@AndrasDeak That's exactly why it's confusing

So why is it confusing if you know the opposite of trans- is cis-?

I've only recently gotten a hang of what they mean

@AndrasDeak They're used as really relative terms in chemistry. They themselves don't mean anything.

@M.A.R. of course they do! In trans-but-2-ene the methil groups are on opposite sides, whereas in cis-but-2-ene they are on the same side.

Admittedly if the ligands differ the distinction can be muddy

and there's also "trans-atlantic", "trans-Siberian", it's pretty clear that it means "across something"

I bet the word "transition" itself is a cognate of "trans"

The same compound can be trans- in one reaction, and cis- in another, depending on what groups we compare

@M.A.R. then chemistry is silly :P

ur face is silly

All green and what

in every single example at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cis%E2%80%93trans_isomerism there's a very clear distinction, so I bet the ambiguous cases are edge cases where there are too many different ligands

or perhaps there are some groups of interest, in the context of which the naming makes sense

but it's probably that

There's a distinction between the two words, of course

But that doesn't tell me anything about each of them.

And they're not words,

you put words into my brain

E/Z naming is absolute, that's what I'm saying. cis-*/*trans- and syn*/*anti aren't

Now can we please stop talking about why I was confused and talk more about Oh hey how're you doing?

I need to catch with what happened yesterday

E/Z?

none of this is E/Z if you ask me

meta.stackexchange.com/questions/335370/… — Well, this is certainly a nice update to CoC

@AndrasDeak eeeexactly

@AGirlHasNoName Yeah, I feel like the feature requests for pronouns to be shown on usercards needs an answer like our two comments but I just haven't wanted to put it out there (because I don't think I am the right person to say it....or that's an excuse and I'm just too tired of the arguments to make the effort: 30/70 maybe?)

@LinkBerest You're not off the mark, I'm too tired before even writing anything

I think some of this hostility has come from the perception that people on multiple sides of this "debate" have "you're either for me or against me" position. The opposition then hardens its position.

I think the discussion is tainted by the chronic mistakes and neglect of the company toward both sides. For a lot of users being pissed at the company shadows the consideration that the intent is sound

@AndrasDeak this is true

s/both sides/everyone/, really

And basically any goodwil they built up from working on Q&A again is... kinda overshadowed by other stuff

oh, for sure

but that would still be true three weeks ago

yup

mistrust at least on SO goes very deep, and starting to work on Q&A is just a minimal first step

Well there's a few big differences

SE hasn't grown well

There's occationally some tail wagging the dog too

Not sure what you're referring to exactly. I'm familiar with the idiom, just not sure what you're alluding to.

@JourneymanGeek depends on the perspective

In my humble opinion, it's an earthquake

@M.A.R. someone piled up the firewood, and it caught fire

Pouring water over milk is like sitting on a bench at sea.

See if you can absorb the sheer wisdom in that, uh, Vietnamese proverb.

@JourneymanGeek tbf, they were getting trust. Had they not fired Monica and used the momentum to talk to the community, they would've had a chance to do things a lot better. But instead, they removed HMP, insist on an aggressive ad policy, lies to us and ignores us until there's consequences. They had and have a chance to fix it, but they make mistake after mistake instead.

@Zoethetransgirl precisely

the worst thing is that they've managed to conjure up hitherto-unseen levels of hate against the users whom they intended to protect and in whose name they did the wrongs again

@AndrasDeak this too

(which is why I keep saying that this is all about appearances rather than trying to do actual good)

you might call me cynical, and I might agree

I'd actually like to see a survey of failed interactions on various SE sites and see where things went off the rails. Every good business has an "onboarding" process to get new people up to speed and productive, and the learning doesn't stop there.

And while they're doing, I actually have no idea what they're doing, the community is slowly turning on itself. Sides are slowly forming, and the amount of actually transphobic and otherwise toxic content has gone up thanks to the way they handled it. And not just on main and meta, but in chat too. Everything is slowly collapsing, and they're still not taking it seriously. All four things they said they'd do have turned out to be lies so far.

@AGirlHasNoName but the level of agression and ill will could have been managed with more trust

That ^

There's a bunch of issues that just increase problems

@AGirlHasNoName If I go back to being a mod on MSE - (and this is curently on the table)...

I'd like to help, but...

