@sphennings The two are not mutually exclusive. There are people out there who are, as we used to say "spoiling for a fight". There are also people such as myself who can offend without intending. Perhaps because of my face blindness and inability to easily pick up social cues, I fail to avoid them.
@RichardU You can't control how people will respond to your actions but you can change your actions. If you're always finding yourself in fights perhaps it's not everyone else who is spoiling for a fight it's yourself. Picking up cues can be hard, especially online where there is very little besides the text itself that conveys information. But it is something that can be learned. It's much harder to teach yourself to read cues if it doesn't come naturally. There is a lot of cognitive overhead.
@RichardU You have made a lot of claims about "some people" with the implication that it's relevant to how we should behave. If it's just trivia, "one person exists like this", then this is all a bit pointless, we don't base our behavior on that one corner case. And if it's meant to apply to many and be routinely relevant, then yes, you are making significant claims, and we've generally responded as if this is the case.
interpersonal.stackexchange.com/questions/13095/… please help flag the onslaught of comments telling OP to see a therapist. The question itself does not require therapy, these comments are just analysing the rest of OP's life and it is entirely unnecessary
It is not our place to analyse the context a questioner has given... we can ask further questions that can lead us to a better answer for the question they asked but to give numerous unprovoked answers about a part of their life they have not asked us to help with is not what this site is about
@RichardU Just giving an example of where you did exactly what you claim you haven't done. Not naming someone specific doesn't mean you aren't claiming things about people.
Anyway, my original point was an off the cuff joke. There are people who are easily offended and I always seem to find them and annoy them by doing little more than breathing.
If one is not sure about whether or not something should be flagged as offensive, is it better to err on the side of flagging on R&A or No longer needed?
Ok so I'm working on making a text based adventure game for my beginner level program class and I've already gotten stuck. I need to define 2 classes: location and World. Here are my starting instructions:
The Location class should have the following instance variables:
-description (a string)
...
Okay.. sooo... there's comments here interpersonal.stackexchange.com/questions/13095/… asking and providing info about sex life. I dunno if they should stay, be edited into the question or just flagged?
@Tinkeringbell the first two comments don't flow well and are sprinkled with other not so good stuff. Think we could edit into question and then remove?
@AJHenderson certainly better than NJ does. I worked for six years for county government. I wasn't a libertarian when I started there, they made this monster.
@AJHenderson At the county, we were amazed at how bad we were, until we looked at what the state was doing. We couldn't have done that badly if we tried
The sad thing about NJ is that the mob is the least corrupt part of it.
yes, where as here when a state governor said they were going to refuse to send national guard troops (the state militia) to the border, people were saying they were being treasonous (which is completely incorrect, but still shows just how more overbearing the US fed is)
but as for the local taxation differences, it actually generally tends to work out reasonably well. Areas that are doing well economically tend to start developing more services and raising more taxes which in turn tends to make the area more desirable. The problem is that when it fails, it results in pretty bad urban decay where governments are saddled with trying to maintain stuff they can't afford and make the areas highly unattractive
so it both works really well and fails really hard
@AJHenderson but then you have renewal when those places decay to the point where artists buy up entire neighborhoods (SOHO) or cities (Asbury Park NJ)
though really, the government still ends up helping the area, they just change how they approach it. Making the area attractive to buy ups and such is also a function of government doing their job well
not everything requires throwing money at it to fix though
@AJHenderson ah, but that's why atlantic city is in ruins. The land is literally worthless because nobody will buy when they know that the city is just aching for tax revenue.
@Mithrandir FSU is enticing since I know it's very well-funded (by e.g. the NSF), but I don't think I can go down south. I just don't feel it would be conducive enough for research, for me. So, still Tibet for now, I think :)
NY's capital region is an odd area of 4 small cities in close proximity and a ton of research and educational infrastructure that is close to both the mountains, farmland, and NYC
@Mithrandir it's also a very late offer -- and one that I think has to be finalized by April 15th's tax deadlines, to guarantee my funding. So, my friends and I agreed that the offer was not so good, in that sense ...
