Tavern on the Meta

Mazura

00:21

1997 called. They want their underlined links back.

user393596

01:24

@JonEricson @Catija Looks like I was suspended for a year over at Interpersonal Skills IPS SE. I already used the Contact US form but wanted to inform you guys too. My participation there has been respectful and also minimal -- no drama. I think it's unfair to let aggressive, bully moderators do what they want and suspend people they don't like. That sets a bad precedent for an already-controversial place to be to post and answer questions. Would you guys please have a look into this?

user393596

Thanks

user393596

@adamlear looping you in on this too ...

Adam Lear

I don't get involved in suspension reviews, sorry

user393596

ok, no worries

ArtOfCode

@JalapenoNachos Use the contact form to get this looked at - it's likely to get lost in chat.

user393596

01:36

@ArtOfCode ok, thanks

ArtOfCode

That said

@JalapenoNachos Drama wouldn't have been the cause of this. You were suspended "for voting irregularities", which means the moderators saw evidence that you were involved in some sort of voting fraud. You don't have to have been rude to people to get suspended for that.

user393596

@ArtOfCode I didn't vote irregularly -- my last activity there, and I haven't participated there in a while, was posting an answer on Meta, agreeing with Tim Post and the Company's decision to remove IPS from the HNQ, and I cited professional image of Stack Overflow as the main reason. I feel a moderator didn't like my answer, and chose any reason to suspend me for a year. That's aggressive, given that my participation there has been otherwise minimal.

user393596

(you can see my answer, if you have enough rep there ... )

ArtOfCode

@JalapenoNachos You're unlikely to have been suspended for meta participation - very minimal moderation happens on meta. What I suspect has happened is that the moderator tools showed abnormal voting activity on your main-site account (like artificially inflated upvotes on your posts, or targeted downvotes, etc etc), and the moderators responded to that.

As you've figured out, the best way to get that resolved if the tools are wrong is to contact the SE team

user393596

@artofcode I haven't voted much at all over there ... once or twice.

user393596

01:44

@ArtOfCode and it's troubling that such a temper tantrum by a moderator can be so easily covered up

ArtOfCode

@JalapenoNachos You can check that if you can't recall - there's data on how much you've voted on your profile:

user393596

right, so I voted once this week ...

user393596

if those are my stats

ArtOfCode

Aye, and 43 times overall.

user393596

yeah, that's not much, right?

user393596

01:46

I dunno

user393596

I didn't target anyone

user393596

I honestly think it's my Meta answer agreeing with Tim that set off a moderator.

ArtOfCode

Here we go, took me a moment to find it

user393596

yes

user393596

that's my answer

Rob

01:48

@JalapenoNachos What makes you think it can be covered up? You've got access to chat here, you're able to reply to the mod message you received (which all mods on that site see), and you're able to contact the company directly. Perhaps you should just wait a little bit to hear a response from the CMs?

user393596

and I stuck by it, because I believe in it

ArtOfCode

Oh whoops, I pulled your voting stats from Meta not IPS main. Here they are

Rob

Coming here and accusing moderators of bullying and targeting you is bad taste

ArtOfCode

user393596

@ArtOfCode right, 42 a month, 4 this week ...

user393596

01:49

hardly many votes at all -- and again, I have not targeted anyone either

user393596

@Rob ok, good to know

user393596

@Rob I didn't reply to that mod message, I forgot that message would go to all

user393596

maybe I'll jsut wait for the staff to return my message

ArtOfCode

Interesting. That answer was deleted after you were suspended. I'm not sure whether that indicates anything, but I'd assume what happened is that it was deleted as a result of your suspension, rather than being the catalyst for it

But aye, speculation probably isn't useful. The team will be able to answer what happened here.

user393596

@ArtOfCode it's because you're a fair moderator.

user393596

01:51

@ArtOfCode you're a seasoned moderator, I don't doubt your judgments.

user393596

I've said what I've had to here in chat -- thanks for listening.

