The Awkward Silence

7:03 PM

@IPSCommentBot Hey you! :(

I’ve got to say, I don’t trust this comment bot. :’(

I can’t be sure, but I’d say I was suggesting an improvement to the answer here.

@Adamant don't take it personally. It just looks for patterns in the comment and posts any that match one of the ones that users have defined

Tinkeringbell

@Adamant It's off sometimes ;) although I think responses wasn't for the other answers but the comments ;)

It only works on regex XD

sphennings

It's probably keying off "I was going to say"

Adamant

@Tinkeringbell Yes, I thought so....

sphennings

It's not supposed to be smart but to pick up on some of the common patterns of comments that this site is constantly being littered with.

Adamant

7:06 PM

@sphennings Has there been an analysis of the false positive rate?

Regex matching is very useful, but it’s easy for it to make mistakes.

sphennings

Since all it's doing is posting in chat we really don't care too much

Adamant

@sphennings Oh, it doesn’t flag/delete them?

That still has to be done manually?

sphennings

It just notifies chat.

Tinkeringbell

@Adamant Nope. Yes

sphennings

@Adamant We have had single threads with over 100 comments deleted from them before.

Tinkeringbell

7:08 PM

@Adamant it runs here: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/63296/the-closet Only a selection of comments ends up in this room

Rainbacon

It hit off the regex looking for (up|down)vote

Adamant

OK. Well, if that’s the case I still think my comment was pertinent…but I’m sure they got the message anyway.

Rainbacon

That pattern often appears in comments that are needless

Em C

@Adamant Catija has since posted a comment and moved the rest to chat, so hopefully yes :)

Adamant

One thing that does worry me, though, is that I see whole comment threads deleted here because some of the comments are not seeking clarification or improvement.

I understand that it might be easier for moderators to click a “delete all” button (is there one?), but it might make more sense to delete only the disallowed comments, even if it takes a bit longer.

sphennings

7:09 PM

There are so many comments on here that there's no room for a nuanced comment policy.

Comments are supposed to be transitory anyway.

Adamant

@sphennings My comment was deleted a minute after posting, it seemed. Or a few, anyway.

Comments aren’t supposed to be so transitory that the posters don’t have time to see them.

sphennings

Mods finally got around to cleaning up all the posts on that question.

Adamant

And I’ve seen this happen before.

sphennings

Comments are supposed to be for requesting clarification, and suggesting improvements.

Tinkeringbell

@Adamant Well, yours was 'suggesting' an improvement that is made now ;)

Adamant

7:11 PM

@Tinkeringbell Right, so that’s good.

sphennings

We are more strict about that than other sites because of the volume of comments we have to deal with.

Tinkeringbell

I think the keyword here is suggesting... I think a lot of people don't put enough suggestion in their comments..

Adamant

@sphennings I understand. But I still think comment “purges” are not ideal, and that it would be best to target only the off-topic ones. You’ve even got a bot to help with that.

Em C

mods are very sparing with the "move to chat" function here.. interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2757/… is the latest meta on comment policy

Tinkeringbell

@Adamant We try ;) I get flags declined from time to time, because I flag one that can actually be seen as a suggestion... with a lot of between the lines ;)

Cascabel

7:13 PM

To be fair to apaul here, although I definitely do not support using an answer to attack others, responses to the question (especially comments) have included a significant amount of defensiveness, ignorance, and tone-policing of the sort the OP is looking to avoid.

Tinkeringbell

I usually prefer to use 'buzzwords' like 'I think', 'I'd suggest' to indicate that I'm actually suggesting stuff ;)

sphennings

@Cascabel Very true.

Tinkeringbell

If that's missing, it's not a suggestion but an opinion for me :P

Adamant

@Cascabel I do agree with that. But at the same time, we do aim to Be Nice, and taking jabs at other answers and users is almost the antithesis of that.

Cascabel

@Adamant and my message acknowledged that

Adamant

7:15 PM

@Cascabel :)

That’s nice then.

Tinkeringbell

@Cascabel I must say I didn't see anything in the answers... so I assumed it was the comments they were referencing...

Cascabel

Yes, I assumed it was largely if not entirely the comments.

sphennings

@Tinkeringbell The comments were some of the worst I've seen.

Tinkeringbell

@sphennings Yep... I haven't seen much, I was too busy to moderate that question, but I got the gist ;) If people are even complaining in chat XD

sphennings

I wonder if this is the most voted 0 score question on the site.