@Zoethetransgirl do NOT ever say that in a chat with Journey

there's a few hundred people now who don't know me

I don't even know what I can do, or touch without making things worse

@M.A.R. Meh, I stand by my statements.

@AGirlHasNoName I bet there would be a lot less abuse if the first public step wasn't Monica's sacking

@M.A.R. she is right

@Zoethetransgirl He'd start a journey back to the very beginning.

Maybe even before that. 2009.

But a critical thing is how we deal with those issues

same as how the Welcome Wagon would've seen much less pushback if the first public step wasn't a blog post asserting a dichotomy between quality control on SO and treating people fairly

@M.A.R. "But to really understand this story, we need to go back to the beginning of the universe..." :P

I'm kidding @Journey. Your words of wisdom are the only light that shine this dark

. . . theme.

What would be nice was if SE listened.

@Zoethetransgirl always is

@Zoethetransgirl internally too

quite a few folks inside the company probably know us well enough

I expected stuff to get bad

not this bad

that bad

I've seen some of the staff commenting on the resignation posts (and not the copypasta).

I actually saw this coming. Not all the details obviously, but I imagined it would explode

@Zoethetransgirl the effect, not the extent

I certainly didn't expect the media picking it up

and the sudden spike in traffic

I predicted dinosaurs would go extinct.

There's been many tweets about SE too

@AGirlHasNoName its intent is not

It brings outside attention in, which is why I actually recommended it early

but certain aspects of how it was carried out is

Figured pressure might work. I'm so far wrong

None of this happens in isolation after all

yup

I will say this. While underappreciated at times

folk here have one lovely flaw

We talk a lot?

we get nerdsniped easily when we have a problem in front of us

Drive by downvotes

@AGirlHasNoName I see. Haven't heard that about the CoC yet. And I don't agree with it.

What does nerds nipped mean

@AGirlHasNoName completely agree

@M.A.R. move the space

It's a weekend so I expect (daresay hope) that the staff is ignoring all this stuff so they can say something helpful without exhaustion ruining it.

we get easily distracted when we have a problem. And will not stop till we have an elegant, workable solution

n erds nipped

I bloody well hope so

they've probably been getting pulled in on weekends a lot dealing with this

@DavidA Hey, don't use that h*pe word

And for most part they're good folks

@AGirlHasNoName I cannot dispute that at all!

I'm from the crowd that says vanilla can be a good flavor if done right

.... I wonder if the airport has anywhere that sells the good stuff...

THere's a local creamery that has some interesting flavours. Their peanut butter is to die for. As is their tripple choc.

@AGirlHasNoName I think Andras is trying to say what I tried to say here. Of course there'd be pushback. Some out of political reasons, religious reasons, and plain old anti-trans attitudes. But due to SE's bungling, the pushback has been amplified. And made it really hard for people to have rational discourse about it without being misinterpreted.

@M.A.R. ice ice baby

@PM2Ring more or less, yeah

Not just amplified. Also misdirected.

And there's just so much of this that actually countering it is difficult

:/

And I don't see how it could be a good thing

So much what? Drama?

Drama, hate, trolling

Take your pick

"some of the criticism of the CoC itself is that it is hurtful to trans people and that isn't true." Certainly, it's not directly hurtful, but by demanding more than a large chunk of the community is prepared to do, it means those people find it hard to take the CoC seriously, which undermines its power. But more importantly, at least in the short term, it has increased the expression of anti-trans sentiment.

A poor defense of an argument hurts it more than it helps.

@PM2Ring I don't think the CoC itself is the problem, except for by-design conservative SE sites. Then again the more detailed the rules are, the easier it is to violate them in good faith and to weasel out of them in bad faith

Simple as that.

Let's put it this way. I can't imagine a lot of non-binary people rushing to join SE right now, or the existing non-binary members rushing to add a neopronoun as their stated pronoun in their profile or their posts.

@AGirlHasNoName one thing's for sure: none of us intend that!

I'm really sorry if you feel that way :(

oh, "this" is a link. Phew :D

@AGirlHasNoName yeah, that's very bad

I completely understand :(

for what it's worth I don't think a response is merited

anytime

I meant a response from you or Aza; the asker has no regard for your feelings. I'll try to write up an answer later when I can focus on it

@AGirlHasNoName For sure! If we all hid in our closets, we'd... still be hiding in our closets. :) But you have to pick your battles. Make demands, but be prepared to compromise a little if that makes the demands more acceptable to the community.