ArtOfCode

No worries

user393596

Talk later - thanks so much.

Aibobot

02:55

ahh, tuesdays. The second worst kind of monday

Somewhat

03:39

NO GOOD MORNING

ah right, it's not caps day anymore...

Journeyman Geek

GOOD MORNING

rene

04:08

Morning! I'm in a rush, I shouldn't be here ...

That Low Quality content on MSE. Can't we Q-ban them ... ?

Journeyman Geek

@rene looks like the queue is clear

rene

04:46

delv-pls 20K logarithm meta.stackexchange.com/questions/317157/… /cc @Bart @JourneymanGeek @ShadowWizard @Glorfindel

delv-pls 20K frontend meta.stackexchange.com/questions/317158/… /cc @Bart @JourneymanGeek @ShadowWizard @Glorfindel

Aibobot

delvoted both already ;p

Tinkeringbell

05:30

@ArtOfCode :D nice!

Magisch

06:37

The official response is coming on american tuesday then, it seems

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Yep, I hope so ;)

It's probably hard enough to make it Wednesday :P

Journeyman Geek

06:52

I can imagine

Mithrandir

→ 9 messages moved to Chimney

Somewhat

is it still small caps day?

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell I imagine the complete silence until then is calculated in an "let's try not to make it worse" way

Aibobot

07:13

@Magisch I seriously hope so ;)

Magisch

@Aibobot optimism! \o/

Aibobot

and TBH, I think its better they take their time and get this right for the long term

@Magisch well, kinda

At best, its probably a start?

but I don't see any other company having the potential to actually come out of this with minimal damage

(SE could)

Magisch

long term will show that

Aibobot

@Magisch I could be delusional ;p

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch TBH, we've been met with anything but complete silence? I mean, we've had two replies to our meta, Adam apologizing profusely in comments there...

Aibobot

07:16

@Tinkeringbell well...

there's the damage control

and there's the damage prevention

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell There's still no official writeup of the thing, and outside of a meta post soliciting feedback there hasn't been much activity. Adam apologizing in the comments is very nice but also kinda inofficial

Aibobot

@Magisch but acting hastily in good intent is one of the things that got us into this mess.

Magisch

point

Aibobot

I mean, it surfaced broader issues

but quite literally it was something doing what he felt was the right thing at the time

I'm not mad at Adam or even Shane

Magisch

iirc, they have confirmed that they still think the initial action was the right decision now

> That said, 24-48 hours later, we still think it was the right call.

Aibobot

07:20

@Magisch well, if someone had gone into IPS meta, talked about the issues, and went "lets try removing the site from HNQ until early next year - folks have been complaining and we could put in some work"

it would have been different

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch I don't really expect them to say otherwise, do you? 'Yeah, we removed you from HNQ and that was a bad idea but you're going to stay off anyways' will float much less than 'we did this, and we're still supportive of that action, even if we went about it the wrong way'

Magisch

I was hoping for "We realized this was done too hastily so we've reverted it and will have a process involving feedback on if we reinstate it"

but Cat already said that's not happening so we gotta deal

Aibobot

@Magisch I think (and I'm sorry to say this) that the lack of communication with the community as a whole's bigger than just IPS

Magisch

ya, but eating the crow (reverting the change for now) would be a show of good faith that the communication disaster was taken seriously enough

Aibobot

@Magisch and probably cause even more trouble

The smart thing here would be to actually help the site work through the issues that led us to this mess actively

Magisch

07:28

I saw this in the frame that I have when I make bad decisions on my minecraft server

say i banned someone I suspected of being a griefer without looking at evidence (as I have)

I'd eat the crow (unban them) and then re-examine if I need to re-ban them later.

