The Awkward Silence

Jesse

01:13

@thatgirlwhodraws if your goal is to influence a child's behaviour ("I would like to see this child at the very least, be polite") then personally I think you would have better success asking on parenting.se as they would be much more focused on this goal whatever the best way to go about it is (talk to parents, scold child, do nothing)

since you asked here on IPS, we are really looking for what you want to communicate and to who for a "goal" that we can respond to. But this is up in the air depending on your parenting views (which we are not the designated experts on)

.... now that that is said, you are talking about behaviour from a year ago by someone else's angsty teen. Even IF she acts the same way, and that is a very big assumption, how is it your place to do something about it? You KNOW that the parents are responsible so let them be responsible.

ElizB

01:55

@Jesse I believe that I've experienced something like this- the worry that the person will behave the same way again, and wanting to know how to react in the most appropriate way that is effective. I hope that helps @thatgirlwhodraws

Extroverted Main Man

0

Q: How to deal with workplace acquaintance who showed her true colors

Only now I am trying to make acquaintances and even friends at work. If it's relevant, I'm a govt employee with perm job, hence hard to fire. the acquaintance is older lady, married, kid out of college and she has year probation before she gets perm title. She joined our team six months ago. I...

Introverted Meta Man.

03:59

1

Q: Heavy handed deletion of an answer

Over a year ago, the question How to get spouse to empathetically listen to problems instead of offering solutions? was posted here. My answer was brief, offered a book that was perfect for the situation, and a paragraph offering the advice that the author took a full book to explain. It remain...

discussion

Jesse

05:40

@ElizB I can see how you might be justifiably worried about how to react appropriately. But wanting to react in a way that is effective is basically just as problematic to me. It still echo's having a goal of getting the child to be more polite which puts the question in a frame where you are not actually concerned about how YOU should act/react which is what we can help with on IPS but how THEY should be acting, and how to get the child to act that way instead. Which is parenting

avazula

08:15

→ 12 messages moved to Trash

Hello everyone!

Tinkeringbell

Morning :)

JAD

09:06

ola

Tinkeringbell

09:26

Quiet in here today.

avazula

Yup

It seems like the activity of this room really depends on @Noon's and mine availability for chatting :p

Tinkeringbell

:P

Noon

@Tinkeringbell No more coworker with you today?

avazula

I'm in a conf call so, not so free for chatting

Tinkeringbell

Not today.

avazula

09:27

Hey, Noon's here!

Tinkeringbell

So I'm getting coffee with another now

Noon

@avazula Hehe :p

Also, thanks for the meta answer @Tink

IPS Comment Bot

09:39

This helps, thanks! — Erik 21 secs ago

#20347 Erik (6510 rep) | A: How do I explain to extended family/acquaintances that my husband has high-functioning Autism, and has particular habits? (score: 1) | posted 37 hours ago by Noon (4273 rep) | edited 3 minutes ago by Noon (4273 rep) | Toxicity 0.013090027 | tps/fps: 0/0

Matched regex(es) ["short-comment"]

Extroverted Main Man

1

Q: How do I share I don't wish to be a part of the superstition without insulting anyone?

Quite a big life event happened in my family recently, causing some conversation about a family curse to come up. My niece and nephew brought this old tale up again, and my mom seems to highly believe in this. I know my mom will want to discuss this with me over Christmas, but quite frankly when...

conflict-aversion family

Tinkeringbell

@Noon You're welcome? :)

Noon

@Tinkeringbell Why the "?"?

Tinkeringbell

@Noon I don't remembering answering one of your questions on meta ;)

Noon

@Tinkeringbell Oh no, I was talking about this one ^^

Tinkeringbell

09:53

Ah... That one :P

Well, I was the one that deleted it ;) Not that people need to wait for a mod to show up when an answer is deleted ;)

Noon

Yeah, but since it was my comment I feel like I had to explain but didn't feel like it (at least, not at the moment). But now, I don't have to explain anymore \o/

ThZ

11:53

hello!

avazula

→ 10 messages moved to Trash

@IPSCommentBot tp

Ooker

I need a quick help. I have replies to all of the skepticism on this quesiton (and that's why my friend is convinced), but it would need to change the question drastically. So what should I do? Edit it or ask a new one?

avazula

→ 8 messages moved to Trash

Ooker

if I ask a new one, then how to inform the commenters? Via chat?

