Maid Café (メイド喫茶)

Gao Weiwei

18:03

It's 6:03, we should start

Madara Uchiha

@ʞɹɐzǝɹ @JNat are you guys on?

ʞɹɐzǝɹ

Yes.

Toshinou Kyouko

so now what

:P

Gao Weiwei

why is the timestamp still 1:52? Does SE update time at intervals?

nhahtdh

~_~

Gao Weiwei

18:06

oh ok for a moment i thought my clock's not right

nhahtdh

It's already :07 on my clock

Frosteeze

I thought mods are supposed to start

I'm so confused

Hakase

ok let's start then :p

ʞɹɐzǝɹ

@Jnat -kun should be leading this one, but we can start if y'all are ready

Hakase

13

Q: Close Reasons: “What if ______ happened?”

Per the Help Center: What types of questions should I avoid asking? To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where … ... you are asking an open-ended, hypothetical question: “What if ______ happened?” ... Currently I ...

JNat

18:07

I just got here

Hakase

what do you think, do we have a similar problem with those Death Note questions?

Madara Uchiha

Alright there, we can start.

@JNat is hosting today

Hakase

I remember somebody said we don't have much traffic so those were okay for now

JNat

Ok, so let's get started

nhahtdh

@Hakase It would need knowledge on the series

Taisho

18:09

JNat

under discussion today, as we had mentioned, are the following topics

nhahtdh

Of course, there is the bandwagon closing, but it is hardly fair...

JNat

Topic List: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/19461282#19461282

2

Taisho

">.>

JNat

The first three will be taken care of by a survey we made and will give the link to in the end of this cast

ʞɹɐzǝɹ

18:10

@Hakase one take on this:

7

A: Should we discourage wildly hypothetical questions?

We should not accept those question. One of the rules that makes so many Stack Exchange sites so successful, is that askers must ask about a problem they actually face. There are several good reasons for that. One is that if one person has that problem, there's a pretty good chance that many p...

JNat

And the last four should be mentioned there (- content policy with H content (where do we draw the line?; should we even?; revisited) was left out) too as a teaser, and will be left for the next discussion

So today we will discuss id-requests and tagging

I believe we should get started with Id-Requests

Do we still want them?

Should we have tighter regulations on them?

Or what else?

Thoughts, please :)

nhahtdh

Crap id-request are closed when a frequent use voice the concern and downvote, so regarding the incoming stream, I see no problem

The problem are old requests

ʞɹɐzǝɹ

even if we tighten the grip how do we get users to come back? are they worth keeping in the long run, some are goon but most aren't

Frosteeze

@JNat I think @LoganM showed us once that id-requests aren't that much a problem. I don't have the link handy on me, but it's in the meta somewhere

JNat

my greatest problem with id-reqs are dangling and unanswered ones, plus the fact that most of them are by hit-and-run users

ʞɹɐzǝɹ

18:13

@nhahtdh I think we should remove ones that have been inactive for more than 1 year

Frosteeze

@ʞɹɐzǝɹ That sounds like a good idea. Let it expire.

Madara Uchiha

I think that going over all of the ID questions and removing those inactive for over a year is wasted effort.

JNat

@ʞɹɐzǝɹ delete unanswered id-reqs older than a year, for every user, or only for hit-and-run users?

nhahtdh

Vague requests which does not receive much votes are vaccuumed automatically

Madara Uchiha

Those questions are barely visible anyway to anyone that's not actively looking for them

Eric

18:14

Sorry I'm late.

nhahtdh

So we probably need to look at high voted old requests and clean them up if they are not yet answered

ʞɹɐzǝɹ

@Eric you better be!

Hakase

@JNat I vote for hit and run since we can't really expect them to come back and add details

Madara Uchiha

I don't mind identification questions

I have a problem with it taking half the front page.

JNat

@MadaraUchiha my problem is only when we have a front page filled with crappy ones

@MadaraUchiha exactly

Gao Weiwei

18:16

@JNat so we downvote quickly to get them off the front page

Hakase

still active users can be notified with a comment that they should update or the question will be removed

Madara Uchiha

@GaoWeiwei That

We don't vote enough

Not nearly enough

Eric

Why should valid questions be downvoted?

JNat

@MadaraUchiha I was gonna say that

Eric

If they're bad, sure.

