Tavern on the Meta

Monica Cellio

7:00 PM

@enderland if they're brand new they can't on most sites, even if they were aware, even if they wanted to.

enderland

@NobodyNada sure. questions which get +2 or higher automatically get promoted to SO, or something

Steven Vascellaro

@hairboat Wasn't this tried already?

canon

@enderland lol

hairboat

ok, folks... That just about does it for time today. Thanks everyone for coming! If you have feedback on the format, please leave it on the meta post. It wasn’t a huge amount of time, but we’re trying to keep these short and lightweight so we can do them more often, since it’s important that we get this time to talk to each other directly. Next one in two weeks - watch meta for details. Thanks for town-hall-chatting, y’all!

Shog9

@MonicaCellio something like this maybe

Martin James

7:00 PM

Thks, >gone<

Bhargav Rao

@StevenVascellaro yep, there was an Area51 proposal as well, which didn't find much support.

Monica Cellio

@Vogel612'sShadow dunno, but I think an "incubator" site with migration to SO as the goal is different from "SO for people who are afraid of SO".

Jon Ericson

Also:

267

Q: Can we make this meta site work for mentoring?

Last month Shog9 proposed Stack Overflow Academy on Area 51. I was skeptical and thought it was sort of a joke. The idea that anyone would go to yet another Q&A site in order to a ask a question on Stack Overflow seemed crazy. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked the proposal. Over t...

Monica Cellio

@Shog9 yeah, but without the management problems and with better tooling. :-)

Shog9

@MonicaCellio exactly - able to scale

hairboat

7:02 PM

Town Hall #4 - 26 July 2017

32 mins ago, 30 minutes total – 199 messages, 21 users, 55 stars

Bookmarked 9 secs ago by hairboat

3

Shog9

I've been keeping half an eye on Interpersonal Skills during the past week; something that really strikes me as interesting with Channels is that it might make a much better test-bed for weird-ass ideas like that site, like mentoring, like "product recs"... Topics that are by necessity moderation-heavy but simultaneously start out without any moderators.

TylerH

@Shog9 wait, is there a new site called Interpersonal Skills?

Monica Cellio

@Shog9 would that be different than keeping a site in private beta for longer?

Mad Scientist

@Shog9 I almost asked during the town hall if SE considered Channels as a base for implementing Area 52

TylerH

heh

Vogel612's Shadow

7:07 PM

@Shog9 the question is ... how do you transfer the moderation duties? And in what capacity is that "without moderators" a problem?

and why would a beta-site start as a subsite of SO?

Monica Cellio

I think sometimes it would be ok to let a private beta run a lot longer than 2-3 weeks, for odd-concept sites.

2

enderland

@TylerH they seem to have a lot of drama

Monica Cellio

No reason you can't appoint some pro-tem mods just for the private-beta part, if you want. It doesn't all have to fall on CMs.

TylerH

@enderland ironic, perhaps

Travis J

@ShadowWizard - Did you want my input on something? I didn't fully understand the reference from the ping (I realize it was a while ago though)

Anthony Pham

7:08 PM

@MonicaCellio Could you expand on odd-concept sites?>

Shog9

@Vogel612'sShadow for a site with a well-defined technical topic, it's rarely ever a problem. For a site without a well-defined technical topic, it's almost always a problem.

Monica Cellio

@AnthonyPham I was responding to Shog's "weird-ass ideas". Whatever SE considers weird-ass -- instead of saying "your three weeks are up; time to set you loose on the Internet at large", if a site needs more time for that initial incubation, why not give it to them?

Anthony Pham

That is justifiable. But for how much longer? Anime and Manga, though in public beta and not exactly weird, are stuck in public while having two moderator elections.