Tinkeringbell

@Ooker As it isn't on-hold, be careful when doing so. At least make sure you don't invalidate (most of) the existing answers by editing.

Ooker

12:02

I'm pretty sure that I'll need to change it drastically

Tinkeringbell

I'm not sure what the new question would be either.

The last three comments were just chatty, and you've already replied to the one from Upper_Case.

Ooker

I think they are valuable. Please don't delete them

anyhow, it will invalidate the current answers

avazula

→ 2 messages moved to Trash

@Ooker if it's not asking for clarifications or suggesting improvements then it's not valuable in the meaning of the stack

Ooker

it suggests me to improve

avazula

@Ooker then either you edit your question and improve it (if it's possible without invalidating the already existing answers), or they just have to go

the least-UVed answer on that question is already invalid, BTW. That'll make only one remaining.

Ooker

12:09

the new edit will invalidate the existing answers

wait, you have already deleted them?

can you copy that for me? They are valuable for me

avazula

@Ooker I did not do anything. I was waiting for you to make your mind

Ooker

so is it able for you or anyone else copy the deleted comments for me?

a screenshot will do

avazula

@Tink?

Tinkeringbell

@Ooker Only mods can see deleted comments.

Coming up.

avazula

Thank you dear

Ooker

12:20

thank you

Tinkeringbell

I'd like you to understand though that these comments are chatty, and should not be encouraged. Read them at your leisure, but I don't think any of them warrant an edit or new question.

Be careful of getting too defensive in your reaction towards such comments.

Flagging will usually do fine

Ooker

I'm not sure. Maybe I should create a chatroom and ping them?

but OK, I see why you see it chatty. But it's valuable to me.

Tinkeringbell

@Ooker Making a chatroom and pinging them has no use, if you make a room and they've never talked in it, they won't get a notification of being pinged.

Ooker

so how to communicate with them?

I think as a room creator I can invite them, but not sure the invitations get to their inboxes

Tinkeringbell

Perhaps, I think an invitation does that, yes.

Ooker

12:26

ok thank you

avazula

maybe with a superping?

i'm not sure

Ooker

superping?

avazula

oop, no, that's not what it's for, sorry

Ooker

but what is it?

avazula

41

Q: What is a 'superping'?

I've seen the word 'superping' be used across SE meta sites. What does it mean? Is it just a synonym of the word 'ping' (ie. using @ followed by a user's name to give them a notification in their inbox).

support chat super-ping

Noon

12:44

Is it me or do we have less "new user" and more "come back user" (aka: already have some rep but from a long time ago) these days?

ThZ

12:55

what is long time for you ??

Noon

@ThZ Well, I don't remember them, so I guess "long time" is something like 4 months?

ThZ

@Noon maybe those people are commonly here but don't often answer to questions ^^ Also the "rep" weight, even if its a nice system, could very much be discouraging!

Anyway I don't think I'm here enough to draw any conclusion :X

Extroverted Main Man

0

Q: Most people around me are jealous

Whenever I go for business matters, I always facing people with jealous on my forward programs. They follow me at effective situations.

acceptable-behavior

avazula

13:12

I'm sick 4 days before Xmas. Yay ...

Mithrandir

Aw, feel better soon!

avazula

@Mithrandir Thanks! I hope I will, seems like it's the flu u_u

Mithrandir

Oof, no fun.

I'm hoping I don't have the flu...

avazula

@Mithrandir Erh, oh no, are you feeling sick as well?

