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Q: How can I connect to a Tor hidden service using cURL in PHP?

339

Staff Note: This question and the associated answers were locked to prevent off topic discussion surrounding an event that is related to the question at hand. Questions about this event can be found on our meta site. Thank you! I'm trying to connect to a Tor hidden service using the followin...

If you're a criminal mastermind, don't post a question about it on SO. Kinda negates the whole "mastermind" thing.

Cerbrus

Oh that's hilarious xD

user194636

Did they ask for one meeeelion dollars?

@194636 something about php and curl. Someone commented that he should have been put in cuffs just for using php.

user194636

heh

5:10 PM

There are CoC trolls that are better at anonymity.

Deleting a post related to an announcement with a score of almost -2k and many answers feels at least a little like censorship.

Journeyman Geek

@NotThatGuy eh, it was obsolete in a lot of ways. If it doesn't give you joy....

@NotThatGuy please note what is pinned on the starboad

I'm thinking we should have a huge banner on all SE sites: "This network will censor you. If you do not like this please do not participate".

Yes, please note your new overlord! Smoke doesn't stand a chance.

5:23 PM

I've never understood why people object. The entire premise of having strict rules about topicality and civility is based on allowing censorship.

2

@terdon Exactly! One of the best things about SO is that there is rigorous and aggressive "censorship" of low quality and off-topic things

@terdon I have no problem with "let's keep things on topic and nice", not so much with "you're free to talk about anything as long as you don't disagree with us" (which may sound familiar if you've read the news lately).

2

@NotThatGuy Oh wow. While I have many reasons to be angry at SE, I'm sorry, but accusing them of not allowing disagreement is absurd. There has been a lot of disagreement that's been allowed to stay. You just need to make it civil disagreement.

5

@NotThatGuy On the flipside, consider what that means

MSE is a festering sewer of every possible argument you can dream up against SE right now

if they're trying to be censorius they're incredibly bad at it

Heh, yes

5:28 PM

also, if you have 10k, take a gander at some of the deleted answers on the old faq posts

and if you still have your dinner after 100 of them I'll buy you a beer

John Dvorak

That's worse than the hot sauce tarantula feeding challenge

Stack Exchange tarantula feeding challenge: pick 10 of your pet spiders at random, feed each. For every spider that doesn't eat, read a random answer from the CoC and read it fully.

source for the idea: youtube.com/watch?v=haKOdjZVY1E

@JohnDvorak Malformed link

(Looks like your finger bounced on the V key)

John Dvorak

fixedfixed

@terdon They're usually pretty permissive about what's allowed here (and they certainly have no obligation to allow disagreement with their decisions on their platform). But deleting the post containing most of the disagreement about one of their recent decisions seems like a pretty sharp turn there. Many of answers might not have been too reasonable, but I don't remember seeing any that were clearly intended to offend (at least not near the top).

While there is a question asking why it was deleted, there is no request that explicitly asks for it to be undeleted (and possibly locked), and why.

And if the concern is the excessive flagging, have no fear: historical locks prevent flagging the question or answers.

John Dvorak

5:35 PM

I'd support the request

I haven't been keeping up with all the arguments for undeleting it lately (and have less reason to spearhead such a request since I have 10k)

The problem is, people want that question largely as it stood right before deletion. That's not an option that is on the table (according to Shog). Instead, if hypothetically the question was undeleted, all the flags on it would have to be handled. That means (some) answers deleted, comments cleaned up. That's going to be costly in man-hours and likely to spawn even more drama. It should stay deleted.

@Rubiksmoose Deleting the post automatically dismissed all of the flags (except custom flags).

Man, that new FAQ is a huge improvement

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog Right, it was a hypothetical. It would now be even more work to get it cleaned up without flags as pointers, likely.

5:39 PM

I especially appreciate it mentions not to out users that haven't publicly said their pronouns

@Stevoisiak It is! I think they did a terrific job with it. And in this case, "they" is SE and all the people that contributed feedback and more to it.

Hey

Hey!

I've missed a bit. thoughts on the new FAQ?

