When you review an answer in the low-quality post queue, one of the comment templates is:
This does not provide an answer to the question. Once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post; instead, provide answers that don't require clarification from the asker.
I...
Okay, let me try to figure out what the message should say.
Verbosely, what we want to say is: "If you can provide a good answer to this question without asking for clarification (which is generally done by providing an answer which covers all of the various reasonable possibilities for what the asker's situation may be), do that; otherwise, just don't post an answer. "
Verbosely, what we want to say is: "If you can provide a good answer to this question without asking for clarification (which is generally done by providing an answer which covers all of the various reasonable possibilities for what the asker's situation may be), do that; otherwise, just don't post an answer."
(Did that message go through twice? I don't think I sent it twice.)
@TannerSwett Yep, it's there twice, even when I reload the page. If you want, you should be able to delete one (hover over the message and there's a drop-down button on the left).... and now too late. There's only 2 minutes to edit or delete.
Only a moderator can delete or edit a message after 2 minutes. A moderator or room owner can move it out of the room to another room. Those are the only things that chat permits to be done.
"This does not provide an answer to the question. Answers should only be used to provide an actual answer to the question. Requesting clarification of the question should be done in a comment. Once you have sufficient reputation, you will be able to comment on any post. Until then, please feel free to answer questions which don't require clarification."
Yeah, that pretty much seems like a strict improvement over the current phrasing.
The current phrasing says "provide answers that don't require clarification," but that's... a confusingly creative use of words at best and outright wrong at worst. It should be... well, exactly what you just wrote: "answer questions that don't require clarification."
Can I go ahead and post a second self-answer with another suggested phrasing?
Yes, you are permitted to do so. Alternately, you can change your current answer, if it is something you no longer support. It really hasn't been seen by that many people to feel that it's set in stone.
If there had been lots of votes on the answer, then I'd recommend leaving it as-is, at least the substantial portions of it. Right now, it's new enough such that most of the people that will read it haven't seen it yet. So, personally, I'd go ahead and change it, if you no longer desire the wording you originally suggested.
watching stack exchange inc piss away the last few bits of goodwill and mutual respect it had with its core community is both deeply painful and incredibly amusing
painful, because i consider myself part of that core community who helped to build these sites into greatness
amusing, because this has been the obvious end goal since spolsky's "summer of love" post, and every time i've called it people have called me a pessimist and told me that i'm the one who's wrong, and that it'll get better
I was expecting the welcome wagon thing to be more competently done and I wasn't expecting what happened this weekend, which looks from the outside tantamount to going at your own leg with a chainsaw from SE's perspective
talk about cutting off your hand to spite the face jeez. At least I would have expected them to prepare a public statement rather then the ominous bad faith potshot taking answer it got so far
that answer is probably the worst part of this whole saga. I expected a lot better from them then unqualified, non backed up ominous potshots at someone who's clearly been mistreated in the eye of the community
tacticly accusing monica of something when they know damn well they can't share specifics. This kind of "trust us, they're bad" bullshit is exactly not allowed around here and is the primary reason why mods refrain from taking these kind of potshots even when people complain about e.g. suspensions. I would expect them to know a lot better
you forget that they are the ones with ultimate power. ultimate power doesn't need to justify itself to anybody, nor abide by the rules. rules are for plebs.
Nah, we, the userbase has the ultimative power. Without us, there wouldn't be something like SE inc. Until now, we lived with their decissions... but this can change
but all of the relaxing of the content quality rules that we have tacitly allowed have now enabled the sites to have far more users and content than they would otherwise have
and there will always be people who are willing to take a diamond and comply with whatever SE tells them to do, because imaginary internet points
so regardless of what we do, i believe that SE inc will survive, and continue to grow, much in the way that experts exchange has done. not growing by quality, but by quantity. enough to keep the investors and the power-hungry at SE happy.
the time when we should have rebelled, when we could have brought the network to its knees, was when the summer of love post appeared
but we did not, and so today here we site
i'm not particularly interested in seeing this play out, apart from it confirming my suspicions. what i am interested is knowing where y'all decide to migrate to. so unless or until these chat rooms get shut down for incitement, i'll lurk a little
@Magisch i would love that, but i'm leery of how such a thing would play out. what i will say is that if the rules are pre-summer of love, i'd be keenly interested
On the downside, it's illegal to just go and set the world on fire. On the upside, the world seems quite keen on setting itself on fire all by itself while also insisting that there's nothing burning and even if it is, it's not their fault.
@JohnDvorak sounds like Israel's PM who is accused for year in serious crimes of bribery and corruption and always has one single reply to all the accusers: "There will be nothing because there was nothing". Well, that's the translation, sounds better in Hebrew...
I'm Czech, and our president doesn't bribe get bribed (or at least that I know of). Instead he spends his days in the hospital, from all sorts of possibly-alcohol-related health issues.
