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Tinkeringbell

13:06

@Shadow9 And while we wait for a mod to get to that, someone can just continue posting... while a few downvotes will push it into an automatic system to handle it: the post ban

Shadow9

@Tinkeringbell true

Tinkeringbell

I also like the post ban better than suspensions, because it forces you to make good contributions (either by improving existing stuff or writing better new stuff), unlike a suspension where people can just pick up where they left off (and often do, in my experience)

Shadow9

Well... so it can be useful to allow mods to give post ban.

Requires some big changes, but doable, I guess.

Tinkeringbell

@Shadow9 Perhaps. Still, if a community would consistently moderate low quality posts, and votes weren't reversed... It would probably be easier than having mods manually set one.

Shadow9

Vote reversal is important, better not bin it

Magisch

13:15

I mean the whole SE model breaks down if mods and community aren't on the same page regarding quality metrics

if say answers without backup regularly get swaths of upvotes then it ought to be examined if the policy is still within consensus

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch :/ Not really though, as the SE model itself requires said backup.

If you have a 'community' that doesn't stick to that, it doesn't really belong on SE and should probably be migrated to Reddit.

Magisch

well you can't make your userbase do things they don't want to

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch True, it's a 'take their toys away' kind of scenario.

Magisch

eh. It might be more of a "find out if SE is a platform fit" scenario

besides, TWP doesn't have a backup policy, and it works relatively fine

Tinkeringbell

@Shadow9 Oh, it probably shouldn't be binned... but it should allow for proper content moderation without relying on 'vote on something else in between' workaround.

Magisch

13:19

it just requires you to elaborate your reasoning for your answer, but there is plenty of subjectivity and it's not a cesspit

Shadow9

@Tinkeringbell maybe... but hard to tweak it

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch TWP does have one too, technically. No one really does anything with it anymore it seems though. I spent some time over on TWP specifically to learn about it, and learned... nothing.

Magisch

well yeah it's a pretty much common sense based thing

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Eh, I beg to differ on that. It might not be a cesspit but it certainly doesn't smell like roses either.

Magisch

fuzzy around the edges

Tinkeringbell

13:24

IPS doesn't work like that, and I'm happy about it. We'd get this all the time.

(Courtesy of Em that linked me to that one)

Magisch

In the end, it's not either of our calls to make

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch I'm still a moderator on IPS, so it's a bit of a call for me to make there.

I have given up on TWP ;)

Magisch

mods dont make policy decisions though

they just enforce them

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Luckily we now have the policy set so I can still enforce it.

Magisch

if your community told you right now they're getting rid of the back up rule you could argue as a member of that community but mods don't get a supervote on policy

CMs might, if they decide IPS isn't allowed to get rid of the policy

Tinkeringbell

13:29

@Magisch Depends on who you'd count as community too. A random influx of users saying they should be allowed to because their posts were moderated and they're grumpy certainly doesn't override the SE model.

Right now there's a few good people on IPS and I hope they stick.

@Magisch That would honestly be lovely. We have one post from Shog saying 'Finally' when asked about implementing and enforcing backup :P

Magisch

heh

Tinkeringbell

Still took us a while even after that to get it going good.

Magisch

it also left a bitter taste in many people's mouths

Tinkeringbell

True, people still think we're the gossip corner.

And some people really want a gossip corner.

There's not much we can do about that though, just like SO still doesn't allow low quality questions or duplicates ... and that leaves a bitter taste in many people's mouths too.

I'm not sure why one would argue that IPS should settle for less just because of it's subject matter lending itself to lesser quality content just as well as good quality content... :/

But apparently people do.

Magisch

I always thought IPS could be a place where you could ask about advice and strategies to deal with interpersonal issues, either generally or specific

and that you could give advice. I'm not sure I'm in favor of a "back this up or we delete it" policy but I see why backup should be encouraged

It got too academic for my liking, tbh

Tinkeringbell

13:38

@Magisch That 'give advice' part is dangerous. It's still an SE site, so it's not about questions and advice, the A in Q&A still stands for 'Answer'.

It's that thought though that makes it that we have to explain IPS over and over and over as not just an advice site. Which is kinda strange considering it is hosted on a network of sites with questions about a specific subject matter, yet people still think...

It's the same as using SO to write your code for you, or dumping your homework on Math, I guess.

Both come from wrong expectations.

Hard to manage expectations too.

Magisch

When you're dealing with a topic which is fuzzy like IPS, there's not really right and wrong advice besides broadly

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch And it's still way too soft for mine... but it seems to have found a precarious balance that I'd like to keep.

Magisch

and any advice is technically an answer. Bad advice is just a bad one

you can't really compare IPS to a code problem

there's a "right answer" for a code problem. there isn't on IPS

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch True. Back up isn't about right or wrong... it's about proving your hypothesis.

