@Aaron, @CharlieBrumbaugh, @ab2, @Aravona, @RoryAlsop, @Willeke and other friends. Until the question with the seal flinging the octopus is off the front page, which could take a long time considering how many questions we get per day, I'm out of here.

I know how sensitive I am, so I'm not blaming anyone. It's a popular question, and, other than the fact that there's no text whatsoever, people like it. It even has a great answer by @Aravona! I just think it should have been explained and linked to a video.

Even a picture would have been better.

@CharlieBrumbaugh, I downvoted because the question kind of made me sick, not out of anything personal. I promise. I rescinded that. I'm not going to upvote because it doesn't say anything. If it had some text, even an explanation of what was in the video, that showed some effort, I would have upvoted. That's just an explanation of my voting reason, not that you asked for it!!! I didn't want you to think it was a revenge downvote of some kind.

@CharlieBrumbaugh, if I edited the question to announce that the video was coming, but left some space so people could decide whether or not they wanted to see it, would you just roll it back? I don't want to play in your question, especially because people know how I feel about things that could be construed as hurting animals. I'd do it though, if you'd let me............

@Sue I’d rather leave the question as is

@CharlieBrumbaugh That's what I figured. That's why I asked. I didn't think it was fair of me to do it without asking.

@Aaron, @Aravona, @ab2, @CharlieBrumbaugh, @RoryAlsop, @Willeke, I had a case of "trigger finger", which is what @Aaron and I talked about yesterday, where you have a feeling, write it down and hit send before you stop and think. That's what I did when I announced I'd be leaving because I don't like seeing a dolphin flinging itself onto a boat that's in its way.

I've had a really rough day, and I came here for my usual information and relaxation, and a chance to learn and maybe even contribute, and that was the first thing I saw. All I could think of was that either the dolphin or the octopus could have been injured by the guy in the boat.

I started to cry and decided I couldn't take it.

@CharlieBrumbaugh, I also thought (think, but in my judgmental state I could be wrong) that it was put there with no effort at all, and doesn't ask anything that can be answered without the gif.

@Aravona had an excellent, scientifically proven answer, and I love those, especially where animals are concerned.

The meta question answered so thoughtfully by @Aaron, outdoors.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1315/5547, considers many angles of this type of posting.

I've also asked a meta question to see if it's possible to put gifs behind spoilers, outdoors.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1316/…, like we can with a picture. I'll see what's said about that. It won't change this question, because @Charlie's question must be left alone. I wouldn't disrespect him by doing that. I asked if I could make it a bit harder to find, and that request was denied. I respect that!!

@Aaron, @ab2, @Aravona, @CharlieBrumbaugh, @RoryAlsop. The thing is, it's a fascinating question! I liked seeing the title of it. I just didn't like seeing the video.

I wonder all kinds of things about why animals do what they do. Many are not pretty, by my standards at least! But I love them so much and think they're much smarter than we are, in many cases!

So, thank you all for putting up with my temper tantrum. I have other things to cry about tonight and a dolphin trying to figure out how to eat an octopus shouldn't have set me off!

I do think we're treading a dangerous line in terms of quality though. In this case a low-quality (link-only by SE standards) question attracted a high quality answer.

As @Aaron said in his post, we should be forced to write something in addition to posting a video.

I think I should look around at what else is happening on the site today. I also have another animal behavior question that I think people might like because it absolutely fascinated me! I'll check it to make sure it's okay though! I'm glad to see more animal behavior questions here, especially when they don't include shooting something!

I hope everyone has had a lovely day, and I'll check in when I feel better! You're a kind and patient group, and I'm blessed!

@Sue Sorry about your discomfort over the animals. I don't mean to belittle that at all, but I do want to say a couple things about that question...

@Sue In Charlie's defense, I am fairly certain he did that question partly as an example for me, since he posted that question after we started talking about embedded videos, and he did it just minutes after the animated gif alternative was brought up (that is an animated gif in his question). I don't think he would have made that post if I hadn't asked if we could do videos on here.

@Sue As for the quantity of text: After reading what you said, I tried looking at it a couple of different ways. 1) I tried ignoring the animation and thinking about what the question would be like if it were just the text that Charlie originally wrote without anything to go with it. If he had asked the question with no image but still having just that text, I doubt anyone (even you) would have said anything, though you might have still thought it short and abrupt. And 2) Taking just that ...

... 2) Taking just that short text into consideration, it is actually representative of Charlie's questions. He tends to be very short, abrupt, and to the point. I have noticed that about a lot of his answers, and even more on his questions. He tends to boil an issue down to its fundamental parts, strips out everything extraneous, and so makes very pointed posts. I don't like envy, but being someone who uses way too many words, I am a bit jealous of his ability to do that.

