The Assembly

Aarthi

00:01

I'm currently reading through the meta post(s).

1

A: Is general reference used inconsistently?

This Question I personally believe the question should be closed. While Gilles brings up the point that the word "trial" could be edited out of the article, it wouldn't be. Why? Given this, and given that any reasonable person would have read the entire film summary before asking a room full ...

freiheit

00:37

Jediism

Jediism is a new religious movement based on the philosophical and spiritual ideas of the Jedi as depicted in Star Wars media. It has no founder or central structure. Belief Practitioners identify themselves with the Jedi Knights in Star Wars, believe in the existence of the Force and that interaction with the Force is possible. Believers align themselves with the moral code demonstrated by the fictional Jedi. Many Jedi churches described the religion as syncretistic, incorporating beliefs from various religious philosophies including Christianity, Stoicism, Buddhism, Taoism and Shintoi...

Aarthi

So anyway: @MarkTrapp I just wanted to chat with you about stuff.

Gilles

@freiheit I know, but apparently Jediism is ok for SFF whereas Christianity is tainted

Aarthi

16:07

If any top users lurk in here, your input would be appreciated. :)

4

Q: Is the [feature-request] tag being misapplied in lieu of [support]?

Recently, I've been working my way through child-metas on the SE 2.0 sites (I've been cycling through old support, bug, and feature requests) and noticed an odd pattern. Many users ask a question such as, "How do I do X?" where X refers to something like track badge progress, prettify code, or ...

Aarthi

18:59

This is a beautiful artwork set superawesomeshop.com/post/34306591241/…

random

20:08

> An email address like no other, launching in November 2012 for limited release. Your favourite email host meets Goatse...

wax eagle

@random wow....just wow

random

Finally, an email address to rival AOL

Thomas Owens

I want one.

Gilles

20:22

@MarkTrapp Could you please make a post on Science Fiction and Fantasy Meta saying how I am Genghis Khan and should be stripped of my diamond, my account and my head, and contain your single-minded rants there and not disrupt unrelated discussions?

user2334

@Gilles I've already formally lodged my complaint about your actions as a moderator. It's unfortunate you seem to be unable to tell the difference between a disagreement on policy and apparently a personal attack on yourself, but it's not surprising, given how you've been reacting to both the GR question and now my answer

Gilles

@MarkTrapp I see some of your comments as a personal attack on me, but not your answer. What bothers me with your answer is that most of it is expounding on a case which is not related to the issue at hand (it had never been an issue in the DKR question whether the asker had seen the movie).

Your answer on the “I haven't read” thread is mostly about DKR being GR, which has nothing to do with the question

user2334

What bothers me is that you are so sure that my answer, and really anyone who disagrees with your understanding of policy, is out of line. Generally, when faced with conflicting ideas or positions and the realization that multiple people also support that position, a reasonable person would stop and reassess their own position instead of dismissing it

user2334

20:37

But you've done it twice in as many days. First on the GR question by telling the OP he had the wrong attitude and was part of the problem, now to me directly by calling my answer a tangent and personal resentment towards you

user2334

But it's not on SciFi: you do it everywhere. On MSO, you routinely dismiss disagreeing positions with colorful language and absurd analogies

user2334

Get over it. Reasonable people disagree. Either learn to deal with that and handle disagreements on their merits, or step down from a position where your obstinance does real damage.

Shog9

For the record (since I don't feel like reading the backscroll to figure out wtf this is about): I support keeping GR on sites that have (and make public) a finite, and extremely short list of such references, preferably in a form that is suitable for listing in the close description itself.

mmyers

I support obstinance-only moderator education

user2334

I support Nixon, he's our man.

Shog9

20:45

Also, anyone suggesting Google or Wikipedia as one of the references gets a month-old jackolantern shipped to their house, parcel post.

user2334

@Shog9 There is a somewhat-related suggestion on SFF Meta: basically, require someone to ~~name names~~ list the reference when VTCing

Shog9

@MarkTrapp Meh; it's a nice thought, but if the folks on a site haven't already agreed on a canon, and if it's not trivially searchable given the problem statement, then it really shouldn't even qualify.

wax eagle

@MarkTrapp isn't that basically closing a question as a dupe of the internet?

Shog9

Just institutionalizes LMGTFY, really

user2334

@waxeagle In a sense, yes. :P

Gilles

20:48

@Shog9 why not Wikipedia? Experimentally, outside language and computer sites, it's the main reference

wax eagle

@Shog9 this is sort of like establishing what constitutes documentation for your site.

user2334

@Shog9 the elephant in the room on a site like SFF (or even Arqade) is that we're playing catch-up to canonical references the rest of the internet has settled on. If you're a Trekker, Memory Alpha is it. 99.99% of all Star Trek questions could be answered by a Memory Alpha article, easily. On Arqade, there's GameFAQs. But we arbitrarily decide those don't count. I guess because they are really, in effect, competitors.

user2334

Which is a round-about way to say that there's very little disagreement about what's a canonical reference, but if we used those references, it'd be virtually impossible to be able to ask a question.

