The Ink Spot

9:51 AM

Happy Friday everyone!

12:30 PM

tgif!

2:22 PM

@Emilie Can I ask you a question about your answer graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/a/117922/5498 ?

Call me jaded or an old grumpy bastard who has slept too little the last couple weeks (you'd be right), but why are you answering a question that is very obviously off-topic for not obeying the style-identification guidelines?

My train of thought is to not answer these questions in order to not recommend bad quality

Sure! just bear with me, typing one handed so its slow ^_^

kid in the other? :)

yup!!

foggy brained also lol

that makes two of us

did you catch something off? I'm scared now :D

2:26 PM

well, it's mostly what I'm describing above

I just went back and read your full thing (hadn't)

that's okay :)

I think my taste for a challenge might have trumped my judgment :)

(oops)

hehe

thing is, this user has been quick-firing this kind of questions today, I saw at least three

sorry to call you out then so bluntly :$

I was just thinking yesterday how it's too bad these questions really only benefit the asker even, I think I ran into a few of them as well yesterday, maybe the same ones

(even) if they fulfill many of the guidelines

2:31 PM

that was my reasoning

I guess we agree, and there was just a slip-up somewhere by I-don't-know-who, which we will not mention again ;)

wait, what was I talking about?

lol! well the questions keep coming, and even if the asker fulfills the guidelines, their use fulness are iffy at best because of poor image searchability... so I feel it comes down to being ok to answer something that will only be used very briefly

not unlike font id and such

I assume total responsability for the slip-up; somewhere in between endless diaper changes and feedings, I felt the irrepresible urge to do something intellectually stimulating ^_^

I know the feeling :)

well, not the diaper changing, but the urge for a challenge

Other than pointing to where it comes from and what they've attempted, which guideline is missing?

where it comes from was easy, I reverse googled it so that could be edited in

it's mainly the description

they didn't make any effort to describe the style in their own words

@Vincent I always sort of have a problem with that because a lot of novices can't seem to put what they see into words

like they could say what they'Ve tried searching

2:41 PM

I understand. It also makes the question absolutely unfindable in a search

and it might be really basic

that's why I gave an example here

@Vincent +1

hey @WELZ

"monochromatic with stark lines and heavy contrast" it's very nice wording...not the kind of wording I would expect from a non-expert :)

2:42 PM

Hey @Vincent, welcome back @Emilie

@WELZ Never really gone but never really there either lol!

Exactly! :D

@Emilie I understand that a newbie wouldn't describe things like that. But at least let them try a bit ;)

@Vincent I mean we could in theory probe every asker about their question or spoon feed them leads like "Are you asking about the color palette? What is special about it?" but practically it doesnt fit the speed at which SE evolves (and answers)

@Emilie With the danger of sounding blunt and defeatist, but then we should get rid of the font-id, style-id close reasons

We already have a list of criteria in the meta posts about these

if people don't follow these and the questions still get answered (and thus, similar questions will be asked again), we should get rid of the off-topic reason as we are essentially saying we don't want to police them being off-topic

that's all right with me, if that is what the community wants. Personally, I'll just apply some prefs and custom CSS rules to hide questions with these tags completely. :P

3:00 PM

I've always perceived that the community felt those Qs to be a problem because they'd feel like answering them is a waste of their time (but no one has any obligation to answer anything)

(brb!)

r50sap-7

2

sorry cat got on keyboard lol

ok who starred this LOL

hehe, couldn't resist. It's just so insightful and carries so much meaning

@PieBie you shuld have seen the other many lines that I managed to erase before the cat hit enter!

elderly cat and warm laptop attraction :)

now we will never know the genius of your furry four footed friend!

she destroyed a paper i was writing for my MA once

came back and the margins were so that only one letter fit on each line

hopefully you could fix it or had a back-up

3:13 PM

fixed it but it took some time to figure out what had happened!