And you don't do that with 'common sense' as that's a myth on an international site.

Magisch

It does feel kinda contrived

Tinkeringbell

13:43

It's how the system is supposed to work.

Magisch

and it means basically to participate there you need to share a lot about yourself

Tinkeringbell

I'm sure there's places outside the system that allow you to just post your opinion and be done with it.

@Magisch Not necessarily, the best kind of backup is sources, not experience. Experience is for when you don't have any sources.

Magisch

literally nobody reads academic sources on interpersonal relations

except academics or people with an academic interest in it

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch excuse me.

Magisch

but that isn't your userbase

Tinkeringbell

13:45

@Magisch That kinda reminds me of all those 'we're driving away the experts with huge amounts of low quality content' arguments.

Magisch

maybe it is now, it's been a while since I peeked in

Tinkeringbell

If your userbase doesn't contain anything interesting for someone that is interested in reading about interpersonal skills, of course they won't become part of your userbase.

Magisch

thats a place where the expert model kinda falls apart doesn't it. To remain useful to the general public it needs to be a space where you can share and ask about things that a normal person might deal with. But if you want experts on the subject then you're going to have an academic discussion about hypothethicals.

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Things that a normal person might deal with aren't necessarily excluded from research...

Magisch

technical SE sites are about a topic where the usual practitioner seeks to become an expert someday, and where there are experts that also have nonacademic interest in the subject. IPS is something literally everyone does every day

so the gap between answerers and askers on a technical site is relatively small, because they're drawn from the same group of people.

Tinkeringbell

13:48

Yep. So we need to get those people that have at least an interest in the subject, not just the people that are people everyday.

You still don't want the homework dumpers, not even on your technical site. And everyone has to do Math in school.

Magisch

like, I'm certainly not uniquely qualified to give answers on IPS. I don't have an academic interest in the subject, all I have is trial & error experiences

and I'm not fond of laying out my whole life story in the course of giving answers, tbh.

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch That's your own choice then. If you're not comfortable giving your equation and how you worked it out on e.g. Math, you'd probably run into the same problem.

From what I've seen they don't really accept answers that just say '42'

Magisch

At the start, when IPS was new, I restricted myself to answering where I thought I may have a useful perspective. Most of these answers are probably deletable under current policies

@Tinkeringbell on SO they do though

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch We've had a discussion about that and at most you'll get a comment if someone stumbles across it, so people can see it's not up to current standards ;)

Magisch

for a technical question an answer is very self evidently verifiable. It either works or doesn't

Tinkeringbell

13:52

@Magisch SO is weird then. :P

@Magisch True. So perhaps on SO you can give a line or two of code that fixes the problem... still the best answers to me do explain what's different in those lines, and why they work while my code didn't.

Even there, a great answer can be more than just '42'.

Magisch

for instance when someone has a problem with their SQL query and maybe made a logical error. You can point out the error and provide a correct version, you don't need a source from whence you drew the answer. Because it's possible for the asker to run it and see if it works.

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch We could play with people's lives like that... should be fun.

BlueSoul

@Tinkeringbell outdated. Was 42. Now it is 48.

Magisch

projecting that on an IPS answer, if someone asked "Why did X get upset" and you go "X got upset because you said Y which is generally offensive because Z" that would be a sufficient level of detail, but not contain backup

Tinkeringbell

@BlueSoul I missed the update, do you have a source?

release notes?

@Magisch Ah yes... we don't do 'why did X get upset' though, as we can't read minds.

We had a discussion about updating the help center for that, we should make work of that.

Magisch

13:55

in the end, any advice given is playing with people's lives like that, because people often leave out crucial details and IPS is a super complicated subject with lots of moving parts

you remember the question I asked about the girl that stepped on my foot? She tried to get her boyfriend to beat me up after I apologized :)

Tinkeringbell

Oh, that's wonderful :/

BlueSoul

@Tinkeringbell as Rick Berman said "47 is 42, corrected for inflation".

But that happened a few years ago...

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Which is why getting some questions to work already takes more work than answering them ;)

BlueSoul

so it should be 48 by now.

maybe even 49

Tinkeringbell

AH.

BlueSoul

13:58

(yep, that is the reason Star Trek often mentions 47)

Tinkeringbell

Anyway, I like IPS with back up rules and the citation expectations we stole from RPG... and I like seeing RPG posts on HNQ, as the answers are always backed up :D

Rob

Whichever way you look at it, on SO or IPS, you don't want to break Data

25 great Data (Brent Spiner) quotes

►

Tinkeringbell

@Rob I'd also settle for not breaking anything, not just Data ;)

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