@amWhy it can indeed be difficult to communicated with them. I recommend you ignore them as much as possible. It might not be always possible, especially as they do not have a very distinctive profile. But overall this is likely the best approach.

@quid Please note that I did not confront them today. They derided me to a new user. I did not address them at all.

@amWhy yes I noted that (in a positive way).

@quid I do not appreciate being maligned in that manner, so please at least warn them not to do so.

@amWhy you can rest assured that we follow the situation.

@quid Okay, @quid. I will trust that. Thanks.

^^@quid sorry for the double ping, @quid. :-)

Is there a way to PING and PONG a user?

@amWhy the same comment only pings once @amWhy Even if the name is mentioned more than once.

At least that's what I believe to be the case.

@quid That's great to know. Yes, that seems to be the case in your double @ to me, only one ping. Good to know! But I know it is now very late for you, so you should take the opportunity to get some sleep!

@amWhy actually I still try to finish something

@quid Well I will let you go finish it, so you can retire for the night, err, morning! :-)

@amWhy see you

@quid See you!

Better yet would be "I would if I could understand..." (i.e., flipping your use of would and could in the meta comment, @quid).

In answer to:

No biggie, @quid. Just I did a double take at your comment. No doubt, you made yourself clear though.

@amWhy Much more clear than the other commenter, in any event.

Guess you're still busy, yet again, @quid. Have a productive Sunday!

@amWhy slightly less so than the last days.

hey @amWhy !

have a happier sunday !

:P

considering half your day is over..

@sai-kartik That sounds like a halfier Sunday, not a happier one...

:P

@XanderHenderson haha

also @quid, are you a professor at a uni or a student?

@quid Well, whatever, quid. You are the one who chooses to be as busy as you perpetually seem to be. It's like a matter of pride for you to never say you've actually got free time. Anyway, it was none of my business to ask in the first place. Go on and continue to make the choices you make, but don't turn around and use "being busy" (due to the choices you make, perhaps overcommitting) as an excuse or to chronically complain about being so busy and so tired. Best to you, @quid.

Hi everyone

Hi, @sai-kartik and @Arjun. Like @quid, I'm going to plead "busy" as an excuse to bow out today.

@amWhy totally understand. we don't want to bother..

@sai-kartik Please be assured that neither you nor @Arjun were bothering me! :-)

@amWhy , no worries ;-)

@amWhy point noted:)

Hello everyone, hope you're having a good day/night :)

@amWhy that's partly true but maybe a bit of an oversimplification.

I have a question which is kind of opinion-based or experience based, can anyone kindly help?

If a question contains little context or no attempts posted.. should I raise a flag or politely ask for them in a comment?

I don't think leaving it as it is is the best of options. Also, I don't want to bother mods as they have better things to worry about

So what's -in your opinion- the optimal thing to do in such situations?

I apologize if this isn't the right place for such questions. I didn't want to post it on meta as it's kinda based on experience

And this is the only familiar chat room that popped up

Which flag do you mean?

@sai-kartik yes. // If you also wanted to know which of the two, it's the former.

Flagging for "needs improvement" and then "needs details or clarity"

Alright then, flagging it is

Thank you quid!

@OmarS to avoid a confusion I did not yet answer you.

Seemingly i have misunderstood :) Can you specify what you mean by the "former"?

@OmarS That comment is part of the reply to @sai-kartik

I'll fix that.

Oh okay, i got you

Flagging in this way is certainly fine; you can also comment in addition or instead.

The point is the flag will technically send the question on the way towards closure.

If you are convinced that the question should be closed than flagging is the way to go.

A crucial point that might not be clear, the flag does not go to the poster.

It is mostly a means to get the question closed. If you want to communicate with the poster then commenting is better.

Very much appreciated! Thank you for the insight :)

@OmarS, how are things in Lebanon?

Financially, it has been hectic the past month. The currency is crashing ever since the 17th of October. However, it reached historic numbers during the covid-19 outbreak

For instance, 1500 lebanese pounds is equivalent to 1 USD

Basically everyone's getting paid their salaries in lebanese pounds (i'll refer to lebanese pounds as L.L)

But everything is being priced according to USD

Today, 1 USD is equivalent to 8000+ L.L, which is around 6 times its original worth

@OmarS ,yeah I have been reading some articles about the middle East these days. Don't worry brother everything will be fine in a while

@OmarS ,that is really heart wrenching

Isn't the government taking any steps?