JNat

18:16

@Eric 'cause they're crappy

and show little effort

Madara Uchiha

I want to see an average of 4-5 votes on every post.

Eric

But we shouldn't just downvote them because we don't like their tag.

ʞɹɐzǝɹ

@Frosteeze this one?

To support the claim here that ID requests aren't really significantly hurting our answer rate, our current answer rate is 87.70%. If we removed every question from the site tagged identification-request right now, it would indeed increase our rate...all the way to 87.80%. We'd only gain 0.10%, which is not even measurable by Area 51 metrics, and corresponds to about 3 total unanswered questions sitewide. We'd gain somewhat more by removing every question tagged nanoha (gain of 0.18%) or speed-grapher (0.13%). — Logan M Jul 25 '14 at 21:08

Madara Uchiha

I don't think it's that much of a stretch either

JNat

@Eric no, that's not what we propose

Hakase

18:17

we could do "Vote like there's no tomorrow" every month

Madara Uchiha

That's a different topic though

JNat

@Hakase IMO, we should do just that everyday

Madara Uchiha

Let's focus on id-requests

I think that today we're too lenient with those..

Frosteeze

@ʞɹɐzǝɹ I'm more referring to this one

11

A: Do identification-request questions attract users that don't contribute to the site?

I've noticed a trend among regular Stack Overflow users which, as someone who doesn't use SO, is frankly bizarre. SO users tend to think of SO (and by extension all SE sites) as a battleground between "good questions" and "help vampire questions". They think the people asking for help are lowerin...

Hakase

@JNat unrealistic, unfortunately

Madara Uchiha

18:18

It's not a question of "can it be answered" but "will it be answered"

JNat

@MadaraUchiha I think our guidelines are good enough, though we don't seem to enforce them every time

Gao Weiwei

@MadaraUchiha adopt this guy's approach?

Eric

I don't think our guidelines are good enough.

JNat

There are, of course, some questions some times that only comply to one of the guidelines and still find a quick answer

Madara Uchiha

@GaoWeiwei I have an upvote on that answer.

Eric

18:19

And there are questions that comply with them and still are unanswerable.

JNat

But many times other questions that are crap and have very little detail are still left open by the community

@Eric yes, that too

Madara Uchiha

I don't want to wait until they become an actual real problem.

Can there be answerable id requests?

Surely.

nhahtdh

@Eric Like this list anime.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/identification-request

Top question +14 votes, no answer

ʞɹɐzǝɹ

@Eric I don't think most ppl read them

reading is hard for some ppl

Eric

@nhahtdh Those aren't what I mean. That is answerable for someone who recognizes it.

JNat

18:22

@ʞɹɐzǝɹ we have good and explicit enough guidelines, but people take too much time to act according to them and to vote on crappy questions

Eric

What I'm saying is that you can fully follow the guidelines and provide a question which cannot be answered even by someone who knows the target manga or anime.

nhahtdh

It's hard to recognize such problem, though

JNat

@Eric With this do you mean that in your opinion id-reqs should not be allowed?

Gao Weiwei

i think loganM declared id request problems solved (or no such problem exists), and i concur

JNat

Or what do you propose we do with those questions?

Gao Weiwei

18:23

guidelines are guidelines, sometimes i think people follow them too strictly like rules

Eric

@JNat No, IMO the guidelines we have now are not good enough. They emphasize quantity over quality.

JNat

@Eric Ok, I get that too

Toshinou Kyouko

oops i got distracted

nhahtdh

@GaoWeiwei We need a guideline for everyone to close vote on questions that are too poor and able to explain to the OP

Hakase

I remember we already talked bout the requirements for a "valid" id request like it has to answer some significant number of questions about the events of the descriptions of id'd work

Gao Weiwei

18:25

@nhahtdh Yes we need to teach them how to write good question, but not a reason to close the questions

Toshinou Kyouko

I'd half consider a minimum length for id-requests, which would draw facts out

Hakase

we could just throw a bunch of those general questions in the face of anyone whose post is too short or lacks description

Madara Uchiha

@ToshinouKyouko I don't think that's the way.

Frosteeze

@Eric Do you have any proposed changes to the guidelines then?

