Timeline for How is the community doing? [2018]
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
45 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 27, 2018 at 15:59 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | I have slept on this, and we are indeed done. These two comments, 1 and 2 in particular are so far wide of the mark, and so wrong in detail, as to leave me even more puzzled, and to conclude that further discourse at this time is fruitless. Thank you for your time, and the effort, put into the discourse we were able to have. | |
| Jun 9, 2018 at 3:31 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | Try not to put words into my mouth. Really. Let's give this an overnight to see if there's anything further to offer, or if I feel inspired to do an edit. | |
| Jun 9, 2018 at 3:30 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | When this answer says things like “How do I know that it's easy to fall into the trap of contributing to barriers to the new user experience?” it’s appearing to conflate all barriers as undesirable—a position we can’t as a community endorse. | |
| Jun 9, 2018 at 3:29 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | @SevenSidedDie Nothing I have suggested in any way undermines the core goal of SE to have a favorable signal to noise ratio to differentiate it from the rest of the internet. I am about out of interest in further discussion today, so I'll sleep on this; and maybe our discussion has run its course and there's nothing more to say. I'll see what the sunrise offers in way of inspiration. | |
| Jun 9, 2018 at 3:27 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | You’re saying I’m endorsing intentional hostility, but I’m not. I’m endorsing the barriers that are what makes this site function. They are “structurally hostile” and often received as hostile, but they’re not optional or negotiable. You’re advocating a greater human touch—which is fine in itself. But you’re advicating means that undermine the site mission: (1) treating questions differently based on who asks, (3) treating the askers are more important than their questions. We can be actually nice without drifting the site from the impersonal Q&A it’s designed as, into a personal help site. | |
| Jun 9, 2018 at 3:05 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | @SevenSidedDie My suggestions undermine nothing and are an attempt to encourage "be nice" in deed rather that in lip service. Your advocacy in this interchange of encouraging intentional hostility is explicit support of the antithesis of "be nice" in deed; be nice at this point comes off as an empty corporate platitude. Not the first time I've ever seen that, either in this venue or IRL. Are you playing devil's advocate here (understandable, given your mod role) or is this a sincerely held position? | |
| Jun 9, 2018 at 3:02 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | @SevenSidedDie My 3 suggestions are aimed at addressing inhospitable personal responses to a new user: this is within the remit of each user. Each user is encouraged to view a new attempt at participation here with a human frame of reference vs the disembodied hostility that you suggest is intended and desired. Not the platitude "be nice" but action that embodies be nice. In opening review queue to help out in community modding, how do I prevent perpetuationg needless hostility to new users. New users are my concern: once any of us feels welcome enough to join the scrum, lay on MacDuff! | |
| Jun 9, 2018 at 2:57 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | This answer pervasively advocates undermining the core mechanisms and barriers of the site, woven together with otherwise-good pleas to be more kind. That conflation makes it a non-starter — mods can’t get on board with this, without violating the mission we (literally) signed onto when we were made mods. | |
| Jun 9, 2018 at 2:53 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | We see people advocating for less structural hostility all the time — close slower, allow answers in comments, allow discussion, allow opinion-based questions — in the name of being more friendly, and thus showing misunderstanding of the point of the site’s rules/mechanisms. So making this distinction clear is critically important to get on the same page in site friendliness discussions. We as a community can’t afford to endorse positions that don’t recognise the value of the moat. | |
| Jun 9, 2018 at 2:47 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | This is where your distinction between structural hostility and human-generated hostility is critical to keep in mind. The site’s mechanisms and rules are structurally hostile. The site is sink-or-swim by design. However, we as humans need not — should not — communicate with new users in a hostile way. We should communicate hospitably, I agree. The distinction I am drawing is that the obligation to communication hospitably (Be Nice rule) is separate from the site’s mechanical/rule hostility. The structural hostility must not be mitigated; the communication hospitability is good but separate. | |
| Jun 9, 2018 at 0:33 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | @SevenSidedDie It is not necessary to be dismissive and hostile to all new users in order to deal with the small category of new users who won't/don't fit well here. (I pay attention. There is indeed a class of users who are not a good fit here: protonflux is not the only one who admitted as much in one of his last comments). That's the message. Your message to me is that it is OK to be hostile to all new users on the outside chance that any new user might become a problem. (And if you really feel that way, I'll once again to confess to scratching my head). | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 23:53 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | In other words, the barrier you and others are perceiving was put there on purpose; it’s an obstacle course shaped to pass those who suit the site and fail those who don’t. So saying “there’s a barrier!” isn’t a call to action that will inspire fixing it. We aren’t unaware of it. That’s just saying “there’s a moat and walls around the castle”: yes, we put them there. Crossing them may be inconvenient, but the alternative is the castle burning down some day, by accident or intentionally. We’re charged with keeping the moat filled and the walls and gates in repair and functioning as designed. