And then there is: "Is '5e' a clear enough statement of game system by a question asker?" which until recently did agree with the other posts. Only recently did the vote totals end up switching around; as such, at least to me, it is still unclear as to whether the actual practice and implementation of any sort of protocol regarding questions using "5e" has changed.
@user-024673 Please know they did not say that
> [...] continued disregard for site policies can get you temporarily banned [...]
But further discussion should be on Meta, not here
@user-024673 They don't even have the power to ban you, btw
So I saw this question today: Does Favored by the Gods work with counterspell rolls?
In the question it says "5e", talks about "Favored by the Gods", "Counterspell", and "Power Word Kill". If I asked anyone what game this is, they'd look at me funny and reply "5e, duh". If I pushed them and said "...
If you want to research and read previous discussion of adding system tags; here's a list I made
We have quite a few answers from various people saying that the obvious-ness doesn't matter and giving numerous reasons not to add in a system tag, no matter how obvious it is. I'm not saying I agree with the current practice; but there are stated reasons
@user-024673 And that's the entire reasons we have Metas and go by voting totals; you don't just need a reason, you needs reasons that people actively click "yes, I agree"
This kinda is a "stepped on an invisible landmine" situation; maybe some good will come of it all
@ThomasMarkov You ever write up and post a whole answer and then realize that some random sentence in the middle was distilled alphabet soup, and then you've gotta rush to fix it?
Can a lightfoot halfling hide while in the space of some creature (like a Medium-sized or larger ally), and be hidden from an adjacent creature?
The halfling is not trying to hide from the creature with which it is sharing a space.
Not the first time I've tripped on edited comments. I'm so used to being able to see Q/A revision histories, I forget that comments are... let's say "highly ephemeral"
@Novak Particularly in cases like this. When I became a mod I discovered a whole host of discussion buried in deleted comments that I didn't know existed.
@BardicWizard One of my professors once wrote "I have absolutely no idea what you did in the middle, but the start and end were correct; have the points"
@Medix2 I would like to have had more of your profs-- I was rarely if ever allowed to get away with that. Probably built character, but very unpleasant at the time.
@Medix2 I knew the totals were getting close but I hadn't realised they had so dramatically flipped. I'll discuss with the other mods as clearly we need to address this.
@linksassin I swear I once asked a question about "What is the go-to answer to a Meta question for providing guidance: The highest-scoring one? The accepted one? Something else?" but apparently I never did
It would still only help users who frequent the chat room often (i.e., not me) but it might be somewhat useful. I don't know what is possible with stack bots, either.
@ThomasMarkov I've (sort of) made that edit now. I think it reads a bit more clearly now. (...Technically, the tweet's still presented before the rules; it was easier than rewriting the phrasing of the whole answer to have the rules first.)
@user-024673 Please refrain from referring to opinions of other users as "mob rule", "bs" or similar derogatory terms, we don't do that here.
2
You are free to disagree with the current way of doing things all you like, but you need to remember that the viewpoints and stances you are criticizing are made by and supported by normal site users. Conduct your criticism in a way that does not insult them.
(Anthony uses his A-list authorial clout to make good on a ten-year-old grudge against an editor who did a poor job on one of Anthony's already awful early novels.)
Just. Anthony is mediocre and petty on the best of days, and then you start to notice... all the other things... that he keeps playing as jokes... for way too long...
It baffles me how he ever rose to prominence, much less managed to be called a "Star of Sci-fi & Fantasy" in the Year 2020. He's a walking stranger danger alert.
Not cool, Bundle. Not cool.
But really, why are THESE your stars of sci-fi and fantasy anyway? More like 1980s Novels I Remember From The Discount Shelf In The Used Bookstore.
I know you've heard of Ursula K. Le Guin, Bundle. You compared Jane Yolen to her.
Most of the bundle's choices are just confusing and arguably inept, but Anthony... yeah, that's a hard nope, a deep disappointment, and a lot of skepticism of Bundles going forward.
sadly I think that it's super easy for some to just go "Oh, white male author, probably fine", and thing they don't need to dig deep and look even a little under
My favorite is the bit where he complained about not getting his apology received the way he wanted.
(If you check out the Talk page for the wiki article you'll find more stuff which has been taken out of the article in its current state... and a lot of people trying to write apologetics for him.)
Can we at least have fixed term limits for the relitigation? Needing to be ready to vote whenever the topic is so much as mentioned seems wrong. (And I'm not sure what fraction of my statement is satirical at this point.)