If you were getting paid 900,000 L.L/month, that's 600$. Today, 900,000 L.L is a little bit over 100$. You can just imagine how everything follows from this point :)

Hopefully everything is going to be okay. The least we can ask for is our families and loved ones to be safe and sound

@OmarS , most precious assetes of humans

I don't like pessimism and i refrained from following the news except for critical ones.. I don't think the government will make a change. Is it so much to ask for tranquility and at least financial satisfaction? :)

@Arjun most certainly!

@OmarS ,many countries going through the same rough time including mine

Thank you for checking up btw!

Perhaps you and I should start a new room to avoid disturbing other participants :)

@OmarS , no problem brother

@quid Whatever you say, quid. But I expressed my perception over the course of four years time. If I oversiimplified, you never provided sufficient information for me not to have oversimplified. I'm simply reporting your incessant

claims, and complaints over time about how busy you are, how stressed your are, and how overworked you are, etc., etc..

@amWhy maybe I did not realize how much I complain.

@quid Perhaps "complaining" is not the right word, but you have most frequently reported on status updates how busy, tired, overworked you are. You've yet to answer, to my question: "how is your day going": anything better than not that great, not that bad. It's okay @quid. I vent a lot here too. But when you seem always so pressed for time, or rest, or relaxation, it seems to send a message "don't bother me right now."

Anyway, @quid. I am not here to pick you apart. I respect you and I value your participation on math.se, meta, and in this chatroom.

@amWhy I mean, that is the Jewish response. I call my mother, ask "How are you doing?" and the response is a litany of complaints.

Maybe @quid is a Jewish mother?

@XanderHenderson not a Jewish mother but I assume there is some cultural aspect to it.

But, hey, I said I am less busy today than yesterday, that's pretty positive.

@quid Darn.

@amWhy some things might get mixed up, I'll pay more attention to this.

When I say that I have many things to do it does not always mean that I have no time right now.

It is however sometimes the case that I actually do not have time to stay on the site for an extended period of time.

Hey @quid, I think I'm about to get in to an edit war on math.stackexchange.com/questions/124663/… and I'd like some advice on how to proceed.

@OmarS I disagree with your comment here:

There are stupid questions. :P

@quid That's a step forward, but more positive yet would be, I'm more available today that I was yesterday.

(The one being ask, however, is not in that category, in my opinion).

A certain user has twice rolled back a pretty helpful addition to the post and it's starting to grate on me.

@amWhy indeed!

I agree that there are stupid questions! I also agree that the question in discussion wasn't stupid :)

@KReiser I'll check.

I think that providing such a comment is a little bit reassuring. If you (generally speaking) go around thinking you're stupid for asking questions, then that's definitely a problem. No one is born fully knowledgeable; asking questions is one of the ways to increase your knowledge

@OmarS , I agree (•‿•)

@KReiser (Preface: I'm on your side.) I can see the argument that the edit (made years ago, and years after the question was asked) fundamentally changed the nature of the question, and was therefore a poor edit. However, the edit stood for many years, came long after the question was asked, and seems not to have caused any harm, one way or the other.

IMO, the correct course of action is to leave in place the edits made by David E Speyer.

I also seems clear to me that the answerer answered the more inclusive version of the question.

@quid you might have clicked the wrong rollback - currently I'm showing a version of the post without Speyer's comments

Any comment starting with "I don't want to be rude..." is likely to be quite rude.

@XanderHenderson , I am genuinely worried about this comment

@kReiser That was quid's rollback. I rolled back to Speyer's edit prior to @quid's rollback.

@amWhy I think it's all been fixed up now

@Arjun That user has some ... interesting ... views and I would not recommend dwelling too long on such things.

@KReiser Thanks for the update.

@KReiser it wasn't an error. Jeremy Rickard had corrected something. I did not want this correction to be lost and it seemed simpler to start from that version and add back the addition.

@quid Ah, I see. Anyways, thank you for your attention to this matter. This was helpful.

@amWhy but this lost the improvement.

@quid Thanks.

@quid But you initially rollbacked to this post, then corrected the rollback.

@amWhy yes, because that seemed to be the simplest route

One could also have made anew the corrections by Jeremy Rickard.

@quid Well I'm glad you changed to roll-back.

@quid Introducing more and more editors only complicates matters, @quid.

@amWhy I am not sure what you want to tell me.

@quid "One could also have made anew the corrections by..." introduces additional editors. That's all. Thank your for your service here, @quid. You do a wonderful job moderating. Thank you for your precious time. (bows down in deference to @quid).