Adamant

7:18 PM

I can’t see the votes.

How many does it have?

Tinkeringbell

Might very well be, 11/11

Also, this small thread can use some flags: interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2744/…...

Adamant

Well, I’ll give it another upvote. I don’t necessarily agree with every statement, but it’s a valuable question for the site. :)

Plus, there’s sometimes knee-jerk downvoting of questions about race, gender, and so forth.....

We see that all the time on Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Cascabel

It's easy to stick to the rules, to just think, "we have a Be Nice policy, and we're a Q&A site, so we'll delete everything that goes outside the lines", but I think it's good to at least keep in mind how the OP is likely to have felt about everything that got thrown at them. The Be Nice policy is ultimately meant to protect people from harm, and deletion can't entirely undo the harm.

I'm not really suggesting any particular action here, just a little awareness, I guess.

Tinkeringbell

@Cascabel I think you're preaching to the choir...

Cascabel

Maybe so, sorry.

Tinkeringbell

7:21 PM

The people here in chat seem to be well aware of all that. It's the people you rarely see here or on meta that chime in a lot... :/

Magisch

Nobody here is arguing for more mean comments or for mean comments to be removed slower

Tinkeringbell

And I am still wondering how to reach those

Magisch

we're all in the same boat

Cascabel

Well, I'm not saying this to try to stop the comments from appearing. Just... to try to keep in mind while interacting with the OP in situations like this.

Em C

@sphennings dunno how to share a SEDE query, but this answer is at 12/12. but 11/11 would be the most controversial question

Magisch

7:22 PM

Fortunately or unfortunately, everyone is subject to the same rules here. That you were insulted is no license to be insulting

Em C

aha found the permalink: data.stackexchange.com/interpersonal/query/838369/…

Tinkeringbell

@EmC Oh yeah, that's the one-liner that got a bounty and then got downvoted for lack of quality... ;)

I forgot about that one...

Em C

@Tinkeringbell yeah.. that was a few meta posts too IIRC

Tinkeringbell

@EmC One, I believe?

Or maybe two indeed, one about what was wrong and the other if it were fair to delete vote an accepted answer or something

Cascabel

interpersonal.stackexchange.com/questions/11069/… is +15/-18

(as of the data dump)

sphennings

7:25 PM

@Cascabel Speaking of contentious questions.

Tinkeringbell

Again, one of those that had a lot of problems to begin with... and what sphennings said

sphennings

That one generated at least 3 meta posts.

Introverted Meta Man.

0

Q: How does this question not violate the "Be Nice" Policy?

Recently, I've been having issues with the "Be Nice" policy. I understand why it's necessary, especially on this Exchange Branch. After all, this a place where opinion and personal experience is necessary, which can often incite particularly nasty comments of disagreement. While I am upset about...

discussion

Em C

@IntrovertedMetaMan. and here we go again :P

Cascabel

using this data.se query: data.stackexchange.com/interpersonal/query/838375/…

relevant (for the meta post), on tone policing: everydayfeminism.com/2015/12/tone-policing-and-privilege

sphennings

7:32 PM

@Cascabel What complicates things here is that tone policing is an explicit part of Stack Exchange's framework. I think the important thing to keep in mind is to keep discussions of tone from being used to silence legit questions.

Tinkeringbell

@Cascabel I heard that that feminism website wasn't the most reliable source? :/

Cascabel

@Tinkeringbell I think that as a description of how people feel about being told "stop being so angry, say that in a civil way and then we can talk" and so on, that particular page is pretty good.

Tinkeringbell

@Cascabel Okay, I'll poison my mind with it :P

sphennings

Is there a way to bring up how disingenuous it is to only start complaining about how a post is not nice after the mods shut down the comments on the post?

On that meta question I mean.

Cascabel

@sphennings I dunno, isn't it kind of also how things are supposed to work? Shutting down comments often comes with "discuss on meta if you think there's an issue".

Sounds like a tricky tightrope.

sphennings

7:42 PM

They were fine with violating site policy to have a discussion in the comments.

Cascabel

Sure sure. But that doesn't mean they lose their right to have a discussion in the correct place.

sphennings

But now that that avenue for expressing displeasure over the question has been shut down, they try to shut the question down by tone policing the question.