Mithrandir

Yeah - sore throat, stomachache, headache. Went to the doctor this morning. Tested for strep, probably not but won't know for sure until Sunday. Doctor said my tonsils are inflamed, though.

avazula

13:16

@Mithrandir oh no :( I hope you'll feel better soon too, then ...

Mithrandir

The Awkward Doctor's Office

3

avazula

hahaha

Jasper Loy

I like doctors who explain why you are ill and why the meds help you, but most don't.

They just check some things and give you the meds and send you out.

I don't know, but it may be different in different countries.

Is that also your experience when seeing doctors?

Rainbacon

So it seems like we're having a sickness party?

Mithrandir

Apparently.

Rainbacon

13:24

Well, then I'll fit right in

Jasper Loy

Well, the party doesn't have that many people. =)

Rainbacon

That's probably good

Jasper Loy

I think a party should have at least 5 people. But that's my personal definition. =)

Please don't ask on English SE how many people a party should have. =)

Rainbacon

Oh, that's an awful lot of people. My favorite number of people for a party is 2

Jasper Loy

My party usually has only 1 person. =)

@Mithrandir What happened to your secretary, Henry?

Mithrandir

13:32

He's gotten more busy in real life, as far as I know.

And he's not my secretary :P

Jasper Loy

Well, he claims to be. =)

So sometimes I see the doctor and they will write URTI, which stands for upper respiratory tract infection.

Can't they write something simpler? =)

Mithrandir

they could write asphyxiated

Jasper Loy

That sounds wrong. =)

Mithrandir

Well then, stick with what you're got. ;)

Jasper Loy

So I think the last time I took Literature class, I got 51 marks only.

I think that was when I was 14.

But I think that means I suck at literature tests, not at literature.

Mithrandir

13:37

I've never taken a Literature class...

Jasper Loy

I suppose you call it an English class?

Mithrandir

I've never taken one of those either.

Or any other kind of class, really.

Jasper Loy

Then what do you take? =)

Mithrandir

Actually, I haven't been to school since kindergarten.

Jasper Loy

Must be home schooling then.

Mithrandir

13:38

Yep.

Jasper Loy

Home schooling must be not uncommon in the US.

Mithrandir

It's not... not that I live in the US.

Rainbacon

Oh, I just assumed that mith knew everything and didn't need education. Illusion shattered

avazula

@Rainbacon but that's also the case

Mithrandir

Ooof, people on SE keep overestimating my intelligence... I'm not quite sure what to make of this...

Jasper Loy

13:40

But I guess people still need to go to university to get a degree if they want one.

Rainbacon

@JasperLoy or they could do something extraordinary and be given an honorary degree

Mithrandir

I'll be taking the GED tests from overseas to get a high school diploma, and then probably the army, and then I have to figure out what I'm doing with my life.

Jasper Loy

@Rainbacon I think those shouldn't even exist. =)

Sid

@Mithrandir The last part is a bit more difficult than the others.... :P

Mithrandir

*hoping to get a job at Scholastic*

Jasper Loy

13:42

@Sid I think for most people, the army would be the most difficult part. =)

Rainbacon

I think you are underestimating how hard it is to make a decision

3

Jasper Loy

I now find the marking schemes for school exams very superficial, like you get 1 mark if you say this but 0.5 mark if you say that or 0 mark if you say that.

Real world knowledge is very different from exam knowledge.

Rainbacon

Exactly! Nobody ever gave me an exam on how to file my tax returns

Jasper Loy

I think we make kids study too many things in school that are useless later on. Only reading, writing, and arithmetic is essential. The rest are all the life skills.

Rainbacon

I would argue that there's a lot of utility in have a basic understanding of science and history, but that's probably not a road we should go down

Sid

13:53

@JasperLoy I disagree. School only gives you a very basic idea of what all subjects you can take up later and everyone should have a basic knowledge of history, geography, etc.

Rainbacon

How can you learn from the mistakes of the past without studying them

Jasper Loy

I didn't know that natural history is not history until I was very old. =)

@Mithrandir I haven't heard of GED before. I know about the IB and the A levels, that's about it.