Shog9

Strictly-speaking, A&M is graduated, we just can't get a design :-/

Anthony Pham

Okay that makes more sense but the question still stands. Extra incubation to see if the site veers or stay on path is fine but too much and it will start to die like any beta site right after private.

rene

7:13 PM

@Shog9 applying that to the mentoring discussion: How would you have started that channel then? With just the topic: We would like to try mentoring, how would that work? Instead of the, by the looks of it, now 80% ready plan where most of the brain storming took place in the SE bunker?

Shog9

@MonicaCellio private beta is a very artificial state for a site; it gives a skewed impression of the challenges, traffic, topics that will arise.

Monica Cellio

@AnthonyPham I meant private -> early public beta, not public -> graduated.

This is for the "does this even work?" phase of site development.

Anthony Pham

Oh that phase. That is always the weirdest and most argumentative phase to be in.

Shog9

@rene I wouldn't describe this as anywhere near 80% ready

rene

It has that feeling ... to me ...

Monica Cellio

7:15 PM

@Shog9 private shouldn't be permanent or anything, but I'm wondering if IPS could have done with another week or two? Dunno, just wondering out loud.

Travis J

Mentoring? Is that under consideration as a feature?

bluefeet

@TravisJ see this

rene

@TravisJ yes, we just signed you up.

Jon Ericson

@rene Maybe 80% of the first tentative step was planned before taking it to meta. I guess we weren't clear this isn't anything like the longterm solution.

Travis J

Oh, haven't seen that post yet, reading

Shog9

7:18 PM

consider that the idea has essentially three critical pieces:
1) volunteer mentors
2) a venue (chatroom) that would accommodate mentors and new users
3) a means of sending new askers to #2

We're currently on our way to having... Uh, #1

Anthony Pham

Just a question that's been nagging at me: how do we get new users to understand how to the site works more efficiently and importantly, at a faster rate? These new users who are complaining about the site clearly aren't being informed to the minimum we need them to be

Jon Ericson

Chat is just a handy tool we already have to press into service. We'll probably need to invent a screwdriver to replace that hammer at some point.

Shog9

So, we have an idea, and maybe some people interested in that idea. I'd put it at 30% at best.

Jon Ericson

@AnthonyPham That's been nagging me too. The ask page is an obvious place to start.

Travis J

@rene I guess I can mentor you, but only if we are animated characters on SO TV.

Petter Friberg

7:20 PM

on area51 has there ever been a site request for "Home work", my vague idea is to redirect traffic from other sites, hence a site you can ask your about your home work and the answer is not a code dumb or the solution but a mentoring solution. The benefit is remove that from SO (and other sites) and give a nice first user impressive

Anthony Pham

@JonEricson Sorry for being a little laggy but I assume you mean asking that on an actual post?

Shog9

@PetterFriberg it's been suggested. And discussed quite a bit.

The core issue is that a good homework question, one asking for guidance on working through the problem, is also a pretty decent question for SO

rene

@TravisJ let's pitch it on MSO to get funds for an episode 0 ...

Shog9

Meanwhile the ones that are irritating everyone are the ones that just want a solution, ideally one that compiles and hasn't already been submitted by another student, and can be deleted after being copied so's not to clue in the professor

...and as such, a bad fit for a mentoring site

Petter Friberg

Where should I search for this discussion? on SO meta I only find SO related discussions

Jon Ericson

7:22 PM

@AnthonyPham One thing we've considered is to build a more guided path for asking a question. (Not sure I understand your question.)

Travis J

@rene yes! :D

user160606

Not really sure if this is the right place to ask this, but...

πάντα ῥεῖ

@Shog9 May be the best way to mentor people is to teach them how to google successfully and ask the right questions (either at google or Stack Overflow). They aren't aware of their primary obstacles and ask for ready made solutions for their final goals. There's a huge gap in between, that needs to be filled up with basic knowledge.

Shog9

250

Q: The homework tag is now officially deprecated

Homework is no longer a tag on Stack Overflow. Keeping this post for historical reference. --Shog9 The result of a rather lengthy discussion concludes with the homework tag needing to go away on Stack Overflow. As far as tag burninations go, this is quite large, with over 20,000 questio...

support tags clean-up homework

86

Q: Should I send students to Stack Overflow?