Cascabel

I think that the voting on the meta question and its answers are a far more effective way to reach a conclusion than trying to tell them they shouldn't be talking about it.

sphennings

You're probably right.

Em C

@Cascabel , even without the blue I'd peg you as a mod ;)

Cascabel

7:49 PM

@EmC I can't help it! I guess the hat is stuck :)

Tinkeringbell

@Cascabel Take it off... it's annoying to have mods around here all the time, we want to mutiny sometimes!

Tinkeringbell

8:04 PM

@RichardU interpersonal.stackexchange.com/questions/13071/…

Really? I thought you were the one that was propagating more editing...

I don't understand why not now?

Richard U

@Tinkeringbell Too controversial for me to touch it. If I did it would disrupt things far beyond control, we'd likely have Shog back.... you know the drill. I won't deliberately cause chaos here.

Tinkeringbell

@RichardU You could have made that minor edit ;-) I'm sure Shog would approve, because I can't keep count of the amount of times I've been scolded for not editing on one hand ;)

Just disengage or mod flag if something nasty happens after ;)

Rainbacon

Do you not get to specify an edit reason when you roll back an edit?

Em C

@Rainbacon nope, it just does it

ArtOfCode

Not if you just hit rollback, but if you hit edit on the revision you want instead, you can specify a reason and then submit

Rainbacon

8:18 PM

Ah, I was about to suggest that you leave a more detailed description of the edit, but then I saw your comment :)

Em C

@ArtOfCode I just tried that and it still says the default message.. and I already deleted my comment :\

Catija

@Rainbacon You can, though... you can go to the edit history and edit the rollback reason.

Em C

@Catija how do you do that? I clicked the edit link in the revision history, added a reason, hit "save edits", and when I refresh the revision history it's still the "rollback" comment

Catija

Oh? huh... where?

Em C

the link at: interpersonal.stackexchange.com/posts/13071/edit/…

Cascabel

8:23 PM

that might be mod-only

Catija

Did you click "edit" or "edit comment"?

Em C

54

Q: Allow mods to edit revision comments

Nice hole in the system... You can pretty much say anything in a revision comment and it cannot be removed or cleaned up by a mod. See https://stackoverflow.com/revisions/3405175/4 for an example. Mods need the ability to at least remove the comment, if not the ability to edit the text of it.

feature-request status-completed moderator-tools revisions-list edit-summary

sounds like it's mod only..

Catija

@Cascabel A week or so ago, Shog implied that anyone could do it.

Em C

I clicked "edit"

I don't have an "edit comment" link

Catija

Well, guess Shog isn't always right, then.

Em C

8:25 PM

@Catija gasp

Catija

What do you want it to say?

Em C

I was just going to paste my comment: "Please leave in the location, that's useful as it gives context for your experiences."

Catija

:)

Tinkeringbell

@EmC I think you can only edit your revision comment if you're fast... Maybe 12 minutes is just too slow? ;)

Em C

thanks :D

Catija

8:27 PM

That's also a possibility... next time you roll something back, try to edit the comment immediately... it may have to be within the five minute window.

That would make Shog not wrong.

Em C

maybe it's special for rollback comments, that wouldn't be too surprising

Mithrandir24601

@Catija No no, Shog must be right. It's part of Shog's very nature. The website itself must be wrong

Richard U

@Mithrandir24601 I've seen a few people run up against Shog. It wasn't pretty

Tinkeringbell

I just tried it on my own meta answer... I could edit the edit summary, but it's indeed not showing up

Em C

meta.stackexchange.com/questions/41953/… hmmmmm

Tinkeringbell

8:31 PM

Ahhh! I got it!

It apparently only saves an edited edit summary if you edit something in the post as well

Catija

:/

That's dumb.

Tinkeringbell

And I do believe that that edit has to be within the grace period (that's 5 minutes I believe?)

@Catija I'm not saying it's not XD

Mithrandir24601

@RichardU Ah well sigh SE will implode any time soon for trying to go against the Shog. Of course, Shog will just rebuild all of it from scratch and we'll never notice

Em C

@Tinkeringbell huh, good to know!

Richard U

@Mithrandir24601 Shog is really the Hindu god Shiva. The world has actually ended and begun several times, and nobody has noticed.