It's so much better

5:39 PM

See just above

In every respect

@Rubiksmoose IMO leaving it up creates confusion

@NotThatGuy I really disagree. That post was a train wreck. It has multiple pages of answers, none of which were easily findable any more, loads of horrible comments... The new FAQ is much better and supersedes the old one so I just don't see any point in keeping the old.

@Gwideon we think it is better.

Personally, I like it since it takes into account people who do not have a pronoun preference

5:40 PM

I think it's better as well. um is the discussion post bad

Either your concerned were addressed, so yay! Or you can raise them again if you feel it's necessary. But keeping complaints (valid or not) against a document that is no longer relevant doesn't seem useful.

More importantly, if the network does survive this, why make everyone's life harder by having two things about the CoC instead of one? Why make everyone need to figure out which one is actually relevant?

For me, I looked up the old FAQ to compare and see what was changed

I definitely understand the people who are offended by incorrect pronoun use (in fact I've been taking care to use the correct ones long before the recent controversy), but I'm not offended by it. I, for one, didn't want to see people getting in trouble just because they used incorrect pronouns toward me, and the new FAQ addresses that nicely.

Specifically, the original revision of the old FAQ

I also think it's important to note that this time, SE took the time to at least ask for input from the moderators. And listened to that input and made substantial changes because of that input.

3

This is very, very welcome.

5:44 PM

I've always believed that if you supply input civilly and properly, SE always listens to that input (not necessarily in a timely manner).

As an example of why you'd compare the two:

I'm just glad things seem to be simmering down a bit

@Mgetz Definitely and I wouldn't want anybody stumbling on that mess by accident. Seriously.

@Stevoisiak I really think it's better to just read the new one without comparing to see how you react.

In particular, I'd like to see us work toward clearing the impression that some staff members have of meta being a negative place, by actually making it a positive place.

5:46 PM

@terdon The reason to keep it would be historical significance. I'm a bit concerned for the same reason people would be concerned if Twitter were to just delete all tweets with a certain hashtag (and not even a particularly offensive one at that). They could've always just closed it as a duplicate and/or locked it instead.

@terdon Agreed. I had a much better reaction reading this. But I wanted to understand why it made me react differently

Seeing how the wording changed helped me understand that

@NotThatGuy Well, there have been fallouts from historical locks lately, especially from newer users who don't understand what historical locks mean and harp on site management for having such content on the site.

@NotThatGuy Historical locks are only useful for things that are worth keeping. That wasn't. The only thing keeping it would do is reignite this whole mess every time some new user saw it.

Oct 18 at 17:00, by terdon

@Stevoisiak The content isn't fundamentally different, but the tone is completely different. And tone is important.

:)

5:48 PM

:P

I'm split on whether it should stay on the site, but I'm glad it's at least archived on WayBackMachine

@terdon I stand by the image I linked

Yes.

anyways i'm gonna hop out. Been avoiding meta and I think I'll keep it that way until this fully blows over

Wise choice.

It's worth mentioning, the Wayback Machine has multiple archives of the FAQ, including the original revision.

So if anyone wants to see it, it is available for those who look

5:52 PM

That was posted as an answer somewhere.

The answer showed the most recent revision, rather than the original

canon

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog That's asking a lot given how hard SE is (apparently) working to anger meta. :P

@Stevoisiak Ah

I think preserving the original version as posted is important as well

Honestly, I think all of it should be nuked from orbit. It was a bad mistake, it has been largely rectified, let's all forget about the really bad version and focus on the current one.

5:58 PM

When I say preserve, I don't necessarily mean on SE's site

Having it on Wayback Machine does a lot in that respect

Ah, yes, OK.

I would be upset if there had been a rule against linking the archived version

@terdon Sorry? Did they change anything to the CoC after posting the initial FAQ or fundamentally change their clarifying answers?

Mark Amery

@NotThatGuy From the look I took, yes

For one thing, avoiding pronouns by using names or constructing sentences differently is now sort-of explicitly allowed

(Except you mustn't do it "conspicuously", whatever that will mean in practice)

Also, there's a woolly special case rule suggesting discussions that are directly about trans issues will be handled differently (given that some people may want to give an answer whose thesis would, in other circumstances, violate the CoC). Which we can hope will be interpreted in a way that shields people from being punished for views they express in the course of discussing these rules (e.g. Monica)

@NotThatGuy Here's the original FAQ vs the last available archive.

