The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

4:34 AM

@Lhurgoyf “Hey, Rand, recommend any fantasy novels”

”Wheel of Time should cover the bases for a while”

(His name is from the series)

7:27 AM

@Jenayah I've met him on Joy of Coding. He's amazingly nice and friendly.

@SQB seemed so, from the interviews/meetings etc I've read/watched ^^

7:46 AM

Chicken chicken chicken

►

(Don't drink while watching).

7:57 AM

@SQB added to the to-watch list

8:56 AM

@Jenayah good edit.

@SQB eheh thanks

@Lhurgoyf I've been keeping an eye on that Music post of yours, if you're concerned about the band making money you could link the Youtube video. I'm sure they make money from the ads

Here's the timestamp if you want: youtube.com/…

(I don't want to edit the post for you, because peer review is a thing but everyone is free to choose what they link to :) )

Just a thought, no obligation

Not entirely sure the above link is supported by the band though, but you might get more replies

Poke @Edlothiad you sure this last one is an episode-identification? Sounds to me that OP really isn't sure of what series it was in...

> I'd love to know what comic this is.

> It was possibly a National story from the forties or fifties about a man on the run from the law.

Maybe both?

> Also for use in situations in which you know the movie series, book series, or comic that a plot belongs to, but cannot remember the title or issue number.

@TheLethalCarrot this "you know" seems very definite, OP doesn't seem sure.

I'd add a story-identification to the question.

I'd vouch for both story-identification and episode-identification

9:11 AM

No, because he knows the series: "In the early seventies DC reprinted a story as a second or third feature in one of their comics."

^

I'm too lazy to finish my comment

In that case, you use episode-identification otherwise, every episode-identification would be story-identification

In which case there's no need for episode-identification

"DC" isn't really a series, though

I don't like it either

Not that I'm saying we need ed-id, but that's how the cookie crumbles.

It's one universe.

It's a series of series.

9:12 AM

@Edlothiad well yeah, but doesn't that mean every "I saw this episode of a TV show which I don't remember of, what was it?" is episode-id?

@Mithrandir dis

If they can identify the TV show but not the episode yes, if they're using the episode to find the TV show, no.

That's the tagging convention. Believe me if you want, add story-id if you want, I won't be losing any sleep.

The question at stake sounds like "I know it was part of a series, but I don't know which one": useful for story-id, doesn't mean (IMO) that we should kick out the story-id tag

Hell, I won't even see it for the next couple of hours.

In this case, they've only identified DC as the publisher. I wouldn't call that a series.

In the US comic world DC is about half of everything existing ever, though.

9:15 AM

@Edlothiad oh right, you have work to do :)

Q: Comic about a man on the run who helps a lost girl and encounters a woman who can see into the future

3

In the early seventies DC reprinted a story as a second or third feature in one of their comics. It was possibly a National story from the forties or fifties about a man on the run from the law. He's a good man, wrongly accused (though of what I cannot recall), who comes to the aid of a lost and ...

That's the one we're talking about, right?

yeah

I'm gonna agree with @Jenayah that both are applicable. I've added story-identification.

@Jenayah Well when you do nothing all week, you have to work on friday.

@Edlothiad you mean "work" work, or "think about which comment to throw on Monday morning for your bosses to bicker on during the whole next week and leave you alone in the meantime" work? :D

9:17 AM

Of the guys who bicker, only one is here. So 2 weeks of work in 1 day, work.

But "problem" solved, I guess.

@Edlothiad what, you found a bicker-inducing comment which will throw said guy into an internal mindwrecking for the whole week? :p

9:38 AM

No the "problem" was the id tags. My poor discipline at work is a real problem, not worth quotation marks.

There's no loophole here.

Is there an archive of mos-eisley chat messages over the years?

@Edlothiad oh, ok!

@Simpleton pretty sure it's a 10k+ thing

Nah, it's just the regular transcript, as with any chatroom.

We should've called it Alderaan, though.

