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Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
12:17 AM
Really busy IRL, but just dropping in to say congrats to @Emrakul @Hamlet and @Mithrandir! :-D
 
Riker
Riker
:D
 
Rand al'Thor
Rand al'Thor
A special word of advice to @Mithrandir: it's now really important that you start taking "Patience, my young padawan" to heart. It's been turned into something of a joke, but it's real, serious advice.
8
A big part of a moderator's job involves sitting back and doing nothing, letting the community have their say before expressing your own opinion. If you want another platitude, "fools rush in where angels fear to tread". For the love of G-d, don't start testing all (or any) of the mod tools right away until you actually have something worth testing them on!
(I really hope my saying this doesn't spoil your otherwise-happy moment. The only reason I didn't say something along these lines earlier was because I thought it might upset you, or seem insincere coming from a 'competing' candidate. But now you're going to have to get used to receiving hate-filled abuse and not even being able to vent about it, so you should be fine with friendly advice from someone who is your sock has your best interests at heart ;-) )
2
You have it in you to be a great mod, but it's going to be a steep learning curve and you'll need to be ready to take a lot of advice and to change in some ways.
2
 
Riker
Riker

PMYP: Xtreme Moderator Edition

3 mins ago, 1 minute total – 4 messages, 1 user, 0 stars

Bookmarked just now by Riker

 
HDE 226868
HDE 226868
@BESW Still having issues with The Crucible?
 
verbose
verbose
That q about whether Maya Angelou responded to Francine Prose's criticism got a lot of flak in the comments but the more questions I see about LoTF the more I wanna roll my eyes and agree with Prose's article.
 
BESW
BESW
12:28 AM
@HDE226868 Poster's done, now I have to do the program.
 
HDE 226868
HDE 226868
Oh, fun.
 
Shokhet
Shokhet
And a related (but ancient) blog post: stackoverflow.blog/2010/10/vote-early-vote-often
 
user61230
1:25 AM
Thanks for all the congratulationing, by the by, everyone! There are... a lot of people to respond to, so this is my blanket response.
3
 
BESW
BESW
@Emrakul [yey!]
 
 
1 hour later…
Benjamin
Benjamin
2:51 AM
I hate moving deadlines.
@Randal'Thor Could we have this pinned?
 
BESW
BESW
WHAT DO WE WANT? fewer deadlines! WHEN DO WE WANT IT? see, this is the problem
Tweeted by TimFederle on February 21, 2017 at 5:05 PM
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
3:27 AM
@BESW Yeah, but the way I work, if I don't have one, I never finish it, I need a deadline, just one that CAN'T move. I will put together that post I was telling you about earlier in about 7-8 hours.
 
Bookworm
Bookworm
4:09 AM
0
Q: How much "self-editing" did Nabokov do when his Russian novels were translated into English?

Kevin TroySeveral of Nabokov's early, Russian-language novels were translated into English in the 1960s, either by Nabokov himself (Despair), or by translators under his guidance (including his son Dmitri). To what extent did Nabokov take these translations as opportunities to improve upon the originals? ...

translation vladimir-nabokov
 
 
4 hours later…
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
7:50 AM
@Randal'Thor thanks for the advice. Okay, I won't be testing my sock too much ;) But yeah, got the memo about patience and not stepping in.
 
muru
muru
8:19 AM
So what's with literature and sandboxes?
 
 
2 hours later…
BESW
BESW
9:54 AM
I'm not a fan of sandboxes.
2
Use meta in a question-per-post capacity to workshop stuff, with chat as a complement.
No need to make up extra protocols for something the system already does just fine.
 
Standback
Standback
10:40 AM
@BESW : Can I pick your brain a little bit more re: reading order questions?
 
BESW
BESW
I'm not very brain right now, but you can try. [grin]
 
Standback
Standback
:D
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Standback I'd also be happy to discuss it.
 
Standback
Standback
(Me neither. I'm trying to stay focused at work, but I had a few questions I thought I'd drop and then let you answer :D )
@Benjamin Awesome!
(I'm partially leaning specifically on @BESW 's conversation with me yesterday, though, so just yelp if something seems unclear?)
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Standback I am still developing my opinion on them though, so don't be surprised if I move.
@Standback I read through all of that, so I should be good.
 