As far as link-only posts go, you made me wonder about something... we have a "no link-only answers" rule, but how does that apply to questions? I had never even given that a thought. We say "link-only answers," but if someone posted a question which was merely "How do I do this? (link)" we probably would not take kindly to that. I would say a question needs to be able to stand fully on just its text, and that videos are only to augment the question. Essentially "no 'link-only'", as you put it.

In Charlie's case though, I think the question would have been essentially the same even without the image, and I think it could have acquired the exact same answer that it did get.

@Sue No offense intended, but you even said that the question had no text... since you have such a high sensitivity, could you have perhaps been so put off by the animation that it caused you to miss the text below it which asked a question?

@Sue I understand your pain. It bothers me too just to think of animals (or people) getting hurt, no matter how it happens. When I first saw Charlie's post, I laughed. Later, reading the answer and realizing that the octopus was probably badly injured, possibly killed, I cringed at the thought of what would have been happening to it...

@Sue I'll tell you how I've been overcoming that sensitivity, as maybe it will help you. For the longest time, I was not a hunter and hated the idea of hurting anything. I still remember when I was a young boy and my grandfather asked me to shoot a bat out of his barn: I hit it, he was impressed, and I felt awful for the bat. I did not even fish, because it bothered me to hurt the worms by putting them on the hooks (not to mention what happens to the fish)...

@Sue ... fast forward a bunch of years, and I suddenly had an epiphany. Even if I do not hurt anything by my own hands, I am still responsible for the death of numerous animals. Every time I buy a hamburger, eat a chicken nugget, order anything with bacon on it, etc. that food had to be killed at some point. Obviously, I knew that all along, but it just hits you in a different way when you view yourself as partially responsible for it. And becoming a vegan isn't necessarily a correct answer.

I mean, it's not like humans are the only ones doing it. Animals are doing it constantly all around us, and not even just animals but even plants and fungus does it, there are even plants and fungus that kill and eat animals. That's how all of creation is. Some would say that's how it evolved. I would say it's because of the curse on humankind brought on by the fall in the garden of Eden. Regardless of why, "it's a dog eat dog world" is, truly sadly, an understatement.

We could take that a lot of different ways, but here is what my response was: I now consider it quite rude to the animals around us to pretend that we are not responsible for their suffering. To not be willing to eat a cow but to be happy with eating a cheese burger felt to me like a lie and disrespectful to the cow. So I decided to force myself to take responsibility for the death and suffering that my life causes to other creatures around me.

I fish now, and I cringe when I injure the worm, but I thank it for its sacrifice. If I catch a fish, I thank it for giving its life for me. I have not yet done any big game hunting, but I have decided that if I do I will pray over the animal and thank it for giving me life. I will honor the life around me by acknowledging the pain and suffering and being willing to bring myself to perform the act myself instead of ignoring it and letting some unknown person do it out of my sight.

As far as I am aware, this is more than the animals themselves do for each other.

Also, I do not mean to disrespect you, or others, in any way. I personally feel now that it is disrespectful of society in general to eat cheeseburgers but be unwilling to slaughter the poor cow themselves, but I do not hold that against anyone because they view it differently. For me though, I decided I needed to either bring myself to hunt something, or if couldn't then I needed to refuse to eat it and force myself into veganism so as not to disrespect nature.

Sorry for the wall of text, and I don't expect you to do as I have done, but I thought that the viewpoint might help you when animal suffering bothers you.

This viewpoint has helped me to overcome most such suffering issues. It still makes me cringe, and I don't like it, but I accept it. Well, most of it... it still really bothers me when I see people hunt animals for no other reason at all other than for the fun of it or for trophies; not common, but it happens, and I think that's about the only part of it all that I don't accept.

Anyway, that won't make the pain in you go away, but maybe it will help to make it tolerable! I'm sure the seal merely thought of it as its Burger King meal combo and would itself have suffered if it had to go without. Ah, but if only we could all live off of photosynthesis.

TL DR - morning everyone

@Sue glad you liked the answer. Not all seals are so rough, the ones I played with were very gentle! But that's nature, there's a reason they're called Wild Animals - on the other hand, I prefer my octopus in a curry or on a seafood paella, and not thrown about my plate :P

Afternoon all :-)

(I don't know) I hope @Ricketyship is back from his trek, there is a storm in the region he has visited. Hope you are safe mate!