@SQB oh?

pretty sure every Mos-Eisley transcript linked in Meta redirected me to the 404 page with Star Trek guys in Tibetan hats

Oh, okay.

9:53 AM

Or are those South American?

@SQB well since you're 10k+ maybe that's why you can access it

@Jenayah that might be it.

alright

So what about those hats?

@Jenayah Oh, alright. The meta posts about mos-eisley make it sound as though something deep and mysterious happened over there. I just wanted to know whether it was something cool or just a bunch of people arguing during tea-time.

@Simpleton uuuuh... Wasn't there myself, but from what I've heard, that almost degenerated into a civil war, StackExchange CMs had to come and fix things... bad times

(doesn't mean there haven't been good times though, but the camel's back was apparently broken eventually)

@Jenayah oh..ok

10:02 AM

@Simpleton see some replies to that transcript:

18 hours ago, by Lhurgoyf

Wait? What happened to the old version of this chat room? One of Rand’s posts in that tag from Jenayah mentions it being deleted

We don't like to talk about it much. Basically, some users got very uncivil and were banned. The chatroom was closed permanently and we created a new one, to start over.

Let's leave it at that.

I guess it simply is the competitive nature of stack exchange. When I joined this site, I wanted to get more and more rep. I tried to post more answers to get more rep.

But now after reaching 2k rep, I already feel that I have enough rep. I guess this is my saturation level

A: Is scifi.stackexchange.com a competition?

@Simpleton rep shouldn't be taken as a competition, not entirely at least

Related meta post

23

There's a little bit of competition, and a little bit of competition is good... Hi Emma and welcome to SFF:SE! I'm Praxis. I am a room owner for our chatroom. I was there when you posted this, and your post came up briefly there as Tango and CandiedMango wrote responses to you. I decided to ...

@Jenayah I've read that post. In fact I think Ive read most of the posts that are either about Valorum or meta posted by Valorum

Ahah, fan much? :)

(jk)

10:15 AM

@Jenayah I wouldn't say fan. He(or she) seems to be the most active user on this site. And the fights and arguments are always interesting when Valorum is involved. Interesting to read...in fact more intersting than the posts on the main site!

And I think Valorum has the most gold tag badges, which is only possible if you are an expert in many sff tags

Expert or master of Google-Fu, you decide ;P

Plot twist: Valorum is Google

2

@TheLethalCarrot I suppose he could be either ; ) but a gold tag? I dont think it can be earned with just google.

I have 2 gold tag badges, work out if I used Google or not :P

@Simpleton sure, to be noted however that they can also fetch info from previous answers/questions which address yet another question

(which isn't a bad thing)

10:31 AM

@TheLethalCarrot I suppose some amount of googling is necessary. I guess its the way you put forth answers, that makes a difference. And btw you have gold in GOT and ASOIAF. Thats great!

Thanks, second to Aeg, and I would have got GoT first if I hadn't have mentioned it to him haha

@TheLethalCarrot ah, that's Aegon isn't it...Does your username also come from a fandom.

Nah, t'is a name I used for gaming, still do, and it's just stuck... though there is a character in ASOIAF named Carrot

Yeah Aegon

@Simpleton where do your username come from btw? Mathematics enthusiast?

(though IIRC using "Simpleton" instead of "Singleton" was a joke one of my teachers made, don't know if it's widespread...)

A: The many usernames of SFF.SE

4

My user name, TheLethalCarrot, is taken from my gaming name used on all new communities I join. It used to be TheLethalCoder which was an extension from the above as I had originally joined Stack Exchange on Stack Overflow and so wanted to change it a bit to be more appropriate, it still is that...

Although that's basically all I said above

10:41 AM

@Jenayah oh, haha. When you posted the first line, I was trying to figure out how 'simpleton' and mathematics were related.

I've never heard of that joke in my life :)

@Simpleton ahah guess that was just Mr B. being funny then, that matches his character :)

@Simpleton so... where does it come from? :)

@Jenayah When I signed up, I wasn't really thinking very much. English not being my native language, I thought simpleton meant 'simple' and I wanted my username to be a simple one. It was only later that I googled it and found that simpleton also means 'fool'.