Standback
Standback
10:42 AM
So, two questions:
First, do you see reading-order questions -- specifically, "Give me a full reading order for--" questions, rather than "can I read [specific X] before [specific Y]" -- do you see those kind of questions as useful outside of science-fiction and fantasy series? Can you give examples of where?
(Bonus points: do you see them as useful for something that isn't a series at all? Can this type of question be applicable then?)
 
BESW
BESW
[starts to write answer]
[pauses]
I'm gonna have to think for a bit, because I don't sort collections of literature in my head by genre.
What's the other question?
 
Standback
Standback
And second: BESW, your answer to reading-order guidance and @MartinEnder 's answer both got a lot of support. Do you see them as complementing each other, or is there any conflict/tension between them?
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Standback Yes, I see them as useful, but not really in the way they have been framed up until know. I see them mainly as useful for well-defined bodies of work with known interrelations and legitimate reasons for believing that non-publication order may be a better way of reading than publication order. Also, I do not think we should make any distinctions based off of genre, because as Rand has said and has I have experienced personally that only opens a can of deadly worms.
As for current examples I can't find them yet.
 
Standback
Standback
Or, to put it another way, does Martin's proposal of "Don't ask for a recommended reading order, ask for things that inform a choice of reading order" restrict any questions you'd want to keep?
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Standback I see them as useful, but now we are pushing the boundaries of something being "unclear what is being asked". I think that they can be useful, but I have not seen any legitimate examples yet.
 
user61230
10:48 AM
@Standback A couple examples potentially worth considering: mythology doesn't have to be read in a specific order, but it often makes more sense to do so; philosophy definitely has better and worse reading orders; and certain rare edge cases, like Alvin Toffler's works, are generally better read in a specific order.
 
user61230
I list these examples not as a general rule, but as a way of providing some reason to believe that the answer isn't "it's never useful outside SF/F."
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Standback I don't think I answered that question unless we are talking about different ones, but his post does complement my view and I definitely don't see it as conflicting.
 
Standback
Standback
@Emrakul Neat :) Could you expand on either Alvin Toffler, or the philosophy example? Assume I know nothing about them (because that's accurate). What is it about them that makes reading order important?
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Standback No, I view it more as if someone asks they should first break down why they think it should be read in a specific order into multiple questions that help them decide and then if they are still confused come back to a reading order question. The one issue with this is it is encouraging people to ask false questions, which I am not a huge fan of.
 
user61230
@Standback Western philosophy as a whole is often a self-referencing web of nightmare. Philosophers develop their own ideas, which later commentators build into their own structures and philosophies. You can trace that back as far as you want, but there are usually good starting points, and there are usually works that are downright a bad idea to try and read without having read others.
 
Standback
Standback
10:53 AM
@Emrakul So you'd ask about, say, prerequisites for a certain work? Reading order for... a particular body of text? What would a reasonable question look like?
 
user61230
A case example would be that it's awfully difficult to read and understand Spinoza's Ethics without understanding Descartes' Principles of Philosophy and the problems with it, because while Ethics stands on its own, many points and asides in it are intended as discussions about Descartes' statements.
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Standback For philosophy, let's take Marx, just because he is the one who I study the most, you will have a hard time understanding Das Kapital fully, if you don't understand his growth through Wage Labour and Capital.
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
@Standback I think they complement each other. I actually upvoted BESW's. Particularly for the "In the interests of optimising for pearls, not sand, we would expect these questions to specify why the querent suspects the reading order of that particular group of works is non-obvious/non-trivial."
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Emrakul @Emrakul This is even more true with Mathematics, where you can't learn calculus if you don't understand Algebra.
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
I think it's just that my answer goes a bit further by asking people to dig even deeper if possible.
 
user61230
10:55 AM
@Standback I'd think that's a good framing. "Which books do I need to read in order to understand [this book]?" But whether this falls under "reading order" in the way we want to talk about it here is a little questionable.
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
But I've also got this in my answer: "I want to make clear that I'm not advocating a blanket ban on reading order questions. The Harper Lee question is an example of a very useful and evidently answerable question about an optimal reading order. But what makes it a good question is that it focuses on the reason why one might deviate from publication order."
 