it basically turns us in to a giant sprawling suburb without a real significant urban center, but lots of resources available that make a very strong economy
@AJHenderson I've seen Colorado devastated by it being overrun by Californians fleeing California. Changed the culture entirely, created massive poverty and a dichotomy with no middle class left. The calfornians with massive wealth came in, built up the tourism and shut down all other industry, leaving generations of miners, oil workers, farmers and ranchers with no way to get an income
@Dzyann No, although there are often a few moderators around ;) You can see who is, by looking at the name. If someone's name shows up as blue, they are a moderator somewhere on SE
yes you are totally right, I am really sorry. Hi everyone! I am a bit dizzy today, I am actually working but I had this nagging doubt I wanted to ask, so I asked @ct
I am one of those people that you know when it has a thought it doesn't abandon me, and I asked this question the other time: https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2743/how-to-give-advice-to-op-when-comments-are-deleted-and-not-moved-to-chat I wasn't feeling well that day and I think I wasn't clear from the get go, so it got a lot of discussion, but my actual question wans't trully answered XD
I am more active in SO, so I didn't know here there was so many issues with the comments, I was innocently asking, not trying to create problems, or complain XD
I won't ask @Catija to go and re-read everything, re-edit her answer, etc etc etc
after all the discussion I added an update to the question that i think is very clear, but I want to know if i implement one of those approaches if my comments will get deleted
@Dzyann I don't think anyone assumed that you were trying to create problems. It's in fact one of the most reasonable ones I've read in a long time... the others often being rants on 'why am I not allowed to voice my opinion!'
well yes I know, but I can imagine how you guys read "question about comments" and feel "omg not again"
that is why the conversion went off track on how I think this site is for helping people, or how this site is not SO and many other things that are not what I actually want to know XD
I am more than happy to create a new question with the specific topic and link it as a comment in the OP question, OR create a chat with my comments and link the chat. But I want to do something that will remain, like not get deleted. I mean even if i have to edit the question and say "question open in relation this one" (I rather not edit someone else question like that though). But I want to know what action can I take that wont get rolled back XD
First, I want to apologize if I'm posting this in the wrong site, but I hope this is the right one.
My question "how to find friends" might be very unclear at the beginning, but it's very common in many forums and most of the answers include things like involving in different communities in orde...
the person is asking a bunch of things, and it is very very generic
that is why it got closed
then he said this specifically about her sister "If she asks me how I am, what I'm doing and when I start telling about my programming stuff, she becomes uninterested and doesn't pay attention to me."
i read the answers to this question, and people suggested things like "learn other topics so you can tell your sister", or tell her about how you are interested in making friends
but no one told him how he can actually tell her about his job without turn off her interest. Which is his actual problem in those specifict 2 sentences of the 30 or more sentences of the question XD
so when i saw that tiny part, i wanted to post some comments with hints for that, which is not the question. But comments get deleted. SO could I open a new question and link it in the comments? SHould I open a chat and tell him that staff there and link it in comments? should I open a question and link it directly in the question?
@Dzyann I kind of feel like that is one of those things where the answer is kind of indirect. There isn't a whole lot you can do to make programming particularly interesting to a non-programmer beyond just a very basic explanation. Hard to have a conversation about it with someone who isn't interested in it.
basically, you tell the other person, I learned this super hard thing that everyone was having issues with, or I spent this many hours studying this new thing, etc
@Magisch the best I've ever been able to come up with is giving analogies that explain how it impacts something they like on situations where that comes up, but mostly I talk work with work people who understand it
you translate into terms anyone can sort of understand. Her sister doesn't care whether or not he programs in python, she wanst to know How HE is doing, so he has to say it more generic
i talk with my mom a lot about work, because she asks so i give a lot of analogies, and she doesn't even know how to reset her facebook password, but she understands XD
@Dzyann Yeah, one thing that's frowned upon here is answering questions after they are closed (even partially) because if we allow them, why would someone edit their question and improve it? It also add a lot of noise (I believe you wrote multiple comments?) that drowns out the actual improvements that are suggested by the community.
I still run in to something of a problem there because as a framework developer and architect, the stuff I build often doesn't make sense to other developers, let alone my social friends
@Tinkeringbell yes I saw after what I did that comments are a big issue here. That is why I was asking if i Open a new question, or if I just tell him in chat, etc. SOmething not affecting really the original question. I can not edit the question, like someone suggested because it would render useless the not related answers
@Magisch yes but my mom feels she won't remember XD We have cosntant arguments about that, oh well. But I do get your point, she doesn't say she wants to know the details of what I am doing, she wants to know how do i do. And in really if you have a doctor and a lawyer married unless they give generalizations and analogies they wont be able to talk about work XD
for example
the silly tech jokes you can't share, but generisc most certainly. And the OP feels his sister is not interested, when he is the one giving non interesting information XD
Opening a new question will have 2 problems I think, one of which is that we already have a very similar question (https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/q/3213/1599)... and second of all, you haven't had the experience the OP is asking about, so it's kind of hard to come up with enough detail (unless you have similar problems yourself).
