Background to Issue:- Up until two months ago, my 23 year old daughter had been living with me and her 11 year old brother in a large 4 bedroom house without much quarelling.
She is a fulltime student but approached me two months ago for advice about whether she should take a parttime job offer ...
I have heard many one talk about How to Win Friends and Influence People book.
However, I don't have enough time keep reading full book currently but I need to use it's knowldges.
I will come back to read full book later.
I have found the wiki's summary.
My question is
Is it enough or does ...
My girlfriend has anxiety issues for which she currently is prescribed medication. The medication helps but she still struggles with social occasions, especially when she does not know many people there. She did get counselling at one point but stopped after a while as she did not feel it was hel...
An issue we have all dealt with at one time or another please share your thoughts. http://shuharido.com/blog1/2018/04/10/toxic-people-at-your-workplace/
My definition of friendship is extremely strict. In fact, my friends are what most people would consider to be their "best friends". As such, I have very few of them.
I think I'm making a new friend. However, something recently happened that made me think that perhaps I was mistaken and we're no...
In my high school, I had a crush on a girl who was more drawn to this other guy, I'm not sure why. She didn't romantically liked him or anything, but once, in our chemistry lab, she was just touching some plants and he told her not to. She stopped touching them and looked a bit sad. After the lab...
@Tinkeringbell just to add - I am not bothered the least from you removing the comments on [that question](https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/questions/14745/why-are-some-girls-attracted-to-avoidant-rude-guys) - I knew it was off-topic. (In fact, I expected this was the likely outcome).
I'm not sure what the policy is on things like [my comment here](https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/questions/14744/how-to-determine-if-a-friendship-exists#comment59844_14744)
That is, I tried answering it but I couldn't because it seemed rather broad. OP responded (in an in question edit, which I presume is as inappropriate here as in other SE sites I participate in).
I think that's generally the case in every SE site and some sites (like this one and theworkplace) make it harder for people to figure out what the boundary is. I guess I'm struggling with that part a little.
If you struggle with writing an answer for example, there's probably stuff you want to know before you're able to write a good one? That's the clarification that can go in a comment...
And yes, responding in edits is inappropriate everywhere
I mean, I can totally see the value in it - but the way it's written makes it very hard for me to write a proper answer (and a comment answer while bad runs away from this responsibility).
@BenjaminGruenbaum interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2147/1599 I like to link to this meta post a lot ;) It really explains how you can phrase a worry that something is wrong like a request
@BenjaminGruenbaum Nah, I'm looking at it now and although I'm not sure it's 'bad' enough to close unilaterally, it could certainly use some improvements (if only editing :P). Give me some time to carefully read it :)
Yeah, to be fair I knew I wasn't participating in the proper way which is why I came here to ask for advice about it. In the question above for instance would it have been better to simply not answer and let users with 3K rep close-vote it (and/or give someone with more experience a chance to answer)?
@Tinkeringbell Thanks, no rush. Just curious since I enjoy reading contents on this site and want to see if I can participate more as I work on my soft skills. StackOverflow contributed a lot to my skillset as a developer and I'm hoping to learn more about how people communicate here.
(Mostly because I've been accepting more roles that involve community leadership in organisations and I want to understand peoples' perspectives better but also because I find it interesting)
This thing is still beta, so you only need 500 rep to close vote something ;)
It's always good to have some experience to back up answers with, we are actually in the process now of determining whether or not to make that a hard rule (https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2984/1599) because we get A LOT of questions asking 'how do I solve this situation/do this interaction' and even more answers that just say 'do this'... sometimes it may not even be possible given a certain cultural background, or actually harmful if written from a completely wrong perspective :)
You're welcome, and feel free to pop in with further questions :) I've left some comments on the question we talked about, I hope the asker keeps being engaged :D
@Tinkeringbell I also use auto-comments on Ask Ubuntu, sometimes. The wording is part of the problem, surely. In any language, wording helps set the tone and the attitude of the speaker. If the same comment is left with intentionally terse and "pro-argument" tone, I think it doesn't work very well.
