V'dibarta Bam

Shokhet

12:09 AM

@MonicaCellio Did you ever get an answer to your "alt-text best practice" UX question?

Double AA

12:25 AM

@IsaacMoses How many questions had it?

@YeZ I haven't removed it bc i haven't read it and thought about it yet. Can't say about the others with delete votes.

YeZ

do I cause any harm by selecting "looks ok" in the review queue instead of "skip"? If I am נוטה to "looks OK" but I'm not sure, is there any reason I should be machmir to skip instead of looks ok?

Isaac Moses

12:43 AM

@DoubleAA chadta

Monica Cellio

1:35 AM

@Shokhet One answer so far:

7

A: Best practices for long "alt" text and the vision-impaired?

Retype vs. summarize (a) If the entire text of the scan is relevant, the entire text should be provided in text form. (b) If only a certain part of the scanned text is relevant, only this part should be provided in text form. (It can have a summary in addition, as long as the relevant parts are...

This recommends alt text for shorter bits (excerpts or summaries) and blockquotes for cases where the full text is relevant, saying that a blockquote is easier to interact with, search, cut/paste from, format, etc.

There are also some additional affordances in HTML, it appears, that markdown doesn't support.

I'm probably going to accept that answer if I get no further input soon. It sounds plausible to me; if any of the folks implementing our alt-text cleanup would like to try it and report back, please do. @Shokhet @Scimonster @IsaacMoses (I've lost track of who else is working on this.)

Shokhet

2:00 AM

@MonicaCellio Thanks.

@MonicaCellio I think @Fred was also involved; I don't remember who else.

Shokhet

2:22 AM

There are close votes on this question, though they haven't been explained. It appears that the anonymous close-voter thought that this question is "about Jews, rather than about Judaism." I disagree, because it asks about a halachic decision, and what factors changed that caused this shift in accepted halacha, which is completely on-topic, IMO. — Shokhet 26 secs ago

....I see @YeZ agreed with me on that one.

YeZ

4:02 AM

@IsaacMoses do you remember a question on the site where you pointed out in a comment that the question amounted to asking why we do any hishtadlus, or why G-d didn't just make us automatically satisfied

Shokhet

4:16 AM

@Shokhet @msh210 would also probably be interested in that answer, but would likely see it in any event.

Shokhet

4:27 AM

> "It's the same, only different" ~@YeZ

:)

I'm cool with "lomdish," @YeZ :)

Isaac Moses

4:50 AM

@Shokhet Me too

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses Well, I couldn't have known that then, could I have? :P

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet You probably could have predicted it

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses No, because anyone might have been the third reviewer, and then you wouldn't have seen it in the queue ;-) ....or do you mean about agreeing about leaving open?

BTW, does anyone think that a relevant alt-txt could be added here?

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet The latter. I apparently have an inclusionist reputation

@Shokhet Sure. Describe the flower crowns a little bit, providing some of the value-added (other than "aww cute!") that the picture does

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses ....but really, it's just a picture of kids with flower crowns. That's all I saw in there, anyway.

Isaac Moses

4:56 AM

@YeZ Not distinctly. Sounds like the sort of thing I might say to brush off certain kinds of sophistry

Shokhet

....you might call it "decorative," no?

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet What is a "flower crown"?

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses A crown. Made out of flowers?

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet You should be a poet.

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses Thank you! ....I won't go to med school then, and I'll make a living as a poet! Great idea! :)

(sarcastic tone, but joking. not that sarcastic)

Isaac Moses

4:59 AM

@Shokhet judaism.stackexchange.com/revisions/…

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses Actually, I think you'd make the better poet -- "Children wearing rings around the crowns of their heads made out of fresh flowers"

@IsaacMoses Jinx! :P

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet I think that the picture adds value for someone who might not know what to picture when they hear "flower crown." With my description, I attempt to do the same.

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses Okay; makes sense.

Isaac Moses

I wasn't familiar with the term, but apparently, the meaning is pretty unambiguous

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses Hm. I knew the term from before; I was under the impression that it was pretty widespread. Perhaps not.