Even if it ends up being just symbolic, a definitive acknowledgement of "ok, that's not how we do things here" is very powerful

Aibobot

@Magisch well I don't think this is totally due to twitter

and ugh, there's probably the whole "we also need to protect our people" side of things

Magisch

sure, but the reality is secondary to perceptions here

Aibobot

If they undid it, Adam's probably going to be the "bad guy" for a lot of folks

@Magisch eh, its entirely about perceptions

Magisch

in my example I might have a very informed guess that player is bad, but that doesn't mean I can just let the optics of being trigger happy with the ban hammer sit

Somewhat

hypothetical case: when SE agreed to unban, then the next day another "interesting" question got into HNQ, then "another side of SE" was surprised. Again.

Magisch

07:33

i.E it doesn't really matter what action I take in the end, what matters more is how it looks to my users

then again, these are my 2c. Maybe PR doesn't work like this on SE's scale

Somewhat

07:50

Meh, just remove the whole HNQ from all sites for temporary then

Tinkeringbell

08:19

@Magisch Sure, but who are your users in this case? The tweet that started this was made by someone that apparently also uses SO ;) So, putting IPS back in HNQ... how would it look to the part of the users that are glad they don't see our question titles on SO anymore?

There's never one side to these kinds of things.

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell my users in that case are those who can use proper feedback channels and not resort to namecalling

idk

Somewhat

But you know well that using proper feedback channels didn't work well, right?

Magisch

That's a failing of the company

Aibobot

@Somewhat that's a core issue we'd like addressed

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch And then you're at the point where you have to ask what is a proper feedback channel. It has been pointed out a few times, but there's lots of people that just stumble upon SO when googling solutions for everyworkday problems. Are those people likely to go 'oh, I should go meta?'... If you're lucky, they file their complaint via 'contact us'. If you're not, they see SO/SE has a Twitter account at which they can be contacted, and they go for that..

Magisch

08:27

if I was at SE I'd be deathly afraid what happens when people actually take this to heart

think one twitter storm is bad? try one every day

@Tinkeringbell might be time to retire that twitter account then. Sorry I just don't think twitter can work as a serious feedback channel

It's the internet equivalent of canvassing in the town square

Tinkeringbell

Before I cleaned up my Twitter account and changed my handle there to use it for SE, it was in my own name. The only few tweets that were there were all made to customer support accounts of various companies, mainly to the Dutch Railways (NS).

Twitter *can* work as a means of customer support, but then you need a team (just like in a call center) that picks up those tweets and handles them. And handles them all, not just one seemingly randomly.

The problem here is that the SO/SE Twitter accounts right now aren't seen as such, not by the users here, and it doesn't look to me like they're used like that by SE either...

Somewhat

The difference is, you don't need 50 rep to ~~comment~~ directly tweet at SE

Magisch

SE shouldn't feed the no nuance outrage machine that is twitter. Tweets shouldn't even be dignified with acknowledgements or comments. I hate how the modern internet culture has come to rely on public outrage or bad PR to resolve everything

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Perhaps... Yet when I look at example ns_online on Twitter, there's surprisingly little 'chiming in'. It doesn't feel like a town square, more like a place where you drop your tweet and then wait until someone gets to it... Kinda like phoning them but without the need to hold a phone to your ear, freeing up your hands to do something else in the mean time.

Magisch

I'd go as far as to say twitter and other platforms like it are a hazard to modern democracy and need to be stamped out

This whole social media outrage culture is making us less empathic, less knowledgeable and more easily manipulateable.

Tinkeringbell

08:34

@Magisch On that, we agree. But I'm of the opinion that Twitter can be a customer support platform, given the right guidelines and teams to deal with it. If I tweet ns_online having a complaint, I'm likely to get a 'we're discussing this internally' or 'may we DM you for more details?'. If you have such a thing, the outrage is likely to be less and more manageable.

Somewhat

@Magisch does the creator of Twitter had this kind of idea?

Magisch

I mean, yeah. But in your example you're using twitter as a sem-public contact us form

Aibobot

@Tinkeringbell only if is not more effective than the right ways

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch True. Is that so bad? I don't think so. The problem here IMO is that SE is on Twitter, and is being used as such too, yet isn't acting like one too... And that's what can cause bad publicity and such...