Well, in this case the problem is the votes on a meta have shifted over time so that it no longer represents the praxis/policy it is used as (because of the consensus it reached at the time). The problem is that one side would be much more motivated to vote whenever it got cited on main, so it's hard to trust it as consensus (meaning it doesn't work as a policy-meta)
I'm not sure we need a strict term limit. If a revisit happens without sufficient grounds (such as some event or reasonable time/shifts), downvote it (and voice that concern)
@Someone_Evil It still seems fairly clear what the policy we want is. It's just that folks don't like it and always throw up flags when the odd case comes uup.
Also seems like carving out exceptions will be problematic, or not.
@NautArch To me it's been most clear that the community is really split on the issue. And in this case it's a meta not being representative of the policy/praxis it is cited for. That needs to be fixed one way or the other. Either by getting a representative meta, or changing praxis/policy
@Someone_Evil I agree. But the discussion really has already been had several times and I don't see it really changing. There are strong views on both sides. Someone somewhere is going to need to make the policy statement and one group will be unhappy.
@NautArch Probably not? For the revisit I'm not citing the recent main site question, but what happened to the old meta. I can't imagine the revisit of "Another question got closed because of X policy. Should we change the policy this time?" be recieved very well
If it's an on/off toggle, then it's on because to try and keep it off in all cases, no exceptions, would be an unsustainable expenditure of time and energy and would cause massive amounts of ill will.
@NautArch Cool. The current meta on "5e" currently carves out an exception. The praxis we have is that it isn't one. I'd be happy to continue current praxis, but then we need to correct the meta. The alternative to a revisit is to decide what our meta process is after the fact (and effectivly have the diamond mods dictate it), and I don't think anyone wants that
But if we permit "sufficient grounds" editing, we're just asking for the mods to have to start making these decisions anyway. It gives equal power to persons of equal authority who will legitimately disagree, and theyre going to push-pull till a diamond rules on it.
So with the community divided as it is, the mods are going to have to make the decision either way, in general, or in particular. Pick your poison.
@NautArch It certainly gets cited as the basis for praxis. When it said "no" it didn't really matter what it was, but now it sorta does. And we can revisit normal discussions too (say about workshopping threads)
The most saddening part of the current discussion, personally, is that we're still getting questions without a system statement despite the ask page now reminding askers to state it
I just noticed that our recent meta isnt actually a question.
Its just a rant.
Even with the extensive scrubbing.
I'm sure its too much work for the stack devs, but it sure would be nice if the ask page would throw a flag if you submitted a question without a system tag, something like, "You havent added a system tag, are you sure you dont need one?"
I'm 100% certain that if we actually put a little effort in, we could come up with a policy that compromises between "no guessing the system, ever" and "feel free to guess whenever you want". And with the frequency that it comes up, it definitely needs to be changed
@Medix2 Yeah, we should have probably made some note of the discussion/conclusion being "closed" (we have done that on other policy metas). But it's awkward to know when to do that, and doubly so to retroactively do it
@Someone_Evil I remember KRyan had that moment of "People will whittle down the resolve of those in favor of the current policy through constant attempts at changing it" or something similar. Meanwhile... The camps do seem legitimates quite split
@ThomasMarkov Yeah, just saw that
Though that was also the first time I'd heard "Questions where the user hasn’t given us enough information to proceed, and who never bother to come back to clarify, are by definition some of the worst content"
Agreed, though as Someone evil pointed out; it doesn't really matter as we very likely won't get the feature
At the end of the day, numerous people have been on one side from the beginning; numerous people have switched sides from where they started... At least everybody agrees that system-tag-requiring questions need system tags
Exactly, there's likely been a small change if not a net zero movement. The sides will always be split and the side on the outside of the policy will always post a question challenging them at some point.
Either we continue to deal with edge cases and debates (which isn't great either for new users to deal with), or we have a very simple requirement.
And then what to do with new questions on it is also not agreed upon... I mean, I guess it makes sense that those against the policy want to bring up arguments against it and those for the policy want to not have to constantly argue back... Though the duplicate closure of the recent questions was undone...
@Medix2 People can always try and bring it up again, but if the policy is simply "we must wait for querent to state", then the only edge cases are when it's a system agnostic question.