ʞɹɐzǝɹ

@ToshinouKyouko that might cause ppl to pad it with nonsense

Madara Uchiha

18:25

^

Hakase

@ToshinouKyouko girl, pink hair, robot, tv

Eric

@Frosteeze I like Logan's suggestion. Let me grab the meta that has it.

JNat

@ToshinouKyouko that'd be a problem of quantity over quality, once again

nhahtdh

@GaoWeiwei It doesn't scale

Madara Uchiha

I think the problem with id requests is that they are not useful.

Gao Weiwei

18:26

@nhahtdh If you look at this question, it's certainly too vague, but I still managed to answer it

Hakase

@MadaraUchiha +1

Toshinou Kyouko

@everyone - yes, thats why i didnt fully consider it - but something along those lines would be useful - encouraging longer descriptions

Madara Uchiha

Even the most well written and clear id-request with the best answer will never be useful to anyone but OP.

nhahtdh

@GaoWeiwei Managed to answer != good question

JNat

So just to get things straight and out of the way, getting rid of identification-requests for good is out of the question for everyone?

Madara Uchiha

18:26

And I don't accept @LoganM 's "use" for them that it helps him discover new serieses he hadn't watched.

Gao Weiwei

@nhahtdh bad question = downvote != close vote most cases, unless off-topic

Hakase

@ToshinouKyouko not longer, but just more descriptive

Toshinou Kyouko

@Hakase thats what i meant yeah

JNat

@GaoWeiwei true

Hakase

I already practiced throwing questions into people's faces and it worked okay

Madara Uchiha

18:27

@JNat It's still not out of the question for me. But I'm in a minority on this one.

Hakase

I think that's the way to go

nhahtdh

@GaoWeiwei Vague questions are a target for close vote, since they can get random post from random people answering it

JNat

@MadaraUchiha It's not out of the question for me either

Eric

@Hakase Can you temporarily disable @Taisho please?

#undo

Hakase

if somebody says "there was a girl and a boy and they fell from a roof, this is all I can remember, sorry", you can ask what the girl looked like, ~~the size of her breasts~~ the color of her hair, was she the only girl, etc

Madara Uchiha

18:28

Was just about to write that ^^

Hakase

#post disable

Taisho

Post module disabled.

Toshinou Kyouko

@Hakase having to tease out details on every id-request is painful

Madara Uchiha

@Hakase If someone asks that, then I would put on hold and then have him edit his question to add those details.

ʞɹɐzǝɹ

@Hakase three sizes or bust

Hakase

18:29

write a FREAKIN BIG list of general questions and link everyone who lacks description to that meta post

Madara Uchiha

This is something I want to make very clear.

Putting a question on hold is not a permanent state.

nhahtdh

@GaoWeiwei I'll close vote bad question, and I will open vote it if it is edited. How will you know if a bad question is answered in the future?

Hakase

make them answer at least 10 questions from that big-ass list

Madara Uchiha

It's a completely temporary state between "fix it and reopen" or "don't fix it and it'll get deleted"

Putting a vague question on hold should be the first thing you do

2

Before asking for more detail.

Toshinou Kyouko

^

JNat

18:30

@MadaraUchiha when a question gets closed because of not complying to the guidelines we currently have, I always write "please add more details according to these guidelines, so that your question may be reopened again", and that's how it should be regarded and everyone should do it

@MadaraUchiha this, yeah

Hakase

the "closed as not detailed enough" should contain links to all relevant meta posts with helpful info, like a bunch of general questions

JNat

@Hakase it does

Hakase

then we need better helpful info

nhahtdh

In the close banner

Hakase

where are those general questions?

nhahtdh

18:32

@Hakase People don't read

Gao Weiwei

Question: can closed questions be answered? or only commented?

JNat

@Hakase See this one

Toshinou Kyouko

@GaoWeiwei answered if they are reopened

Eric

9

A: What kind of policy should we adopt for current and future "identification-request" questions with no audiovisual artefacts?

My viewpoint is that many of the identification-request questions coming in are bad questions, but few of them need to be closed. This is, in my opinion, the same viewpoint that JNat suggested in his answer here. Hence, IMO the first course of business should be to create an FAQ on meta regardin...

nhahtdh

@GaoWeiwei You can commented, not answer, but you can flag for reopen if you think you can answer it. But generally, too vague questions should not be answered

JNat

18:32

@GaoWeiwei only commented, yeah

@nhahtdh not flag, vote

don't confuse those

Toshinou Kyouko

@nhahtdh answers that are still under-spec should remain closed unless they're edited

Hakase

10

A: What criteria should we use for QCing for ALL "identification-request" questions?