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell Yes it is, because then your contact us form is a viable target for manufactured outrage

Somewhat

08:37

Nothing different than using meta, but then it will be downvoted/closed/deleted

Tinkeringbell

Crazy idea? It can become a right way too. This all started with me saying that Twitter could be seen as customer support by those people that only use SO as the end result of a google search for their daily programming question. They're not likely to be familiar with the intricacies of meta, of the entire network.

A question or point that's often posed to such a customer support Twitter account might be put on meta still...

Aibobot

@Tinkeringbell well, in which case they will need a lot more people...

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell twitter is inherently unequipped for the type of nuance you need when presenting an issue on SE

The char limit doesn't enable that

Tinkeringbell

@Aibobot I did mention that such an account needs a 24/7 callcenter like team to support it :P

Aibobot

don't forget, one reason we use the 'proper' ways is so as to reduce the strain on the folks handling it

Tinkeringbell

08:40

@Aibobot True. And it was just a crazy idea... more used to explain why some people might think Twitter is the 'proper' way to approach SE than an actual feature request ;)

Magisch

another thing is twitter doesn't really have a good voting system, its just whoever shouts the loudest

Somewhat

Alright, I'm outta of this discussion, not fruitful for my productivity...

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Trust me, over the last week I sincerely missed having a 'dislike' button on Twitter... or perhaps just even the angry smiley Facebook offers ;)

Derpy

@ArtOfCode Lindt is not chocolate. It is perfection. And pricey. Very pricey.

Tinkeringbell

@Derpy Waaait... I almost got a truckload of EXPENSIVE chocolate yesterday? Can I still send my address to someone? :P

Aibobot

08:45

;p

Magisch

Lindt choc is pretty expensive yea

about 2.5x more then store brand here

Derpy

@Tinkeringbell lindtusa.com/…;

Tinkeringbell

@Derpy Now I'm hungry! Ah well, just one more hour to go till it's almost lunch time ;)

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer (60): Flu-contaminated mail: How long will it be contaminated? by stockholding on biology.SE

Somewhat

is the chocolate... brown?

Aibobot

09:20

@Magisch what's "Store Brand" 0_0

Andras Deak

<3 Lindor

Magisch

@Aibobot gorcery stores here have their own in store brand

Aibobot

ah. Not a thing here 0_0

Derpy

... have just realized I haven't updated the cheese chat room in a while now.

... but... I guess... I don't really fell like to anymore.

Somewhat

welp, the cheese is stale...

Tinkeringbell

09:35

@Somewhat I really, really want the next one now :P

Derpy

@Tinkeringbell oh, well... I was actually considering posting a final image in my now dead "a cheese for every network site" project

but it wasn't really nice, so I avoided that.

If you really want to know, this is the picture I had in mind. And I think you can guess what site it was for.

Somewhat

@Derpy either it's a photo of cheese in the dark, or my browser failed in showing it

also, filename: f4rty

Derpy

@Somewhat nope, there is no cheese. Only darkness, and that is the whole point.

Add what I said before (it is not "nice") and you will understand.

Somewhat

there is cheese! you just forgot to turn on the light...

Derpy

09:53

oh, and by the way, I just noticed that while very worried about question titles that tweeter user doesn't really seem to remember Commandment #4... But perhaps Christianity users won't really mind about that.

Somewhat

anyway, would someone feel like to flag this question as ID req?

Derpy

@Somewhat sorry, not going to step on anime.

Andras Deak

Close call for japanese.SE. Good thing they didn't pull the plug on the whole site.

Martin

Do other sites have problem with the search, or is it just Mathematics?

I do not see anything mentioned on StackStatus or the status blog.

Bart

Search seems to have an issue, yes

Andras Deak

10:06

It's always been broken ;)

Nog Shine

@Martin Search function is broken. If you type words which will turn automatically to tags, they work.

Martin

I am a bit surprised I did not find a post about this on Meta Stack Exchange yet - typically when there is a networkwide issue somebody asks what's wrong.