I teach an introductory course in which the focus is on learning how the machine works: memory, registers, caches, assembly code, and all that. But it is also the first course in which C is used, and my students do some programming projects that are moderately ambitious for beginning C programme...

support faq homework

user160606

The Stack Exchange software puts a lot of emphasis on question quality; what about answer quality?

Shog9

7:23 PM

@PetterFriberg oh, which site were you interested in?

DukeZhou

I think a persistent link in the sidebar on each forum to the guidelines for that particular forum would be enormously helpful to new users. (Links to that info comes up when you create a new question, but we're in an attention deficit era, and people may not always notice it...)

user160606

I got a really good answer from Shog about a closing feature for answers

user160606

8

A: Can post notices on the hard-science tag actually do something?

This is one of those areas where a topic breaks the model a bit. For questions, we have essentially two axes for voting: Closing a question - possible even if highly upvoted - makes it eligible for deletion and prevents answers from being posted, providing strong encouragement for improvemen...

Travis J

There is obviously a flaw in the whole "force them to research" approach, as it hasn't worked for years. We still get very basic questions.

rene

@Hamlet that is similar

Anthony Pham

7:24 PM

@JonEricson You said the ask page is a place to start. You mean that it should be made clearer how to ask or I should ask a question about my original question?

Travis J

> The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

user160606

But, I've been participating in the Interpersonal SE informally, and the biggest problem they have is no one knows how to write a good experience-based answer.

Travis J

(okay, not technically, but hopefully the point comes across)

user0042

Hi everyone!

user160606

Sorry if this is off-topic, but it would be nice to get some thoughts on it.

Shog9

7:25 PM

@TravisJ like how folks keep posting that quote and expecting others to see themselves in it?

Jon Ericson

@AnthonyPham Oh. I mean we haven't touched the ask page in years and it's due for an overhaul. We also know a lot more about what a good question looks like since when the page was built.

@Hamlet Parenting has the trouble too. It's a lot harder to write a good answer there than on SO, in my experience.

user160606

@JonEricson yeah. With these subjective sites, they get good questions, that's not the problem.

Vogel612's Shadow

@JonEricson but doing so usually yields a significantly larger amount of rep

user160606

The problem is that there needs to be rules about writing a good answer.

Travis J

@Shog9 I wasn't really expecting anyone to place themselves there, but instead to place the approach there - namely the one previously referenced (and the issue that you reference with your meta links above).

Shog9

7:27 PM

Well, to be fair, they also get terrible questions. But the terrible answers are more damaging.

user160606

There's a close feature for questions, so people talk about when questions should be closed. But there's no close feature for answers.

Travis J

In my opinion though, the overall question quality of new questions as SO has improved since Documentation was launched.

user0042

I agree with @πάντα. I've seen a lot of people who ask about their primary homework tasks, describe those in detail, but end up asking to fix a simple compiler or linker error. I heavily doubt these kind of questions will be useful to build a FAQ like repository or for future research.

DukeZhou

Good answers on subjective subjects should be well reasoned and, where appropriate, link to corroborating data

Jon Ericson

@Vogel612'sShadow Parenting rep + $2.50 buys you a cup of coffee. ;-)

user160606

7:28 PM

The other problem is that there isn't a good writeup of how to write an experience-based answer

Anthony Pham

That's a really expensive cup of coffee

Vogel612's Shadow

and Code Review rep + $2.50 also does ;-)

DukeZhou

imo, the problem is sometimes with the questioner being too inexperienced to recognize a legitimate answer that conflicts with their thesis

Vogel612's Shadow

that's quite an expensive coffee though...

user160606

I had to write this

user160606

7:28 PM

3

A: Why doesn't this site have a back it up rule?