Taking cues from sites like TV & Movies.SE, Sci-Fi.SE, and Arqade, I've come up with the following guidelines: An identification-request should have as many of the following points as possible: Any description of the leading/recurring character(s) (i.e. physical description, behavior,...

Toshinou Kyouko

otherwise we're being inconsistent

nhahtdh

@JNat No, I'm not confused, but usually, if the question is closed, they are usually extremely vague

Eric

The answer I posted above suggests a more heuristic way of determining whether or not an ID request is a good fit for the site. The two examples he posts are excellent examples of how short ID requests can be answerable and long ID requests can be unanswerable.

Toshinou Kyouko

18:34

@Hakase I think "type of media" shouldn't be a full point

nhahtdh

So I don't think anyone would flag for reopening

Hakase

I think we should expand on that list

Toshinou Kyouko

it helps sure, but it's nearly always known

Hakase

like explode it a few times

nhahtdh

Anyway, I'm talking about corner cases, so ignore what I say above

Hakase

18:35

write explicitly those general questions, make people read them

and make them answer for their crimes!

nhahtdh

@Hakase You can't make people answer, lol

ʞɹɐzǝɹ

@Hakase that only works in russia

Gao Weiwei

Can we do survey on users? See how they use this site, etc, or what they know or don't know?

Hakase

ka mo ne…

@GaoWeiwei impossible

JNat

@GaoWeiwei very few people participate on those

nhahtdh

18:37

Will be skewed by us

Toshinou Kyouko

just regular users

JNat

the sample wouldn't be big enough to draw conclusions

Hakase

better just give those who really want their questions answered the tools to improve their questions and let the rest vanish over time

JNat

In any case, in my opinion changes to the guidelines are not the most pressing matter, enforcing them strictly is what matters most. That and consistently down voting crappy but guideline compliant questions

Hakase

@nhahtdh they'll answer if they want to get their questions reopened, by adding details

JNat

18:39

either that or, as I've mentioned before but only @MadaraUchiha seems to be open to this, getting rid of them altogether

Toshinou Kyouko

what about image-only questions?

Frosteeze

@JNat It's not a pressing matter, but I think we should consider Logan's proposal in the link Eric posted

Eric

My proposition: Cast close-votes as per this answer; cast downvotes as per the hover text: "This question does not show any research effort; it is unclear or not useful."

JNat

@ToshinouKyouko Definitely get rid of those, IMO

Eric

Why?

I can see the argument both ways, but I'm curious.

nhahtdh

18:40

^

Hakase

images are kinda easier to recognize

at least they're not distorted in portraying the original

Toshinou Kyouko

@Eric a lot of this are iffy judgement calls

re: that q

JNat

@Eric because allowing them opens the door to a shitload of crappy questions easily found with reverse search, with little or no effort by OP

Gao Weiwei

@JNat no don't, not enough to damage the site yet, and if we have plenty, make a new SE site for id-request

nhahtdh

^We can just dv/cv them

JNat

18:41

And in my opinion we don't need them, and I don't see how they benefit the site

nhahtdh

Not that we get much of them

Toshinou Kyouko

Image-only questions are generally fan art or google searchable

Hakase

we could ask some SE staff to make a reverse image search plugin thing for the site :p

nhahtdh

I think they benefit the site as much as the rest of the id requests

Toshinou Kyouko

I think they do, but they are lower quality qs

Eric

18:42

Personally, I think leaving them on the site is fine, but downvoting where appropriate.

Toshinou Kyouko

in general

JNat

many of the image only id-reqs are asked by hit&run users

Eric

The reason I say to leave them is because there's a fine line we're crossing here.

JNat

@Eric 90% of the times?

nhahtdh

Treat them as a normal id question, and dv them

Eric

18:42

What if there is a reference in an anime, to another anime, that is visual?

You can provide the image, and it's technically an ID request.

JNat

@Eric that's a different matter, IMO

Toshinou Kyouko

thats not image-only

you have context

Eric

Personally I'd find that upvote-worthy. But it's such a fine line it's hard to say that it's any more valid.

