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12:46 AM
Well... coming back to the original topic of the room
^ I suggest deletion, the question is based on a misconception and I cannot be bothered to type it out.
 
 
1 hour later…
2:02 AM
@orthocresol I don't vote to delete, because I feel clearing up a misconception is important
I made an attempt at OCRing it; have a look
 
 
12 hours later…
2:01 PM
It still took me a while to understand what is being asked, but basically only after reading the answer...
 
2:13 PM
@Martin-マーチン thanks for your reply on the repo! I'll post a detailed reply tomorrow, but just wanted to let you know that I too am gradually shifting away from the low-effort policy (read ten lines here)
 
in The Periodic Table, 11 hours ago, by pentavalentcarbon
yesssss, come to ussssssss
We might really have to have the discussion what the community thinks a close vote actually is and what it is supposed to do. Maybe we all want different things at that level already...
 
@Martin-マーチン <nod>, I think I've said before -- I think we've gotten to a space where too many in the community follow a thought of "I don't want to answer this question..." with "...and so nobody else should, either. <CLOSEVOTE>."
When the better response is either just <CLOSE TAB> or <DOWNVOTE>.
 
@Martin-マーチン are you trying to say that close reasons (apart from the hw one) are often mis-applied?
@hBy2Py yep, that's similar to what MAR said in his "CVs aren't superman downvotes" post
 
I think one should see close-votes as a ticking time bomb. It'll give the OP (and the community) time to 'defuse' (improve) it, but if that doesn't happen, they should blow up (be deleted).
 
2:35 PM
@Martin-マーチン okay, I'll admit I don't understand where you're trying to applying this thought to. What problem are you trying to solve apart from what the meta post by MAR had already covered?
 
@GaurangTandon i need a link to that post, i'm missing context
 
12
Q: Close Votes Aren't Super Downvotes

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠUnfortunately, we've had a problem for quite a while now. It basically boils down to close voting questions with reasons that don't fit. Essentially, the Homework off-topic close reason, "unclear what you're asking", and "too broad" reasons are sometimes used where they make no sense whatsoever. ...

?
 
No that's not what I am saying.
@GaurangTandon I'm applying this thought, that everybody who vtc needs to be conscious what that means; and in my opinion it means that the question should be deleted unless improved.
 
2:53 PM
Hmmm...are you trying to say that every closed question should necessarily be deleted, by Roomba or by force?
 
in principle yes
if you agree that a close vote means that the question does not belong on our site, then explain to me why we should have to keep it around
 
...because we are not 100% accurate with the close votes. stuff that should be closed, isn't closed. and stuff that shouldn't be closed, is closed.
 
0
Q: How to determine the order of acidity of the following dimethyl nitrophenols

AbhigyanC I was solving some questions, and I came across this one. This is how I went about it, although I got a wrong answer: (2) shows the nitro group to be sterically hindered, due to which it should go out of plane and this will be an example of the steric inhibition of resonance. Hence, there wi...

This was incorrectly closed
It's one reopen vote away
From getting reopened
 
3:09 PM
even the compounds aren't same, so how's it a dupe? @pentavalentcarbon could you please tell why you would closevote this as dupe? or maybe you just happened to make an error here?
 
3:31 PM
@GaurangTandon AFAICT @Mart is arguing for what the VTC mechanism should be used for, not how it is often currently used.
VTC should be a vote saying "This question should be scrubbed entirely from the site, and no one should be allowed to answer it."
Not just "I don't like this question" or "I don't want to take the time to answer this question"
(those two are my words, not my understanding of Mart's position)
 
4:15 PM
@orthocresol This is the kind of thing I won't touch because I don't understand it. Is it really that un-useful?
@GaurangTandon it's a moot point now; I'll stop voting on organic chemistry questions because I can't judge them
same or different compounds are not necessarily a good metric, just because they're different doesn't mean the questions are actually different
 
@GaurangTandon @hBy2Py Basically that is the problem, and I think every close voter should be aware that by closing the question is basically out on death row (do you spell that like this?) It might change how questions are being closed...
 
Erik's answer is good at first glance; can the question be cleaned up? chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/97944/…
of course there are a ton of related questions that I don't know if they should be edited, dupe-closed, nuked, or just left alone
this is not great, maybe just because of formatting: chemistry.stackexchange.com/q/70487/194
 
4:38 PM
@pentavalentcarbon any reason for bumping this old question?
 
that's not the definition of "bumping a question", so I don't understand what you mean
 
ah, okay, you meant to get it deleted
 
I figure it's a lot nicer than just saying "delete this" over and over again, but if that's preferable...
I should not be the final arbiter of anything
 
@pentavalentcarbon the word "help" has the traditional sense of positive improvement associated with it, at least for me :)
 
@GaurangTandon well, I think it's a positive impact on the site for some questions to...disappear
 
4:43 PM
@Martin-マーチン and @hBy2Py hmmm okay, that makes sense. So, by making the question closure have a lot more seriousness associated with it, we want to fix the current situation of frivolous/mis-applied close votes?
 