@amWhy did you plan to do that?

Anyway even if you did there is some advantage in me doing the edit in this case.

@quid Unlike you, who has perennial powers to edit old comments, I do not.

@amWhy your comments seems snide to me. And it is not clear to me what the reason for this is.

Typo" Thank you for your service here, @quid.

@quid Thank you again, Servant of the Little People, I bow down in defernece to you.

@amWhy I was asked to do something, you interjected yourself and complicated my task. Don't be snide in addition.

@quid I am a mere humble servant to the Leaders of Math.SE, forgive me my sins for what you perceive as complications. Please forgive me, oh worshiped Leader, @quid!

In addition it is in this case better if I own the edit. Chances are there might be controversy. Which is why I, as a mod, was asked to do it.

@quid Yes, you are ALWAYS right in every decision you make, dear worshiped Leader! Our gratitude to you, Blessed One. Thank you also for accosting me in all my sins, dear Faithful Leader!

@amWhy this has nothing to do with me always being right. You interjected yourself into something that did not even concern you.

@quid But you do, indeed, always insist you are right. Always, across the board. As you did here, yet again, dear Wise One.

@amWhy is the current version better or worse than your version?

@quid I was just trying to be helpful, and it was you, only, who accused me of sabotage and interference. I had not seen your comment to KReiser, but I saw the reference to the edit that ought to be kept. You screwed up your first roll back, hence I intervened. Grow up, @quid. And stop thinking you're the only one who knows how to deal with everything on SE. If you went on to improve my rollback which was far better than your first roll back, all the more power to you..

@amWhy I did not screw up anything.

What maybe might have cause confusion is that I wrote the comment before actually doing the edit.

@quid Yeah you did, your rolled back, first off, to math.stackexchange.com/revisions/…. Perhaps you ultimately arrived at the best rollback/edit, but don't tell me I undermined anything, when you were the first to undermine things.

@amWhy but that's after your edit

math.stackexchange.com/posts/124663/revisions

^^ I had not touched the question before your rollback @amWhy

@quid But my rollback was better than your first rollback. But I know you need to win ever debate, with everyone, dear @quid. So, Learned, Wise, and Supreme Leader, forgive me all my sins.

@amWhy this is an odd claim as I had planned to do both when I started.

I did what I initially planned namely add back the info provided by D.E.S. into the version current when my attention was drawn to it.

@quid Yes, Supreme Leader, I bow down to you in reverence. Whip me into compliance, if you must, as I am just a fly compared to your Magnificence!

This is simpler to do then redo the edit by Jeremy Rickard, which involved the addition of a link.

Not sure if this is the right place for this, but I have a question.

Does a user who offers a bounty get notified that they need to manually award it when the period is coming to a close?

@MichaelAlbanese yes I think so.

OK, good.

@quid I am convinced, Dear Master! No need to go on and on. The peons who serve under you will honor you to the end of your days, Dear Master.

@amWhy I find it annoying that you make this about a power-differential.

I have answered a question with a bounty on it and the answer has been accepted, but it has not been awarded the bounty. I don't know if the user is aware they have to make that decision or not, but I really don't want to leave a comment pointing this out to them.

@quid But it has EVERYTHING to do with the very vivid power-differential that you regularly employ to your advantage.

@amWhy no it is all explained here.

I did not make any error in editing I did exactly what I planned to do. What was arguably an error is to write a comment saying that I edited before actually having performed an edit.

@quid That doesn't explain your comments to me, their tone, your indignation against me. Just stop pretending you are still the user originally elected to be a mod of this site. You have amplified your aggressiveness against users since that election, like a spoiled heir to the throne.

@amWhy I am annoyed about you having edited this post.

There is clearly a conflict smoldering there. It is unhelpful if more people get involved.

@quid Poor baby. I did not edit the post; I merely rolled back. I guess you believe, now, that only you, and you alone, are qualified to handled concerns on this site. And throw fire at anyone who might try to help in the meantime. This room, if I remember correctly, is not the mod's office? Just get over yourself, @quid. Forgive me oh Lord!.

@quid So shut me up while you can?? Go to it, Highest Leader.

@amWhy you did not handle this concern overly well.

Anyway, @quid. You can come find me, when you have time to do so, if you want to do so, provided I am not too busy, and provided I want to do so.

@quid Nor did you.

@amWhy what specifically was the problem?