Mithrandir

General Educational Development

The General Educational Development (GED) tests are a group of four subject tests which, when passed, provide certification that the test taker has United States or Canadian high school-level academic skills. GED does not currently stand for anything and instead "it is more similar to a brand name." (personal communication with Pearson's GED Testing Program Customer Service). It is an alternative to the US High school diploma, HiSET and TASC test. The GED Testing website currently does not refer to the test as anything but "GED".The American Council on Education (ACE), in Washington, D.C. (U.S...

Jasper Loy

LOL

I like this idea of GED. Maybe it represents my idea of a minimum education with only the essentials.

Mithrandir

I'm basically growing up on the internet. It's teaching me everything I need to know... :P

Jasper Loy

14:08

Which is why avazula said you know everything. =)

Rainbacon

The internet knows everything. Mith learned everything they know from the internet. Therefore Mith knows everything

avazula

@JasperLoy avazula is currently raving because of sickness so, don't take my words for granted

Mithrandir

The Internet taught me what I know != the internet taught me everything it knows...

avazula

Generally speaking, don't take anything I say for granted

@IPSCommentBot ouch ...

IPS Comment Bot

Invalid feedback type. Valid feedback types are tp, fp, rude, and wrongo

Jasper Loy

14:10

@avazula That's why "the cake is still a lie", lol

Rainbacon

14:23

What would be a good synonym for "disorder" that doesn't have negative connotations? I thought about condition, but that still seems kind of negative to me

Tinkeringbell

Affliction, but that comes with it's own set of connotations too

What are you trying to describe?

Any chance of just 'naming the beast by it's name'?

Rainbacon

Having a medically classifiable disorder that makes one different. Such as autism, but I want a generic term for all such things because I'm not talking exclusively about autism

Tinkeringbell

Hmm. Diagnosis then?

Rainbacon

That might work

How does this sound " If someone knows that a person has autism (or some other diagnosis that causes them to have atypical social behaviors)"

Tinkeringbell

Sounds good to me :)

Noon

14:30

@Rainbacon I like it too :)

avazula

yup

Rainbacon

Yay! I can words!

Mithrandir

diagnosis, condition, reason for being socially awkward...

Rainbacon

I thought about "atypicality" as well, but that sounds a little odd to me

Mithrandir

Heh, I just saw @Noon's drawing of TAS. Nice job! I like the closet in there ;)

That's where I am... :P

Rainbacon

14:38

Where is this drawing?

Mithrandir

Rainbacon

Ooh, nice!

Mithrandir

I'm not 100% sure who's at the bottom left, though

Noon

@Mithrandir Haha, yeah, sorry you aren't on it. I thought about drawing something related to the Lord of the Right but I didn't have much place left and it was when you were on your "SE break"

Mithrandir

It's fine. :)

Noon

14:41

@Mithrandir Don't you see it's @AJ? XD

Mithrandir

ahhhh

His new avatar threw me :P

Noon

Haha, I must say I can't get used to it, it's way too different!

ElizB

@Mithrandir that's strange, I woke up with a sore throat as well...

Mithrandir

o_o there's a sickness in the chatroom

ElizB

I ate some toast with cream cheese and yogurt to help, it seemed to help a bit

@Jesse I can see that point, and I still think that there are two approaches to it- from the parenting side and from the IPS side

Rainbacon

14:53

Stack Exchange just asked me if I was a robot...who told?

Mithrandir

*points at @IPSCommentBot*

ElizB

@Rainbacon That's a really good answer that helps to explain the autism in a way that people get it, and i think that along with the introvert explanation, it will give me enough to give people at gatherings a good reason for his not going. Right now, people we know just know that he'll either be at climbing, church, or a very few select events

Rainbacon

15:20

@ElizB Thank you. I'm glad I was able to be helpful

ElizB

@Rainbacon Thank you! :) That's why I came here in the first place

Introverted Meta Man.