Tinkeringbell

8:33 PM

@EmC You're welcome. And with that experiment finished, I think it's time to close the lab ;)

@RichardU That at least explains why I don't like him :P

Mithrandir24601

@RichardU Ahhh, that explains why the planet hasn't been nuked to utter desolation then

Richard U

@Tinkeringbell I've seen some experiments on "change blindness". Terrifying on how much can change and nobody notice.

Tinkeringbell

@RichardU We have a whole Dutch television show dedicated to that and other weird mindstuff, it's aptly called 'mindfuck' and presented by a pretty well-known Dutch illusionist :)

Rainbacon

@Tinkeringbell You must have much looser censorship laws there. I'm fairly certain that title wouldn't fly in the US

Tinkeringbell

@Rainbacon Apparently, we have censorship, and the show is called mindf*ck :P

I had to google that though, and I'm certain no-one calls it that when at the coffee machine at work ;)

Rainbacon

8:38 PM

Well, mindfasteriskck isn't exactly the easiest thing to pronounce

Richard U

@Rainbacon well we have Chris Angel "mindfreak", which is easy enough to deduce

hmm, I'm thinking of another name change..... would "Ma'ii" be a good one?

Tinkeringbell

also, @Cascabel, I read that article one tone-policing. I don't entirely agree with it, but I'll keep it in mind ;)

Em C

@Catija OP un-rolled-back interpersonal.stackexchange.com/posts/13071/revisions again..

Magisch

@RichardU Snarkimus Rex

Catija

@EmC I know. It's OK.

Em C

8:49 PM

ok, I will leave it be

Tinkeringbell

@RichardU Pick something Dutch ;)

Rainbacon

@Catija I don't see how it's ok, but it seems like way too small of a hill to die on

Richard U

@Tinkeringbell "Ma'ii" is Navajo for Coyote, the trickster god. BTW, I knew that would be an edit war. The OP is trolling.

@Magisch I do go by "snarktimus prime" on another website.

Introverted Meta Man.

9:08 PM

-5

Q: What's wrong with apologizing?

I'm a little confused about all the fuss over something that I wrote in an answer today: First off, I'd like to apologise for the onslaught of crap responses you've already received and those that'll likely be rolling in over the next few days. It's an unfortunate reality of talking about the...

discussion moderation editing specific-answer

Cascabel

@Tinkeringbell That is fair :) I think even as long as it is, there's subtlety and context dependence and so on that it doesn't touch on.

Richard U

@Tinkeringbell I did some tone policing when I was in the choir. A few people were off key, it really made it difficult

Magisch

9:25 PM

I just want to say

I called this crapstorm 20 minutes after the question was asked

Richard U

@Magisch I don't troll SE, but if I did, that would be exactly what I would post

"Thankfully, not the US" essentially threw a grenade in the room.

I would really like to see this site become a success

sphennings

@Magisch It was bound to happen.

Cascabel

9:41 PM

→ 7 messages moved to The Singularity

Pheo

Noted.

Richard U

I'll take an c# if we're passing out notes

Pheo

"Nothing to lighten the mood like cracking a joke." -- A lot of people

Rainbacon

It is really hard to write a custom mod flag on mobile

Pheo

@RichardU Well, you need people to moderate it [check]. You need a large number of people to know about it [check]. You need people to define what goes on the site and what goes on it [IDK].

@Rainbacon the small box, or is it off the screen?

Oh now I see what you mean. :)

Rainbacon

10:02 PM

@Magisch thanks for taking care of the mod flag for me :)

Pheo

Ok. feel free to move that message.

Magisch

sorry

I have to apply this equally

→ 1 message moved to Trash

Cascabel

@Magisch sometimes it helps to just flag and not bring things up to a bigger audience like chat, doesn't give anyone the temptation to pile on.

Magisch

@Cascabel You're right

→ 8 messages moved to Trash

I'm sorry

I should be an example and not part of the problem here

Cascabel

no worries :)

Pheo

10:06 PM

@Magisch don't worry about being an example. You have been one of the best ones I've seen (besides moderators)

I've seen some nasty ROs (NO NAMES)

None here. :)

Magisch

I can't expect other people to behave if I do not

Pheo

@Magisch you and others in this room have impacted me positively to the point where you wouldn't recognize the old me.