@quid Hahaha! Really?? This is not the venue to talk, @quid. You've just dismissed my concerns. You have the right to do that, because I am a peon, whereas I cannot afford to dismiss your concerns. HAVE YOU NOT BEEN reading my comments?? Sleep well, @quid, only if you want to, that's your decision.

@amWhy read the start of the conversation. In particular the point of the comment below is not even quite clear.

In reply to:

What did you try to do there?

Looks like piling on, on a (perceived) error.

Look at the edit review, @quid: math.stackexchange.com/posts/124663/revisions. I rolled back to Speyer's edit before you rolled back to an edit without Speyer's edit. See for yourself. Only after KReiser posted to you again, here, did you, Sir quid, see it fit to correct your incorrect roll back. I am sick of your blaming me immediately for anything I am involved in. SEE FOR YOURSELF, Perfect quid!! If you want to talk with me any further, don't do it here.

@amWhy no

See for yourself. Too painful to see??

This is just wrong. I cannot prove it. But I did no read that comment even before my second edit.

I had planned to do that.

Rollback to the version with the correction by J.R. and add the bit added by D.E.S.

One cannot do this in one revision.

@quid It is correct. I was edit 10, and your were edit 11, 12. Give it up, @quid. I'm sick of this.

@amWhy the part that is wrong is "Only after KReiser posted to you again, here, did you, Sir quid, see it fit to correct your incorrect roll back"

I had planned to do this.

It is true that the chat comment was written prior to the (second) edit but I had not seen it even before having completed the thing.

@quid Oh, so I should have given you a few minutes to correct your error? Convenient how you make it my fault that you made an error in rolling back . You owe me an apology. You expect everyone to anticipate that your might act to correct yourself, when you don't want anyone to expect you will do so any time soon?

@amWhy Once again, I did not make any error.

@quid Yeah, you did. And I'm sick of you blaming me for errors I did not commit, to distract everyone else from the errors you committed.

@amWhy what was my error?

@quid Big Sigh! Now your behaving like one of the many trolls we get on math.se. Think about it @quid. I don't have enough patience to deal with you anymore right now.

@amWhy Once again, I intentionally rolled back to Jeremy Rickard's version. I wanted to preserve their improvement and have Speyer's addition. It seemed simplest to me to rollback to their version and to then edit in Speyer's addition. I could also have started from revision 4 (to which you rolled back in rev 10), and redo the improvement by Jeremy Rickard but that would have been more complex to carry out, as with the link it is not just a copy-paste of a paragraph.

Thus my plan was from the start: go back to revision 9 (rollback revision 11) and then do an edit to copy-paste the paragraph from D.E.S.

My editing of the post was done without knowledge of the content of the chat comments written in parallel. I heard the ping while editing.

This is what happened.

I cannot prove it. But if you think I am so petty as to lie about this, then I would be shocked.

That said, I could have been more diplomatic about this.

@quid Good for you. But that was after you obliterated Speyer's addition, so my attempt to improve was better than your first attempt to improve. So you set the situation further back than I did, before intervening after my comment and KReiser's comment, to do what you intended. So you undermined your intent further than I did. I can't read your mind, and you have given users little reason to believe that you have the time to act in a timely manner. You just seem incapable of believing..

@amWhy there is no first attempt; there is one attempt that had two steps.

That maybe you failed to assume good intentions of me, and incapable of admitting that the rollback you first made, pointed out by KReiser, was erroneous.

@amWhy it was not erroneous.

@quid There were clearly two attempts. Sorry buddy, but you erred.

@amWhy there are two revisions because that was the simplest way to do what I meant to do.

I am extremely forgiving of errors, and rarely notice them, until a person like you accuses me of wrongfully intervening.

@amWhy there was no error in the editing.

@quid That's after the fact, and another attempt to deny your involvement in the confusion. You want to blame only me for the confusing rectification. Stop blaming others /

I acted only because you can no longer be trusted to act in a timely manner.

@quid That's fine, but you did not need to delete a good edit addition as you first did.

@amWhy no I did not need to but as I said " it seemed simpler to start from that version and add back the addition"

@quid And stop insulting me by assuming I have not read these prior comments.

As I said later: " I could also have started from revision 4 (to which you rolled back in rev 10), and redo the improvement by Jeremy Rickard but that would have been more complex to carry out, as with the link it is not just a copy-paste of a paragraph."

@amWhy given that you just said something I had addressed twice that's maybe not entirely unreasonable.

@quid Another insult by requoting a comment. In any case, you confused the poster here in your chat, by rolling back to a version that did not include the original improvement.