I can imagine :)

I think I've brought up in meta before the problem about novices not being able to word what they are looking for but it never really got elaborated on

The guidelines fit to improve searchability (and thus, usefulness to more users) but that aspect is not taken into account and I feel it's a problem

@Emilie I think I remember that. It has at least been brought up in a number of low-effort-questions debates.

Still, just throwing in some images and asking 'what is this' seems very low effort to me

@PieBie Do you remember if anyone ever brought up a solution to it?

they could've at least said where they found them, how they tried and failed to identify a style (e.g. I found them on Marco's site, and he calls it neo-classical. but when I search for this it returns something else entirely.)

@Emilie no, because there is no solution

except for the system that is now in place: reviewing and guidance

3:31 PM

@PieBie That's the guideline, but I'm questioning the rationale for the guideline

@Emilie to be honest, these questions were pretty good in the sense that all the examples presented at least were in the same vein. I've seen much, much worse (like six completely different images). The guidelines exist for those questions mostly.

It always annoys me when questioners ask lazy questions without any context or intro. To me it seems impolite to just expect people to help you, even with things that are easily searched for. But maybe that's just me.

I'll also repeat this: i.stack.imgur.com/uakIt.jpg

(sorry, so many things to say but wrestling a colicky baby...I'm reading you though!) :D

I wanted to type previously and you sort of answered with "it annoys me when Qs ask questions with no context or intro"

like if the extra effort doesn't really help to answer the question...(in this case, I had plenty of images to understand what was asked)

does the low-effort close exist to weed out people that are deemed not worthy of the community's time? (for a variety of reasons: because they seem rude or too novice...)

(or they are experts but unaware of our culture)

the user created an account to ask a straightforward question (when we take into account the images), that does require some effort

I think we can assume they tried a few things if they're a 1 point user with no other profile on the network

I almost never use low-effort, only in cases where the Q is very near to complete gibberish. I believe most Qs are salvageable. Problem is that a lot of posters never return to aid in said salvaging, leaving unanswered half-questions all over the place. But that is another issue

@Emilie yes, and that is why we point them to the guidelines. To say "we understand you don't know our customs, so here are some pointers"

we never tell them "you don't deserve an answer"

we tell them "please help us help you"

@PieBie not explicitly but I'd be curious to know how people perceive it when their question gets closed

3:47 PM

mostly OK I think, sometimes not so much :D

To refer to the comic you posted earlier, is Glenn thinking "oh ok, let me go google it then" or is he thinking "wow, Frank is <insert bad word here>, I'll just go ask someone else"

if he's thinking the second, is he worthy of being helped?

@PieBie not in Frank's opinion probably

and if someone shows up and tells Glenn "Hey I know the answer, it's..." and Frank goes "Don't tell them, I'm assuming he didn't even try googling it first"

I mean, if this played out in real life, it would be sort of surreal

(for me at least!)

yes, but what you're skirting around is that Frank started with "like I said", so Glenn already knows the rules

we're talking about new users who do not know the rules

@PieBie Yes those who don't

3:55 PM

and we point them to the guidelines, to help them learn the rules, see my first point

yes my issue with the guidelines is the "Describe it in your own words" and some of the ones below, but it really depends on each case

if I have few words because I'm a noob or a non-native speaker, I'm coming across as low-effort almost automatically

but like you said, multiple images help. I think that can sort of bypass the wording problem because an expert can identify the common elements if the images make sense

@Emilie Well, not necessarily. Everyone knows the words 'searched', 'looked for' and 'try' I assume. Like in my example of artist Marco. Those are not hard words, though they make all the difference.

Then there's "Tell us what you’ve already attempted". In some cases, that may just be too much to list. And it's also easy to just pretend and claim "I've looked in x and y font search engine and didn't find anything"

which regularly happens with font-id Qs

(I'm kind of playing Devils advocate here, because I'm partly in agreement with you. I think a closure can come across much more 'heavy' than it really is, and can be quite intimidating to new users. But those are the tools SE gave us. See also my answer here)

My first feeling is it could be all summed up succintly by asking to provide as many leads as possible to help people answer the question

@PieBie it's fine, I'm enjoying having an adult discussion for a change lol

I was thinking to myself that I'd never deem a student not worthy of having a question answered but it's not quite true...if they don't show up on time, I tend to not want to answer if it's repetitive info

4:04 PM

I think the fundamental problem is that low-effort and rude are subjective terms, and largely depend on the situation of the beholder.
In the example of the comic, I have had co-workers do this to me. If I was in the middle of something important, I have been known to politely tell them to go stuff it. But if I would've had time aplenty, I might have answered the same question.