Or maybe just I did not find the post. :-)

Nog Shine

@Martin Go ahead and ask.

Martin

How long is this going on - I have noticed that for the first time after seeing the post on Mathematics Meta which was about an hour ago.

Bart

3

Q: Searching on tags works, but sorting on type and status doesn't

I just noticed that my search [code-review] is:q closed:no failed over to the maintenance page. I repeated the search omitting the is:q closed:no and it worked like a charm. Is this known behaviour, due to the way search is implemented or a bug?

Andras Deak

10:09

Search is crap so most people^[citation needed] don't use it

Martin

@AndrasDeak It depends what you are looking for. For example, if you are looking for a question which is asked repeatedly and you have a very good idea for the tags which would be used there, then probably the fastest way is to search for the correct combination of tags and check the featured tab.

In such situation I would definitely use the built-in search rather that Google or some other external search engine.

Andras Deak

Is the context looking for dupes?

Martin

Yes, for example when looking for duplicates I often use this. (Or a specialized search engine which is good for searching mathematical formulas.)

Andras Deak

16

Q: Duplicate Target Manager

Description This is a userscript that lets you mark questions as commonly used duplicate targets, and replaces the default question search in the close dialog with one that searches through your marked duplicate targets. A new button is added below the "favorite" button: Once a question has ...

script questions closing duplicates

I'm told it's great for managing canonical dupes ^

not very relevant to the search bar issue of course

Martin

When I have a bit of time, I might look into that script. Is it just standalone script, or does it require Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey or something?

Andras Deak

10:18

Userscript = ~Monkey needed

But that's a trivial complication on most browsers :)

Martin

10:32

I have posted question about problem with search on Meta Stack Exchange. (I have included link to the Meta Stack Overflow post mentioned by Bart and to Nog Shine's remark about tags.)

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad ns for domain in answer (1): Can I use unlicensed music in a birthday video and take money for my editing work? by Marcus on video.SE

Martin

We will see whether (or when) we get some response. Let's hope this gets fixed.

Andras Deak

try posting an angry tweet about it

Martin

I would have to get a twitter account first - it's probably not worth the hassle.

Was that the reference to the recent HNQ change - related to tweet about some posts displayed there?

Andras Deak

nooooo

:P

Martin

10:40

I was surprised to see the post asking about how HNQ should be improved so heavily downvoted.

BTW are diamond-bearing users immune to question ban on Meta Stack Exchange (or even in general)?

Andras Deak

yeah, read the top answers and Monica's medium post and this Q&A to see what's wrong

and I don't know the answer, but even a handful of decent posts will protect you from question bans as I understand

Aibobot

@Martin its really hard to get Qbanned on MSE

and its actually pretty easy to get enough rep to avoid a qban

but no, a mod on some site basically is a normal user on MSE.

Magisch

Fun fact: The featured MSE post generated 23 reversal badges overnight as its score dipped into the negatives

Andras Deak

congratulations

Martin

I meant people who have diamond on Meta Stack Exchange (like CMs and developers).

Magisch

10:45

and it really makes me annoyed at the CW system

Aibobot

@Martin I have no idea

Andras Deak

@Magisch how so?

Aibobot

@Magisch the CW system is a failed experiment IMO

Magisch

I wanted to not get rep from that answer but making it CW would mean that I disclaim ownership of the post. These are my words, but I don't want rep for them

Aibobot

@Magisch shrug CW was never meant for that

Its literally meant to share ownership of a post, rather than be a get out of rep free card

Mark Amery

10:48

The two behaviours ought to be separate

"I do not believe I should get rep for this post" and "I want to make clear that others are free to edit this, and extend editing power to those who normally don't have the privilege" are almost entirely unrelated ideas

Sadly, they're arbitrarily bundled together and so we have to make do

Aibobot

@MarkAmery and it didn't work that well

ArtOfCode

@Derpy It's on the expensive side, but I've found they do giant 500g bags of those little ball chocolates which are super cheap for how much you get

Martin

@Aibobot Actually, I know at least one from other site who has question ban on Meta Stack Exchange. (And his posts seemed relatively reasonable to me.) In fact, this post has some warnings and advice for users starting on that site, including what not to post (although it does not explicitly mention bans): How do I participate in Meta and not die trying?