@Simpleton ahah, funny story :D

I felt quite the fool at that point...so i guess it suits me in a roundabout way ; )

^^

What's your native language if you don't mind me asking? (if you don't want to share it, no problem :) )

10:51 AM

@Jenayah I'm from India; South India to be more specific. My language is Tamil

@Simpleton ok! :)

However, I can safely say that I know more words in English than my own native language due to the frequency of usage, and the nature of all exams being in English. In fact, me having a job in the government right now is largely due to the reason that I'm good in English

@TheLethalCarrot why do you encourage people to register? I mean in some cases it's obvious (like that Smartie user who posted a lot of HP Q/A in a row, they're likely to have casted votes etc, don't want that to go away); but for people who may be one-time users (story-ID askers come to mind), there's not a real need innit?

No, but if they lose access to the account we have no way of knowing acceptance, unless they merge. A registered user is always better

It can prevent problems if they do decide later that they want to come back.

10:57 AM

@Jenayah People who register might feel the need to come back later, and I guess that would make them more inclined towards posting more questions

@Simpleton I've heard (from a friend with Indian roots) that India had lots and lots of regional dialects, is that what you're referring to? (my Wikipediaing tells me Hindi and English are the "official" ones though)

@Simpleton ...isn't that reeling? :D

This might be something as trivial as doing a small edit to your question. You then happen to see annonymous users suggesting edits, which is a hassle to figure out.

So... why bother with unreg users at all?

That...is a good question. ;-)

What is the official stance on "this is why we provide an unreg user possibility" ?

Apart from the fact that having to register an actual account might turn away some people

11:00 AM

I guess it's part of SE's free to use, no need to register attitude. But...creating an account on SE is incredibly easy.

@NapoleonWilson creating an account is quite easy pretty much anywhere, I was more referring to people who don't want mail addresses laying around or stuff

(I know that was why I lurked big time before registering, and only signed up when I had the answer to a story-ID question)

(which the OP self-answered five minutes before I did :( )

Still bitter? I haven't seen you mention it in at least 3 days :P

(which is a story I feel compelled to tell every time I talk about me eventually signing up, sorry to be repetitive! :p )

True. But on the bigger picture, and I know that's not a popular opinion, but unregistered users who won't come back anyway aren't....really worth it for the site at large.

@TheLethalCarrot i hold my stand that my first answer was better than his anyways </rant> :p

11:04 AM

Lol

@NapoleonWilson the users aren't, the content they posted might be.

Might, yes. But...in many cases it likely isn't. Though, I'm admittedly speaking from experiences made on other sites. The common non-user question here might very well be pure gold.

On second thoughts, I should have a keyboard shortcut for my "that day I registered and the guy self-answered five minutes before I did :( " story

But usually the rule of thumb is user engagement ~ question quality.

@Jenayah I think it'd be a good thing

11:07 AM

@TheLethalCarrot would deffo save me some time ahah

@NapoleonWilson Essentially quality goes up as you learn more about the network and how we're not just a discussion forum, even with quality new users they still get better over time

@NapoleonWilson true dat

@NapoleonWilson tbh I was mainly thinking of story-ID question here since it's what I watch the most

@Simpleton True. India has too many dialects. Hindi is official because a lot of the patriots who led the Independence movement spoke Hindi. And English is official because...well. you know why ; ) there are 22 official languages in our country, for the record

@Jenayah Heh, me too. ;-)

@NapoleonWilson wait, do you?

11:09 AM

@Jenayah The thinking part, not the watching part.

@NapoleonWilson oh, ok!

@Simpleton this "for the record" sounds like it could also be an actual record ahah :D will Google that

Well GWR says Zimbabwe, but it also says they have 16, not 22, so I'm confused

guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/…

And after that it says "India has 18", still not 22 ahah

Heh, you actually checked the Guinness World Records. ;-)

@Jenayah Your username doesn't appear in fiction or fantasy AFAIK. Is it your real name, by any chance?