The problem that this site currently has is that the answers are mostly suggestions. What this means is that answers will simply suggest suggestions to the problem, but there is no way for anyone reading the answer to know if the suggestion will work unless they actually try it. This leads to pro...

user160606

@JonEricson

Shog9

This is why I roast my own coffee - my reputation goes further that way.

Jon Ericson

@AnthonyPham You aren't drinking very good coffee. ;-)

Anthony Pham

I think that an experience based answer blog post would really help users on all sorts of sites

πάντα ῥεῖ

@user0042 It's mainly to close that stuff using dupes IMO.

Petter Friberg

7:29 PM

@Shog9 meeh those I have seen but they are SO related, my core idea (but this is vague) is that we need to remove them from SO and also other sites (matlab ecc), they create problem and frustration, mostly dups, badly formatted and code request --> bad OP experience, bad Power User experience and moderation work. My core idea is that you should not presume that users can ask professor and the correct answer to these are not the solution, but how you should work to find the solution.

canon

@JonEricson with $2.50 and enough SO rep, you get coffee and a mug

Petter Friberg

Do you know of any area51 discussion?

Anthony Pham

@JonEricson I drink authentic iced coffee brewed on small stores in Vietnam...

Shog9

@PetterFriberg if you haven't read the discussions on Math, you have no idea what a gate to hell you propose to open there

Anthony Pham

@PetterFriberg What do you mean by "them"

Shog9

7:30 PM

Each community has to come to an agreement over this on its own, I'm afraid

user160606

The strange thing about Interpersonal Skills was that there were a ton of power users who should know how experience-based answers work, yet who were unable to explain any of this to the other members of the site.

Jon Ericson

@AnthonyPham Ok. You are probably drinking very good coffee. [Skipping the discussion on global economics. ;-) ]

Petter Friberg

in fact I have no idea, trying to understand this concept

Vogel612's Shadow

@Hamlet you should check out the four stages of mastery. These people are on stage 3

that "explain it to people" is stage 4

Shog9

Sugar is what makes those expensive coffees so expensive. The more syrup you add, the more expensive they get.

Petter Friberg

7:31 PM

@AnthonyPham Home work question

DukeZhou

Is that anything like the three stages of tequila?

πάντα ῥεῖ

@Shog9 This is why I'm growing my weed myself :-P ...

Vogel612's Shadow

@DukeZhou gold, silver and sunrise

user160606

@Vogel612'sShadow but the site has plenty of moderators/power users. Someone should know how to explain it.

Shog9

@πάνταῥεῖ not, fewer seeds?

DukeZhou

7:32 PM

"I'm rich, I'm good looking, I'm invisible"

Vogel612's Shadow

@Hamlet someone should != there is

Monica Cellio

@Hamlet "unable to" is a strong statement. AFAIK the only evidence you have is "haven't done so (to my own personal standards, which might be different from yours)".

Petter Friberg

@πάνταῥεῖ ooh Hi!

user160606

@MonicaCellio your answers on the site are really good.

DukeZhou

(or some variation-- usually "I'm bulletproof" is inserted before "I'm invisible)

user160606

7:33 PM

@MonicaCellio what I meant by "unable to" is that no one had even written an meta answer explaining how to write a good answer. Not a single person.

Monica Cellio

@Hamlet I've tried to provide a good example. No I haven't written a tutorial on meta, but that doesn't mean nobody can. It means that's not where I'm spending my time, and that's probably true of other people who write good answers, too.

user160606

@MonicaCellio I'm not blaming you for not writing a tutorial.

user160606

But if no one is thinking about this, leaving comments, educating people who aren't writing not so great answers...

Shog9

@AnthonyPham ...that's supposed to be what happens in the chatroom created for each new site...

Monica Cellio

@Hamlet yeah, and you're saying "unable to" instead of "hasn't done". Do you see how that could be off-putting?

πάντα ῥεῖ

7:34 PM

@Shog9 @Petter TBH I'm mostly buying scions, the biggest one I can get. Not so much about the strain actually.

user160606

@MonicaCellio fair enough, I'm sorry.