Standback
Standback
So, are you imagining things like "What books are crucial to read before Spinoza's Ethics?" Or "What order should I read Marx's writings?"
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Emrakul I like that sort of question, but we have to be very careful to avoid shopping questions.
@Standback I think I would be fine with both of those, but I would find it easier to justify and keep open the latter than the former.
 
user61230
(I'm personally pretty ambivalent about reading order questions as a whole, but) more the former, less the latter.
 
user61230
I think asking the latter - "In what order should I read Marx's writings?" - is an XY problem.
 
Standback
Standback
10:57 AM
@Benjamin Interesting. My gut feeling is just the opposite - prerequisites yes, Marx's writing no. The assumption that one intends to read all of Marx seems much stronger than just wanting to read one central work (+prerequisites)
 
BESW
BESW
@Emrakul To elaborate on this, and to answer @Standback's first question, I'm going to mention some non-Scriptural texts of my Faith: there's a series of letter-essays, released roughly yearly over more than a decade, which document the learning (and the process of acquiring that learning) about a set of world-wide community service projects.
 
user61230
The reason one would ask that isn't to understand the order of precedence of Marx's writings; they're really asking about what books one needs to read as a whole in order to understand them.
 
BESW
BESW
While they can be read for historical value, the primary purpose for reading them is to glean the learning they impart so that we can implement these projects more effectively going forward. This means the more recent essays have more complete, relephant insights than the early ones, but because the letters were written sequentially to the community over time they may be assuming prior knowledge of the earlier letters' content.
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Standback I think that I find the former to be a better question than the latter, but I think the latter would be easier to keep open because it is clearly not a shopping question.
@Emrakul I think it is now a neccesity that in any reading order question the asker state, whether they intend to read everything in the body of work being asked about.
 
Standback
Standback
OK. This is interesting stuff. :)
Followup question: Asking whether a book has any prerequisites, or whether a series has any reason to require a non-obvious reading order -- do you see that as being legitimate, on topic?
I mean, if I haven't read it yet, I probably wouldn't know, right?
 
BESW
BESW
11:02 AM
@Standback I think they're pretty complementary. Both are rooted in the idea that all we really need to do is apply the existing expectations for subjective questions and ROQs should be pretty much good to go.
2
@Standback Absolutely. But see above re: questions still have to meet basic Stack expectations.
 
Standback
Standback
@BESW (I'm really glad to hear you see them as complementary, because it means we've actually got strong non-conflicting community consensus!)
 
user61230
It's worth considering, the idea of precedence in reading is practically a first principle in Western literature - heck, it's even the foundational principle of allusion. Be familiar with X before Y. This implies that, at minimum, there's something categorical about these questions worth keeping.
 
BESW
BESW
I think a lot of the contention here is coming from a weird idea that permitting a subjective topic somehow means we're giving it a pass on meeting basic Stack guidelines.
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Standback I think that they are fine, because you might wonder without wanting a reading order.
 
Standback
Standback
@BESW So: is anything keeping me from taking any series in the world, and asking "Is there any reason to read $SERIES in non-standard order?" Any book, and asking "Does $BOOK have any necessary prerequisite reading?"
 
BESW
BESW
11:05 AM
(Well, and that thing where you thought ROQs are shopping questions. But that's cleared up now.)
 
Standback
Standback
Those seem to me to require zero justification.
 
user61230
@Emrakul This is so much true that some books have to go out of their way to establish nonlinearity in their structure, and when a book or series does that, it's very weird, because everyone's assuming explicit order.
 
Standback
Standback
(Because whether or not there is justification for something non-obvious, is the question.)
 
BESW
BESW
@Standback Nope! Nothing at all. Of course you'd be expected to describe the situation which caused you to ask for our help, or it'll be an XY problem where you've decided the kind of answer you want instead of just explaining the problem and asking for our expert advice.
 
Standback
Standback
"I'm about to read $BOOK. Does it have any prerequisites?"
"I'm about to read $SERIES. Any reason not to start from the first book?"
 
