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Thunderforge

01:01

Hi, I had a question I wanted to run through chat before posting, just to make sure it fit the site

I recently visited San Francisco and had unfortunately parked my rental car in front of a driveway (which I didn't realize was a driveway). I was given two tickets at $100 each and ultimately had my car towed (the two tickets were about an 1 hour 45 minutes apart and the second ticket was issued a mere 2 minutes before the car was towed, according to the timestamp. While I'm really bitter about that, I'm not sure there's anything I can do about it). The car was towed and I was able to recover it before paying additional fees for it being impounded, but it cost me about $480 and I still had …

It's a question that came about because of travel, but since it's about fines, I'm not 100% sure that it fits.

Also I hoped that it came across as a legitimate question and wasn't a rant or anything. If I can improve it further, let me know.

Mark Mayo

01:58

added 2 new bounties, for anyone interested. Have 3 running - as we're back up to 24 unanswered questions

@Thunderforge sounds more like a legal issue, it's not a travel problem, it's just a local bylaws problem that happened to occur while travelling, IMHO

Often if you write to them about it, take photos of how unclear it was that it was a drive way, you can get the ticket cancelled

especially if you're an out of towner

Thunderforge

@MarkMayo, thanks for letting me know.

They did say that I could challenge the fees and towing, but I was doubtful about success for it.

Also since I've left, the only picture I have is Google Maps street view

google.com/maps/@37.804072,-122.410903,3a,75y,180h,90t/… if you're curious :-)

Not a good welcome to San Francisco unfortunately.

Still, I appreciate you clarifying that this wouldn't be a great fit for Travel Stack Exchange.

Mark Mayo

02:20

that would probably suffice as evidence

the door on the left or right?

Doc

04:39

hmm.. Star Alliance website is fubar

Mark Mayo

05:35

So these days, is United really bad?

They've got a great deal for me from TYO to YVR...

and they're staralliance, so I can get AirNZ points

Doc

no worse than any other US airline

probably not as good as AC or the asian carriers

but economy blows on all carriers really

if you can get E+ (free with status, paid otherwise) then it's much better

Mark Mayo

no status here :/

but good to know

really as long as I have no jerk trying to hog the armrest, and some movies to watch (which I can bring) then I'm happy

mindcorrosive

05:57

1

Q: Allow posts only when people are actually traveling?

I think we should classify all posts that people do while at home off-topic. We are a travel site and users should be true to the topic at hand. Why do I think this would be a good idea? We have too often people who make assumptions on trips without researching. If we force people to at least t...

discussion

2

finally, a sensible proposal

Mark Mayo

06:10

@mindcorrosive did you remove the user on those russian posts as well, or did he remove himself?

mindcorrosive

@MarkMayo: gone like the wind ;)

Mark Mayo

that didn't answer the question ;)

mindcorrosive

I did, yeah

obviously they registered to get their 15 minutes of {f,sh,l}ame, and Travel-SE is not the place for this

I bought purplification of own posts with my hard-earned Unicoins!

Doc

it's a great answer

doesnt belong on SE, but it's a great answer none the less :)

hippietrail

08:24

booja!

RoflcoptrException

09:06

Juhuu I just bought the closed because unicorns close reason!

hippietrail

09:19

i spent all my unicoins on putting my photo on the visa tag. and some bobbleheads

RoflcoptrException

cool

andra

09:49

morning

wow! I must say for such a bad question about Russians I am am surprised it is upvoted that much

42

Q: Do Russians smile at each other?

I'm planning to go to Russia. For my culture smiling is really common even to strangers. And I heard that Russians don't smile or laugh unless it's something funny or something that make them happy. Will it be strange or will I insult anybody in Russia if I smile?

russia culture

s/Russians/Londoners/ and you have the same question

hippietrail

10:04

all the frowning russians of the world are upvoting it

RoflcoptrException

10:49

Question "put on hold because unicorns by Karlson, Dirty-flow, Vince, VMAtm, mindcorrosive♦ 46 mins ago"

That's great :)

Thorsten S.

14:18

Question for "Do Russians smile at each other ?". I have made a comment on the top voted answer saying sth like"As German it looks like home". This comment disappeared without any notice. What happened ?

RoflcoptrException

14:37

hi @ThorstenS.: your comment was flagged by the community and then one of the moderators deleted it

Thorsten S.

14:47

@RoflcoptrException Hi, shouldn't I get some standard message as response: "Your comment was deemed inappropiate, please be careful etc. ?". So it looks rather strange. And for the comment itself: As travelers we are meeting cultures which behavior may seem strange or offensive and in return we may come off as offensive or strange without knowing it. So the question "Do Russians smile ?" is not "bad", but it may have a completely valid response explaining the reason why this impression persists.

RoflcoptrException

@ThorstenS. A notification would be nice, but I think that's not implemented here on StackExchange

Since I haven't handle your comment, I can't really comment on why it came off as offensive

Thorsten S.

And for the comment itself: I am German and I really do not see why not smiling in a culture without reason should be considered offensive. It could only be seen so if you judge it from the idea that people should smile.