So Im a pretty introverted person, but when I moved out to study about a year ago I initially met a lot of new people. Mostly at parties and other social events arranged for students to get to know each other. However after these initial social events when the semester started, I saw a lot of peo...
The way it's asked and why it's asked. If you are asking out of genuine concern it is something, if you are *coincidentally* asking only under the answers you disagree with and with a rude tone, then it's not OK.
BTW I am using "you" in a generic way, not you... :D
@AndreaLazzarotto So was this really a case of 'only the answers I disagree with?'... I mean, I moderated a few questions yesterday, where I left a comment asking for back-up on at least 4 answers each, sometimes even on every answer to the question... Because none of those answers had as much as an 'in my experience' in them, or a source to back up their claims... I try hard to customize them for each answer, but sometimes it's just not 'worth it'
@ExtrovertedMainMan are "How do I deal with stuff" on-topic for this site? Sorry for my ignorance but I never really understood which was off-topic and which was on-topic
I mean, as far as I can see, the comment was left on all the answers that were there at the time, some even got edited to include experience, others were deleted as very low quality/not an answer... But I think that apaul is just as interested in why people say the things they did on that question as I am.
@AndreaLazzarotto Meh, sometimes they're just left because I like to see this site get better quality answers
@Tinkeringbell BTW more often than not people answering here cannot provide a bibliography for what they write. Several IPS situations are based on experience so there is only so much one can link about a given situation.
"I like to see this site get better quality answers" yeah, this is what I call genuine concern
@AndreaLazzarotto Well, trust me that that concern lives with apaul just as much. I don't have any experience with LGBT or polyamory to be frank, especially when compared to others. I know apaul does, and is very interested in getting better answers for those kinds of questions especially :)
Given all the recent fuzz on meta, a post with midly offensive language and even a "farewell post" related to that post by the same user, I have some doubts about it
@AndreaLazzarotto Welll... Trust me when I say this site got very nasty for a time. Right before I became a moderator, there were only 2 mods here, too many comments, too many fires on meta and too much flame-bait on main, and more than a few troublesome users...
It isn't strange that apaul said goodbye... I must admit I had just quit the site for about a week and a half, a few weeks before that.
Suggesting that, for example, only african-americans should be able to answer questions about racial discrimination is offensive on so many levels... regarding sexual orientation it's the same thing. Intentionally prohibiting a part of users from answering is quite horrible, if you ask me.
Of course my opinion doesn't count much, but whatever
@AndreaLazzarotto It isn't... but if it's about racial discrimination, we might at least expect answers to be written by people who have dealt with racial discrimination...
@AndreaLazzarotto What that answer shows though, is that it's possible to write an answer from someone being on the opposite side of such a conversation... but at least I've been on the opposite side of those conversations. What if I'd still be living the sheltered church life I grew up in? I could have written a very good answer saying 'don't say anything, and quit your lifestyle'. It'd be logical for me, but of no help whatsoever to the person asking...
You do need to have had some interactions, and similar interactions too, to be able to write such an answer
My (68 y/o) father does not use, upgrade, or keep his cell phone with him at all. His current phone is a very old Iphone, perhaps a ver. 5, and he generally leaves it at home when he goes out to do anything, including work, the gym, or realistically anything else.
Moreover, he does not seem to u...
@Tinkeringbell sure. And what I am saying, fellow users should not assume you didn't have such interactions and that you are answering without any clue just because you have nothing better to do.
@AndreaLazzarotto But that is exactly what we've seen happening on this site. I can't even count the amount of times I've asked people to back up their answers, even if it was just a little disclosure on why they wrote down what they wrote down... and got the reply 'it's common sense/logic'.
I'm glad we're having a meta discussion right now on what to do with such answers, since it's of course no good to go arguing logic in comments, but it's also not the way of SE for subjective sites
@Tinkeringbell I can't comment without seeing specific circumstances, but even if that's the case, one cannot project the assumption that people are clueless on all users.