Anthony Pham

@Shog9 I just woke up... I feel really stupid now...

Shog9

Drink some more good coffee :)

user160606

@Shog9 @JonEricson I guess I'm a little worried because Stack Exchange keeps launching sites on area51 that don't make the internet a better place.

Shog9

such as...?

Vogel612's Shadow

7:36 PM

@Hamlet wow ... you're getting only deeper into areas where you're conflating your opinion with what's closer to facts

Monica Cellio

@Hamlet thanks. It's really not about me but the community in general. We want those folks to step up; honey'll work better than vinegar.

user160606

@Vogel612'sShadow no I'm not. There are too many sites that don't follow any sort of back it up rule. It's not an opinion to say that answers should back up their claims.

Shog9

I mean... Not gonna lie: IPS is a long-shot. But it's pretty rare that we launch a site like IPS.

Jon Ericson

@Hamlet The internet can never have too many CMS and cryptocurrency sites. ;-)

Petter Friberg

@πάνταῥεῖ yeah my vauge idea is something similar, homework question is a special question that actually those not fit SO (or other similar sites) since the correct answer is not the a code dump of the solution. I guess you know well what your reaction on SO is to the "Need help with my homework?" is on SO.

Shog9

7:37 PM

And, hey, sometimes you get a Workplace site, or a Worldbuilding site.

user160606

@Shog9 I don't like to call out specific names, but History is a good example.

Shog9

...ok, so clearly the real solution here isn't "mentoring" it's "launch squishy sites only if the name begins with 'W'"

user160606

@Shog9 yeah, those two sites are pretty good.

Jon Ericson

@Hamlet And both were sites I assumed would fail miserably.

πάντα ῥεῖ

@Shog9 dls-store.com/…

Shog9

7:39 PM

@Hamlet History is... 5 years old?

Jon Ericson

@Hamlet Do you have a few examples where the answers make the internet worse?

Petter Friberg

@πάνταῥεῖ I often see, "Do your own homework" comment, but that's actually not the response I would give to my kids when they ask for help and they are far more lazy then the ones asking SO, since they ask me.

user160606

@JonEricson yeah, hold on.

πάντα ῥεῖ

@Petter Well, I'm proven not to be "nice" :-P

Jon Ericson

@Hamlet Or maybe post on their meta.

rene

7:40 PM

@πάνταῥεῖ Ah, you're learning ;)

Monica Cellio

@Hamlet "back it up" takes different forms on different sites, but there should always be something. On SO "does it compile and run" can suffice (not always); Skeptics requires citations. Most of my sites expect at least one of citations, solid reasoning (starting from agreed-upon axioms), or direct personal experience. The weightings among those vary somewhat.

Petter Friberg

@πάνταῥεῖ You are, it's just that you get frustrated by all the c**p, I need to work some on my idea, I have no real clue how all this area51 stuff work yet.

DukeZhou

When people ask me to "do their homework", I take advantage of the opportunity by subjecting them to more information than they needed by several factors ;) I love such opportunities!

Anthony Pham

I just prefer that if a question is a homework question yet is actually a well-formed and appropriate for the site that the answerer would give hints rather than an actual answer to lead the OP in the right direction.

πάντα ῥεῖ

@rene Not sure. There's a way to get over with more sarcasm, but I'm not that sure that's actually "nicer" in nature

user160606

7:42 PM

@JonEricson here's one from the front page

user160606

45

Q: Were Hitler's anti-Jewish sentiments known at all to those who voted him to power in 1933?

This is partially related to the issue that dislike of certain groups of individuals had long roots in Europe (such as exemplified by this article). Anyway, I was looking at this other question which asks how Hitler could possibly have had his own militia already in 1923. That other question ha...

nazi-germany germany hitler

Petter Friberg

@DukeZhou I would just like a place where they could ask this or similar and the upvote answer is not the solution but the process of how to solve the problem. One of the key factor to get people to contribute would be to remove it from other sites.

