The Comms Room

@Adrian Was today your last day? How was the after party?

@MilesErickson All these trees look the same.

@MichaelHampton Most rivers are wider than a Ford. Unless we're talking about like trucks or something...

@voretaq7 No, you're just lost, they are the same trees.

Incidentally, Zeke drowned.

@jscott the only solution is to burn the forest.

BTW I think we're under 200 questions in the close queue

Is there a timeout on close votes? I know, RTFMSO, but I'm tired. Or do things with just 1 close vote sit in there forever.

4:35 AM

@jscott they do decay off eventually, I don't recall the process offhand

(also if a mod says "Leave open" the aging clock starts immediately and they get booted out of the queue)

(it is documented on mSO, I just don't feel like poking the googles with a sharp stick until they bring me the answer)

@voretaq7 Oh neat. You guys and your special touch.

@jscott sometimes that's needed - I kicked a bunch of relatively good (or at least "OK") questions out of the close queue today

The close queue should really be the third queue visited -- Look at "low quality' and "first posts" first

(if someone's first question is not fantastic it's better to clean it up or leave them a few comments rather than whack 'em with a close vote less than 4 hours after they signed up :)

I don't remember seeing more that 1 or 2 in the Low quality queue since I put about 3.5K of them through.

@jscott LQ is usually less than 10

first posts is 10-20 most times I look

Oh I'm a supporter of the "kinder, gentler" SF.. But I don't make enough time to actually do useful good towards that end.

4:44 AM

@jscott doesn't take much - you can just upvote the good ones :)

(which are unfortunately usually a small proportion of what's in there so you can skip through the queue pretty quick)

I think my voting up/down ratio is way off, but I'm trying to contribute.

I'm about 10:1 (up:down)

you're about...uh.... 100:1 :P

A -1 anything on SF seems to gather additional downs more than +1s gather ups.

Ward is 7:1

The guys a machine. I can't even read them that quickly.

4:48 AM

and being perhaps the largest sample set I declare him to be the nominal "average voter" representative of overall site proportions :)

I'm about 11:1

and yeah downvotes tend to breed downvotes. I don't downvote stuff unless it's really blatantly bad

I used to be almost 5:1

(of course being a mod helps there too, because if it's blatantly bad I can just hammer it closed rather than having to beg 4 other people to join me in the firing squad)

@ChrisS it would be interesting to see my Up:Down ratio over time

Yeah; I don't mean to pat myself on the back but I think the current mod team is extremely responsive and generally personable.

@voretaq7 Mine got low when I was going for Electorate; when you start looking at everything you find a lot of crap.

4:51 AM

site-wide it looks like it averages out somewhere between 4:1 and 8:1 depending on the day

I tend to only look at things that I have to, or that interest me now

Definitely responsive. Any time I flag it seems to be handled (and I don't care about valid-vs-invalid) quite promptly.

(so ward is somewhere in the band)

@ChrisS the time I'm spending in late answers, low quality, and first posts is probably lowering my ratio a little

I rarely look at that stuff recently. I've been busy as heck with work and school.

Our average handling time is back down to 34 minutes. I want to know how the heck that's calculated as it seems to swing wildly for no reason

@ChrisS rand() % 1 year

4:57 AM

makes about as much sense as any

It's another one of those "sliding window" things too, so holidays and stuff really fuck it up (if a flag sits for 20+ hours because nobody's around, and the flag volume is low because - well - nobody's around, then the stats go all to hell)

I just watch John Carter... Man, there was a movie with potential that got completely carried away with ridiculous stunts and inexcusable abuses of physics.... Like to the point where my very non-geek wife noticed.

@ChrisS <evil>post about it on physics.SE? </evil>

@voretaq7 It's an average of over 1000 flags for the last 30 rolling days. A single holiday doesn't do all that much.

@ChrisS true, it probably shouldn't be as wide a swing as it seems to be

4:59 AM

@voretaq7 Well it started out fun; don't know if you've seen it or know the premise, but a Earth dude (John Carter) gets transported to Mars (with Oxygen).