@NautArch But the policy is that you can always ask a per-question Meta and try to get at a consensus that might make an edge case not have that answer
Though we have no Meta on whether such per-question Metas are helpful/harmful, and asking one... I can't imagine going well
So something like "Should per-question Metas on adding in system tags be closed as duplicates of the current policy Q&A?" I'm a bit scared to even ask that ngl
There is this vaguely helpful SAC question: "If a Grave Domain cleric casts a spell that restores hit points to multiple creatures and one of those creatures has 0 hit points, does the spell restore the maximum number of hit points to all targets of the spell?"
@NautArch Another point here is that since it's two player options interacting, knowing how it will be ruled before it comes up is important. So players and DM not being clear on how much precedence to give those tweets can be a problem.
@Someone_Evil Well, giving zero precedence to them is probably the correct approach.
YOu can use them as potential guidance, but given his opposing tweet 'rulings', it really shines a big light on how questionnable it is to put too much into them.
As I usually say in comments, his tweets are only indicative as to how he'd rule on the question at the time he wrote the tweet. No more, no less.
@Medix2 Yes, but I've also learned to ignore SAC, too. There are official rulings that for me directly contradict the written rules and that I don't agree with.
But yeah, if they're in there, then it's an official ruling.
@ThomasMarkov RE: Twinned Compelled Duel. I don't think the second point is correct. The spell specifies if you cast a spell that targets a hostile creature other than the target. Since twinned spell doesn't cast a new version of the spell, and merely expands the number of targets, both creatures are "the target" and therefore casting a harmful spell on either of them is fine.
@Medix2 This is honestly a very good question. Something I have talked and thought a lot about. Unfortunately no perfect solution was reached.
I'll have to dig into my spoon drawer when I have a few to see what I can pull out of those thoughts. Unfortunately work and US elections have left me fairly silverware-less at the moment :(
I really think there is no perfect solution. Either we pick a position and have upset people. Or we don't pick a position and have upset people. All while still upsetting a new querent most likely.
The wizard casts Message and targets my druid that's currently a wolf.
Wild Shape mentions:
You can’t cast spells, and your ability to speak or take any action that requires hands is limited to the capabilities of your beast form. Transforming doesn’t break your concentration on a spell you’ve a...
@ThomasMarkov I just hear the "don't worry about old questions" thing again
I debated cleaning up numerous old tags like tool-recommendation and game-recommendation but I determined nobody thought it was worth it to make old, long-forgotten questions match current standards and practice
@ThomasMarkov I'm confused... Is that asking about putting on or taking off an amulet?
@Someone_Evil Indeed it is; split. Any pretense of consensus would seem to overlook that aspect. And it would seem to me that without consensus the term "policy" might be a mis-label
@GcL I was kinda serious about adding a response to that question from OP on the shield guardian removal command - but it also seems moot because if the amulet is on the guardian, then the command is worthless.
@NautArch Yeah. There's some confusion in the wording of the title and content of the question. I figured the gist of the query was "can a shield guardian be given it's sock and be free?"
I've used shield guardians in a magic heavy campaign. One was a puzzle. The guardian was guarding a corpse. The solution was to cast gentle repose on the corpse.
@doppelgreener I wasn't sure if you'd been privy to any mod internal discussions on that while diamonded, but thanks for the further clafirication. 👍
@ThomasMarkov The point is that this site allegedly relies on expertise. The longer I see the conversation going, the more I prefer that there not be a policy; use judgment informed by expertise. The sentiment of "we need a policy" is one to be wary of.
@NautArch I think the querent was confused about the mechanics of the amulet. They can clear that up in their post. I suggest taking it out as it's just a distraction from their main line of inquiry.
@KorvinStarmast Are you suggesting a policy of being wary of policies? /S
@KorvinStarmast I don't totally agree there. The problem is we have a lot of experts with varying knowledge. Which expert ends up getting to be 'right' here?
@NautArch We have a process; let it work. I dislike the "I need an easy button" appeal. Mind you, I have written answers and comment that advocate for both positions - I am able to understand value in either path forward, which makes me even more strongly opposed to the "I need a policy (aka bludgeon)" approach.
@GcL No, it's a Britism or an Aussie-ism that I learned years ago from a RN helicopter pilot. I just discovered that it's been around for some years and has its own wikipedia page entry.
@GcL Short answer: The oozlum is a rare bird who, when startled, will take off and fly around in ever-decreasing circles until it manages to fly up its own backside, disappearing completely ... which adds to its rarity
I thus postulate that if the shield guardian were to be given its own amulet, it would behave as would an oozlum bird does, since my brain saw a kind of infinite recursion being possible in that case. It would discover its own perfect hiding place.