Anthony Pham

I see this a lot in Mathematics and it seems quite effective

user160606

The top voted answer is just a bunch of links to Wikipedia.

user160606

@JonEricson it's been raised several times.

πάντα ῥεῖ

7:43 PM

@Hamlet Awww! No please!

rene

@πάνταῥεῖ please no, not even moar sarcasm ...

user160606

I'm trying to find one from the philosophy stack exchange that I found through googling.

user160606

@MonicaCellio I agree.

DukeZhou

On that history question, in fairness, Denis de Bernardy does provide context to those links

Anthony Pham

The validity of Wikipedia does vary though it usually is trusted. If it's wrong, it would be blasted by other users

DukeZhou

7:45 PM

And I see part of Stack's role as a watchdog for bad information in Wikipedia

πάντα ῥεῖ

Area51 proposal: Effective search engine queries.

Monica Cellio

IPS has, from what I've seen (I haven't read nearly everything), a tendency toward speculation and personal opinion sans support. Some of that's garbage, but some could be fixed if the person would actually insert his reasoning. That might be neither sources nor personal experience, but could still be a valid answer. I'd like to see that be part of the back-it-up discussion but I haven't had time to do more than drop this comment in here to you.

Jon Ericson

@Hamlet Well, it's clearly more than just a bunch of links. Obviously it would be nicer if the answer linked to primary or secondary sources, but it's not a scholarly paper.

Feeds

Shog9 has added an event to this room's schedule.

πάντα ῥεῖ

Lemme refine: Search Engine Usage.

user160606

7:48 PM

@JonEricson but as a reader without detailed knowledge of history, how can I tell that the answer is true/valid?

user160606

i.e. I'm just googling and I want an answer.

user160606

Or if I'm doing research for a paper, what is there in the answer that would help me with my research?

user160606

In other words, how does that question/answer make the internet a better place?

Bart

I go away for a couple of hours and this place has gone all serious? All I can say is ... brown.

Petter Friberg

@πάνταῥεῖ The core problem is that often they do not know how to start, lets do: "Please halp me with homework, tanks in advantage" and you will be one of the core contributore's, helping out the kids.

πάντα ῥεῖ

7:50 PM

BTW, that's not new with the Interwebz age. The real value of mentoring and teaching always was to give the students a methodology at hand to enable them finding the relevant information at the publc library.

DukeZhou

Ideally, the sources on wikipedia have citations, which lead to primary sources

Wikipedia is an excellent starting point when the articles have citations

Shadow Wizard

@SagarV now? 10:50 PM

Petter Friberg

Does anyone have any area51 discussion about home work site?

That's my first question on @πάνταῥεῖ new site

πάντα ῥεῖ

@PetterFriberg I always taught my daughter how to help her out herself. Teaching to ask the right questions at the right time is the foremost goal.

DukeZhou

I find wikipedia useful on AI--with a large number of questions I field, it's obvious the questioner is unfamiliar with basic concepts, so I continually link to wikis for Turing Machine, Bounded Rationality, Rational Agent, etc. to provide them a primer.

Shadow Wizard

7:52 PM

@Shog9 oh. What make Russian SO so special it gets video chats?

Petter Friberg

@πάνταῥεῖ I actually have no doubt you would be great, you just need the correct context!

Jon Ericson

@Hamlet You might be interested in:

8

A: How do I write a good answer to a question?

The core criteria for writing answers on the Stack Exchange model, not only on this site but across the entire network, is one of usefulness; this can be reflected simply by hovering over the vote buttons on the side of every post: Usefulness, unfortunately, is highly subjective. Unlike our p...

Shog9

Looks like you annoyed a mod, @bwDraco

Shadow Wizard

?

bwDraco

Where?

user160606

7:54 PM

@JonEricson that's fantastic.