Isn't an organized call to flag stuff by definition vote brigading?

@DavidA It' sstill [flag-pls], not [flag-or-ill-stab-you]. It's just creating a form of meta effect that anyone and everyone can act on in their own way.

I'm reminded of an anecdote about the game Battle Chess, an early computer chess game with animated pieces. The animation designer had a clear artistic vision of what the final game should look like, but they also knew that upper management love to meddle, and change things for the sake of being able to claim they were involved in the design process. So the animator came up with an ingenious plan...

@DavidA Yes and no

We don't notice everything

Spam is objectively spam. Matters of offense are far less objective.

aww man

In response to the latest... debacle?

Can't win can we?

@AGirlHasNoName Wise!

Taking a deep breath is always good.

@AGirlHasNoName It's not easy. But I've been practicing being diplomatic for several decades. And although I've mostly avoided political discussions of LGBTQ+ stuff for the last decade, and even avoided most LGBTQ+ sites online (apart from the xkcd safespace), I have been thinking about (& educating myself about) trans topics for over 40 years.

I try not to take any message as a personal attack unless it is really aimed at me personally, not expressing an opinion I strongly disagree with.

If people were forced to write G*d, then I suspect such posts would materialise...

Is this a "zero tolerance for intolerance" thing? Because contrary to Karl Popper's take, it's often necessary to tolerate (though not accept) some intolerance in order to build effective alliances.

@AGirlHasNoName Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.

I must have missed that.

I get the feeling that some people are obsessively scanning Meta in search of battles to fight.

Yup

@JourneymanGeek It's impossible to win everything

That probably needs a mod or cm

.... Speak of the shog.... 😁

Custom flag please!

@Cerberus Disagreement isn't offensive. Content attacking people, regardless of which opinion is expressed, needs to be destroyed from orbit.

@AGirlHasNoName You can get a lot more offensive than that, unfortunately.

welp, posted

I'm not sure it makes as much sense as I intended originally

@AGirlHasNoName You are a good trans woman. :hug:

at worst I can claim Shog stole my thunder :P

I've seen a lot worse elsewhere, but SE has never been as bad as in the past two weeks or so

the same way that general anger and frustration is focussed on employees posting on meta, now general frustration is focussed on this issue, and there's a lot of collateral

Yup

And we are attracting trolls :/

Jacqueline has been lurking for years, but has never been "in" the community before, so she's got a different perspective, like a tourist. But she sees a bunch of bad behaviour happening, and telling us that we're all behaving badly, whether we're cis or trans. And I have to admit it does look bad.

But she doesn't understand why we need to flag stuff before it blows up in a toxic explosion. She just perceives it as the trans people & trans allies abusing flagging on the grounds that trans people are the poor oppressed minority, so the powers that be take pity on them.

@AGirlHasNoName take care

People looking for fights have this unfortunate tendency to find them.

A lot of what Shog said is... Pretty standard

I can't keep up with the dynamic on MSE no more

We want people to flag things so we see them

I have no idea whats going on and what lines people are drawing, and there are at least a hundred threads with thousands of associated comments spreading the info out.

And meta is kinda a unusual state

@Magisch Yup

looks a lil like

I don't know if there's anyone who has the time and energy to keep up with the discussion at the moment, and I don't know if anything useful is coming out of

How about some rate limiting on comments

now would be the perfect time

I half expect this to be due to this misunderstanding:

@Magisch Would be seen as censorship 😁

Anymore then now?

People are seeing it as censorship that they're not allowed to turn the tavern into a sewer

sigh

There's no optimal strategy here. No way to keep up with all of it.

The situation is picking up steam and we're ever so slightly losing grip. All we can do is hold on and hope it doesn't last forever

Yup

MSE comments are beyond keeping clean - too many for too few eyes. But we can maybe still keep this room usable

Or folks manage to help us get things back to normal

Eh. I wanted to move it to its own room

The thing about censorship is that each side will probably think it's being censored more than the other. Bleh.

I want to be snarky but I bet it would show up somewhere on meta

@AGirlHasNoName I have to agree, that is highly suspicious. Still, some non-binary people do like to mix gender presentation like that. There are a couple of people on xkcd who identify as trans, and like to wear feminine clothing, but who are very attached to their beards, and even venture out in public wearing a skirt & full beard. I guess they live in very accepting regions. :)

I'm almost tempted to write a post about the tavern telling everyone that it's not in fact SE that is commanding us to do whatever

assume good faith, even when someone's acting unreasonably

@AndrasDeak That feels unnecessary

Maybe quietly raise the rep thresholds so people have to be useful before they can troll?