@RoryAlsop Can you feature this one outdoors.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/558/… as otherwise its too old to show up on the sidebar

This post needs more flags applied outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/20654/4079

@JamesJenkins I pinned the Charcoal Hq room and they will help raise more rude flags

@CharlieBrumbaugh thanks. Also I am not big on protection, but it seemed appropriate in this case. In a couple days after it falls of the HNQ queue you could probably remove the protection.

@CharlieBrumbaugh done

@JamesJenkins many thanks - good call. I deleted the two rude/pointless posts by new folks who obviously came in with the HNQ

@RoryAlsop Thanks

I just want to put out there that my new meta "chicken & egg" question is brought on by my frustration and annoyance, and I think people need to realize that it can be difficult to work within the tiny box SE provides, but that I blame that very same tiny box that is the SE model more than I blame any of you. The Q&A paradigm has its merits, but often times questions beg further questions, and in this case some people want those questions begged up front.

If we do come up with an answer to that, the rest of SE might want to see it too, as we are not the only site that suffers from that problem. Frequently I see posts closed (or almost closed) as too broad on worldbuilding because people don't want to help a question asker bootstrap their way into the question they actually wanted to ask.

@Aaron Short answer -> redirect paparazzos comments to /dev/null

@CharlieBrumbaugh I am trying to bash some understanding into him. If he is going to keep lurking here, he needs to get that some of his actions are just utterly ridiculous. But I am trying not to let it get to me since I know how he is. So I suppose I'm redirecting them to 'tee /dev/null', which is obviously in vain.

I tried to be very forceful, but to do it in a manner as polite and nice as possible while still being firm, and I thought this would be a good spot to do it since this is a clear-cut completely obvious case where his antics are objectively nonsense.

And now that I have said that, I am thinking of the "trigger finger" comment by @Sue as it is also possible that he has not connected the dots between the questions and sees them as a bunch of discrete rapid fire questions (despite me linking them). sigh He can't read my mind, so I suppose it's not necessarily so clear-cut to him.

@Aaron: while I am no fan of paparazzo and enjoyed when he was banned, he was half right

broad questions are not a good fit

additionally, there isn't really any meaning to "linked" questions, each question should stand on its own

@whatsisname But every question I have asked has not been a broad question in and of itself. It is only when an expert comes in and says "Well, it happens to depend on X, Y, and Z" that it now appears broad. It is only broad to the expert, not to the asker.

You cannot expect question askers to read the mind of the experts before they ask their question.

So a perfectly good question has been invalidated by the reality that the asker did not know beforehand.

Hence each successive question I've asked.

I'm not familiar with all of your questions, but that "how much to expect question" I commented on IMO is most definitely too broad

Maybe it seems that way too someone who knows enough about it, but it is definitely a question which is useful and which I'm not the only person who has asked. I have seen the same question on other forums with no good answer.

And I don't understand why nobody can at least provide some kind of range. I take that back, James tried to do just that. So rather, I don't understand why it's so hard to put a range on it.

If it's so hard, then the people who have the answers should explain why the question supposedly cannot be answered.

listen I'm not even an expert on ocean fishing, I've never gone fishing on the ocean in my life, but I have been alive long enough to know that the ocean is not the same everywhere

so it doesn't take an expert to see that your question was too broad

this is not just an "other forum"

For all I know, I should expect to be able to go out and catch 100+ pounds of fish every single day and will need to throw 95+ pounds back. Is that realistic? Is that completely ridiculous to expect? I have no clue. In the opposite direction, should I expect that catching a single fish every two to three days might be a lot, and so I should have extremely low expectations? To me, the range is essentially 0 to infinite, and someone should be able to set some kind of bound on it.

What if someone asked "Hey, I'm going outside right now. What should I expect the temperature to be?"

@whatsisname wrote "this is not just an 'other forum'" Yes, I am aware of that. But you are making assumptions that you seem to be expecting me to make. Your assumptions might be 100% correct, and if they are then thank you for sharing them with me. But you cannot expect everyone else to be able to make those same assumptions.

with no other information? Even being able to say it's between -128 and 134F is not terribly useful

To answer your hypothetical temperature question, if it was asked by someone who truly had no clue (Maybe they have literally lived in an air conditioned bubble or they are an ET), then it would be helpful for them to know that temperatures in most areas with inhabitants on our planet range from about -30F to 120F.

people would rightfully say "Where are you? What time of year is it?" etc

no, it wouldn't be helpful to know -30F to 120F

That information actually would be useful.

No that would be too narrow, as it would only apply to one person on one specific day in one specific place

@CharlieBrumbaugh: ok, change the question to "A hypothetical person is going outside. What should they expect the temperature to be". Same basic principle.