To be fair though, the position of a Czech president was never really one of power, even if the one sitting there is of mental capacity - and the one sitting there for four terms = 16 years (even though the limit is 2 terms, the country has been renamed in the meantime, making the first two not count) has actually been quite good.
The reason why Monica was fired has been out and clear. She had a different view point from what the director of Q&A had, and was therefore thrown out like street garbage. The director has repeatedly demonstrated that they don't care about the community's feelings. There used to be a time when users were free to oppose whatever the company had done, and were able to remain on the site. But in the past few days, the Stack Exchange staff have tried to take down posts on MSE and Stack Moderators teams which were focused on the resignations, and suspended a user for posting that. — Bhargav Rao7 hours ago
Bhargav is a trusted moderator and has been nothing but level headed in his every interaction I've ever seen him perform. Hearing this damning asessment almost makes whatever they'll say irrelevant. Time for consequences instead
@Magisch 100%, Bhargav has always been extremely cool calm collected impartial and fair in the face of the worst of the welcome wagaon, to hear him this angry means things are really bad
and the reason for that is that mods have been chosen by the community, where community = people who give a damn about SE site quality (i.e. NOT the screaming help vampire hordes)
whereas we have no insight as to how SE employees are chosen, and the current meltdown suggests their process is horribly flawed
> Though once our lands, a pale being lays claim to the caverns ahead. > It may appear benevolent but it does not share our dream. > Be wary to wander that place.
they are in a monumental mess most likely none of their own making
user206222
Linking Word to the Wise in my resignation wasn't an accident. Though... I'm thinking about what's happened in a very different way than most people, I think.
@JourneymanGeek Agreed, but what we have can not always be what we can keep. If there are no longer finances to run things as they are being run right now, things need to change wether we like it or not. And seeing the changes that are made regarding advertising, and legal issues I think this is the case.
I also noticed somewhere in an interview one of the founders mentioned an IPO someday. So I bet theyre ramping up for that. And for that to be succesfull you need revenue.
I agree. But as long as it stays one CM, were still going nowhere. It needs to move up at least one or two levels into the company. I think they should re-think their priorities. Just as they had to do about a year ago.
@AndrasDeak If you talk about Sara, all I've read on the Meta's from her was well, not really displaying that she knows how the community is feeling right now. Mostly boilerplate answers that lack any real answer if you ask me. Not sure if she is able to disclose anything beyond what she said though?
@Magisch I don't have anything against Sara as a person. But you can't deny that she is (a / the) public face of the company in regards to the community. So for most people she can't be anything else that "the company".
@JourneymanGeek Neither do I, but from what I understand from Monica's post a public appology would be a place to start. But for all the "directors" I've dealt with in the past I have little hopes for something like this turning out this way. Seeing they are usually very keen on being right.
@AndrasDeak Finding voting rings can be automated by a script, and anyone can be trained to recognize them. The part of moderation that keeps this place from descending to reddit levels is harder and more intractable then mechanics.
@JourneymanGeek meh. How much do you think the corporation is affected by moderators being leaders slash guiders of communities, and how much is it affected by the janitorial work?
I have an opinion but of course you have much more perspective to answer that
@AndrasDeak But the community, or at least the users who make up the community, are essential to the company, because without them there wouldn't be a company. So in that sense they are probably better of realising they should value moderators, and the time they invest.
contrast with Jeff Atwood's era (at least what I can tell from remarks through time) which sounds like something genuinely community-embracing, even if not -driven
it's more or less "badgering someone in a seemingly polite way", which is awesome because at one point you can always claim your opponents are sealioning you
@john It's one of the funny terms people who consider themselves socially sensitive can use to describe "toxic" behaviour. It's right there with "mansplaining" and "techbro", typical example of when you're doing as bad as who you are up against in the name of good
Oh, yeah, it does. And also a lot of jerks mansplain and manspread and there are people who are very much adequate to label "techbro". On the flip side, "SJW" is also an existing entity, in an extreme manner. Using these labels, however, are in no way constructive, because they just drive any kind of wedge between people deeper, and frankly I find their prevalent use itself toxic.
first there's a lot of baggage around any such term, second a lot of people (especially the ones you would want to target with reasoning to help them change) will just close up and leave if you label them this way
Honestly, I'm just praying for a replacement. If something similar to SO with a few changes to handle the way information ages and better focus on curation were to spring up, I'd be gone in a heartbeat.
that if you're focused on getting an advantage from a good looking SO profile, your behaviour would be very different from either the person looking for the next problem solving fix, or someone who's an engaged, active part of the community
When you review an answer in the low-quality post queue, one of the comment templates is:
This does not provide an answer to the question. Once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post; instead, provide answers that don't require clarification from the asker.
I...