I don't buy it. I don't believe all of them are clueless, nor that one should be allowed to rudely challenge them. One thing is legitimately asking for backup, another thing is to leave snarky remarks just for disagreement
So, maybe something like a link to meta after the comment, to a meta post discussing backing up of answers... or even to good subjective, bad subjective.. might have been more useful?
I agree that using the entire character limit for a comment is better. But that doesn't mean it's not a good idea to leave such a comment on every answer, if every answer is lacking backup
@AndreaLazzarotto Huh... what side did you live on?
@AndreaLazzarotto Ah nice! I worked there for a while. But you definitely met the most nice and chatty people around :P I've lived more to the North (near Zwolle) and in Leiden for a while... it's definitely quite common over here to just ask three questions in a row...
We could do something based on the existing canned comment for link-only answers:
"Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here, and provide the link for reference."
@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ it could be, but still better than such a comment. Also considering the fact that written communication is very blunt itself and more prone to be misunderstood.
@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ I didn't write that one either, I was just showing an example.
> Thank you for writing an answer! While I'm sure that you have your reasons for giving this advice, you might want to take a look at this meta about backing up posts.
> Although it's not strictly enforced, it is a good idea and heavily encouraged to back up your answers with references (either external sources or personal experience). Could you perhaps [edit] to improve this answer with something to back it up?
Thank you for taking the effort to write an answer! While I'm sure that you have a good reason for giving this advice, you might want to take a look at [this meta](https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1611/31) about backing up your posts. Although it's not strictly enforced, it is a good idea and heavily encouraged to back up your answers with references (either external sources or personal experience). Could you please perhaps [edit] to improve this answer with something to back it up? Thanks! :)
@Sid You don't. I might as well pretend I am gay just to answer a question about homosexuality... the truth is, the good quality answers will emerge whether you provide rock solid evidence of your experience or not
@AndreaLazzarotto Okay, so then the problem you are describing on meta isn't with leaving comments on every not backed up answer, but with the tone of the comment... That's not coming across very clear to me :) Also, you might want to reconsider quoting this... it was written in response to comments that weren't even asking, to say the least
@AndreaLazzarotto At least, SE does allow subjective sites because they allow for sharing of experiences instead of research (read good subjective, bad subjective... do I need to repeat that? I am a parrot after all... READ good subjective, bad subjective). We can't go fact-checking every experience, but we can leave comments and maybe even those post-notices Cascabel mentioned on meta, or delete the stuff where none is added
@AndreaLazzarotto Lot's of people seem drawn to this site because of exactly having that problem. Which makes for interesting moderating sometimes :)
@AndreaLazzarotto I think I'm seeing the 'clearly expressing disagreement' thing a bit different: they were left because they're meant to express a disagreeing with answers that aren't backed up, IMO. Not as some bait for a discussion in comments (which I probably still have to clean up). I think a comment that is 'clearly expressing disagreement'... is worse. I've seen a few, been on the receiving end of those quite a lot. They're not fun.
@Tinkeringbell I have read it, I swear. As I said before, I also agree that backing up from personal experience is a good thing. We agree on a lot of things, trust me
I don't think he is a bad guy, I think he is extremely vocal about his POV and doesn't very much like other POVs. Which is fine, just sometimes not very healthy for a community
To be honest, the fact that I avoid participating on IPS more often, other than lack of much free time, is the attitude of some diamond users (especially two). If all were like you, it would be much more enjoyable to stay here.
@AndreaLazzarotto Don't say that too loud. I'm not sure how their attitude differs from mine, other than that they have some other ways of communicating the same ideas. I appreciate that, I recently got stuck with a particular user to the point that we both seemed to be getting frustrated, another mod stepped in and their method of communicating was more effective than mine :)
As far as moderating this site goes, I'm pretty sure we're all on about the same line when it comes to comment deletion and backing up answers... (I admit I'm the most picky when it comes to questions)
May I ask you what you think should change? What do I do that I need to keep doing?