BESW
BESW
11:07 AM
Has anyone asked that yet?
 
Standback
Standback
 
BESW
BESW
I say look at each as it comes, downvote, vote to close as appropriate, encourage the user to elaborate, etc.
You know, basic Stack protocol for teasing out the meat of a question that's first presented as too bare-bones to answer.
 
user61230
I've actually been wondering something tangentially connected to this idea. I'm gonna ask that now.
 
Standback
Standback
@BESW My issue isn't that these are bare-bones.
It's that they're, well, "fishing questions."
"I think I know enough to start reading this book, but maybe somebody has a really awesome insight that will change which book I read?"
That's my sand/pearls issue, I think.
The idea of fishing for maybe there's an interesting, non-obvious answer to your question.
 
BESW
BESW
So, on every Stack I've ever seen, fishing questions are rare because they get downvoted into oblivion when they happen.
I'm okay with that.
Not everything needs a policy.
 
Standback
Standback
11:12 AM
So this is possibly my only dissenting conclusion from our discussion yesterday, @BESW : I have some issue with the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" approach here.
 
BESW
BESW
Sometimes the community hivemind can just say "Nice try but no thanks."
 
Standback
Standback
Because reading order questions were a problem last time we tried Lit.SE.
 
BESW
BESW
What was the problem, specifically?
 
Standback
Standback
Not the only problem, to be sure,
 
user61230
@Standback What problem, specifically, did they cause?
 
BESW
BESW
11:13 AM
@Emrakul Jinx.
 
user61230
Ninja'd.
 
Standback
Standback
There were a few classes of question that felt like they were taking up the bulk of the site. Reading recs, series order, something else that's slipping my mind ATM.
And they did that because they were easy.
I agree there's a tradeoff here. I'm not saying "Reading order killed Lit.SE.1.0, NEVER AGAIN,"
 
BESW
BESW
That's a good observation. But what's the problem? How did "having a lot of easy questions" kill lit.se.1.0?
 
Standback
Standback
I'm just saying that "There's no reason to give them any special attention or thought this time around because they haven't been a problem yet" is going a little far on the other end.
 
user61230
I think the ease of asking reading order questions is a red herring. Instead, I think it'd be better to frame the problem as one of asking lots of questions that don't lend themselves to detailed, interesting answers.
 
Standback
Standback
11:16 AM
@BESW In my view, it's a balance. Easy questions sets a certain tone to the site.
Attracts some people, bores others.
This answer was mine; I described the process, as I saw it, reasonably well there. I hope :)
 
BESW
BESW
@Standback That's fair. It's a new tack, unrelated to the objections you've raised before, but a valid one.
 
Standback
Standback
I'm a work in progress! :)
 
BESW
BESW
Welcome to the team.
 
Standback
Standback
I just want to set the "ain't broke" thing on the side for one minute, there's something previously I don't want to let slip --
 
BESW
BESW
So you're saying that ROQs are liable to be pearlless sand based on the last site, not on this one. That explains a lot: i wasn't there, so you're raising objections based on experience I don't have.
 
Standback
Standback
11:19 AM
@BESW Oh, absolutely.
On the subject of asking whether a series has non-obvious reading order, or a book has non-obvious prerequisites:
Let's take a specific question or two as an example?
Say, this one:
5
Q: Do I need to read the Hardy Boys books in order?

MithrandirThe Hardy Boys books are a bunch of mystery novels, written by Franklin W. Dixon. They all focus on the Hardy Brothers, Frank and Joe. Do I need to read them in order?

reading-order hardy-boys franklin-w-dixon
Or my own experimental foray into the territory:
3
Q: What is the recommended reading order for David Mitchell's books?

StandbackThough David Mitchell's novels differ wildly in style and substance, all occur within the same universe, with links between them - some subtle, some very central. What is a good order to read his works in?

reading-order david-mitchell
Can you give me your thoughts on these?
It seems to me that in both of them, things are pretty obvious:
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
@muru nothing. It's a joke from Puzzling, where the mods (including Emrak) put a mandatory sandbox in place, which turned out to be a bad idea.
 