Richard U

10:19 PM

@Magisch don't worry, I'll continue to set the bar low so you will always look good in comparison

user15026

I think at this point, we all need to kinda...take a step back from all of the stuff that's happened today with that question. :) I know we all have decent goals in terms of wanting people to get the right things out of what we're doing here, but I think we all kinda let our emotions get the better of us today, and I think that prevented us from being able to help someone with what is, at it's core, a very good question.

sphennings

@Ash While I agree stepping back is the right thing to do, the question did get some good answers to their questions

user15026

This is true, I think people did manage to get to the heart of it eventually :)

user15026

Which is good, it means we're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Now if we can just prevent the rest of the associated bits, I think we're on to something.

sphennings

@RichardU I'm on mobile now can't see downvotes, has my answer acquired a second downvote?

user15026

10:27 PM

(Heck, part of the reason I didn't answer the original question or the metas is because as they were posted I didn't trust myself immediately to be able to respond rationally so I took a second to kinda gather myself and then someone else said what I wanted to say so I could just happily hand out upvotes instead)

sphennings

@Ash as it stands it's only a 2 meta question and No-one was put in time out. Which while less than ideal is better than how headphones/cashier played out.

user15026

This is true, I suppose

sphennings

That's the same reason I kept from answering the first meta question.

user15026

So that's improvement, I guess, which is a good thing, but I think that we could all kinda take some stuff away from how this rolled out as well to deal with future questions like this - I doubt this is the last time we'll see any sort of controversy here.

sphennings

I think we can learn from these contentious questions how to better field them in the future.

user15026

10:31 PM

Agreed. I think each time they happen, we learn a bit more about how to deal with them as a community. It's a hard process.

user15026

I just wish it'd come with less inflammatory mess, but every time I think that I can't help but be reminded of that Mean Girls quote: "I wish we could all get along like we used to in middle school... I wish I could bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles and everyone would eat and be happy..." which is kinda how I feel but then I laugh because the person saying that didn't even go to the school. :P

user15026

I don't know why me thinking "I just wish people could get along" makes me think of that

Extroverted Main Man

-2

I find myself being attacked for political opinions based on policy. The come back is that "you just think that because you are racist" even though my argument has nothing to do with race. How do you handle people who cant see past the filter of race in everything? Even suggesting there might be ...

politics

user15026

Then again if getting along were so easy this site would not be here

Pheo

Yeh.

sphennings

10:43 PM

Being effectively social is a skill. For some people it's easy for others it's not. We're never really taught to do it. Most of us just learn enough to get by. Not enough to really be able to navigate the complexities of human interactions.

Pheo

I picked up that skill a little late.

But learned about it the reverse way. I learned about how to navigate human interactions before how to interact correctly.

user15026

→ 9 messages moved to Trash

user15026

There, I think I kept the right things :)

Pheo

Cheers! :)

sigh. Sometimes I just don't follow my own advice.

@sphennings isn't that weird? How I learned to interact and the fact that I don't follow my own perfectly fine advice?

@scohe001 I would have never found that if you had never entered the room. Nice advice!

Hey is there a markdown SE? ;)

Can't find one.

user15026

11:14 PM

If you click the "help" button at the lower left if you're viewing chat in desktop/full site mode, it gives you some basic markdown for chat

sphennings

No but math has an excellent guide on it.

Pheo

IK markdown... But indentation is being striped when I send requests to the server.

Wait nvm. I have a workaround figured out.

sphennings

Is this SE related?

Pheo

@sphennings I'll check that out.

Pheo

11:27 PM

Well, I have some changes to make. See ya all!

Adamant

11:48 PM

@apaul - I think that if this site is to continue to have a healthy and functional community, people need to meet the minimum bar of not condemning other people's opinions and contributions as worthless - even though, of course, some will be.

Otherwise, everything goes to pieces, and you might end up like Science Fiction and Fantasy's last chat room.

More specific criticisms are of course necessary and likely more effective.

Cascabel

Of course, there are also actually bad things that moderators delete. But... that's more of a mod issue, and it tends to work out best if it's just gone. It's not exactly possible to handle by adding more discussion of it, especially on the main site.

Adamant

For example, someone writes an answer that uncritically quotes a controversial politician....

Good: "Politician X has said some inaccurate things in the past. Maybe your answer needs another source?"

Bad: "Politician X is a liar. How could you write such a trash answer?"

apaul

There's that classic SE moral equivalency... "some pretty bad dudes on the other sides" right?

Adamant

:43952093

Sorry, are you talking to me or Cascabel?

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