@whatsisname Yes, they might rightfully say that. The -20F to 120F would be a valid answer, and it would directly answer the question, but you are quite right that its usefulness is highly limited and that location/time would be preferable to know.

Again, You are correct

But that is missing my point. If that was a genuine question asked, the one that you just asked hypothetically, it must be asked by someone who does not know ahead of time that such information is necessary to answer the question. I'm not even saying that the question must be answered (though it definitely could be), my point is that the question itself is completely legitimate, and you cannot expect people to stop asking questions of that nature.

a question just being legitimate or asked in good faith is not enough, it also has to be useful

if a questions usefulness is highly limited it is poor quality and should be removed

It is useful, it just isn't (from someone's point of view) narrow enough. And that's fine...

the -20 to 120 or -128 to 134 answers while correct, don't provide anyone any value

but again, you cannot expect people to stop asking such questions, because that is expecting them to know ahead of time what they don't know, that is a paradox.

If I had a time machine to go to tomorrow and read the comments to see what information I need to ask about ahead of time, then come back to today and ask that other question first instead, then ask my original question after, then I would do that.

But I can't.

@whatsisname I don't think you are really arguing against anything I'm saying. And I am not saying that anything you are claiming is wrong either.

This whole argument has been started because we have one argumentative user, can we just drop the argument and ban said user already? It won't be the first time this year....

@CharlieBrumbaugh The argument has merits on its own ground, as it is a problem that keeps recurring on TGO and elsewhere in SE, but yes, you are correct that this argument wouldn't be taking place if a specific user hadn't been so argumentative.

@CharlieBrumbaugh: I'm a bad person to ask about that, as I'd be favorable to banning him even if he was 100% correct

@Aaron: I am arguing your how much fish question is too broad, and you are arguing it is not

@Aaron: did you make the how much fish question that way because you didn't know about variation in the ocean, or because you thought the broader question was more useful?

@whatsisname You are again glossing over what I'm saying. I do not necessarily disagree with you. I am not saying "It's not too broad."

Yes, I did not know that the fish are different in different parts of the ocean, or even in different oceans for that matter.

I just commented as such on your meta answer.

I'll paste that here: As for vague: It is only vague to the person who already knows, and if I already knew I would not ask the question. To the one who does not know, the question honestly sounds perfectly focused and narrow. You have suggested that I "should have just known that the location would ...

... matter", but no, I honestly did not know. I honestly believed that the fishing would be the same off the US east coast as it would be off Chile as it would be off Japan. I had no reason to assume they would be different. Even if that information were commonplace, the nature of my Google queries didn't dig that up.

@Sue Here is something you can click on without trepidation: wheelchair for recovering turtle

I am even willing to admit that the information may seem common knowledge to anyone who knows anything about the topic. But I have only done freshwater fishing, where one could expect to find a large variety based on location because the waters are literally separated. And in trying to find out about this saltwater fishing, I am not searching for that (wouldn't know to).

@whatsisname Despite disagreeing with you on the impossibility of what you ask, I thank you for taking the time to speak with me. However, I must be going now, as I just realized I'm late for something. I will see whatever else you say when I am back at some point. But please, if you continue on this topic, please play special attention to my points about "it is literally impossible" and "that requires hindsight... ahead of time" and think about it without making any ...

... assumptions at all about what the other person must or must not know. That is especially frustrating to be told "You're not doing your research" when I have poured many a sleepless night over the whole boating and fishing thing and have exhausted myself doing exactly that, researching it all.

@whatsisname I will admit that I am frequently guilty of depth-first searches though, so I tend to have oddly balanced knowledge in fields I'm not yet an expert in. xkcd.com/761

later

Sorry @CharlieBrumbaugh for having continued this topic in here to your annoyance.

no worries, thats what chat is for

@Aaron, I want to thank you so much for all of your thoughts, and taking the time to write them so soon after my own. Today has been busy, so this is my first time back to the site. It's also a busy evening, so I won't be able to give you the quality responses you deserve, so I'll probably hold off on answering. Hopefully tomorrow will be easier, and, even if you're not around, I'll give them some quality attention!

@Aaron, I just noticed you're in the midst of something important to you. I don't have time to read these transcripts closely, but I hope you and everyone, including @whatsisname, are settling whatever it is in a way that makes both of you happy!

@Aravona You're sweet! I forgot you've played with seals. How awesome is that. Nature is nature as you say. I was watching a movie recently where someone was visiting Greece, and the people were wrapping the octopus around the clotheslines. It was in the background, and I'm not sure whether or not they were still alive. Whatever the culture is, it's how they do it!