Shog9

@ShadowWizard Russian Nick

DukeZhou

@JonEricson Usefulness is key. Thanks for injecting that

user160606

But the problem is people keep upvoting things that aren't useful.

bwDraco

Hmm. That's probably a mistake.

πάντα ῥεῖ

@PetterFriberg Good point. They start without context and are mostly confused.

Shadow Wizard

7:54 PM

@Shog9 oh, it was his own initiative?

Shog9

Yes

Bart

@Shog9 is Russian Nick, just Nick with a bottle of his favourite drink next to him?

Shadow Wizard

Nice... and it didn't spread to other sites yet? @Shog

user160606

So "back it up" can't be enforced with votes. It's a minimum standard. answers that don't meet the minimum standard should be deleted. But there's no good tool to do that yet.

Shadow Wizard

@Bart Hot Chocolate?

bwDraco

7:55 PM

Any context as to what happened?

Bart

Sure, with marshmallows.

Shog9

@ShadowWizard different CMs have different styles

Anthony Pham

@Hamlet The clearest option I see is that to flag the answer

Shadow Wizard

@bwDraco All I see is one of your messages above deleted. Did you delete it?

bwDraco

Can you point to the message just after that?

Shog9

7:56 PM

@bwDraco not at hand

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 and your style doesn't include video chats unless Russian Nick asked you to replace him? ;)

Anthony Pham

@ShadowWizard I believe that was him asking why he got a chat ban due to a flag (that's from memory)

Jon Ericson

@Hamlet That certainly is a problem. Worse, sometimes the OP accepts a terrible answer:

85

Q: Can we exempt downvoted accepted answers from getting the top spot?

Similar to this request but narrower, I'm suggesting we make a particular exception for downvoted accepted answers (those with score less than zero, or some other threshold like -3), so that they stay in the normal sort order and don't jump to the top. The accepted answer on this question on bh....

feature-request status-declined down-votes accepted-answer

bwDraco

in Charcoal HQ on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, 5 hours ago, by Thomas Ward

hate trying to use chat on my phone. accidentally sniped @bwDraco. Sorry about that, I've fixed that issue.

Monica Cellio

@Hamlet I wrote a somewhat-related post on Writers (not the whole "how to do research" topic, which is broad, but a kind of "sources 101").

bwDraco

7:57 PM

That was probably an error on his part.

Thanks for confirming it.

user160606

@JonEricson so I guess I'm trying to advocate for feature that can "close answers".

Shog9

@ShadowWizard anyone who's ever spoken to me in person knows better than to do it too regularly ;-p

user0042

Hot Chocolate - You sexy thing 1975

►

user160606

@MonicaCellio I've written stuff like this for literature.

Jon Ericson

@AnthonyPham As a moderator, I'm very reluctant to delete answers that are earnest, but wrong. Malicious and wrong is a whole nother ball of wax.

Shadow Wizard

7:58 PM

@Shog9 hehe... makes sense. Anyone around here other than SE staff ever talked to you in person?

user160606

@JonEricson but answers that aren't useful, e.g. an answer that doesn't back up any of it's claims...

Shadow Wizard

@user0042 lol took you a while :D

Monica Cellio

@Hamlet yeah, it's pretty hard in practice to get answers that violate a site's rules, like "back it up", deleted as non-answers. Especially if they've been upvoted (so high-rep users can't vote to delete).

Shog9

@ShadowWizard anyone who doesn't get paid to, you mean?

Monica Cellio

It shouldn't all have to come down to moderators, but how do we empower the community?

Jon Ericson

7:59 PM

@Hamlet I guess it depends on how much you trust readers to do their own research. Maybe I trust them too much.

user160606

those should be deleted. But there's no tooling that makes that intuitive. It there was a way for a community to deal with answers that don't back it up.

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 yup

Monica Cellio

Or rather, the small subset of the community that cares?

Town Hall #4 - 26 July 2017

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