@NapoleonWilson well kind of the most accurate "official" thing on the matter of records :D

Seems the case of India is already discussed in the comments there, though. (With the tenor being that it is about national languages, of which India supposedly doesn't have so many.)

11:14 AM

@Jenayah And that's why we want people to register

@Jenayah No way, I don't think that info is accurate

A: Short story about free will and a device which buzzes/lights up moments before you press it

-1

Yes. I remember the mad part now. People go mad trying to outwit the device into not knowing what they will do. But no matter how random they are it always knows because there is no such thing as free will.

This is why you get them to register...

Get your own message

2 mins ago, by TheLethalCarrot

@Jenayah And that's why we want people to register

Shush you, we're the same person...

@Edlothiad Which...is really odd, seeing how the original user already made a nice improving edit on the question itself.

11:17 AM

Oh yeah... forgot

@Simpleton nope, I signed up for a particular comic's forum 8 years ago and I thought it sounded nice. At that time I completely "invented" it, it wasn't something I read or whatever, just sounded cool. Afterwards it stayed as my "online"/gaming identity :)

However it turned out there's a Othman Jenayah guy who's a Tunisian football coach but we're unrelated ahah

@Simpleton Seems to explain itself:

> the difference is that each language is recognised as the official language of a certain area e.g Kashmiri in Kashmir. The overall official language is Hindi, and this is what all central government decrees are written in, along with English. English is not considered an official language of the country, but rather a 'second language'.

@Jenayah Peruvian, I would say. I don't think Tibetan hats are anything like that

@NapoleonWilson Maybe they didn't know they could merge the unregistered account?

@Edlothiad ok :)

Hmm, but they also seemed to have understood what editing means.

11:21 AM

@NapoleonWilson yeah but they might not have known they could edit from their newly registered account

Boom headshot!

@Jenayah Sure sure, but then don't write something into a random textbox without warning at least. ;-)

Also Ed, this comment about merging should be moved to the main question I think, since the new answer is likely to be deleted?

(when it's deleted , I mean)

Anyway, free flag.

@NapoleonWilson you're in IT, you should know people have this tendency to "write something into a random textbox without warning" :D

11:24 AM

@Edlothiad The website asserts that there are 18 official languages. That's not a fact. There are 22 official languages recognized by our Constitution. But yes, English isn't one of those 22 languages.

How do you know I'm in IT? O_O

@Jenayah One of our engineers does testing by literally only "cat walked over the keyboard"

@NapoleonWilson ...network profile much?

I see.

@Simpleton was said Constitution written right after Independence?

@TheLethalCarrot that sounds like your company is using the cat for unpaid work.

11:25 AM

@Simpleton Yes there are 18 languages considered official in the constitution, however they aren't all legally binding nationally according to that page. Only Hindi is.

@Jenayah Slave labour, so much cheaper

@Jenayah How do you know they don't pay her? ;-)

Might as well be the alibi boss for when the IRS knocks on the door.

@NapoleonWilson see what TLC posted right before you :D

The OECD defines it as follows: A language that has legal status in a particular legally constituted political entity and that serves as a language of administration

@Jenayah you seem to confuse IT and Software Engineer

That too. And software engineer with software developer. ;-)

So...is that YouTube answer what people would call a "partial answer"? (Seeing how it's answering a short story question with a TV episode.)

11:31 AM

@Edlothiad honestly I'm so lost in translation with those, that I just cap everything with "IT" when I want to post a quick comment :)

If I'm not mistaken IT is basically a derogatory term for Software eng/dev

Really?

Well not derogatory

Poor choice of words.

But IT is usually technicians that take care of the computers and such in the company. Making sure critical systems don't crash etc. Where as the devs/engs are working on the product

All 22 languages are legally recognized, and they do serve as languages of administration. The Union is, after all, a union of several states. What that page tries to convey is that, the Central government uses Hindi and English in its communication with the constituent states. But the provincial governments use their own languages. Fo instance court verdicts in my state are given in Tamil, and my state govt. gives out official orders in Tamil.