@RoflcoptrException Thanks for the info. Any idea who handled it ?

RoflcoptrException

One of the other two moderators. But keep in mind, there seem to be other people that think your comment was offensive, otherwise it would not have been flagged.

Karlson

@hippietrail There are not that many "Russians" on the site. :)

Thorsten S.

15:05

@RoflcoptrException And people who upvoted it.

mindcorrosive

15:42

@ThorstenS.: I deleted the comment in an attempt to clean up an already cluttered question

wasn't because it was offensive or inappropriate

RoflcoptrException

Oh I'm sorry, then I interpreted the flag history not correctly

mindcorrosive

perhaps it the discussion was flagged and I started cleaning up, and it automatically dismissed the flag as valid

Thorsten S.

@mindcorrosive Is there a link that moderators should clean up ? I can chat here and ask for the reason, but I can see that many beginners may feel offended if their comments vanish without trace.

mindcorrosive

well it's been a long-time SE policy that comments are ephemeral and they should serve to enhance the content of the posts, not be content themselves

52

A: How do comments work?

How do comments work? Comments exist so that users can talk about questions and answers without posting new answers that do not actually answer their parent questions. Comments are often used to ask for clarification on, suggest corrections to and provide meta-information about posts. Comments ...

> Comments are disposable: unlike posts, there's no revision history, and they can be deleted without warning by their authors, by moderators, and in response to flags.

Thorsten S.

But on the one hand you have collapsed comments (so space is not an issue) and it really violates the user expectation. You do not want (from user interface perspective) that the content is mysteriously changed. At least I expect some message: "The comments in this post have been changed".

mindcorrosive

15:52

on many controversial posts, comments sometimes derail out of control, with 20 or so back and forts, and several off-topic threads

rarely people are going to read 30+ comments on a post

so some cleanup is sometimes necessary to keep only the on-topic comments, or just delete all of them altogether

Thorsten S.

But you do understand that people may be surprised and angered ?

mindcorrosive

yes, I realize there's this

but on the other hand, SE sites are not discussion forums

so it's best to keep the conversation to the point

Karlson

You guys take it way too personally.

mindcorrosive

I understand your frustration, and I admit I'm probably too critical on comments, seeing the amount I have deleted so far

but for me, it's something of a broken window syndrome -- if posts pile up comments, all sorts of flame wars are going to happen eventually. Some posts are just magnets for commenting and everybody wants to express their opinion. This question is definitely one of them

Thorsten S.

@Karlson It has nothing to do with taking it personally. The actions taken should simply be transparent to avoid completely unnecessary talk (like now). I think I will offer an improvement to meta to get a message: "The comments in this thread have been cleaned up".

mindcorrosive

15:58

@ThorstenS.: I think the reason for not having this feature is purely social/psychological: people would get upset if their favourite comment gets deleted, and will voice their frustration on meta/MSO (it has happened many times before). If their comment gets deleted, they might not notice, and will be happier for it

Also, I think 10K users can see deleted comments

Mark Mayo

It'd be great to have comments deleted flagged to the user

but that's an implementation feature of stackexchange

and given none of us work for them, the only way would be to add a feature request on meta :/

Thorsten S.

I have set up a question on meta. I am now done so far.

Mark Mayo

sweet

Karlson

@ThorstenS. When the number of comments drops by 5-10 it normally means that there was a deletion of a bunch of comments.

Mark Mayo

Sounds like witchcraft!

0

Q: Notify users of comment cleanup by displaying message before comments

I was informed after a deleted comment that a moderator cleaned up the comment section. As comments can (and should for certain circumstances) be cleaned up could we add a message for the comment section: This comment area has been cleaned up by a moderator. pointing to a link to the comments s...

feature-request comments

Upvoted it

although it looks like a dupe

Thorsten S.

16:08

No it isnt.

The other requests ask for personally informing every user which comments are deleted.

Karlson

meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/187985/…

Mark Mayo

ah I see what you mean

you want a notice on the post itself?

RoflcoptrException

@MarkMayo I just had the same thought and commented on the meta question

Mark Mayo

yeah I removed my comment

RoflcoptrException

And that's exactly the problem

Thorsten S.

16:11

Yeah

RoflcoptrException

Now my comment is still there without any context.

Mark Mayo

;)

perfect example :D

Thorsten S.

Quod erat demonstrandum

RoflcoptrException

you should write that in a comment @ThorstenS.

Thorsten S.

Must leave now. See you later

Mark Mayo

16:13

ciao!

RoflcoptrException

cya

Annoyed

16:28

Alternatively, electronic versions can be hosted on publicly accessible torrent server and the link sent via post-it note to the address above.

:-D

Doc

22:42

hmm.. i need to find an answer to downvote - any suggestions?

ohh.. our russian answerer is back - i can downvote him

and there we go - my rep is now exactly 30,000 :)

Mark Mayo

23:33

lol

@doc he's back??

ah I found him

Mark Mayo

23:59

Ironically I need 1 more to get to 73000

can we trade rep? ;)

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