Standback
Standback
The Hardy Boys are an old-fashioned mystery series for kids, and everything about them screams "standalone." David Mitchell's books are interconnected, but there's no reason for me to assume there's some reading order that's better than just publishing order.
They feel to me like fishing questions -- "maybe something's interesting even though my impression is that probably not."
Does that feeling of mine make sense to you?
And what do you think of the questions themselves? On-topic? Upvote? Downvote?
 
BESW
BESW
I think the HB one feels like an early-beta "testing the waters" question.
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Mithrandir Yeah, I don't want a mandatory sandbox, but a sandbox would be good.
 
BESW
BESW
For yours.... well, it seems like you may have left out some relephant information which is hinted at in the comments, perhaps [puts on speculative analyst hat] because you wanted to leave room for answers to discuss those issues.
 
user61230
11:28 AM
I feel like questions that don't include information on why they were asked tend to be, generally speaking, incomplete.
 
user61230
Both the HB question and the Mitchell question leave me wondering what led the querent to ask at all.
 
BESW
BESW
Yup. The more autobiographical a subjective question is, the better it tends to be.
(this is something I often forget.)
 
muru
muru
@Mithrandir like the on on PPCG?
 
Standback
Standback
So, if you saw those now, what do you think would be appropriate? Voting to close as unclear, until you got a straightforward motive? Downvoting, as a question that's on-topic but poorly written/researched? Something else?
I'm trying to grok what kind of Gold Standard we're proposing, in relation to questions like these.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
@BESW ...Because it was?
 
BESW
BESW
11:32 AM
@Mithrandir Indeedilydoo.
@Standback Hum. Haruum.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
@muru don't know; only go there to flag stuff.
 
BESW
BESW
Downvote, comment.
Maybe, if we're going to come up with a rule, it should be "ROQs that don't explain why they're asking are eligible for VTC-UC."
 
Standback
Standback
(What's "UC"?)
 
BESW
BESW
UnClear.
 
Standback
Standback
Thanks :)
 
BESW
BESW
11:34 AM
Hrmmmm. I think this is the crux of the issue:
 
Standback
Standback
OK, but alongside that, you're also saying that it's always reasonable to want to check if there's a non-obvious order before you read something.
 
BESW
BESW
There are many good reasons to ask for a reading order. They are not all interchangeable. Good questions that elicit pearlescent answers need to explain which reason prompted them to ask.
 
Standback
Standback
I don't think these questions are improved if everybody just adds "I want to read $SERIES but maybe there's a non-obvious order."
 
BESW
BESW
This goes back to a Stack paradigm phrase that I really like, but which is often difficult to apply to sites like this one: "Actionable solutions to actual problems people are facing."
Sites like lit.se have trouble with this because often the "actual problem" is "I was wondering..."
 
Standback
Standback
Yup. Exactly.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
11:38 AM
I edited the HB one to mention my actual problem :P
 
BESW
BESW
And what we're talking about with ROQs is drawing a line between "I was wondering" that elicits quality answers, and "I was wondering" which doesn't.
 
Standback
Standback
YES.
But also,
 
user61230
The operative question is, "what information prompted you to believe or wonder whether these books should be read in a certain order?"
 
user61230
To which, "I want to read this series but I'm not sure" isn't a satisfactory answer.
 
Standback
Standback
my sense of reading-order questions is that they've got this inherent quality baked in -- that the quality of the answers depends entirely on whether the answer is non-trivial. You can ask the same exact question for several different series, and get fascinating answers from one, and a copy of the publication order from Goodreads for another.
 
BESW
BESW
11:42 AM
[takes a deep breath] I'm about to do something very out of character.
 
Standback
Standback
@Emrakul This is why I really like @MartinEnder 's guideline so much. It resolves that. Ask for the specific information, not for reading order.
 
BESW
BESW
How does Science Fiction & Fantasy handle repeated trivial questions like these?
 
user61230
I can't believe you've done this! And I thought I knew you!
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
They're usually received okay, AFAIK.
They usually only pop up for popular works, though.
 