Magisch

I dislike to be the guy that got half his MSE rep from posting about controversies

Martin

I'd guess that if you start by posting a few feature requests which are not too well received, you'd go to a post ban relatively quickly.

Andras Deak

10:50

@Magisch we're talking about MSE, right? With fake fake internet points. Don't lose any sleep over it.

MSE is about discussing and part of discussing is arguing so getting rep for being on the community side in a controversial topic is fine in my opinion. What are you going to do with that ill-begotten rep? Spend it on comment downvotes?

Mark Amery

@Magisch I am also that guy

Andras Deak

hehe

Magisch

that's just excessive

Andras Deak

hey, 3 more rep and you're at 10k

please don't commit seppuku when that happens

Magisch

I'm actually at 10.042, but it hasn't updated yet

Andras Deak

10:54

ah, caching

Somewhat

well, congrats, you just unlocked a way to see the dark side of MSE... hopefully you can survive...

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Bounty the rep away :)

Andras Deak

pass it on to Mark's controversial posts. No need for multiple people to be in this situation

Mark Amery

I have no objection to this suggestion :P

I'll happily take all your political controversy rep

Aibobot

@Magisch I have... like 12 reversal badges

Andras Deak

10:57

as long as it's not artificial inflation of reputation :P

Aibobot

Sometimes you gotta wade into the mud to do good ;)

Tinkeringbell

I like my rep and badges. It makes me look more important and hopefully that'll help me win the SO anniversary contests! :D

Derpy

@Somewhat I must be crazy then. I sometime wish I could see the dark side, to see if the dark scary monsters there exist or are just rumors. And to see the names of those evil evil sea felines that were rightfully exposed to the public blame before someone removed their names (obviously just because of an error and not to avoid others noticing how bad things where)

Basically, there is a part of me that want to share the pain those felines felt, just to realize on first hand if I should be really there.

Magisch

sealioning just means someone is asking for evidence / clarification and you suspect they have ulterior motives to it

Somewhat

And I hate that this question received a popular NAA answer. I just wish that Q&A could be cleaned up (and yes, the comment thread), but if someone did, then the community would be more upset because of censoring...

I regret answering that question.

Derpy

11:06

@Magisch no. It is different. I am not asking for evidence, @Magisch. I will be honest here. I am pretty mad at this recent incident with IPS, Twitter, the HNQ list and everything else. I don't care at all about the questions, I don't care about the tittles, the fact that arcade had more clickbait out-of-contex titles that IPS will ever have etc.

Magisch

I didn't accuse you of it

Derpy

All I care - as many others probably do - is what this incident showed.

Magisch

I just took your poetic bit about sea felines to mean you want to know what that means

Also, hi catija

Derpy

IE: a welcoming treatment of users based on a twitter post, with free namecalling and swearing emojis

What I was able to track down is already very bad.

To the point I am seriously asking myself if it is worth to stay here

And yet, I fear what I saw is only the tip of the iceberg.

Tinkeringbell

@Derpy What you were able to track down may have been out of context...

Magisch

11:09

I mean, I agree on most counts, but this site has hundreds of hours of my work in it, I'm not ready to abandon it yet

Aibobot

@Derpy Well - its kind of a sign that, well, that we need to fix a few things.

And here's kind of a thing.

Tinkeringbell

@Derpy do you have any questions I might be able to answer for you?

Aibobot

Folks in the community have been super super patient and trusting, and we're still at the stage where we hope we can kinda steer things back.

Derpy

@Tinkeringbell first, there were actual names mentioned in the incident? I only saw the "DM sealion (swearing emoji)" thing. But people seems to imply that a few lucky ones had their names explicit mentioned in that "thing". Is that true?