Isaac Moses

5:07 AM

@Shokhet My unawareness is poorer counterevidence to your impression than that image search is evidence for it

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses If you say so.

@IsaacMoses ....I'm still trying to figure out what this means.

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet I frequently come down on the "on-topic" side of controversies involving questions [perceived to be] on the edges of our scope

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses Now I understand; thanks.

YeZ

@IsaacMoses Well if you happen to remember it, let me know. I may have an answer to post.

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses Why'd you need to link to that comment, you could just link to goo.gl/FscvRX ...?

;-)

Isaac Moses

5:11 AM

@YeZ Any more clues?

YeZ

@IsaacMoses it was within the last 4 months or so. Not within the past month. (I think)

You don't get any more clues!

Shokhet

5:24 AM

Shoot. I wrote up a whole answer for this question, and then realized that I grossly misunderstood it. ....considering setting up a question for the answer I wrote, but it might be a little bit of a straw-man.

YeZ

@Shokhet don't worry, I'm lining up a shechita question for you sometime soon.

gnite and good Shabbos.

Shokhet

@YeZ Gnight; good Shabbos!

@YeZ I'm waiting.... :)

Isaac Moses

@YeZ Sorry. Couldn't find it, but I made a nice little comment-searching tool you can try playing with: data.stackexchange.com/judaism/query/271058/…

Shokhet

@YeZ @IsaacMoses I hope the question isn't too thin....IAE, that's the question I though was being asked in the other post.

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet Looks fine to me

Shokhet

5:38 AM

@IsaacMoses ....I know that you and I have had issues with my self-answer questions before; I thought it was worth a double-check. Thanks!

TZT!

msh210

6:42 AM

I don't know who it is, but someone's been flagging my old "Thank you!" comments (commented on answers where I'd written the question) as "too chatty" and I've been deleting the comments, marking the flags helpful (as they are). But I think [cont'd]

[cont'd] "obsolete" would be a better flag for those, since they weren't too chatty when they were posted (per the two tied-for-top-voted answers to the relevant Q on Meta) and are now only because the answerer's seen them (i.e. they're now obsolete). I personally would appreciate [cont'd]

[cont'd] your flagging them as obsolete rather than too chatty, because I don't want whatever statistics are kept on bad comments (if any) to note that I post too many too-chatty comments. Thanks! (Then again, I don't know who you are, so I don't know whether you'll see this.)

msh210

7:00 AM

@Shokhet Only because MonicaCellio posted it here. But thanks for the ping.

@IsaacMoses Cf. data.stackexchange.com/judaism/query/115197

msh210

7:20 AM

@YeZ It claims there's no isur bitul Tora b'echus. That seems like a partial answer.

@Scimonster Every day's like an open door.

Scimonster

7:53 AM

@IsaacMoses Obviously it's been bugging me a while, so i reposted. ;)

Scimonster

8:04 AM

@msh210 That was me. Sounds fine, thanks for telling me.

(I thought you could check who cast a flag?)

msh210

@Scimonster I thought I could, but the place I checked didn't have a username. Perhaps there's another way I can check that I don't know about (or have forgotten).

@Scimonster I saw some SE employee use "raise" as the verb for SE flags. I'm not sure what real-life flags (that are raised) SE flags are supposed to be the counterparts to. Perhaps ships' signals, warning other ships of danger?? The verb I like to use is "throw", à la a football flag, used to note that something was done wrong. And then there's "cast". :-)

Scimonster

@msh210 "raise" is also a good one.

msh210

@Scimonster "Cast" makes a lot of sense if we ignore the flag metaphor. Then it's like "cast a vote".

Scimonster

@msh210 Right, that's why i use it.

msh210

8:23 AM

@Scimonster Ah, I see: apparently "raise a flag" means "call attention to something". (Wiktionary, WordReference forum.)