Standback
Standback
@BESW LOL
 
BESW
BESW
11:44 AM
Also: how has lit.se been handling those "What's the significance of [character's] name in [book]?" questions that were coming in hot and heavy a couple days ago?
 
user61230
(I have a lingering "what's the value in handling trivia questions at all?" question in the back of my mind, but for another time.)
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
Hmm. They didn't seem to be a problem. But our -good questions dropped off slightly during that time, I think
 
BESW
BESW
@Emrakul Trivia is fine. Trivial less so.
[rummages for rpg meta]
(Serioulsy, Role-playing Games Meta is a goldmine for reasoned discussions of all kinds of problems.)
17
A: Is trivia on-topic?

doppelgreenerI think the matter of whether a question is trivia or not is a red herring here. So is whether the reason behind the question is "I just wanna know." I'm considering a "trivia" question to be one where the asker's just curious and wants to learn something, but it won't necessarily solve a practi...

 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Emrakul To replace Google.
 
BESW
BESW
> Trivia questions [and by extension "I was just wondering" questions] are not bad. [...] They just usually suck in some other way.
 
Standback
Standback
11:49 AM
(I am going to need to duck out for a while. As always, thank you all for your time and conversation :) )
 
BESW
BESW
ttfn
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Standback It was enjoyable.
 
BESW
BESW
It's so nice to have an amiable, productive discussion about why we seem to strongly disagree on something.
 
Standback
Standback
Hear hear!
 
user61230
I noticed the progress far more than I noticed the disagreement. Which is nice.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
11:54 AM
The discussion was enlightening.
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
12:05 PM
@Standback Not sure if someone has answered yet, but I think the interesting question for Mitchell is "can I read them in arbitrary order?" because they aren't a series, but there is a lot of intertextuality going on. Which is probably another reason why it makes sense to ask about that intertextuality/cross-book spoilers etc, because it's more likely that someone is interested because they want to start with a random book they just picked up.
(Also your question makes me want to pick up the remaining three Mitchell novels soon, so I can answer it :P)
Okay, finally caught up with the transcript. So yes, I think maybe your question could be improved by rewording it from "what is the recommended reading order" to "is there a reason not to read them in arbitrary order?" and then focus in the question body on the shared characters etc between the books to justify the question (which you already do to a small degree)
 
BESW
BESW
@MartinEnder ....I like this.
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
Then someone could look into all the crossreferences etc and figure out if any of those are relevant to the understanding or suspense of one of the books and tell you whether some of them should come before others (like I did in my comments for the few books I've read0.
@Standback Different thread, you asked earlier about non-series examples where reading order questions make sense. Lovecraft. muru already asked "How do I get started with the Cthulhu mythos?" but there's more. for one thing that's kind of a subseries question. for another, in the Lovecraft works I've read, there were multiple instances where one of the more elaborate later works is clearly a reworking of an earlier shorter story (usually some 10-15 years later).
2
For example "The Shadow over Innsmouth" is a loose reworking of "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family". "The Call of Cthulhu" reuses themes from "Dagon". It's really interesting to read these pairs in order, because they show you how Lovecraft has grown as an author by seeing how he tackled the same theme differently over time.
A question asking something along the lines of "which Lovecraft stories are reworkings of earlier ones" could give very interesting answers and be useful to inform a reading order, even though these aren't part of a series.
 
BESW
BESW
12:27 PM
Good example.
And, of course, the latter Mythos.
@MartinEnder Here's an example that would benefit from this re-framing: Margery Allingham's "Campion" novels can be read as stand-alones, or out of order, but reading them in publication order not only gives a sense of the path of Campion's life--it also gives an amazing impression of the societal journey of Britain from the 1920s to the 1950s, and the slow change in the culture's literary tastes.
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
Ah, that does sound like a good example. :)
 
BESW
BESW
(And it's not speculative fiction, they're murder mysteries, so that fits @Standback's other request.)
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
So yes, in some cases even asking indirectly about publication order can make sense if the books don't form a series and you'd like to know whether there's a good reason not to read them in a random order. In that case answers wouldn't be "here is the publication order use this" (which wouldn't be a good or interesting answer) but answers could be "if you follow publication order there will be this and that benefit".
And again, I think questions should justify why the asker suspects that order may or may not matter.
 