Magisch

@Derpy not in the employee tweet. But the person who complained mentioned 2 IPS mods by name, yes

Tinkeringbell

11:12

@Derpy The tweet by the SRE didn't include names. Kelly indeed named two accounts in reaction to that, and one of them isn't an IPS mod as far as I know (when I last checked).

But their tweets are also still visible out in the open, and there definitely weren't DM's by those two users.

Somewhat

But well, I'm feeling peaceful because I don't care about this incident at all. I only care about moderating a site. That's all.

Derpy

@Magisch Yep, I know that the person who made the original tweet post mentioned some names after getting some replies. I wanted to know if any employee mentioned explicit names.

But it seems at least that didn't happen

Tinkeringbell

@Derpy It didn't.

Aibobot

@Somewhat waaaaaait

You're a mod?

Andras Deak

@Magisch no

as always it's a term that has specific meaning but people keep misusing it

Magisch

11:15

@AndrasDeak doesn't it? I just summarized / paraphrased the wikipedia definition

Somewhat

@Aibobot I have an access to the so-called "moderation tools" :/

Tinkeringbell

@Aibobot regular user moderation is a thing. Very elitist of you :P

Andras Deak

bah chat search is broken too

Aibobot

ohhhh

Magisch

you mods in your ivory towers

Aibobot

11:16

@Tinkeringbell I am but a tin can.

Magisch

german curses

Aibobot

@Magisch well the SE Mod community on chat is smallish and we recognise each other XD

Andras Deak

@Magisch anyway, I think it was discussed here that in the original comics the sea lion followed the person to their home and actively annoyed them with their polite (?) insistence that sea lions are fine (?). In this context I can imagine similar human behaviour that is indeed bad. But as always people are misusing the term for much milder (and non-offensive) things

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Hey, it's a good ivory tower :) Mine even has a wheelchair accessible ramp! :D

Magisch

@AndrasDeak this is where I got the definition from

Somewhat

11:18

and that's when I thought about "merlion"

Andras Deak

I know

Aibobot

@AndrasDeak so... they are sealioning about sealioning?

Andras Deak

> The troll pretends ignorance and feigns politeness, so that if the target is provoked into making an angry response, the troll can then act as the aggrieved party.

there's nothing about it being perceived

Aibobot

@AndrasDeak On the other hand, we're kinda letting this drive a wedge

Andras Deak

to people with a chip on their shoulder actual sealioning and honest discourse may be hard to distinguish

Somewhat

11:20

I believe I have seen sealioning on MSO instead...

Andras Deak

I'm not saying the expression makes sense in practice

Aibobot

Its from a comic

and its somewhat obscure

Tinkeringbell

I think one of the problems with sealioning as a way to describe behaviour is that it makes assumptions about the reasons for such behaviour. Unless that's absolutely clear, using the word might not be the best thing to do.

Aibobot

@Tinkeringbell its a simple, emotive label

Magisch

It's an assumption of bad faith from the get go

sometimes those are merited, other times not

Aibobot

11:22

@Magisch If I don't give the user the benefit of the doubt...

Derpy

@Tinkeringbell oh, wait until someone wants to discuss the meaning of the word "brony".

Aibobot

Its basically a dismissal of any attempt to communicate or change her mind

Andras Deak

it's probably a hip and modern expression for filibustering

Magisch

Sure, and that's why we have "assume good faith" as a rule on the network

because you can't have a constructive discussion otherwise

Tinkeringbell

@AndrasDeak Nah, that's where you make a speech so long as to delay voting, right? Totally different thing ;)

Andras Deak

11:23

twitter users needn't abide by our rules :P

@Tinkeringbell well, social filibustering

Tinkeringbell

@AndrasDeak Which would be?

Andras Deak

talking to a person in a seemingly innocuous way in order to distract/annoy them

rather than a government body or whatever

Tinkeringbell

@AndrasDeak I feel the two are subtly different.