Mark Amery

6:06 PM

My take is that many of the answers in the new FAQ are annoyingly fluffy and imprecise, but that if I choose to assume that the ambiguities will be resolved in the way that I would most like them to be in practice (a big if!), then I have no problem with the CoC change any more

2

@NotThatGuy They completely rewrote the FAQ, the original FAQ was a mistake and that's what has been largely rectified.

The CoC has barely been changed at all, neither now nor last week. The changes to the CoC text itself are tiny.

@MarkAmery That's actually exactly what I wanted to see, as a moderator: room to allow me to exercise my common sense instead of some sort of binding agreement with no wriggle room. It's pointless to try make it specific anyway, it will never be specific enough to cover all cases.

2

user194636

Well Gareth had a hand in it

Gareth had two hands, two feet and most of a tentacle in it, bless him!

user194636

Goodness that's an image

I'm sure he has tentacles. All the cool ones do.

user194636

6:12 PM

Sounds right

George's version of the apology and Gareth's FAQ proposal both did a lot to smooth things over

user194636

There's a lesson there somewhere

They both deserve a lot of credit for making proposals in good faith to smooth things over

user194636

yes

@terdon Well, one of his comods is a dog who enjoys lime diet coke, so it wouldn't be too odd.

6:16 PM

@194636 and a book, and a film ...

user194636

wouldn't rule it out!

user194636

someone suggested the title SExit

We're not doing that.

...yeah no.

if brexit talk invades this room to I swear I will kick a fuss

6:19 PM

@Aza was it really necessary to put 'Empty chairs at empty tables' in there!? My poor feelings :(

@Stevoisiak Yes! Note that the biggest changes and appeals to SE have come from positive suggestions for how things can be improved and not endless negativity. Solutions come from trying to fix things.

canon

brexitiquette?

@mag You wouldn't dare! What did the fuss ever do to you eh?

@Tinkeringbell All's fair in love and war.

@user58 This was supposed to be just a playlist though!

Also... two of the songs aren't playing over here :(

user206222

6:37 PM

@Tinkeringbell Well, in fairness, we sung it in chorus around a campfire in a forest on a rainy day, so it at least fits the intent ;)

user206222

Which songs? I can find alternative links.

Let me see, they were greyed out when I opened the list for the first time... now I can't find them :(

user206222

Aw, damn. If you figure out which ones, just let me know.

user206222

Have you enjoyed it so far, overall?

There's 20 songs on the list?

Yes, very! Thank you so much!

6:39 PM

I just realized both community revisions that SE used, apology and FAQ, were written by mods

user206222

@Tinkeringbell Should be 22 :(

Sorry, what playlist?

user206222

10 hours ago, by Aza

Music for huddling around a fire in a forest on a rainy day: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1ckFkqDGMOVTl0mAqtjqxu

If SE is ever looking to hire new CMs, I nominate George and Gareth as candidates.

@Aza Then I'm missing 2 indeed. :(

6:42 PM

not going to flag this... but holy crap some people are hostile

@Mgetz - how is it in any way a duplicate? The official SE answer on that Q is "it was removed to get rid of all the flags and arguments in 10000s of comments", which seems to have absolutely NOTHING to do with the content comparison of FAQs. — DVK 34 mins ago

Found them on the web!

user206222

Maybe open an incognito window? I see 'em when I load them

user206222

Oh, solid! Which ones, I'm curious?

Could it be a region thing?

6:43 PM

@Stevoisiak I guessed that too, yeah.

Those two are greyed out, and won't play. They're also not in the list if I open the app.

@Tinkeringbell By default, songs that are unavailable are hidden from lists; there's a setting in the app to change that

"Show unavailable songs in playlists"

user206222

That's really funny, but it makes sense.

@Mgetz Comments recently have had zero chill.

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog Got it, thank you!