 
3 hours later…
Standback
Standback
4:04 PM
@Shokhet , thanks for the awesome questions on "The Fifth Gable"! I love the thought that this probably brought the story a few more readers... :)
(Now I'm wondering if we can nudge How many gables are there in the four-gabled house? into being an HNQ, ::scheme scheme scheme:: )
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
very nice edit :)
 
Standback
Standback
@MartinEnder Thankee :)
 
Riker
Riker
4:32 PM
 
Bookworm
Bookworm
4:44 PM
1
Q: Science fiction short story with the ability to jump from world to world

RikerI read this not long ago, maybe a year. It was either a short story or a novella, certainly not longer. Read in English, in the US. The story was definitely older though, no clue exactly when but probably before the 2000s. (I remember very yellow crackly pages in my copy) One quote that I dis...

story-identification
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
@Mithrandir re the deleted comments, I'm not a huge fan of writing partial answers. I've only read 4 of the 7 relevant books, so I thought I'd provide what knowledge I can contribute, in case it a) helps the OP and b) helps a potential answerer
2
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
It seemed to be a fair bit of an answer.
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
I don't know... what's the point of posting an answer that only addresses an arbitrary subset of the relevant texts?
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
Because a part can be very helpful :)
@MartinEnder if you feel very strongly about it, I can give you the text and remove the reminder; don't think it's possible to undelete comments. Some of the comments had gotten flags, and the other ones looked like they were answering in comments, so...
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
@Mithrandir it is possible to undelete comments that you deleted
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
4:57 PM
@MartinEnder I've looked, don't see anything...I'll look again.
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
actually I think it's possible as long it's not the owner who deleted it (I can undelete comments that were deleted by another mod)
 
Riker
Riker
your names are so similar
@Mart and @Mith
both blue, both dark-ish avatars, more names start with M and are more or less the same length
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
*eyebrow*
 
Riker
Riker
*eyebrow back*
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
@Riker *shrug*
 
Riker
Riker
5:05 PM
*¯\_(ツ)_/¯*
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
5:34 PM
@MartinEnder restored
 
Shokhet
Shokhet
5:57 PM
@Standback That would probably be good for my rep :)
 
Shokhet
Shokhet
6:19 PM
...speaking of HNQ, this one's hot now (@Riker), and this one might interest some of you
 
Riker
Riker
wait realyl it's hot wtf
its' an ID q
 
Martin Ender
Martin Ender
Those get HNQ a lot. Which I think is part of why they're unpopular with regular users of the hosting SE
ID questions are basically the popcons of cultural SEs
 
Riker
Riker
6:47 PM
<shrug>
@MartinEnder people hate them both :P
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
7:02 PM
Heh. Sci keeps trying to get me to show him the mod tools :P
 
Riker
Riker
lol
 
 
2 hours later…
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
8:39 PM
Hey @Benjamin. Do you mind stopping to post those 'congratulations on the HNQ' comments? They're not really constructive (and they've been getting flagged). I think a chat ping would be preferable.
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Mithrandir Okay, I didn't realize they were being flagged.
Sorry.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
Thanks :)
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
@Benjamin As Mith said, feel free to ping people on chat. Personally, I find it helpful when someone tells me if one of my questions becomes a HNQ
 
Standback
Standback
@Shokhet I am in favor of you getting rep! And, of that author getting new eyeballs from a new source :)
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Hamlet Yeah, that will now be my plan.
 
Hamlet
Hamlet
8:43 PM
+1
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
@Benjamin Good. (Also, don't worry that this is a formal reprimand. It's just to improve the site, you're not in trouble at all :))
 
Benjamin
Benjamin
@Mithrandir I wasn't worried.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
Good, because if someone in authority yells at me online, I feel... weird, so...
I tried to make sure that doesn't happen to other people :P
 
Standback
Standback
@Mithrandir re: partial answers --
I'm sure there are different opinions on this, but I find partial answers on Stack Exchange very problematic. You can't meaningfully compare 3 partial answers. And, when the partial answers are quicker than a full answer, and they get a few upvotes, that can hide better answers that come along later.
Of course, it depends how partial an answer :P
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
@Standback You can post a partial answer, and attempt to find out more, or hope that someone bases an answer off of yours, or cummunity wikify it...
This seems like a historical-context question to me, but I'm not unilaterally re-opening it. Opinions?
 
