@TRiG I think making the emoticon do double-duty as the closing parenthesis works. The emoticon is a sort of three-character punctuation mark, and it tends to be there to seal the parenthetical statement with a bit of mood, so why not treat it as a specialized closing parenthesis?
@IsaacMoses @Scimonster @NoachmiFrankfurt I noticed you all reviewed this edit; it was something that I had asked for help with, earlier. I think it looks cool.
@IsaacMoses Ah. I didn't (but likely should have) realized that that was a good use case for that space. I was under the impression that most people ignored that spot, from those posts of others that I've edited, but you're likely right. Especially since I know that there are blind Yodeyans.
When you add an image to a post via the helper bar, you get this:
![enter image description here][1]
[1]: http://i.stack.imgur.com/ve8n0.png
What purpose does the enter image description here text serve? I've not noticed anyway of seeing this text, except if I view the page source for the post.
@IsaacMoses I'm reading it now also. "Describe the information, not the picture" is not what most people think the text should be, but it does make a lot of sense. The purpose of the alt text isn't so that I can figure out which picture is which when looking at code, it's so that people who can't see the picture get the same information; which I just realized (thanks to you and @MonicaCellio) is an issue. This is something I'll need to remember.
@IsaacMoses I'm not sure if that picture classes as "decorative" -- all the necessary information is really outside of that box. If you'd like to, you could.
@Shokhet I was thinking about the "decorative" case in the SE context, and it seemed to me that almost always, SE posts should not contain decorative images. If there's nothing useful in the image, why is it there?
@IsaacMoses To show that Jastrow says what I claimed he did, I guess. But if you can't see the image, describing the information content doesn't do much more than repeat my first sentence, doesn't it?
My answer would then say
> Jastrow supports Yishai's answer, that "סנהדרין" derives from the Greek συνέδριον:
@IsaacMoses I don't think we need to duplicate it, but I wonder if there's someplace where we should be linking it. (The markdown help isn't mod-edible, so not there.)
@MonicaCellio Should there be an MSE feature-request to put that link into the mardown help? .....this is really important information, that no one knows about.
@Shokhet @MonicaCellio The current markdown help says "The word in square brackets is the alt text, which gets displayed if the browser can't show the image. Be sure to include meaningful alt text for screen-reading software." which isn't bad.
... the fact that the easiest (and probably most oft-used) way to add an image doesn't request alt-text until the image-adding mission is accomplished (so "why bother") is probably a bigger deal.
@Shokhet maybe, though now that I've taken a look I don't know how visible it would be. People have to click "?", then "advanced help", then find "images", then click "show more", then notice the link in the text there (if we put it there). How do we make it more prominent than that?
@IsaacMoses oh. Yes, that's pretty reasonable.
@IsaacMoses yeah. Thanks for linking to that MSE post.
@MonicaCellio I suspect (but have no evidence) that most images get added via GUI, not via raw entry of markdown text. If I had to do it raw, I'd be looking at the help.
@Shokhet It's a shame that that online Jastrow doesn't support deep-linking.
@Shokhet I added "Screen capture of the relevant entry in the Jastrow dictionary." Your goal in adding the image is to provide ready evidence for your citation. Saying that it's there provides some of that evidence.
@IsaacMoses probably true. I enter them via the GUI (and I'm a "type the XML/HTML/markdown directly" person!) and the first thing I do after is replace that text. It does come in already selected, IIRC, but apparently that's not enough of a prod for some.
Equivalent stats for MY to those in this post , which said in April '11 that 29% of SO posts with images had user-entered alt text: 127 with "enter ...", 5 with "alt text", 7 with no alt text, out of 297 posts with images. So, 53% of MY posts with images have user-entered alt text.
Running the queries against SO takes too long now. For User Experience, who oughta know better: 6356, 189, 116, 12271 -> 46%
I'm thinking of doing up a request for community help on Meta to replace every instance of default alt-texts on MY. It's tractable, since we're relatively small and, I think, relatively image-free. Any objections?
@IsaacMoses Sounds like a good idea; do you have a query for posts with images that don't have an alt text? ....also, I suggest that part of the Meta plan include doing this slowly, and not all at once, for the purpose of the front page
We had a request a couple of years ago to replace "enter image decription here" with some sort of generic text. I think this is a bad idea, as it doesn't add anything. Shog's comment on the proposal essentially articulates how I feel:
I would rather it changed to something like, "Author hates...
Background
Today in the chatroom, we were discussing the practice of adding meaningful alt text to images on the web. Alt text is displayed when the image cannot be displayed and is therefore especially important for visually impaired readers who use a screen-reading device to tell them what's o...
@IsaacMoses I don't know. I seem to recall discussions in chat about retagging efforts, that urged users to not edit so many at the same time. I don't actually know if it's really a problem.
@Mods, given the underwhelming participation in the Weekly Tanach challenge and the greater likelihood of this new project actually going somewhere, I request removing featured from the former and putting it on the latter.
@Shokhet that was from a different site. I've sometimes given the advice in here to try to limit bulk edits to 5-10 at a time. My main concern is that newly-asked questions should get a chance to be seen before being pushed off the front page by an unfortunately-timed update to 50 questions.
That's more likely to happen with retaggings than with edits that require more thought, so I'd say don't worry about specific numbers and just keep an eye on the front page. If you see the churn pushing a lot of new stuff off, hold off for a little longer. Does that work?
@YeZ thanks for helping, and @IsaacMoses thanks for compiling the lists and writing it up for meta!
@MonicaCellio I don't have the patience to do more than 2 or 3 at a time. But I supposed if 10 people did 2 or 3 at a time would still be a bit of a flood.
Every once in a while, we should post another "Judaism + crazy creatures" question.
3
"Would tribbles be kosher?"
"Could we make kosher gelatin from Plesiosaur bones?"
"If we find life on Mars, will it be kosher to eat?"
Now I'm picturing a cartoon of a guy in stereotypical cartoon-Hasidic garb in a fantasy world chasing a pack of monsters, faeries, etc., with a fork and knife.
@IsaacMoses on a different subject entirely, you might be interested in this question on Community Building about transferring ownership/control of communities (and any pitfalls therein): communitybuilding.stackexchange.com/q/1009/83
When you add an image to a post via the helper bar, you get this:
![enter image description here][1]
[1]: http://i.stack.imgur.com/ve8n0.png
What purpose does the enter image description here text serve? I've not noticed anyway of seeing this text, except if I view the page source for the post.
We had a request a couple of years ago to replace "enter image decription here" with some sort of generic text. I think this is a bad idea, as it doesn't add anything. Shog's comment on the proposal essentially articulates how I feel:
I would rather it changed to something like, "Author hates...