@Martin-マーチン Close: "... [by being closed], the question is basically on death row."
 
These 3 may be worthwhile for inclusion into a canonical Q/A:
1. https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/q/54858/194
2. https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/q/54366/194
3. https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/q/41530/194
 
@pentavalentcarbon I think this one is worth cleanup and an answer; I'll tackle it.
 
ok, thank you
 
@GaurangTandon <nod>, it might almost be better if the VTC mechanism were called "vote to delete"
 
4:49 PM
@pentavalentcarbon does that help?
 
Then, closure would be the 'death row' phase of a question's progression toward deletion.
 
Yes, I think that helps, I'm not sure there's a content problem with it.
 
@hBy2Py hmm...I think this discussion is now out-of-frame with Chem.SE and is now sort of clashing with the mechanism SE has put for us. Delete votes are restricted for 10k+ users. I know we lack too many active 10k+ users so I guess this is our way of working around it?
 
@GaurangTandon Oof, good point.
 
The "death row" analogy is apt because people wait years on death row in the United States
 
4:51 PM
Both of those mechanisms would need to be renamed.
No way SE overlords would actually do that, I don't think.
 
yes, this is how we do it
 
@pentavalentcarbon i was wanting to bring this up but...I think we should decide on a particular time deadline before deleting a bad old question? I've no problems with deleting this particular question, but Dr. J seems to an active user, and if they detect one of their answers disappeared suddenly, I'm not sure if they would feel happy
@pentavalentcarbon same goes for this...
 
@GaurangTandon yikes, he's real mad
I agree that in general, we should wait a little while to delete.
 
@pentavalentcarbon ah, yeah, he indeed is mad. probably a bad example for my point, but I think you got it...
@pentavalentcarbon by which search query do you dig them out currently, btw?
@hBy2Py yeah, I think this is something that requires a bit more thought. Close voted questions stay around on all other SE sites forever, unless Roomba-ed. I doubt any of them put all those closed questions on a death row as we are planning to.
 
This is a good opportunity to say though that those downvotes are because of me, because I don't like that question at all, that's not what the site should be in my opinion, and I am free to downvote as I wish, just like they can for me as well. If you think that makes the site suck...I don't know what to say.
 
5:00 PM
@pentavalentcarbon I most certainly agree, and we can only cure these calculative physical-chem questions - with zero concept and only maths - through canonical, conceptual Q&As
 
@GaurangTandon I don't have one, because I don't regularly come here...I skim the front page, and look at the "related questions" on the right-hand side.
 
@pentavalentcarbon i'll have a look at them tomo
@pentavalentcarbon you're certainly more regular than most users around here ;) I'll see if I can get a query to work
 
Ok. Isn't it ridiculously late over there?
 
@pentavalentcarbon it's 10:30pm, not really ridiculously late :O
 
Hm, don't know what I was thinking then
 
5:03 PM
@pentavalentcarbon have a look - the third page starts to have nearly a month old questions; you can filter via tags as you like
 
Urgh, this person has answered a bunch of crappy questions...must resist urge to serial downvote and get suspended...
 
true that
 
That's a good starting point, thanks
 
sure welcome
 
oh dear, I need to switch from coffee to beer before I start tackling these...
For example, the first one there...chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/97321/…
I feel like it could be edited, but I'm not sure that would improve it enough
 
5:09 PM
@pentavalentcarbon Agreed. I really feel we should first let a mod have a look at that page and wave their delete-wand first, on the blatantly obvious bad cases. We can have a look at the remaining later. (In general, I also feel we need to have our Spring Cleaning work a bit more organized, but as long as the room doesn't get too active, it's not a big deal)
@pentavalentcarbon that makes me start to hate the effort closure even more... the question seems interesting
 
 
6 hours later…
11:24 PM
On one hand I'm really glad that there's quite a lot of recent activity here. On the other hand I sometimes feel like I can't keep up... the difference in the amount of free time (and energy) I have now, vs the amount of free time (and energy) I had one year ago, is stark.
I'll say that I read the repo and both penta's and Martin's comments.
And, perhaps somewhat predictably (I can be very fickle), I don't know if I still agree with my stance of ~a year ago... In an ideal world, I would agree with "conceptual" as a closure metric. The problem is that (I think) in practice it will probably be equally subjective and equally prone to abuse as "effort".
 
11:51 PM
Anyway, regarding the question I put up for deletion yesterday, I think it can be reworked into a slightly more sensible question, so I'll do it. Thanks for everybody's input.
 

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