1

Q: What is the consensus on valid comments where the post has not been edited in quite a while?

IPS policy regarding comments strictly discards everything that is not either asking for clarification or suggesting improvements. Those comments that do not respect these guidelines - I'll call them "invalid comments" for the rest of the post - are destined to be deleted sooner or later. There ...

discussion comments moderation

ElizB

Rrrrgh. Trying to troubleshoot a darned stubborn printer that just won't cooperate

Rainbacon

15:42

Printers are definitively the worst piece of technology we've ever created

ElizB

it doesn't work for me (my desktop) but it does for my hubby.... ugh

so strange

ElizB

17:45

figured out the printer- so I'm able to print from USB and my hubby is able to print wirelessly but I can't print wirelessly....

Rainbacon

@ElizB That sounds like the issue I used to have in my office. I could print from usb, and other people could print wirelessly, but I couldn't print wirelessly. Then we changed internet providers and I could suddenly print wirelessly

ElizB

ughhh it's maddening. whatever, it works lol

Rainbacon

At least you can print now

ElizB

yeah

Tinkeringbell

19:25

Time for a discussion!

> On a side note I must admit I (only yesterday) had some random thoughts about how our enforcement of these things is perhaps a lot different from how other subjective stack exchange sites handle this, and how that may cause confusion when people already think they're used to writing good subjective answers only to find out those answers don't fit on Interpersonal Skills and are moderated later on. I was thinking of throwing this thought out sometime somewhere for further discussion ;)

I have seen quite a few 'oh well, then this stack isn't for me' responses over time, most of them relating to our policies on answers/comments.

Most of them have generally been accepting, but ... well... sometimes it seriously frustrates users that we're asking them to improve old answers, that we're deleting content, etc.

Has anyone else noticed IPS being really different from other stacks with regards to how we moderate based on the guidelines and policies we have?

Mithrandir

Well... IPS likes to clean up old things more than... pretty much anywhere, AFAIK.

Which important; we don't need to leave bad examples around for people to point at and say "but THEY got away with it!!"

Alex

19:41

@Tinkeringbell Do you mean to ask whether the moderation here follows its guidelines in a different way from how moderation on other sites follows their guidelines, or do you mean to ask whether the guidelines themselves are different here from on other sites?

Tinkeringbell

@Alex I realize the guidelines themselves are probably very different... but I also get the impression things like back-up (experience), explanations of how/why, answering the question as asked... all these may be discussed on other sites, but not as much enforced as here...

Alex

@Tinkeringbell I think they're considered less of a requirement on other sites.

Tinkeringbell

> On the Parenting.se, there was a similar "back it up" rule, based on the blog you referenced. The rule is part of the custom content for the site's help center:

Please note that opinions shared here should be backed up either with a reference, or experiences that happened to you personally. Also, posts that primarily exist to push a specific agenda (propaganda), and soap-boxing, are not welcome.

If we want a rule like this, I suggest placing it on our help center, which is currently nearly empty.

interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1611/1599 Written here, on one of the earliest posts about back up

Alex

At least in my experience (Mi Yodeya, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Literature, Biblical Hermeneutics, and English Language Learners).

Rainbacon

@Tinkeringbell I've certainly seen a few instances where people point to old low quality answers as evidence for why their low quality answer should be allowed. I believe that I remember one that demanded a number of answers be deleted immediately if theirs was considered a bad answer

Noon

19:57

I would have loved to participate in this discussion but I'm sadly only truly active on IPS. But yeah, a lot of people are very surprised by the fact that we do delete upvoted answers and we do delete "old" (a year) answers #shock

Tinkeringbell

I'm also having random thoughts on 'should we do anything to eliminate that shock'

Alex

I've seen upvoted and/or old answers deleted on other sites, but not necessarily for the same reasons.

Tinkeringbell

Can't really come up with anything on how to do so then ;)

Rainbacon

I also am primarily active only on IPS. I would be curious if the fact that we are a beta site has anything to do with it. I've seen a lot of people reference the difference between how IPS moderates and how other sites moderate, but it's always been a graduated site.