That user in particular has been highly hostile to others

6:44 PM

(As a side note, all those songs are available in the U.S.)

I flagged the post as duplicate because it's an X/Y problem

but I'm not going to engage with someone that hostile

I'll let a mod decline the flag and call it done

user206222

Zero chill's a funny way to say "aggressive beyond belief" ;)

@Aza I'm all about that understatement lol

It's scary to see a community turn like this.

I think the canadians are rubbing off on you @Rubiksmoose

6:47 PM

@Mgetz I mean.. there's two votes already for too broad, which a full comparison probably will be so ... why find a tangentially related post and close it? It does not really look an XY problem to me...

@Mgetz The people or the geese?

I just posted an answer on the question about deletion of the old CoC: meta.stackexchange.com/a/336482/388335

user206222

If we want it to get better we have to start treating it like something we can actionably repair. Won't get better on its own.

I’d appreciate if people would let me know if it’s just going to rile people up

I think the new FAQ does a lot to help repair

6:48 PM

@Tinkeringbell the core of the question is to me a false front asking why it was deleted. But w/e. The user got what they wanted. I disengaged and they got their platform

I know it brought me back

user206222

@divibisan This... probably won't be heard, because it feeds back calmness and not anger. But I think it's more likely to be swept under the rug than receive any substantive pushback.

@divibisan Yes. But so is everything you could have posted. Leave it, I like it :)

user206222

At minimum hopefully a few of the people it could help will see it.

@Stevoisiak it's better... yes. But people are going to find things to start fires with because it seems the popular thing to do

6:50 PM

@Mgetz At least now I don't feel like I'm agreeing with the points made by people starting fires

@Mgetz Come to think of it, I have been saying "eh" a lot more...

@Tinkeringbell Ok, good. It’s hard to know when speaking up will help, or just stir the pot

in RPG General Chat on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, Feb 28 at 20:46, by Yuuki

@ColinGross Canadian people are so nice because the early settlers made an eldritch pact to funnel all of their subconscious rage into the local geese.

Raedwald

@Rubiksmoose I'm out of flags for today. But I learned that flagging NAA on controversial MSE questions is even less likely to get an answer deleted than on SO. It's OK, you can patronize me now.

@user58 definitely not the geese, they stole all the canadian's aggression

@Rubiksmoose technically they are also very good at screwing the indigenous peoples with a smile too

6:52 PM

@Mgetz Sadly that is true of so many places. :'(

@Rubiksmoose aye, but canada more than most oddly. They are very abashed about it which is why I don't tease canadians about it.

just like I don't tease germans about WWII

@Raedwald Having so little rep here really sucks. Can't wait til I hit 3,000 in about 5 years ;)

Raedwald

Some countries had strategic reserves of oil. The US has a strategic reserve of helium. The Canadians have a strategic reserve of... maple syrup. Perhaps they have their priorities right.

user206222

A land acknowledgement would be nice, but now's not really the time to poke SE for one.

@Mgetz Huh, I honestly was not aware. I have many native friends in the US so I'm somewhat familiar with how [expletive] poorly they've are still treated at least.

6:56 PM

@Rubiksmoose I'm in the US too?

Hooo boy, Monica just put a bounty on the apology post

user206222

Aw, that's not good.

That one is for wiser heads...

Floating ones perhaps...

meh

@Rubiksmoose I've made an annoying few hundred rep because of the current situation and I haven't even posted anything about it. *rolls eyes* If anyone wants a hundred rep, point me at a really good answer and I'll consider it :p

6:59 PM

i've only lost rep

@Rubiksmoose /shrug

user206222

Something simple in the footer, in the help center, or something. Like: "Stack Exchange was built on the occupied lands of the Montauk people. Servers are located [description]. Stack Exchange stands with the indigenous peoples of America. Justice delayed is justice denied."

user206222

But hey, that would start its own fire. One fire at a time, ig.

@JNat Cross-site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/16945362/drhenrythanh

→ 1 message moved to Trashcan

7:00 PM

@Mgetz Yeah probably not going to be much drama drummed up from it hopefully. Not holding my breath for it helping though.