Could be totally wrong, in which case,, oh well

11:34 AM

I always took it more as denoting the infrastructural and maintenance part of computing systems. So...more Server Fault than Stack Overflow. But I get that people use it for anything computer-related, too.

@Simpleton So exactly as the webpage says then, and counter to the definition..?

@Edlothiad ok so now I'm laughing hard since my school officially lists us as "IT" when I study Software Engineering :'D yet another example of how the French educational system has no clue of how English works

@Edlothiad Yeah, my understanding too. But I think the general public doesn't always make that distinction. And the borders are probably quite fluid anyway.

I don't really care. Back to only day of work in the "work" week.

Although, most everyone here is slacking off work to chat here so...

I wouldn't blame your school/country all too much, it is quite a fuzzy term, and likely under continuous evolution, too.

11:36 AM

@Edlothiad *the "work" 2-week period :p

@Edlothiad lunch break powa

@NapoleonWilson well that's just one example, but there are several more actually ahah

@Edlothiad I give up. I've had to do too much googling for this. You might be right, I hate to admit. God!

@Simpleton well I don't reckon there's any definite "official" definition for the word "official" so let's say you're both right ;D

Well, there is one that's official for the Guinness World Records at least. ;-)

Is it acceptable to post story-ids where you already know the answer...I just saw in the main site

Saw where?

11:49 AM

No, it's in Meta

the free will and device question

Q: Is it OK to post a story-identification where you knew the answer at the time when you wrote it?

4

As many of you know, I write a lot of story-identification questions. I've had it commented on from time to time, including that I have a handful where I've also provided the answer after having done further research. ^_^ Just to be perfectly clear, all of these cases were ones where I did not kn...

discussion

I don't see anywhere there that the user suggests they already know the answer unless I missed something

Both the question and the answer have been posted by Krit within an hour. I thnk you've even commented to him about merging duplicate accounts

They self-answered btw

11:54 AM

Right an "answer" was posted but it wasn't actually an answer to the question just adding extra info

No there's an actual answer

someone else posted the same answer two seconds before though

Now yes

Not when Simpleton made his first comment

Wow, that's a mess.

ok ok

It is

Accounts merged now anyway so should be better now

12:01 PM

You're doing good work there.

Q: Why is it discouraged to ask a question that requires long answer?

I think it's all sorted now

Marvin

1

I'm asking in pure curiosity. According to the tour, you shouldn't ask a question if it has: [...] too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer However, by the (short) time I've been there, it seems to me that such long answers are usually of great quality, be...

discussion

Q: Happily Ever After potion effect?

12:17 PM

0

In Shrek (the first film of the Shrek franchise, an alternate opening was storyboarded but never filmed, called "Fiona's Prologue". In it, Fiona was born an ogre, which was why she was locked in the tower. She goes to a fortune teller (who was the inspiration for Fairy Godmother) for help. She ...

shrek

I answered "we do not know", but I'm on the fence — perhaps it would be better off closed.

Opinion based or we don't know

I'd say no, there might be an in-universe answer

which might be a bit speculative but still, if it's well-constructed why not

Not a Gorilla vs Shark is my point

It's not opinion based. It seems to be pure speculation, but who knows, perhaps one of the creators involved has stated somewhere that yes, it is the exact same potion.

@Jenayah That's not the only thing that can be closed as opinion based

@TheLethalCarrot true dat

12:20 PM

@SQB It's opinion based in that we have no idea what the potion would be like in an unpublished work

It doubles as our "future works"-closure, but that's not applicable here.

@SQB aren't there books and games and stuff for the Shrek universe? Might lay here, depends on which scope OP is targeting though

@TheLethalCarrot well... that's why I'm on the fence about closing it. But it's not asking for an opinion. It's asking something that very likely has no answer other than speculation. But we don't know for sure.