You can always invite people to a chatroom I believe, by going to their profile and pick 'start a new room with this user'. But that requires the person to have a chat profile. If you do that, after a while, the room will be frozen and deleted for inactiv…
@Dzyann I can't speak for IPS specifically, but generally splitting a question is ok if it is too broad and answers on the question already focus on one particular one. I'd normally give the OP an opportunity to do so first though
@AJHenderson I think the main thing on IPS would be that we're a bunch of gossipy aunts when it comes to question details. Hypotheticals or questions on behalf of others are hard, in that they often can't provide the details (or provide them immediately)
@Dzyann I've seen it once. And in that case, I'd rather have seen that information as a 'what you've already tried' in the question. Lemme look. interpersonal.stackexchange.com/q/7696/1599
so I am going to read this question interpersonal.stackexchange.com/questions/3213/… to see if it covers what I have in mind, from the looks of it, it does, maybe I could add an answer of my own if I think I can be of use. WOuld it be valid to link that question to the OP in the comments? WOuld that comment get deleted?
and chat can be a good way to do that, just try to remember that chat isn't a discoverable medium, so if it gets developed to the point it could be a useful question on the main site, try to do so
well you see my goal was like helping the people that has this issue in general, which I can totally relate to, and also help the OP in particular, if possible, I mean if he doesn't read it there is nothing I can do about it
Well, they were kinda off-topic (as the question is whether it's rude)... I think people saw them and flagged... anyways, this was my answer:
> we've never had a canonical question before, although we did discuss them before... I think we've never started one, because oftentimes things like race, gender, and cultural/societal norms make for very unique questions. Like discussed here https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1360/1599 for example, if we have a question with a good explanation of cultural norms, and there's another one that states different ones, we don't close them as …
I see, i tell you i dont get the comments policy in this site XD I flagged a comment the other time that was totally not in the rules and they let it pass and told me you dont usually get comments deleted on meta XD
well whether that question is rude or not is a matter of perception, I think the OP is biased
but i also think his question is valid for any group of people
@Tinkeringbell but that was meta where they deleted it right? XD that is what I mean, i got flag declined, which btw for me the comment was antagonizing, that is why i flagged it, and they rejected it. And here I thought we were having a discussion and they delete it. Oh my thank's god I decided never to flag again a comment in meta, just in case.
for example I dont think it would be easy for a white person to explain and make someone else that is not white understand how it feels to be discriminated for being white
There may very well be more people struggling with stuff like that... but in this case, I agree with something that Catija said: I think that it's valuable for it to be pointed out that you're not in the US, where tensions are very high right now due to what's been going on in the news and historically.
For me, the same goes for skin color here... It provides something that's to me not totally understandable, but I can sense there's a difference between this and e.g. a female being discriminated at work
@Dzyann I think though, those scenario's are happening a whole less the other way around... because I see plenty of the 'black person explaining discrimination to a white person' in the media... but never the other way around (not saying it never happens, but at least I can confirm from experience the first one happens and I've never heard of the second one)
well i think that question contradicts itself then, it is stating that differences can not be explained, and that is why i suggested a generic approach, but we don't want to make it generic because there are differences, which btw, we dont understand XD
@Tinkeringbell well if you think of it, it is kinda worse, if you are discriminated because you are white, no one sympathizes with you, or gets you, some even may think "you have it good what are you complainig about" XD
Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the way the question is asked I guess. Maybe there's another group dynamic involved (e.g. boss-employee instead of friends), maybe there's indeed the added problem of it not being recognised as a problem because everyone thinks discrimination to those people doesn't happen...
Like I said, it depends on the next question whether or not it'll stand or be closed as a duplicate (because the answers that are there now are also applicable to that situation)
But in the meanwhile, I don't think this question would benefit from over-generalizing, that would certainly get it closed as too broad
@Tinkeringbell what confuses me of this site is like, if you ask in SO, how to check if parameter is null in i dont know C#, it wont get duplicated with a question that asks about the same but in Java. So no one would ever suggest to generalize those two. BUt in this case where it really is not relevant to the answer whether is white, black or whatever, we dont want to generalize but then if a white person asks the question it will get marked as duplicated. It is confusing for me.
I don't mind though, that is why I actually posted those suggestions on comments, since I am still learning the dynamic of the site
@Dzyann Yeah, that's basically the harships of a subjective site vs. a more objective one ;) Lines on SO can be very clear, while here they're always fuzzy... especially since this is beta :)
I think it stems from the fact that people visit the interpersonal exchange and sometimes discuss things that are very, very serious, such as mental health, etc. A comment can change a person's life here.