As far as I can tell nothing is going to happen there because both sides don't want to engage or believe the other in good faith.

I'm not going to speculate further or comment beyond that

@Aza the video you linked hit a little too close to home looking at what's happening here now

user206222

@mag yeah, it's extremely pertinent

user206222

I've been... trying to communicate in various places for a while that Stack is at risk of becoming a part of the pipeline for radicalized/violent beliefs.

@Aza well wouldn't the trope of being built on a native burial ground trigger horror movie tropes?

user206222

7:05 PM

That video's just, way better at communicating it than I am.

user206222

@Mgetz Indigenous peoples are, on the whole, appreciative of land acknowledgements in my experience. I can't speak for them in a blanket way, though. They're very diverse. Here's one resource by an Indigenous group.

@Aza do you have discord and 10 minutes to spare?

user206222

Obviously there are... ways to write a harmful land acknowledgement, but that's not super surprising.

@Aza apologies, you're right and I'm tired and snarky

user206222

@mag Yes and yes. Drop a comment with your Discord ID on an old post of mine, anywhere. I'll add you.

7:10 PM

done

user206222

Sent.

@Mgetz If a land acknowledgement makes you think of horror movies, that's probably... an issue.

@user58 it... was a super common trope in horror movies in the states about building on indigenous burial grounds. To the point of eye roll. Please don't take it the wrong way, it's just a culture thing.

user206222

Yeah, that's fair. "Built" could be replaced with "created," to the same effect.

That sounds like a Hollywood issue, then...

7:15 PM

Since when has hollywood been anything but an issue /snark

Hey, the city in Florida was nice.

yes but florida...

....I mean it's been like ten years since I was there, but still.

I realize I'm stateist... but seriously it's florida

@Aza Oh God, please no! I am 100% in favor of the message, but 100% against bringing any more politics onto the network than absolutely necessary. We really don't need to find out that concernedUser123 hates Native Americans as well. Let them put a plaque on their physical offices instead.

7:18 PM

when alabama looks at you and wonders how you're that messed up politically you have a problem

(if that's a real username, my apologies)

I liked Florida.

I was an oblivious eight-year-old when I was there, though, so... YMMV.

user384163

A Florida Man...

The man, the meme, the gator

Oct 19 at 16:49, by user58

I used to live in Florida, I only saw an alligator in town once.

7:21 PM

@user58 tbf depends on where in florida, down south I think it would be crocs wouldn't it?

Probably. I don't think I could tell the difference at that age, though, so I really don't know which it actually was.

The topic was gators, though.

user1306322

do main site suspensions show you the offending comment/post/action contents?

if I'm not mistaken, chat suspensions show the messages which got flagged

@user1306322 Not unless a mod explicitly includes them in the moderator message.

user1306322

why is there a distinction between main and chat then

Flagged chat message give an automatic suspension if they reach enough flags. That doesn't exist on main.

If you're manually suspended on chat you don't get linked to the offending content either.

user1306322

7:27 PM

oh right

@user1306322 It's much easier to be out of line in a chat message than in a post on the main site

Here: ________________

Feeds

I was fired by the National Weather Service five minutes after they hired me for going into their code base and renaming all the tornado warnings to "tornado spoiler alerts."

user206222

@terdon Ah, this is where we disagree, I think. I sincerely believe we do need to know these things about the people we work with, particularly the people we volunteer with.

user206222

How can we make our communities better, more whole, more accepting... if we never act to make each other more aware of these issues?

user206222

We can't brush it under the rug, pretend it'll resolve on its own, or pretend it's not real -- that only hurts marginalized people further.

7:39 PM

@Aza I have an ancestor that held slaves, does every co-worker I ever work with need to know that?

user206222

Sincerely, that's... kind of a loaded question.

@Aza I know we do :) I don't believe that SE is the place to resolve social issues. That should be handled in the real world. I want this place to be nothing more but pure Q&A. We need rules to be civil with each other, but I don't care and don't want to know about the political or religious convictions of the person answering my question.

4

I have always objected to the times SE has tried to politicize the site, despite pretty much always agreeing with and sharing the political position they were advocating.