@ToshinouKyouko Do you?

nhahtdh

@ToshinouKyouko No, you don't

Hakase

@Eric that's not even a "proper" id request then

Eric

18:43

You definitely do not. Give me a moment.

JNat

@ToshinouKyouko I agree with this

@Eric most of the times you do

Toshinou Kyouko

they will say which anime it was in mostly

Eric

yesterday, by ton.yeung

nhahtdh

@Hakase It's not a "usual", but they are proper

Eric

IMO this would be a perfectly valid site question.

But it's basically an ID-request from an image.

Toshinou Kyouko

18:44

I think the amount of good qs is not enough to outweigh the bad ones personally

JNat

@MadaraUchiha @ʞɹɐzǝɹ thoughts?

I don't think we're getting anywhere with this :P

Madara Uchiha

Let's approach this from another direction.

Gao Weiwei

I would suggest we study the philosophy behind downvotes and close votes

Toshinou Kyouko

the only difference with this is that the posters are on a wall instead in a single image

Madara Uchiha

@Eric what kind of value do you think these questions have for the site?

Eric

18:46

@MadaraUchiha I spent 2 hours looking for those anime yesterday, and I didn't even watch Saekano.

Gao Weiwei

And allow image ids since they aren't many yet, so we can downvote to qc

image ids are answerable and i say on-topic

Eric

There's interest in the questions, and they can interest people in new anime or manga as well.

Frosteeze

@GaoWeiwei Not all of them are answerable especially when reverse image search doesn't work

JNat

@GaoWeiwei The "there aren't that many" argument is not valid in my opinion. If there's something we don't want on our site, I say we should get rid of it before there are that many

Gao Weiwei

@Frosteeze isn't that more reason to allow them? needs our expertise

Frosteeze

18:48

@GaoWeiwei True. I'm just saying though that not all of them are answerable. A good number of them are, but all.

JNat

@Eric I get that, but once again many of them are asked by hit&run users. I know I'm stressing that point a bit, but we want quality q&a's that can build a community

not just help one time askers

Frosteeze

Maybe if they say where they found the image it would be helpful and make it more answerable.

Eric

I agree. But I don't think saying "X question is not allowed" helps that.

Madara Uchiha

@Eric then it is useful to two people

Eric

Because right now, let's say we're getting question tags A, B, and C.

Madara Uchiha

18:48

You and the OP

Toshinou Kyouko

@Eric can go under not enough detail

Eric

We disallow type A.

ʞɹɐzǝɹ

@JNat my take away is that we need better guidelines and more defined criteria to help users know if something is good or bad

Eric

We only get B- and C-related views.

Madara Uchiha

Once the question is answered successfully it is practically useless.

Eric

18:49

But A brought in no new views anyway!

So nothing is changed by allowing it.

@MadaraUchiha ...?

That's a terrible argument, lol.

Toshinou Kyouko

basically, i want id-requests that even if I don't know the series, I can do a good bit of research and help you find it

Madara Uchiha

@Eric It's not

Eric

You're cherry picking that specific example by saying I'm the only one that's come forward as interested.

Madara Uchiha

The goal for this site is to be a repository of knowledge and information wrt anime and manga

Eric

Whereas my point is, people who did not post or answer the question can be interested.

Madara Uchiha

18:50

I argue that identification requests contribute little to nothing towards that goal.

Eric

I argue that they don't hurt, and can still be interesting to people already on the site.

Madara Uchiha

@Eric But they do hurt

Eric

Do they?

Madara Uchiha

Because even now the front page is filled with them

JNat

@Eric they hurt our front page, which is why many of them are asked by newcomers that don't come again

Frosteeze

18:51

@MadaraUchiha Not if they're upvoted to the top. I usually read ID requests to glance over synopsis

Eric

And they end up in the hot questions list.

It's a give-and-take.

Toshinou Kyouko

I think they add value - interesting series, traffic and user satisfaction - when they are well asked

Eric

If we could ban them from the front page, or make them more quickly become "unfresh", I'd be all for it.

Gao Weiwei

Yea this is getting no where

Frosteeze

@JNat Then the concern is with new ID requests. In which the guideline Logan proposed might be helpful

Eric

18:51

@Frosteeze ^ This

Gao Weiwei

Do we want to test-run not allowing certain or all id -requests for a month or something and see results?