Because I'm still learning, and I might well end up unlearning certain behaviours when I 'learn' more about moderating ;)
@Tinkeringbell not sure. Too many times, really, too many times, I've left comments asking for clarification (or seen other people asking for clarification) just to get my comments immediately (read, in the span of 1-2 hours) pruned with a note suggesting that the comments were chatting or whatever. It always happens with the same mods. Sometimes these mods are also happy to leave their comments that should be removed if following the same strict login.
logic*
This only happens on IPS and on another site. I never saw that comments asking for clarification were immediately pruned on Ask Ubuntu, Travel SE or other sites I visit. It depends on the mod.
@Tinkeringbell as far as my experience goes, every time I see you moderating some posts and cleaning up comments you are always balanced, polite and friendly
@AndreaLazzarotto Hmmm... might have been caused by having only 2 mods dealing with that stuff for a long time, and there not being that much time for carefully untangling a web of comments if there's that many. I think you'll notice things might get better a little now that there's more of us, although the 'old' mods will probably be doing the heavy lifting on comments that are completely out of hand until I get comfortable doing that too
@AndreaLazzarotto I'm still young and unblemished ;)
To date I've learnt to simply check what diamond mod has "pruned" the previous comments, if any, and then I decide if I want to comment or not. I avoid engaging with the harsher ones entirely, because it provides for an unpleasant experience
Compare to Academia or Travel, or whatever, when if you have something relevant to add to complement the information in some answer (like backing up with source! eheh), or if you need clarification from a question, you can comment and generally speaking it is well received
@AndreaLazzarotto Ah yeah, but here we're picky about how you phrase your comment too! You weren't thinking this site was easy now, did you? :P It's interpersonal skills after all, we expect everybody to be entirely capable of 'asking for clarification' or suggesting improvements' :P
@Tinkeringbell young? If the digits in your email have something to do with your age, I am afraid we are old the same... and we are getting more towards 30 than 20 :O :P just kidding
(also, standard disclaimer: Comments on SE in general are ephemeral and get deleted a lot; comments on IPS are moderated even more strictly than that because the site's past has shown that to be necessary)
@AndreaLazzarotto Did I ever link you to this? interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/a/2147/1599 Maybe, if you could manage to rephrase your comments like that, a lot more of them would remain undeleted ;)
Also, if someone is asking for a clarification or suggesting an improvement, we generally expect (and leave around) only the answers to that from who-ever wrote the post, not from anyone else (as that would be a discussion in comments)
@ArtOfCode not "any", but when someone leaves comments asking for clarification, OP should at least be given a few hours to provide the clarification. Especially when it's needed to properly answer.
TL;DR: Flag the comments for deletion and write an answer.
More in depth explanation:
People have a tendency to treat comments like they matter, or are permanent, or as places to put information that they for whatever reason don't want to put in an actual answer. Guess what? They're not.
Com...
@AndreaLazzarotto Then maybe that's because they don't have anything for the OP to answer too? I dunno, I rely pretty heavy on questions marks to see whether a comment has value or not :P
@AndreaLazzarotto Do you think you remember a recent example? I can see what's deleted so I might figure out if there's anything deleted that shouldn't be :)
useless comments can be deleted straight away, as well as rants, but those asking for clarifications should be left for a little while because that's precisely what comments are for
@ArtOfCode I know what I write in comments. Most of the time it's for clarification. Sometimes it's for suggesting improvement (BTW bad choice of wording, the current button suggests the only possible comments are those suggesting improvements but that's not how the rules are... asking for clarification is also permitted)
@AndreaLazzarotto Adding in a clarification to a post is an improvement to that post. Anyhow, the wording isn't permanent yet, it's just a test to see if we get less 'comments'.
I made a quick change to Area 51 recently, and it had a profound effect on how people used that site, so let's discuss.
Background:
The basic building blocks of every SE site are the QUESTION and the ANSWER. They are clearly portrayed as such, so if anyone puts "something else" in that space, ...
@Tinkeringbell not really. Lately, I've been avoiding commenting on IPS except in a few circumstances, because I know that those couple of mods are still around and so it's pointless to even ask for clarification if OP is never going to see the clarification request.