@Aza and yet it's a problem facing millions of people both in the US and abroad (technically go far enough back and your ancestors probably were slaves of... your ancestors)

@Mgetz Unless you are directly benefiting from slave labor today, it shouldn't be particularly relevant. However, if you are of the opinion that "my ancestor did nothing wrong", then.... that is going to affect your actions and your interactions with, say, people of color. In which case it is, yes, important for those people to know what you think, because it affects your interaction with them.

You're going to have a hard time working together with someone to remove, say, racism from a site if you disagree on the basics of what you're supposed to removing.

user206222

@Mgetz It's definitely something we should be able to talk about, and confront as a community. How we grapple with the fact that our ancestors owned slaves is a real question that deserves attention. But "every co-worker" doesn't "need" to know, in the sense that you don't need to broadcast it aimlessly.

7:46 PM

@user58 I know almost nothing about that ancestor tbh. So I'm assuming nothing other than what I know...

@Aza I agree, however let's look at a parallel in germany right now. The "Where was grandpa?" question

That's a lot more raw

even in the US that question persists because of things that happened in the civil rights era and even into the 1980s

user206222

@terdon "Politics" isn't neutral, is the thing. "Politics" is a shorthand for "a social issue on which the community doesn't already agree." The problem is, that can hurt people on-site. Your ideal, that the place is nothing but pure Q&A, carries with it assumptions about how people interact, what it takes to make a place hospitable for Q&A, and... those are political decisions, even if decisions by default.

user206222

They're political, because this site doesn't work for everyone. Because interacting with others on this site evidently hurts people. And to step back from that is to say, "this was better when we weren't talking about it."

Bear in mind the distinction between "politics" and "politicians".

@Aza I strongly disagree. I have had very productive interactions on these sites with people I know hold opinions I consider actively harmful to society. We just chose not to discuss those and instead stuck with the technical issues we were facing.

user206222

No status quo is apolitical. It's political because it's a status quo. There will never not be politics.

7:49 PM

Well, if we're striving for idealness, the ideal Q & A would be impersonal. There wouldn't be a "Hey OP, you"

the last lynching in the US wasn't in 1968... it was in 1998 officially and potentially 2014

I am very political myself and in real life I get into these discussions all the time. This just isn't the place for them.

3

/me quiets

user206222

@Mgetz I... can't really speak to how Germans are handling this issue specifically. It is a lot more raw, and the generational wound is still real.

I am not advocating staying silent in society, but I really don't want SE to become a political battleground.

So yeah, let's not hurt each other, but that's it.

7:50 PM

@Aza it's still a very raw wound here in the US too

user206222

You don't really get that choice. SE is a power structure, it's a place that puts people in the position of creating tone, policy, structure, etc. The decisions made to drive that forward are political decisions.

I don't think "politics" is a shorthand for that, FWIW. People using arguments of some sort to further their irrelevant agendas does taint those arguments and debates about them forever.

@Aza You're going back to the CoC there. Having SE put some sort of announcement about Native Americans isn't relevant to how we interact with each other.

user206222

Isn't it?

no

7:51 PM

@terdon Okay... I don't like doing this but: What if those opinions would also be actively harmful to your community, and these people might not discuss them with you, but discuss them and spread them and bring them up with others?

No

@Tinkeringbell Then their behavior becomes problematic. But only because they chose to discuss the opinions.

There was something about 'holding space' in Aza's video, it actually sounds like more like your users than the users Aza was talking about.

I came here for the Q&A, I do my social engineering in real life.

I don't need to know your ancestry or how SE feels about native americans to help joe figure out how to fix his problem

user206222

Heh. Yeah, it is. You can't isolate one from the other.

7:52 PM

@Aza I can and I do. That's where we disagree.

user206222

Stack, for example, has made decisions in the past about what is "rude" and what constitutes "civil" discussions that hurt women.

user206222

Talking about that is "political" but necessary.

@Aza Yes, which is the limits of the politics I want to see because those actively affect our interactions.

Like it or not, SE has grown to be more than just Q&A. The fact that we are having this discussion proves that. SE also has a community, which often formulates... here in chat. Which is inherently not Q&A.