Sealioning would go 'This feels wrong to me' and then keep badgering people about 'do you have scientific proof for that feeling?'

Andras Deak

they are, so I clarified with "social filibustering" :P

Tinkeringbell

Even if that person chooses to disengage.

Andras Deak

11:26

@Tinkeringbell ah

that's a much more specific meaning

I'll take your word for it; I'm not a sealioning expert. Only learned about it from Monica's post :P

Tinkeringbell

@AndrasDeak That's the first thing that crossed my mind when reading it. I've never tried it :P

Magisch

to be fair, being on the end of a large disagreement on social media is terrible

at some point reading the 59th long essay about how you're wrong gets tiring

Andras Deak

who's "you" here?

Magisch

I was just talking about social media in general

Andras Deak

most people in social media don't have to repeatedly read long essays about how they're wrong

Tinkeringbell

11:29

@AndrasDeak It could be you, it could be me ;)

Andras Deak

@Tinkeringbell I don't read nor write twitter, so it could hardly be me

Magisch

I do have a degree of empathy for the original poster: they probably got the far less gentle end of being downvoted into oblivion on meta, except instead of downvotes, they got varying amounts of swearing and arguments as to why their opinions are wrong

Andras Deak

who's the "original poster" here?

the twitter poster?

Magisch

yea

Andras Deak

They'd have my sympathy with their original post raising awareness of something they saw and found inappropriate. What followed it up kills all my sympathy

Magisch

11:31

someone can make a bad decision and still be worthy of sympathy, though

Andras Deak

that is true

I reserve the right to judge the character of people based on their actions and revoke sympathy I'd otherwise grant

Aibobot

@AndrasDeak the funny thing is

I think they're welcome to their views

Andras Deak

OK, chat search kicked in

23 hours ago, by Mark Amery

The original sealion comic relies upon the sealion pursuing the other party into their own home in order to actually make the sealion look unreasonable; without that detail, you just have the sealion publicly responding to bigotry directed at them in public, and they've clearly done nothing wrong by doing so.

Aibobot

I'm not happy with the way these things are responded to

Magisch

I don't think the original poster signed up for becoming the lynchpin of a war between SE and its userbase when they made that tweet either

how would jeff call that, "the problem with popularity"?

Andras Deak

11:35

go away Magisch, I'm not reading that

Magisch

:p

Aibobot

@Magisch I don't think they were unaware it would have an effect either

Andras Deak

that's probably true

people are used to complaining about everything to no avail

Aibobot

I'm a relative nobody

Magisch

@Aibobot sure, but if I try to empathize I'd imagine maybe I'd feel a bit better on making such a snide remark, maybe someone would say "oh gosh, that sure sucks" and leave it be. Not what happened.

Aibobot

11:36

but I tend to weigh the effect of what I say

Andras Deak

they probably also have a bubble of acquantainces who regularly flog SO for being oppressive, so this might have just been another Thursday afternoon for them

Magisch

Not that I'd suspect anyone here would'nt, but I think leaving the original poster alone would be best for all in this

Andras Deak

I agree

Aibobot

@Magisch I'd agree but I've also been constantly been saying this ;)

This isn't about the tweeter

Andras Deak

But don't forget it doesn't matter what we here think. We're just a vocal minority

Aibobot

11:45

@AndrasDeak sigh

Magisch

I should write "obnoxious, small and vocal minority resistant to change" in my bio

3

Aibobot

I kinda wish whoever said that didn't.

Magisch

ought to elicit a laugh

Andras Deak

@Aibobot we all do, and not just "kinda"

@Magisch hehe, I'd love that

Aibobot

@AndrasDeak but I think a lot of the voices that are loud now are the ones who're usually quiet

Derpy

11:46

.... and sorry, but I have to do this.

here, stared. Free to remove, but I have no regret doing so.

Aibobot

@Derpy I don't see any particular reason to

Andras Deak

that's one of my least controversial messages here :P

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