@JourneymanGeek Well you don't have to assume good faith

@AndrasDeak It's the only thing keeping me going

@AndrasDeak my life has been made much easier by assuming good faith and ignoring the loudest voices in the room.

why are you talking to me then? :P

Talks the most != loudest

aww

@DavidA I probably talk the most

As people get more agitated, they become less logical and harder to interact with. That's usually my cue to take a break.

Worth keeping in mind that this has been linked to in at least a couple of unsavory places elsewhere on the 'Net. If it looks like bait, think twice before taking a bite...

:/

I miss the good old days when the worst thing I had to worry about was another lost user posting programming questions on meta

Yep. I mentioned one of them earlier. It's a website you really don't want to be mentioned on.

@Shog9 noted

It's hard to differentiate bait from non bait

And as long as the bait can be considered a misunderstood attempt, we should do so. Eventually what will happen is that trolls start sounding like normal people.

@AndrasDeak That might confuse the trolls, which would be amusing.

Poe's law?

@JourneymanGeek more like xkcd.com/810

ah ok

@Magisch it's a learned skill. If you really want to obtain it, spend some time on those sites. We've been... Lucky? To have had relatively few good trolls here; folks haven't developed much of an immunity.

Some of these accounts on Meta only seem to exist there. They might just have multiple accounts.

@Shog9 I've been to some seedy places but you're talking about 4chan/b and its portents, right?

I'd rather eat a live handgrenade

@DavidA could be hidden if they're at 101 or so but don't have obvious ...

@Magisch or some reddit spaces I think

but I wouldn't just blame them

Often you can search google for their other network accounts.

@Magisch That doesn't sound implausible i.stack.imgur.com/8fr4T.png

"learns to have a thick skin" === "feels the misery set in as the last specks of light fade from their tired eyes"

I hate that arguement

No one should have to grow a thick skin to interact with the world

@Houseman emotional maturity is mindfulness of others.

Demanding people grow a thick skin is the opposite ;)

@JourneymanGeek I think that was once phrased as "worldproofing the child' vs "childproofing the world".

@DavidA and yet - what you end up then is folks who just deny their feelings and eventually just crack

It is a rigid sort of strength

Yep. Someone apparently made a movie about that general theme recently.

I have a thin skin, and occational crippling anxiety and often feel inferior

yet, well

all those things can be a strength too

@Houseman Not to mention an above-average level of cynicism.

@Houseman I'm not sure I'd want to game with such uncouth barbarians

I hate the term "thick skin" for these discussions

Ever spent a day picking wild blackberries?

@Shog9 >_>

(I walked past blackberry bushes for months and wasn't sure if they were blackberries or something else ;p)

@Shog9 its what people use ;p

and its better than "Callous" or "Emotionally stunted" :D

You will bleed, your skin will hurt. And then the sweat runs in. You keep going, because you want those tasty berries. You can layer up, try to cut paths... But you'll still get pricked, again and again and again. You keep going, not because you don't feel it, but because it's worth it.

This is like that.

Perhaps what we need is a Stack Exchange field trip to pick wild blackberries.

lol

Telling someone who is bearing the brunt of numerous attacks that it doesn't matter because "they have a thick skin" is akin to telling someone that they should give their blackberries away to someone who did no picking.

@Houseman but you don't always deal with it by letting it happen

to you or others.

You got to step on the thorny branch carefully with your steel toes, and pull the upper sunlit berries within reach. Leaning in too far and stretching on one's toes might lead to a painful tumble into the thick of it.

It's not just about developing a thick skin, though. You have to be tough just to survive when you grow up and live in an environment where a lot of people feel entitled to insult & ridicule you. Just about every trans person bears emotional scars. And although they've learned to deal with various kinds of harassment, they can still be triggered by stuff.

@Houseman there's a middle ground between seeking conflict and letting it happen though

You work out the support structure

@JourneymanGeek Yup. Because then "folks should take a vacation in 4chan to develop a thick skin" tends to morph into "we should adopt 4chan standards because folks should have a thick skin".

@duplode ewww