JNat

@Eric 5% of them, if we're lucky

Madara Uchiha

@Frosteeze I've yet to see this guideline

Eric

@JNat But those would be people who didn't come at all if the questions weren't allowed.

Madara Uchiha

And Logan's posts tend to get very long

Eric

18:52

@MadaraUchiha .. I posted it twice.

Frosteeze

9

A: What kind of policy should we adopt for current and future "identification-request" questions with no audiovisual artefacts?

My viewpoint is that many of the identification-request questions coming in are bad questions, but few of them need to be closed. This is, in my opinion, the same viewpoint that JNat suggested in his answer here. Hence, IMO the first course of business should be to create an FAQ on meta regardin...

Eric did posted it twice

I think that's the one? I'm not sure

Eric

Yup, that's it.

Hakase

Madara Uchiha

Like I said, that's very long and no one will read it.

Hakase

"Precious Himeka" whatever that is

Toshinou Kyouko

18:53

I don't like that suggestion, it's too subective

Madara Uchiha

Is there an actual list of requirements?

Eric

@MadaraUchiha It's a proposition, not a final requirements list.

Toshinou Kyouko

you will be like "maybe there is a series that would fit this exactly" "maybe there is 5"

Eric

But no one seems interested in even considering that our guidelines suck.

JNat

10

A: What criteria should we use for QCing for ALL "identification-request" questions?

Taking cues from sites like TV & Movies.SE, Sci-Fi.SE, and Arqade, I've come up with the following guidelines: An identification-request should have as many of the following points as possible: Any description of the leading/recurring character(s) (i.e. physical description, behavior,...

Eric

18:54

@JNat This is the current one that I find fully useless.

Toshinou Kyouko

@Eric they need to be improved yes

Hakase

second pic is OreImo

JNat

@Eric why?

Toshinou Kyouko

I don't think it's useless, it just needs to be better thought out

Eric

@JNat Because of the examples in that answer of Logan's I posted.

About halfway down he posts two ID request examples.

A long, detailed, unanswerable one; and a short, one-liner answerable one.

Toshinou Kyouko

18:55

I have been thinking of rewriting one, should have really done so before this

The short answerable one imo should still be removed

Madara Uchiha

Okay

I don't think we're getting anywhere with this

So let's conclude

Toshinou Kyouko

rather than making a judgement call

JNat

@MadaraUchiha agreed

Madara Uchiha

We still want identification requests

Hakase

oh nice it translates

Toshinou Kyouko

18:56

yep

Madara Uchiha

We need to refine our list of requirements

And better enforce them.

JNat

@Hakase let's keep the off-topic chatter to a minimum, please :)

Madara Uchiha

We need to vote more, especially on identification requests, to remove the bad ones from the front page.

Gao Weiwei

wait for Logan to finish his work

Logan M

Finally online. Can't read back right now but I agree with @Eric here. A good ID request doesn't just go through and check a bunch of boxes. It typically has one or two single data points which individually narrow down the list to a very small amount.

Toshinou Kyouko

18:57

I think a new meta post would be a good idea to redefine reqs

Madara Uchiha

@LoganM The point is to reduce entropy the a minimum

A very specific point can be better than 5 vague ones

Toshinou Kyouko

otherwise its just yelling in here

Logan M

Yes, that's the idea.

Madara Uchiha

Yes

So that's the conclusion from this discussion

Gao Weiwei

Can we move on to the second most important point in the agenda?

Toshinou Kyouko

18:57

i disagree, but continue

Logan M

I'm going to post a suggestion related to that, hopefully today.

Madara Uchiha

We will need to make a new requirement list

JNat

@LoganM so they should always be viewed on a case to case basis?

Toshinou Kyouko

^ this is my worry

Madara Uchiha

If someone still have things to say on previous topic after the talk, we will revisit topics or schedule a new meetings

Because otherwise we won't have time to discuss anything.

@JNat, next topic please.

Toshinou Kyouko

18:59

"best girl of A&M"

JNat

Ok, moving on, then

Gao Weiwei

and maybe in future, schedule id request last so we can achieve something

Toshinou Kyouko

haha

JNat

tagging, that was it

damn, I was not remembering what needed to be discussed

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