Opinion based would be asking "what do you think is the best X?"

Most questions don't ask for an opinion, doesn't mean they aren't opinion based....

But that is what opinion based means.

12:23 PM

@SQB what it means, not what it covers

I've seen a lot of questions that I would've thought unanswerable other than by speculation, being answered backed up by references.

@SQB There are indeed a lot of those, see scifi.stackexchange.com/…

Which is why I'd say it's not POB

One person's speculation is another person's obscure reference found after hours of searching.

Damn, I really should pay more attention to closing my parentheses. Thanks, @Ed.

@SQB "we don't know" is a perfectly valid answer, and the question is not, in a situation where that is the correct answer, POB

Q: How can a Horror from Beyond Reason reliably communicate with mortals?

185

Jimmy is an Eldritch Monstrosity. Jimmy has a Red Ball. Jimmy wants someone to play with him and his Red Ball. All of Jimmy's friends are busy trying to Overturn the Cosmic Order and bring Chaos to all of Existence. Jimmy thinks that humans will play with him and his Red Ball. Jimmy once ...

communication horror

bwahahah that's a good one

12:40 PM

On second thought, I've made the "we don't know" cw.

@SQB That really isn't what that function is for...

@SQB To what end? o_O

@Edlothiad Because just stating "we don't know" isn't worth the votes.

CW isn't to be used for eschewing the concept of reputation.

@SQB someone has to point out that "we don't know" three-liner answers based on "didn't happen, who knows" don't get that much rep anyway... :)

12:47 PM

You gave an answer. You and you alone wrote the majority of it. It's your answer and your reputation. If you disagree with the concept of reputation for posts, SE is going to be a rough ride.

If you think the answer isn't really worth anything to begin with, you...probably shouldn't have answered.

Well, I've done it before on posts where I felt I did not do enough work to make the answer mine, instead of something anyone in the community could've given.

For instance, when consolidating an answer given in a comment.

Noone else in the community did, though.

<Shrug> I'm just donating my answer to the community.

You do that with every answer you write already.

Just because you can say "we don't know" doesn't make it ok to you "we don't know" as an answer.

A "we don't know" answer is suitable when you can at least show some evidence of possibilities and make a guess one way, the other, or both. If all it says is "We don't know, it's not really been covered" that's a rather useless answer.

12:54 PM

Well, I do explain why we don't know. We have more answers like that.

@SQB I'm unsure as to what this even means..?

I was speaking generally

Ah, okay.

Anyway, I've made it cw. If you disagree, convince a mod to de-cw it.

Community wikis are best suited for large answers which would receive lots of equal contribution from the community and doesn't really need to have peer reviewed edits. A good example on SFF would be those Character Identification questions. Sure some are done by a single person, but often it's a team effort.

Another example would be the "evidence for moon landings" post on [space.meta.se]

Likely won't happen. They're rather hesitant in this regard, I'd guess. But I flagged it anyway, don't want to say I didn't act on a problem when I saw it.

Guess that magic link is dead.

Or is that only for comments

Dunno, don't really care

1:01 PM

@Marvin Written up an answer to this. Not sure how much sense it makes

1:32 PM

Should work here. Space Exploration

Space Exploration Meta

A: Why is this answer a community wiki?

15

Should a moderator remove its community wiki status? No. I would consider this a violation of the author's prerogative. They have the choice to make their answer CW, which affects only their answer; overriding that under normal circumstances would be akin to forcing them to accept an edit - ...

I know, I know. Already downvoted for the last paragraph. I prefer to go by that older blog post instead. If it doesn't have any business being CW, it shouldn't.

I can understand why the CMs would rather be more laissez-faire in some situations to not piss off users too much for unnecessary drama. But well, it's SE, sometimes we gotta piss off users to do things the right way.

That's why I think it's quite unlikely the moderators will un-CW it. But I don't want to blame myself for not letting them know at least.