@Dzyann Well, it basically is a lot stricter here than on SO... I think no-one on SO has time to flag stuff, with their amount of traffic ;) There's a lot of reasons why commenting here is so restricted, and some basically has to do with 'we don't want the nasty, so we'll have to be equally strict on the 'good''
this question interpersonal.stackexchange.com/questions/3213/… lets say i wanted to ask the same but with a different title, like "how to tell about my family and friends about my job when they dont know about programming" and then mark it as duplicate. Would that be a valid approach to help people using google find that question ?
@Clay07g I agree re psych issues. It's a powder keg and giving someone bad advice on something that a professional should be handling is a VERY BAD THING
@Tinkeringbell well my programmers mind think is more like 2 pointers to the same object helping to make the object more easy to reach XD That is why I dont get mad about my questions getting marked as duplicate.
If someone isn't able to find the question on google, they will come here and ask (if they have the same problem) and can be redirected by the community once it comes up. It's not really our job to turn this site into one of those places filled with buzzwords. (You know, those sites where you look for a torrent that give you a hit because your search is into a string with a bunch of other popular terms?)
@Dzyann Oh, I don't get mad about mine being marked duplicate either, but ... To keep this site nice and clean, it's better to not write them on purpose
I am not native english speaker and many times I find hard finding a question because in my mind i dont phrase things like someone from US, I actually had a friend that I asked how he would look for something. So I think duplicates actually add value
@Dzyann Pointers and references, and structures and arrays, and null zero terminated strings, these are a few of my favorite things... (in best Julie Andrews voice)
@Dzyann goes and creates a gazillion duplicates with subtle differences, muahahahah
I have a long to do list now, read that question you linked, add an answer if I feel I can add value. Answer my meta question with the information you guys provided here, then read that other link about why comments get deleted, although i think i may have read it already
@RichardU Regarding this: There are enough posts now to observe where two people posted very similar things. When that happens, and one is up-voted and another down-voted for saying essentially the same thing, you've got an in-group vs out-group dynamic... Is that about answers to that meta question, or main?
@Tinkeringbell regarding that i have seen sometimes comments get upvoted if the person is well known in the site. THat could account for some of the differences
@RichardU Ehh.. not enough English to understand that I guess? And it doesn't answer my question (or did you just switch topic? an "I'm not gonna answer that" or 'no comment' works better for me then :P)
@Tinkeringbell a common frustration for C programmers is you forget a close brace, and you end up looking for it for hours. Thus the picture of a brace on a milk carton.
@RichardU Ah, okay... well, we do still have the duplicate answers thing.. if you're unlucky enough to be 10 minutes later than the first poster, and your answer is very similar, it may not get as much attention (unless it's of course magnificently backed up)
@RichardU Oh, huh? Did that work?
Looks to me like it's kinda too slow?
Also, is an in/out group always bad? And do you have a good example on main where I should be able to spot it?
@Tinkeringbell it's more of a pattern to look out for. ONE instance doesn't indicate it but if you see someone consistently being down-voted and another up voted and the down-votes don't make sense for the one and the up-votes don't for the other, then you may be seeing cliquish behavior.
@RichardU Okay... but then, I'm going to say that that specific meta post may not have been the right place to point it out? Because right now, in that context, it doesn't look like a general warning. It looks like you're saying that that specific answer is being downvoted unfairly... and like I said, taking into account addressing behavior vs. users, I don't think that's the case on that specific post...
@RichardU I don't see that? The only thing I sometimes see is you not being understood, and you not understanding that you're being misunderstood... And that can be frustrating, but you've done good work on meta too... In fact, you've got less negative scoring answers than me.
@RichardU I know... but I can't force 20 people out of this room just because we want to talk XD Neither can I force everyone not understanding stuff on meta from chiming in... I think you're best bet at that time is to shout 'I think you're all misunderstanding me, but I can't figure this out if there's 5 people at the same time telling me I'm wrong because.... Please give me a chance to figure this stuff out one by one, (and then ping someone that you're not understanding)...
@RichardU I've heard you say differently though... does that make you a sinner? :P
@Tinkeringbell Oh, I'm a sinner indeed. The point I was making earlier, or trying to, is simply that no matter how hard you try, you're going to annoy people. the only way you can get to the truth is to risk annoying people. Getting to the truth is a painful process
Also, if you want someone to proofread stuff, just lemme know. I think e.g. interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2761/… wasn't a stupid idea, but just phrased badly and that lead to a lot of misunderstanding. Our meta can certainly do better at attempting to understand the actual question before giving opinions...
@RichardU Not always, but yeah, some people don't like me on meta either ;)
Now, we as humans build all of these defenses against pain, so naturally, the truth is included in painful experiences. There is a reason why only Jesters were allowed to speak the truth in the courts of Europe.