Standback
Standback
8:48 PM
Those are all options. I've used them sometimes when I feel I have an answer, but that somebody else is likely to have a better one.
But if I know I'm not actually answering the question to begin with, I think half an answer would be more harm than help. We don't really crowdsource the construction of individual answers.
:shrug: That's where I'm at, anyway :)
@Mithrandir Oh, ouch, these kind of things will be a pain.
Literature can cover pretty much anything.
So the question of whether or not this is on-topic kind of falls back to that.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
@Standback This seems like it could make an answer; it proves that there are books that should be read before others.
 
Standback
Standback
It's like sending Shokhet's question on gables to Architecture.SE . One could write a question there, and there's a certain muddiness to whether it's a question "for us" or a question "for them."
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
@Standback Yep. I just found it in the deleted posts pile, and undeleted it. Now we let the 500repers decide...
@Standback No, that one would definitely be off-topic at a site like that...
 
Standback
Standback
It could be phrased appropriately.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
Well, the magic part disqualified it in my head...
 
Standback
Standback
8:54 PM
"If a house is described as having four gables, does that rule out having a fifth gable as well?"
If you take just the first (non-magic!) part of my answer, that could have been an architecture question.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
thinks
 
Standback
Standback
I'm not saying it should have been. I'm just saying every question about "something that happened in literature" is also "a question about some other topic"
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
Mhm.
 
Standback
Standback
(unless it's a book about authors. and literature professors. Heaven help us.)
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
 
Standback
Standback
8:56 PM
LOL
Yup.
I think the difference is going to be what _type_ of answer you're expecting.
e.g., notes on how the architecture reflects the story's theme :P
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
*takes Tylenol*
 
Standback
Standback
--happy moderating! From now on your close and reopen votes override everybody else's! ::whistles innocently::
 
Riker
Riker
@Standback FWIW markdown doesn't work in multiline messages
the only 2 bits that work are blockquotes and code blocks
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
Yes. Now I fully support that feature-request... >.<
 
Riker
Riker
> like
> this
 
Standback
Standback
8:59 PM
Yeah, I know :-/
 
Riker
Riker
and
this
@Standback ah kk
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
297
Q: Add a way for moderators to cast a normal, non binding close/open vote

Andreas BoniniI think moderators should have the ability to cast a normal, non binding close and open vote like they were a normal user (while of course retaining their ability to cast a binding vote where necessary). This can be used in "grey areas" where a moderator can choose to give his or her opinion, bu...

feature-request status-declined moderation moderator-abilities binding-vote
4
 
Standback
Standback
(It's really particularly an issue on betas. Where there just aren't that many avid users -- so three of them with mod-hammers glued to their fists can actually be an issue.)
(On Writers.SE it took a while until the community was really getting stuff closed on their own.)
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
We really need this on SE 2.0 beta sites. — Tim Post ♦ Jul 31 '10 at 19:30
This is needed on new sites, as there are very few users that have enough rep to "vote to close". So without the Mods being able to vote, it can take a long time to get enough votes. — Ian Ringrose Oct 11 '10 at 18:12
 
Standback
Standback
(I think you've got some good active users here so far, though, so hopefully things will be good. :) )
Yeah, and they've got the review queues in since then.
Those are a big help.
Big difference between mod-closing as the third or fourth vote-caster, than the first.
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
9:03 PM
Yep. That's why if ^^^^that gets 3 or 4 people who VTRO, I might hammer it.
 
Bookworm
Bookworm
9:18 PM
0
Q: What is the significance of the fact that the covered wagons were traveling East at the end of Atlas Shrugged?

EJoshuaSAt the very end of Atlas Shrugged, a group of covered wagons picks up people who were stranded by the Comet's demise. Is it significant that they're heading east (e.g. that they were somehow "undoing" the progress of the people who contributed to progress by heading west in the covered wagons)? O...

ayn-rand atlas-shrugged
 
Mithrandir
Mithrandir
@Shokhet ^ may be of intest for you
 

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