@amWhy yes, for about thirty seconds, until I came back to explain what I did.

@quid I am not trying to pick you apart, but your whole tone here has been to berate me for trying to help.

@quid How was I supposed to know you'd be back in 30 seconds to explain?? Given you drop off the face of this site, unannounced, regularly??

@amWhy no, I berate you for involving you in a potentioaly conflicted situation.

@quid Yes, exactly, you berate me time and again, and publicly.

@amWhy this seems neither here nor there.

You involve yourself in varied conflicted situations. Then you are in the middle of it and unhappy about it. Sometimes it's unavoidable. But often it is avoidable. This case was an especially avoidable case.

I rolled back once, before you even acted, because I no longer trust you to act in a timely manner. It is here, and there, @quid. I did the best I could to support a user in this room, because I am here far more than you are. I acted before you. And alerted the user, and then you acted to undo my improvement. Then the user expressed concern, and I tried to explain. Only then did you finally rectify the manner. We all can't always wait 48-72 - 96 hours for a mod to act. Sorry.

@amWhy this does not really match the situation.

I did not see this situation here as conflicted in any way. I am not unhappy about it, except that you had your ego bruised and took it out on me. Don't drag in unrelated events, @quid. Grow up.

@amWhy not here, on the post. It was specifically about a potential edit war. You did not see this is a potential for conflict?

@quid Yes, in fact it does. That you were acting when comments were posted just goes to show you weren't where comments were posted. And why should any user think, anymore, that you would be around when they need you??

@quid I made one edit. You made two edits. Don't you think you acted in a way to start a potential edit war? You did not see this as a potential for conflict?

Personally, I would not have made any further edits. So no, there was no potential conflict for me to get engaged in an edit war. Only with you.

@quid You grossly underestimate me, @quid. And I am sick of it.

@amWhy that misses the point. The user that was against the addition could get into a conflict with you.

Yes, with me too, but that's not the same thing. That's specfically why KReiser called a moderator.

@quid It does not miss the point: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/54789007#54789007

@amWhy it does miss the point because the other user could be mad at you for the one edit.

@quid Oh darn, and they could be mad at you for two edits! Stop patronizing me, @quid. It does not miss the point. The editor you speak of made one edit, so there was not edit war. Stop being so dramatic!

@amWhy they wrote several comments.

@quid One edit. I made one edit, no comments.

@amWhy several combative comments.

The other user made the comments

It was clear they were combative about this.

@quid That's your job to handle. I made one corrective rollback. You made two. I think you were wanting to roll up your sleeves to engage the user in an edit war to suspend them. You were the one provoking, not I.

@amWhy that's really a strange remark.

Stop always trying to pass the buck.

I'm glad you have the time to try to win an argument, but you never have the time to solve them, @quid.

@amWhy indeed. I am not good in my time management.

But at least certain things were clarified. Although maybe not entirely so.

@quid Maybe I'd understand better if I could see them, but I'm guessing some have been deleted.

@amWhy yes, I deleted them. I'd assume you read the comments before editing.

I just wish you wouldn't, when frustrated, tend to take it out on me. All I wanted to do was resolve a situation. And no, I had not read the comments. I went to the link KReiser provoded and directly to the edit history. I was not trying to do any mods' job, but it is hard to know when you are here or not.

@amWhy but KReiser could have just done that too?

The specifically asked a moderator.

They could just as well have rolled back themselves.

@quid I sincerely missed that. I was not trying to be any sort of hero or anything. Just seemed like a legit concern from KReiser. I have really taken a step back from trying to provoke anything, @quid, and flag when I'm tempted to. I just wish you'd give me more credit than you sometimes do. It seemed, in this thread, like the only user you were angry with was me.

@amWhy alright, it seems this was a misunderstanding. Maybe you missed that but you actually have a bit of a conflicted history with the initial editor. To be honest, I was quite angry with you, but it was an anger out of concern about you not being careful and getting in trouble.

Arguably that is patronizing, so I'll accept that critique.

@quid i didn't even recognize the editor

@amWhy well. It seems we built a nice mountain out of a molehill.

But hey, at least we did get to chat a bit towards the end of the weekend. :-) Maybe we should have chosen a more pleasant subject though.

Did you follow the chess tournament a bit @amWhy

@quid just a minute...

@quid hehehehe! Closer to your favorite day: Monday! :-)

Sorry for my abrupt last comment: I was talking long-distance with my brother.