But as @Vincent mentioned, other users can then use the example of the one answered Q to 'demand' their Q be answered too. Much like a student who's always late and never finishes their tasks on time would wine 'but you answered [model student]'s question, which was similar!'

The site is dead

3

It no longer looks like Graphic Design Stack Exchange, it just looks like Stack Exchange.

We have lost our identity

@WELZ :-O

It's so unbearable

@WELZ The thing is people can "demand" but they're not entitled to anything and if they get rude, they can definitely get flagged!

Sometimes it looks like folks feel obligated to answer, I don't know if it's an altruistic thing or because the urge to get points is that strong

I was talking about the new theme

4:17 PM

@WELZ I know, I refreshed and my eyes started bleeding

@joojaa how do you dislike the new theme?

@WELZ LOL

Well, that's been answered already, check meta

@WELZ my eyes are bleeding

We literally gave all this feedback (led by @tchrist) and they listened to zilch

NOTHING

4:21 PM

let's just all bleed together

That, sounds a bit off.

lol

@WELZ Penny for your thoughts (not) lol

wife made a gingerbread appartment building

I assume the multiple windows were not laser cut? :)

4:24 PM

@joojaa would love to see a pic.

> Give us feedback because we want you to feel like we care... (we don't)

2

It's just we want moar moneyz

gimme moar of teh $$

nice lighting!

Q: How do you turn off the new skin?

windows are made of sugar so it really has window panes also

Meta Graphic Design

1

How do i turn off the new skin? Its horrible, you cant even read the headings anymore, body text is sort of passable. Who has time to make a user script that will actually, you know fix the design?

@Emilie how do you know my password?? :O

4:38 PM

@WELZ I own a black cat so therefore, I must be a witch :P

Is modship hereditary? :P

It is now!

@WELZ Do you think they'll listen if I request smaller sized swag? x)

At least chat didn't change

I think if all the active users went inactive (no participation) for even a week. It wouldn't go unnoticed.

(yet)

@WELZ In this stack, probably!

funny that you mention it. Folks have been begging for improvements to chat for years but they've halted all production of chat (except major bug fixes).

Folks say don't screw up the site like that- they do it anyway

They only care about teams now.

because money

4:50 PM

@Wrzlprmft Re:Sansforgetica...that is some painful, interesting stuff! interactive.guim.co.uk/embed/aus/2018/oct/font-yarn.pdf

Now that the site lost its personality, might as well put our guidelines in Sans Forgetica to improve memorization :P

@Emilie: thanks for the interesting chat! I gotta run now. Have a great weekend, and see you around.

And of course: everyone else have a great weekend too!

@PieBie Not likely to be around in chat just for kicks but still available when pinged! Have a good one!

5:52 PM

bue

6:18 PM

Does anyone have any idea what happens with my posts if I completely erase my account?

@PieBie I'm sorry about all the work you put into this. All to waste

6:33 PM

Don't be sorry. It was time well spent.

A: Graphic Design updated site theme is ready for testing!

7:00 PM

@Vincent Yeh, they stay up and your username will be changed to user50959

It won't be clickable (it'll show it's grayed out)

:(

The site literally doesn't feel like Graphic Design anymore, just feels like SO or MSE or SU.

3

So annoying!

1

If you're not going to listen to our feedback at all, constructive or no, you might as well not ask it.

We've been working through feedback and we're not done yet. — Jon Ericson ♦ 41 mins ago

@JonEricson if you aren't done, why would you forcefully roll it out? Leave it as an option that can be toggled on/off. — WELZ 2 mins ago