Mars is 38% of Earth's gravity... So you could jump roughly twice as high. Walking would be difficult at first. You could run with monstrous leaps and your leg speed would quickly become an issue (like running down a hill, only much much worse)

@ChrisS YAY MAGIC

They use a technological explanation; and it's all nebulous, so I can just go with it for the sake of movie magic.

@ChrisS MAGIC. :)

But the wacky physics starts going to extremes in certain areas, while not in others. For instance, he can jump vertically 50+ feet. And he can punch someone and kill them from the hit.... All makes sense for someone that would have to be over twice as strong as the natives on account of Earth's different environment.

But when he's actually fighting people he's suddenly the same strength as everyone else.

@ChrisS . . . also gravity difference != magical fist of death

5:04 AM

Also, momentum no longer applies... like reversing directions has not inertial consequences.

@ChrisS you know all my space games are much easier when I uncheck that "Have actual inertia and shit" box in the physics menu!

@voretaq7 No, but you would expect bone and muscle densities to be 38% as compared to creatures native to Earth. So "people" that are roughly your size are actually considerably weaker than you.

@ChrisS yes, true

It's conceivable that you could punch someone in the head with the force of 2.5 normal punches and end up killing them.

but your punch would not be that much of an increase in force. Certainly more than they can put out, but it's still muscle/bone minus inertia and air resistance.

@ChrisS with well-placed blows I suppose, but not like a bunch of instant kills

I could believe knocking them down / knocking them out pretty reliably though

5:06 AM

No, he only gets this insta-kill when the guy isn't expecting it...

This is not the sort of debate/commentary I'm accustom to in late night SF chat.

probably breaking bones and incapacitating them for a good while too

Like I said, when opponents are "fighting" they're magically the same strength as John.

Shut up and bring me another Martian to punch.
FOR SCIENCE!

On the upswing, martians are pretty darn hot.

IMDB fails me... crappy pictures

5:11 AM

@ChrisS and broken image for me

ditto

so I'm just going to assume it's the chick with 3 knockers from Total Recall

@ChrisS that's not bad for a martian actually

I'd still rather some lizard lovin though

She might have been the only chick in the movie though; tons of dudes.

Martians look an awful lot like humans.

I mean sure after the deed is done she's gonna eat me, but man - SO worth it

5:12 AM

Fell into a couple classic tropes, half the aliens had similar sounding names, so I couldn't remember who was who.

The bad guys did the whole escalating thing, a lot.

Seriously; you're a bad guy cause you kill people; but as soon as you see an exception enemy warrior you want to hold on to him, put him in a situation he might escape from? Really? That sounds like a good idea??

Are the markings on the female martian's face, shoulders and chest like earth-tattoos, or some other thing?

@jscott Some sort of makeup; she's a princess

They weren't explained in the movie; I assume it's leftovers from the book

She had different make-up at different times; other presumably aristocrat had stuff going on too

The graphics and imagery were really excellent. The plot wasn't too bad other than the tropes. I liked the movie overall, but would have loved it if they had cut the dumb-badguy tropes and the wonky physics.

Also, it was 2 hours and 13 minutes long. Whoever made that decision: thank you for taking the time to make a well paced and full story.

I can't stand when a 87 minute movie comes out and it's done before it started.

Does it seem odd that answers in the Late Answer queue includes closed questions?

@jscott a little, but there may be closed questions with good answers on them that also have shitty late answers

That's a recent change... Something to the effect of reviewing them to catch mistakes. I don't really understand it

5:22 AM

If you see shitty questions that should have been deleted flag 'em

Oh I'm an idiot. I didn't realize I could up/down vote on answers of a closed question.

@ChrisS oh yeah they're doing that in a couple of queues now I think - vetted/reviewed stuff gets re-injected to catch people who are just using a drinking bird to badge-hunt

I haven't had a drinking bird in some time. I should get one again.

I think I'm done for the night. Time to catch up on some of that sleep debt.