Shog9

Two reasons:
1) we're *sort of* competing with them, in that a Q&A site can and often will offer the same information as a wiki, but in a format aimed at discovery rather than simply compiling comprehensive documentation.
2) Same reason you didn't get to use encyclopedia articles as references for your homework as a kid: WP articles are *supposed* to be backed up with external sources already, so if you can't point to one of them and say "this is canon", then there isn't actually a general reference - you're just saying you don't want to answer certain types of questions.

Gilles

@Shog9 then we should scrap GR on SFF, since WP is the main reason why we close stuff as GR

Shog9

20:53

@MarkTrapp Uh, yes. The vast majority of SO questions can be answered via PHP.net / MDN / MSDN / The C++ Programming Language / etc. The site exists - and thrives - because of the format, not because the information doesn't exist elsewhere.

@Gilles If that's true, then I agree wholeheartedly.

Gilles

on many topics (not just SFF), WP is well-researched and well-explained, but the references tend to be offline. Competing with an article that's had hundreds of competent authors is a waste of time. IME the result ends up worse, when there's already a WP article on the topic.

For example (anecdote, not statistics, but I think it's generalizable): one of our early questions on CS was pretty popular, and was basically asking “what is branch prediction”. A few weeks later I happened to need to learn stuff about branch prediction, and found that the answers on CS.SE were very far behind what WP had to offer.

So the question on CS had been a waste really: all this work produced original writing, but hardly any content worth reading over the WP article

Shog9

@Gilles "Programmers seem to have stopped reading books." <-- Original justification for Stack Overflow.

Gilles

@Shog9 not true IME

user2334

@Shog9 Right. I'm for getting rid of GR on that reason alone. But as long as it exists, it can't be arbitrarily applied or questions exempted through mental gymnastics or new sub-rules being added or hoops to jump through just to make sure a question doesn't get closed.

Shog9

If that doesn't apply to SFF, then, uh, perhaps the site does not actually serve a purpose?

Gilles

20:56

@Shog9 I've lost track: if what doesn't apply to SFF?

Shog9

@Gilles If the majority of questions are well-answered elsewhere, and the majority of askers are willing to both find and read those other sources, then what purpose does SFF serve?

user2334

@Shog9 Take one of the projects of SE: to show up in Google searches, right? So the minimum we assume users do is use Google. Well, if you use Google, most SFF resources show up already because Wikia et al are indexed just like SE. Large C++ Tome A.1 isn't

user2334

So in that sense, there really isn't a purpose to SFF.SE, no.

wax eagle

@Gilles the answer here is to improve the question/answer CS then, not close it in favor of wikipedia. That's where the whole GR thing falls down IMO.

Shog9

@MarkTrapp Well, some of them are - but you have to know how to ask. And be willing to read. And a lot of folks don't and/or aren't.

Gilles

20:59

@Shog9 Where do you get that a majority of questions are well-answered elsewhere?

Shog9

3 mins ago, by Gilles

@Shog9 not true IME

Gilles

A tiny minority of them (you can check our GR stats, I think that gives a good picture) are answered on Wikipedia. A few more are answered on per-universe wikis, but in my experience the per-universe wikis range from mediocre to passable

@Shog9 how does my assertion that programmers haven't stopped reading books relate to SFF?

Shog9

@Gilles Oh, I thought you were referring to your experience on SFF. If you're asserting that the majority of programmers both know how to find good references and take the time to read them, then you haven't been paying much attention on SO.

Gilles

@Shog9 I work in a minority field (embedded programming), things may be different in the PHP/mobile app world

we tend to read books for the meat of our job, and search SO for peripheral things like build scripts and version control

and we do have a well-worn git book in the office

Shog9

@Gilles Yeah; I barely remember being able to buy a book and use it as a reference when coding. Worked for a decade with Windows desktop apps - even with that relatively slow release cycle, a good, comprehensive reference didn't really exist in print form (or, for a long time, anywhere).

Most folks I worked with had at least a few books on their shelf, but the truth is that unless you were very specialized in your work (strictly DB / strictly network / VB) you probably didn't have the book you needed.

wax eagle

21:11

hang on, people ~~write~~ read books on programming? (only half in jest there)

user2334

@waxeagle starting with a new platform or language, books are rad because the vast swathe of online tutorials or overviews are either too brief or assume the wrong audience (far too basic or far too advanced). But then they are completely obsolete.

user2334

The whole having-to-go-through-the-editor-process seems to help even technical books

wax eagle

@MarkTrapp good point.

but at least some of the time books are behind the leading edge and by the time they make it to market better products are already out there

user2334

Oh yeah, for a lot of tech. But a standard or a major revision that's stable, books can get out in time to at least provide a foundation. A book on the iOS 6 SDK, or Drupal 7, or C99, etc.

user2334

But a book on jQuery 1.9 or something is a very expensive paper weight

freiheit

22:24