If a question lacks details I don't even care anymore, I just go on with other stuff.
@Tinkeringbell I saw who the author is and stopped. No actually I read it, but I found it funny because that's exactly the user that deletes the most "asking for clarification" comments
That's what I meant by "as long as they're asking..." - Tinkeringbell's link. If they ask a question or make a request of the author, that's cool. If they're a more general "I don't think this bit is good" without actually making a request for improvement or clarification, they're going to get deleted.
you will probably find some comments that were left intentionally even if I knew they were going to be deleted. Occasionally it happened I did that, but don't ban me for that please :P And of course I am not referring to those ones in my messages above.
Most of my comments across the SE network are "could you please clarify [this and that]?" so those are what I am referring to
@AndreaLazzarotto As long as you focus on what happened (and not who did it)... there might be fruitful discussions ;) I asked a few questions on meta about my comment flags getting declined for example...
As a side note, I also avoid a mod user that is a SE employee due to insuliting remarksand then locked the thread immediately after. Luckily this happened on Ask Ubuntu so my flags were handled immediately and the comments got deleted right away.
@Sid yes but not all mods are the same, a selected few routinely show sheriff-like behavior. Other are very very good.
@AndreaLazzarotto Employees make mistakes too ;) I mean, I forgot to clear a rude/abusive flag on an answer before deleting it as 'not an answer' not too long ago... which means that people actually get to see that the answer was marked as rude or abusive, and people weren't too happy about that. But as long as it's mentioned constructively, I can look into it and reverse the damage ;)
> Why would children come into question? OP is being asked about her surname, children have nothing to do with it... and if the person asking OP implies children have something to do with it, they are clearly wrong.
@AndreaLazzarotto Yep. I can see that. I also find that it may be a valid question... Although I would have phrased it just a little differently... because the question states: "or questions of a similar nature"... which may well have been interpreted by the answerer originally as 'oh, they're asking about what names the kids will get'.
I think giving a last name as a middle name is a nice idea, which I hadn't thought about before. Though, with our last names, I doubt they would work. — Violet FlareMay 10 at 13:08
There's also that comment from the original asker, which seems to go with the 'kid naming' idea
I'm just trying to say I guess, that as a moderator you don't always have time to look at every little detail, so if you see the original writer of a question confirm that something is a nice idea, it's easy to think 'hey... why is this comment there, the asker just confirmed they liked that idea'
Fine, but IIRC I actually got an answer to my comment so the clarification was given / suggestion was taken into account. I believe, I don't remember precisely to be sure...
@AndreaLazzarotto Yeah, which may have helped with cleaning it up ;)
Anyway, as much as I enjoy talking to you, I have to go. I have to get up early tomorrow ;) If you ever feel like you'd like help phrasing your comments or understanding why something was deleted, feel free to hit this room again :D
Then the comment purpose was reached and I am happy about it. What I really hate is some (only a couple) of mods here going trigger happy with the delete button way before the clarification requests serve any useful purpose. Then they have an attitude which is not nice and they think they are gods
@Tinkeringbell I also have to go. Thanks for being part of IPS, if all were like you the website would be much better and inclusive
A man called me a few times today- I'll refer to him as "Bill". He was looking for a man named Wayne. He is pretty upset that Wayne's old number happens to now be my number. He explained that he has used this number for years to contact Wayne and that he needs to contact Wayne to pick something u...
An issue we have all dealt with at one time or another please share your thoughts. http://shuharido.com/blog1/2018/04/10/toxic-people-at-your-workplace/
TL;DR: Flag the comments for deletion and write an answer.
More in depth explanation:
People have a tendency to treat comments like they matter, or are permanent, or as places to put information that they for whatever reason don't want to put in an actual answer. Guess what? They're not.
Com...
I made a quick change to Area 51 recently, and it had a profound effect on how people used that site, so let's discuss.
Background:
The basic building blocks of every SE site are the QUESTION and the ANSWER. They are clearly portrayed as such, so if anyone puts "something else" in that space, ...