I could see where we might be hyper-sensitive to poor content because of how little content we actually have

Alex

@Rainbacon Of the five sites that I mentioned above two are Beta sites. Of them is probably the most similar to here, but still a bit different.

Mithrandir

20:02

IPS is a lot smaller with much harsher standards. The size means that people see more things, so things get enforced more.

Noon

@Tinkeringbell Maybe this problem will solve itself. The community needed (and might still need) a little time to establish guidelines but, once it's done, I don't think they will change that often. So we won't have this problem of "this was valid a year ago" anymore (but we will still need to clean all bad content before)

sphennings

There's a reason that the IPS standards are stricter. This site attracts contentious questions and answers. No to mention people with strongly held opinions who want to use this site as a platform to voice them.

I remember how often we were having arguments from the comments spill over onto meta, and from there spill into other meta questions. That was a mess to navigate.

Alex

@Noon That happens on a lot of sites. We recently had such a discussion on one of them:

4

Q: Old questions refresh to meet new standards

This question is influenced by my question about נשים פטורות ממצוות עשה, which was suggested as a dupe of Why are women exempt from (many) time-bound mitzvot? When I saw the later question and the answers, they were incompatible with today's standards of quality (I'm often criticized for and I m...

discussion editing answer-quality question-quality

Rainbacon

I think one thing that might make people perceive that we are different is that the core userbase of IPS is so small that almost all community driven moderation seems to be done by the same 5-10 users. In that case, as an outsider, it can feel less like the community is speaking and more like there's a voting mob trying to enforce it's own idea of order

sphennings

@Alex Most sites have some policy about applying current policy to older content, i.e. worldbuilding.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5031/…

Noon

20:09

@Rainbacon Yeah, that might be part of the problem :/

Alex

@sphennings For the most part, the only thing that should officially be changing over time is the scope of on-topicness. Often, older posts might be lower quality simply because in the earlier days of a site there might not have been enough high-reputation users to take care of everything, or less-than-good-content might have been ignored because there was a need for any content.

ElizB

I know I don't have much experience, (I joined in early summer ~June) but from what I see, those that point out the older questions usually help make sure our scope is well-defined, and that we can strengthen the policy of what is on topic and why, and I think we can move towards making a meta post for additions to the Help Center or making the FAQ more visible?

and adding the more detailed policies in the FAQ and help center, of course.

Extroverted Main Man

-2

Q: What type of person he is

I have a brother, he always tell he knows all but if any situation arise to use his talent then he fails to prove his knowledge or skill. What type of person he is

acceptable-behavior

Mithrandir

21:09

Something to take care of slowly, over a period of time: these need alt text

3

El'endia Starman

@Rainbacon: @ElizB and I just had a good discussion stemming from your answer to her question about explaining my autistic tendencies to family. Your metaphor/explanation is pretty good, though it didn't feel entirely accurate to me with regards to my brain. After some deliberation, I eventually settled on a fire metaphor, where adding coal to it makes it continue burning and tossing wet/green wood/straw/whatever on it will dampen it.

If the fire was hot enough to begin with, it can get through that without losing too much heat/energy. Over time though, lack of maintenance and/or poor fuel will result in it being reduced to coals or petering out altogether. That's when I really need a break where I can focus solely on things I like.

Rainbacon

21:40

@El'endiaStarman I'm glad you found it helpful. I like that you were able to take my suggestions and expand upon them to find a metaphor that works for you

El'endia Starman

Indeed! Thanks for the inspiration. :)

Extroverted Main Man

22:54

0

Q: How to get along with an obstructive person who believes her nation is superior?

I obtained qualification Q that is demanded in several European countries. Several countries run programs to recruit Qs internationally and I did apply for jobs in multiple countries. I did not keep secret that I applied in multiple countries. In country C I was told that having a pending applic...

europe

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