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 23:46 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | @Korvin I can see that objection… But, I deliberately wasn’t addressing every new user. The point of many of the mechanisms of the site is to reduce workload on the community, new user vetting included. New users are meant to be vetted automatically, self-sorting according to their personal journey adapting to the site, naturally matching it from the beginning, failing to adapt to the site, or naturally clashing with it. We’re not supposed to be manually overriding that process — that interferes with its efficacy at naturally selecting fitting users and filtering out those who don’t fit. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 21:20 | history | edited | KorvinStarmast | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 8, 2018 at 21:18 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | @SevenSidedDie The problem I have with this comment is that you were not addressing the news users as a whole, but rather a small subset of new users who speak up. My objective in writing this answer is to address the hostility that any new user will receive that is preventable; it takes us a little time, I think, to clearly perceive who simply won't be a good fit. Again, even experienced SE users are seeing a barrier; these are people who 'get' the SE system. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 21:15 | history | edited | KorvinStarmast | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 8, 2018 at 21:02 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | Alright. I'm still concerned there's potential miscommunication there, but it's definitely better than the people-centric implications of “latent”. Cheers. I think I understand much better where you're coming from; hopefully we've both learned some things. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 21:00 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | @SevenSidedDie I am using "inherent" as a placeholder for the time being. Will cogitate further. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:53 | history | edited | KorvinStarmast | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:53 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | @KorvinStarmast Being dismissive or looking down on new users is bad for the site because it throws sand in the gears — if people are going to engage with a question, then they should take the time to do it right and constructively, or leave it to someone who can. In that, the outcome of good question-curation and being friendly happen to coincide. But it's very important to recognise the goal isn't to be friendly for friendliness' sake; when good site management and friendliness conflict (and they do), then friendliness mustn't override what we're supposed to do. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:51 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | This Isn't About A Question Being Closed. I still do VTC's. This is (1) the drive by treatment of a new user (old users, this isn't a problem) and (2) the attitude behind the drive by. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:51 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | All my efforts to help users has been to guide them into being constructive contributors to the purpose of the site. If they don't want that, or can't be, I'm quick to put out the barriers and site-protective spikes. We've lost high-rep users because they came into conflict with the goals of the site, and refused to adjust. That's as it should be. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:48 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | Your disagreement with 3 puzzles me, given the effort I've seen you make to offer assistance in hundreds of cases to users all over the site. I confess, my head is now being scratched. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:48 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | So if we can be welcoming without sacrificing the whole point of the site, then we do. When welcoming methods conflict with the goal, those methods are not acceptable (which is why we will never not-close questions just to make people feel better about it). | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:45 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | I disagree with (1) and (3) because they misunderstand the point of RPG.se—we are not supposed to treat questions as people, we are to treat them as questions. The decades-long goal of RPG.se is to curate good answers to questions. Helping people is the method, not the goal, of getting a good database of posts. (This is also all deliberate founding principles.) We are supposed to treat all questions equally, regardless of the name under them. (There's a reason the name is under posts, not over like on many discussion forums.) I agree with (2) but only because it's good question curation. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:41 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | @SevenSidedDie That does not change the fact that new users being treated badly doesn't have to happen, even with the constraints of the system as stated. Do you disagree with the three points I present as mitigation? | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:39 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | The observation that the site contains structural hostility is good — it's good to finally recognise it — but it's not new. It's a founding principle of Stack Exchange. All the closes, holds, locks, reputation ladders, and everything else derives from that basic core principle that not everyone is interested in helping this engine run, and those who are against this engine need to be incentivised to neither try to change the engine, nor to throw sand in its gears. Objecting that the site uses its immune system is futile. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:35 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | @SevenSidedDie The whole reason I put that there was so that what I mean is clear. I am good with workshopping it, and at the moment "received hostility" is beginning to bubble up as perhaps clearer and more descriptive ... I'll think on it. There may be an even better term. Beyond that, your second comment, that hostility to newbies is intended (really?) is to me a different sort of problem because that seems to me to be self defeating. It's kind of surreal for me to explain to you what I mean, only to have you tell me "no, you mean this." Can you appreciate how it looks from my shoes? | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:31 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | @KorvinStarmast To clarify: you've defined it here, which prevents misunderstanding here. But if you're going to use “latent hostility” as a shortcut without explanation elsewhere — the usual purpose of coining a neologism — it won't get any special interpretation from mods and will be moderated according to its usual meaning, as that is the meaning it will be contributing to discussion. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:25 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | @SevenSidedDie This is rather frustrating; I am in good faith trying to explain as clearly as I can what I mean, and you threaten me. When I told dopple and BESW that I have no faith in the meta process, your latest comment is the kind of response I was referring to. Can we please not do this? I'd rather not this answer to the meta, which two mods encouraged me to write, have been an utter waste of time. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:23 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | @SevenSidedDie Since you are overwriting your opinion into my attempt at an explanation, that is not appreciated at all. There may be another term (and inherent may be it) but your accusation that I am accusing the community of being hostile is utterly false, as I explained now twice, and once before. In fact, the problem with naming this is that I am pretty sure that in the vast majority of the cases, only one end of the message (receiving) sees hostile, as the sender isn't trying to be mean. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:20 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | Aside, you would be right, the site is structurally hostile… but only to a subset of new users, and by design. They’re incompatible with the site, and the structural hostility is a founding principle of all parts of the site design. We have to filter out those who cannot or will not agree with the SE system. Those who are incompatible are vocal disproportionately to their percentage though, so it’s important to not commit an availability heiristic error and overestimate how many people in the whole population are affected/turned away. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:17 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | You may stand by your neologism, but we expect people to say what they mean and mean what they say, so as we have previously told you, you are not welcome to accuse the community of latent hostility, and you’re familiar with how we enforce that. Please reconsider. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:06 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | It's the system's lurking feature, not any given user's feature. An experienced user will not see the same thing as a new user. I'll try other synonyms later. You are reading into the term something that isn't there, and as I had offered to you before, that term comes to me from editing technical manuals and the latent errors therein. I don't want to use structural because to me that implies an intended design element, rather than a byproduct of a design. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 20:04 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | @SevenSidedDie what about inherent/ Structural doesn't capture what I am trying to articulate. I will also point to the problem of SE being an engine not a community, as expressed by you and waxy here, such that it enables an impersonal response that is received as hostile, rather than intentionally sent as hostile. It's my neologism, and I'm keeping it until I get something better. So far, not better, but I do appreciate the offer. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 19:58 | comment | added | SevenSidedDie Mod | What you’re describing is “structural hostility”. “Latent” is simply the wrong word for what you’re asserting (“existing but not yet developed or manifested”), and you’re getting disapproval because “latent” hostility can only manifest by someone taking it & developing it into obvious (ie., banned) hostility. In the social sciences, the word for what you’re describing is “structural”. Unless you mean to say that we as a community have a store of secret hostility that we choose to suddenly reveal to ambush people with, I suggest using the word that matches what you’ve described instead. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 19:34 | history | edited | KorvinStarmast | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 8, 2018 at 18:57 | history | edited | KorvinStarmast | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 8, 2018 at 17:36 | history | edited | KorvinStarmast | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 8, 2018 at 15:57 | comment | added | KorvinStarmast | @doppelgreener I still have misgivings ... but thankfully I tripped over ducktapeal's comments as I was mulling this over and realized I'd been given a gift of a great example ... I have about six things that need to be edited, and I can't right now due to browser/SE conflict thing. Will revisit in a bit. | |
| Jun 8, 2018 at 15:42 | history | edited | KorvinStarmast | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Jun 8, 2018 at 15:42 | history | edited | doppelgreenerMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
that jeff atwood is no longer at the top is almost guaranteed to be pointed out so i'm just gonna save us the trouble of that & update this bit
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| Jun 8, 2018 at 15:39 | history | answered | KorvinStarmast | CC BY-SA 4.0 |