@terdon Sadly, especially MSE right now isn't Q&A. It's turned political whether you like it or not... which makes discussing whether it is political political and we're recursing please halp...

7:53 PM

The new FAQ does a good job of saying, "It doesn't matter if you personally disagree with this thing, but you must follow the policy here"

(I'd have added some Zalgo to the last bit if only I knew how)

I think that's the important thing here.

user206222

The way indigenous people are talked about on Stack Exchange also affects interactions with indigenous people. The way trans people are talked about on Stack Exchange affects trans people. The way PoC are talked about...

user206222

It's no less political just because the group of active participants smaller or larger.

@Tinkeringbell I know it has. Aza considers this (the politicization, not the trainwreck, obviously) inherently good while I see it as inherently bad no matter what political direction it happens to go in.

user206222

7:54 PM

Whether you like it or not, it's necessary now, because MSE is being radicalized.

It's driving people apart.

it's driving the community apart

Marginalized people aren't inherently better or worse than anyone else.

@Stevoisiak It is. It allows for this holding space where people (including me) can figure out whatever needs figuring out.

@Aza Yes. In my perfect SE none of these would be on topic. Personally, I always felt it was a mistake that SE left the strictly technical subjects it was designed for. As soon as you have more philosophical fields, the whole strict Q&A model starts breaking down.

@DavidA What.... does that have to do with anything here?

7:55 PM

I think the new FAQ does a good job of de-escalating the issue

Which is what is needed now

user206222

@terdon You'll never escape the personal. You can imagine an idealized world in which Q&A is strictly Q&A and nothing else, but that's just not achievable in practice.

The most critical thing right now is that SE doesn't do anything to encourage more radicalization.

@Aza Cause and effect . . .

@Aza We can try. And we've been quite close in most of the sites I'm active in.

@terdon Well... It's bad, and good? I understand how you find it bad: It creates a ton of trash fires right now, and stuff... I can also understand how part of this is good though: We're learning. We're working things out. We can come out stronger but we need to get back to a stage where 'everyone can be themselves' is something the community agrees on.

7:57 PM

The issue here is whether we should strive to make it as apersonal as possible or not. And I believe we should.

user384163

@terdon the problem is is that it is inherent. It just is. When you say you refuse to talk about it. You are taking a stance. You are saying "I'm okay with the way things are happening."

user206222

Someone leaves a joke. That joke is sexist. Now a moderator needs to decide: is this something I should remove? Do I think about this as a joke that's okay to keep around, a joke that should be removed, or as sexism that should be removed?

user206222

You will never escape the personal.

@Tinkeringbell Oh, the subjects are excellent! Just not well suited to a strict Q&A format that assumes there can be one correct answer to things.

user206222

It will happen, again and again, as hard as you try to make it otherwise. And when it does, you have to be prepared to handle it.

7:57 PM

That's a moderator problem

us normal users don't need to deal with it short of casting a flag.

@Aza Why is there a joke? How is the joke relevant? That's already a problem.

@terdon It's working on IPS.

user206222

You'd remove all humor? All casual, friendly interactions, because they're not on topic for Q&A?

@terdon SE has chat. Don't tell me I can't joke in chat!

yes, comments should be for clarificaiton.

7:58 PM

When we were discussing how the offset to the rep tab was or someone was discussing VBA on the wrong site, there wasn't much polarization. Sure, it could be taken that the issues were pushed under the carpet, but is it a programming site's focus to deal with those issues?

user206222

Better delete chat, then.

chat is obviously an entirely different beast

@Tinkeringbell As far as I can tell IPS is doing a great job, but I would rather it had a different format.

@Aza Humor is what people use to teach

@Aza Outside of Meta sites? I wouldnt be opposed

7:59 PM

and has always been treated as sch

@Tinkeringbell Ah, but my perfect SE wouldn't :) Much as I enjoy chat.

Maybe I'm just too naive because my frequent sites are sciencey sites.

@terdon Well, I'll miss you then. But I don't think your perfect SE is a counterargument to Aza's real one.

@terdon BLASPHEMY