2:20 PM

Is there a reason for "low quality" being disabled for flags on old answers? Once in a while I spot a low-Q which is neither spam/RaA/NaA and not in need of a mod intervention (just a push to the "recommend deletion" queue should be enough), but the low-q option isn't there.

Can't seem to find something really relevant on main meta.

There is a reason but I can't remember what

I may have seen a meta post on SO about it

A: What creature is a Dementor?

What's the correct way of doing things then?

(even if low-q is kinda subjective in the first place)

If need be, here's the answer at stake, to clarify:

-2

They're like animals that live in the magical world. They're based on depression but that's beside the point though

Can't remember, looking for the post I read

ok

@Jenayah The Low Quality flag is only available for posts within the last week that do not have a positive score. The set of such questions for this site is scifi.stackexchange.com/…..

2:24 PM

@Jenayah It does answer the question (in a way), so not NaA, but it's not backing up with anything and tbh answering "what are they, exactly?" with "they're a bit like animals" isn't exactly HQ

Also, just being low quality isn't really an official reason to delete it, if it answers the question.

@Alex I think she knows that, asking why that is the case

@Alex what TLC said, I'm interested in the why and how to behave then

@Jenayah You can always leave a comment and downvote.

@Mithrandir in this very case, we have to define "answering the question", I think.

2:27 PM

The "very low quality" flag has been confusing and a source of contention ever since it was introduced. It doesn't really serve a purpose, and should, IMO, simply be removed.

3

@Alex the post at stake is 3 years old and user was never seen again. I'm not doing that for the user, I'm wondering for the site's quality, or at least how I imagine it to be

@Alex Actually, I think it has to have a negaative score.

@Mithrandir It serves a very well defined purpose, just no one uses it for that purpose

@TheLethalCarrot And what is the purpose that you're thinking of?

@Mithrandir do you think the answer I linked should be deleted? (honest question, I'm not judging, being ironic or anything :) )

2:29 PM

@Mithrandir Meant to be for garbage, rambled nonsense I believe

In that case it's not an answer, though.

@Jenayah I'm torn. On the one hand it's kinda useless, on the other I don't really have a justification for deleting it.

@TheLethalCarrot the message in the review queue says "length and content" (length is debatable but not my point). Content is the matter

@TheLethalCarrot But that's covered by "rude or abusive". And why do you think that that's the only valid use for the VLQ flag? The post that everybody sources that to says that it's one possible use of the flag.

@Mithrandir Well if we don't delete it, doesn't that mean one can go and answer "it's an animal but not exactly" on every "what is this creature exactly?" question?

Q: The difference between a bad answer and a non-answer

2:30 PM

8

It seems to me (I may be wrong) that there is some sort of confusion or disagreement (recently) about what makes something "not an answer" as opposed to a bad answer. I think it is important that there be some kind of sitewide understanding/agreement about what constitutes a non-answer. What foll...

discussion policy deleted-answers answer-quality

@NapoleonWilson it's partially an answer... (IMO)

@Jenayah Sure you could, doesn't mean they are good answers

I wrote that for a different site, but it's related.

VLQ basically means "this is probably enough of an answer to not count as NaA, but it's so bad, downvoting doesn't seem to do it justice. Please, someone else take a look at it and decide what happens". It's an "easy" way out to flag borderline stuff that noone is sure how to handle.

@TheLethalCarrot well I could, but there'd been no point in keeping them, they're noise.

2:32 PM

@Jenayah I agree, but the system doesn't as far as I'm aware

Just because it is wrong doesn't mean it should be deleted

Now if you were to spam that answer on different Qs that would be different

@Mithrandir Well I've seen too many meta posts on that flag to remember exactly where I saw it but this is a Shog quote I believe "Use VLQ for obvious, unarguable garbage."

> In short, I think that bad answers should not be deleted as non-answers, and non-answers should not be not deleted just because they contain good information.

agreed (to a point)

A: Please provide a flag option clearly designed for gibberish, contentless posts

@TheLethalCarrot most people point to this:

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I originally recommended using the offensive flag option here, because the wording fit and it allowed a sufficient number of flaggers to remove such nonsense from the site quickly. That's still reasonable in many cases: the jackasses who post answers consisting of nothing but long, repeating str...