Monica Cellio

3:21 PM

@Scimonster this worked. I didn't even modify the URL like you suggested (I forgot about that); I just pointed it at the file and it picked it up. Thanks for the help.

My comment templates aren't anything fancy, but if anybody wants to use mine as a starting point, you can pick them up from pobox.com/~cellio/se/comments/yodeya.jsonp. Some of them came with the userscript and some came from our meta (thanks @IsaacMoses and probably others).

Isaac Moses

@msh210 Nice. Your work?

@MonicaCellio Cool. Do you think we ought to add some of our snippets, e.g. from "Welcoming New Users"‌, e.g. "please register" and "please give yourself a name", to this repository?

We're about 1/3 of the way through the To Do lists in Alt Text Fix. Thanks to everyone who's been pitching in.

3

@MonicaCellio Thanks for soliciting this. I think it's not too far off from what we've been doing, following @msh210's guidance

Monica Cellio

3:46 PM

@IsaacMoses oh that's a good idea. Go for it!

Isaac Moses

4:06 PM

@MonicaCellio Went for it. Thanks

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses thanks for collecting those.

msh210

@IsaacMoses Nope.

Double AA

5:27 PM

Any opposition to a rainbow tag?

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA What for?

Double AA

@IsaacMoses These ~15 questions judaism.stackexchange.com/search?q=rainbow+is%3Aq

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA I mean, for what benefit?

Double AA

@IsaacMoses Grouping questions about rainbows

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA Every single one of them will show up under judaism.stackexchange.com/search?q=rainbow+is%3Aq

Double AA

5:31 PM

@IsaacMoses And every question in tattoo will show up in judaism.stackexchange.com/search?q=tattoo+is%3Aq

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA True. It's not obvious that we need that tag, either

Double AA

@IsaacMoses Actually the search is better. Edited.

Shokhet

6

A: What's our policy on 'thanks' comments?

If the comment is purely a "thank you," then it's probably not necessary....but no reason to flag as "too chatty," in my opinion, because (as you quoted from animuson), it is certainly nice to reinforce the idea that the people who help you (and whom you help) are human, which is something that I...

@msh210 I haven't read SQL in a long time, but I have a hunch that somethings broken there, if the word "shechita" has been used twice, by two different users (neither me); and "shechitah" not at all.

Isaac Moses

5:47 PM

@Shokhet looks like it catches everything but initial posts of Q&A

... maybe

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses maybe...but I've said "shechita(h)" many more times than just that

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet maybe it's a militantly vegan script

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses that explains it. Thanks! :D

Isaac Moses

@Shokhet You missed where the MIL_VEG environment[alism] flag was set at the top

Shokhet

@IsaacMoses :)

....I flagged a comment as "not constructive," and when it disappeared I wondered if I had missed my own mod election.....turns out it was probably deleted for the same reason some other comments were deleted; which makes sense as one of the same words were present in the comment.

Isaac Moses

6:02 PM

@Shokhet Cool.

Shokhet

....I think that this is headwear that does need to be described, @IsaacMoses ;-)

@all: I don't think the image here serves any purpose at all. Should I roll back the most recent edit?

....this, ^^^, after I put in some effort reading the unclear picture and summarizing it.....

....also, the added blockquote for the first paragraph is incorrect, as that is a paraphrase, and not a quote

Isaac Moses

6:21 PM

@Shokhet Yes. I was very puzzled by the blockquote until I saw your last message here.

... I recommend leaving a comment for the last editor indicating why you're rolling back. Or maybe just a message here. He's pingable

Once the picture's gone, all of the comments on that answer are obsolete.

Shokhet

@Shmuel -- I disagree with your edit on two counts: the first is that it was incorrect to add blockquote formatting to the paragraph that you did, as that was a paraphrase, and not a quote. Second of all, the picture serves no purpose, because all the relevant information is here, including the name of the book and the page number, so the image is superfluous, and may even cause harm. If you'd like to discuss this further, take it to Bam. — Shokhet 49 secs ago

@ShmuelBrin ^^^

@IsaacMoses Thanks.

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