Mithrandir24601

@TheLethalCarrot (unless it's 'not even wrong')

@Jenayah As for the reason they're removed after 7 days, I think it comes down to "if a post has survived 7 days without VLQ flagged it's most likely it isn't VLQ". Odd reasoning but it's what I've seen around in places

Personally, I believe that a proper use of the VLQ flag would be for answers that technically provide an answer but that runs afoul of a policy that the community set. But that's wishful thinking.

Now I've gotta run, but I'll check back in Saturday night ;)

2:36 PM

The VLQ flag is for Very Low Quality answers, where except for significant editing, it would never be anything good.

@TheLethalCarrot What's your definition of 'wrong' here? It's wrong by lore (they're non-beings) but that's not my point; it's wrong by SE quality (one-liner, not developed, throws a random idea -depression, which is also true- but do not back it up...)

One liners, etc.

@Jenayah I meant provably wrong in universe

@TheLethalCarrot There's an answer here that I think I proved wrong, but it has 13 upvotes I think.

@TheLethalCarrot well yeah it's wrong in-universe but I'm not vouching for deletion "just because it's wrong in-universe"

2:39 PM

Not saying you are

just to clarify ;)

A: Why wasn't Remus informed that the Secret Keeper had been changed?

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At the time Sirius was supposed to become secret keeper, he persuaded them at the last minute to change to Peter. He was pointing at Black, who shook his head slowly; the sunken eyes were suddenly overbright. “Harry . . . I as good as killed them,” he croaked. “I persuaded Lily and Jame...

@Edlothiad so... Is the one above "nver going to be anything good"?

What one above? ;P

Disclaimer: sorry if I sound obsessed or something, always debating how stuff is done, etc. Not my point to be annoying ;D

@TheLethalCarrot oh hey, it's been deleted ahah

2:43 PM

@Jenayah Who doesn't like a good debate?

Well, that's what chat is for, figuring out how things work.

@Alex a "good" debate, everybody's okay(ish). A debate, no modifier... Well, have you been to the Internet recently? :D

So uh... Out of curiosity, which flag was raised? Or did it go straight to delete votes?

@Jenayah I probably wouldn't call those debates.

We can't tell which flag was raised (as far as I know)

@Alex true dat

2:45 PM

The answerer probably saw you bringing it up in chat and straight deleted it crying. Shame on you! :'(

@TheLethalCarrot I think you can if it goes in the deletion queue. "This answer was flagged for XXX - looks OK - Edit - Recommend Deletion"

@NapoleonWilson after all those four years when their only answer here held still, and them never coming back again. I'm a shame of a human being :(

@Jenayah After the fact it just says: This item is no longer reviewable.

@Alex when someone reviews it for the first time I mean

@Jenayah Even then the reason doesn't necessarily distinguish by flags.

@Alex oh?

2:51 PM

I think the Low Quality review always says something about being flagged for length and content.

Regardless of the flag that got it there.

Ah, then yeah

we're talking about the same thing then

Might've been confused, my bad

@Jenayah You were correct that I was first talkking about something else.

I was making a two pronged argument.

First, it is too late to check once the review has already been completed, and even if someone had checked it wouldn't have helped.

@Alex ahah my bad for not understanding due to me replying too fast, then :)

@Jenayah Or my fault for being confusing.

@Alex glad you fixed that comma, I thought you were making a two-part argument and would've waited forever before replying, not to make a fool of myself again, ahah :)

2:54 PM

@Jenayah I did that purposely.

@Alex oh right, I forgot how much you liked to wreck my poor mind :p

@Jenayah What can I say, I'm a horrible person.

@Alex when I'm celebrating my one-year birthday on this site, I'll make sure that your part of the cake is smaller than the others' >:o

@Jenayah I should get a bigger piece. I am making you stronger.