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Timeline for Should questions about dice in general be on-topic? [2019]

Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0

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May 16, 2019 at 12:58 comment added Sycorax "Why make it" -- to correct OP's implicit claim that dice questions do not have a home on SE. That's why I included the block quote. My only purpose in writing this answer is raise awareness among RPG.SE users that dice questions are on-topic at stats.SE. Full stop. If you read something else into that, I hardly see how I can be responsible for it; I plainly state what I mean in black and white.
May 16, 2019 at 12:52 comment added illustro I read your first sentence and I still made the inference I mentioned. If you don't think the point of it being on topic somewhere else adds to the conversation on this question why make it. What you personally are indifferent to or not is irrelevant, which way you think your argument swings the conversation is, however relevant.
May 16, 2019 at 12:39 comment added Sycorax I think anyone who makes it as far as reading my first sentence (I am indifferent to whether or not RPG.SE wishes to expand its scope to cover dice questions.) will understand that the context in which I am writing is the block-quote immediately before it.
May 16, 2019 at 12:36 comment added illustro You are bringing up a point (something is 100% on topic somewhere else) as an answer to the question "should dice be on topic here". People will make inferences in that context, like I did, that you are saying they shouldn't be on topic here. My comment was that you should address that more explicitly in your answer if you don't want that inference to be made.
May 16, 2019 at 12:32 comment added Sycorax @illustro You’re objecting to an argument I never made. I never even took a stance on whether dice should be on-topic at RPG.SE or not. My only point is that dice questions are on-topic at stats.SE. The first sentence I wrote in my answer is I am indifferent to whether or not RPG.SE wishes to expand its scope to cover dice questions. I only wrote my answer to correct what I felt was a misunderstanding by OP.
May 16, 2019 at 12:19 comment added illustro Just because it's 100% on topic for one stack does not mean it should be off topic for another. I can think of 10 questions related to something I'm working on right now that would fit on Stack Overflow, Security.SE and DBA.SE (among others). Equally I can think of dice related questions that are on topic here, and elsewhere.
May 12, 2019 at 11:49 comment added user55419 @DuckTapeAl: Given that this Meta question asks "should we explicitly expand our site's scope to include questions that are about rolling dice, regardless of an RPG context" [my italics] it'd perhaps be wise even here on the RPG site to require that questions provide some information about context, goals, & constraints; rather than assume that e.g. some standard set of dice is available or obtainable, or that random numbers must be generated singly & not in batches. And I don't think it's an especially onerous requirement in any case.
May 7, 2019 at 16:24 comment added DuckTapeAl We definitely have a miscommunication here. I understand that people can ask questions about various polyhedra on Stats. My point is that there are a number of things that you don't have to specify on RPG that you have to precisely specify on Stats. Based on the answers to that question, I would need to know that I need to specify: what dice I'm willing to use, how much math I'm capable of doing in my head, etc. For a lay person, asking simply "how do I make a 1d150" is simpler than the level of detail needed to ask the same question on Stats.
May 7, 2019 at 16:06 history edited Sycorax CC BY-SA 4.0
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May 7, 2019 at 16:00 comment added Sycorax I think you're missing the larger point, which is that asking about polyhedral dice is also on-topic. Nothing about stats.SE is restricted to d6. A person can ask about using fair (or unfair!) polyhedra to simulate any distribution if that's of interest to them. I asked about d6 because that question is interesting to me.
May 7, 2019 at 15:50 comment added DuckTapeAl To be clear: I'm not claiming that people can't get questions about dice-rolling answered on Stats.SE. What I'm saying is that, if the definition of "simple" there is that multiplying a number by 36 in your head counts as simple, then someone with little to no formal math knowledge will need more effort and editing tine to frame their question right than they would here.
May 7, 2019 at 15:29 comment added Sycorax I suppose it's up to question-askers to decide what kind of an answer they want, and therefore choose the right place to ask, in the same way that you can ask DYI.SE about how to build a fence in your backyard and you can ask law.SE whether building the fence might have adverse legal consequences. However, there are now 4 answers to the d150 question. My answer is, so far, the least-efficient method; however it is also the simplest, requiring only knowledge of addition, subtraction and multiplication. Like I said, I'm not here to tell RPG.SE what to do, but stats.SE can answer dice questions.
May 7, 2019 at 15:27 comment added DuckTapeAl To phrase it differently, it looks to me that a layperson who doesn't have any stats knowledge will have an easier time getting a good answer to a dice-rolling question here than on Stats.
May 7, 2019 at 15:25 comment added DuckTapeAl My counterpoint: I read the question and answer posted to stats.SE for the 1d150 question. Even with some basic statistics education, both the question and answer were totally opaque to me. While it's possible to ask a dice-rolling question on Stats and get an answer, it appears that the number of extra details needed to frame the question correctly are non-trivial. Here, we already assume you're using a standard set of polyhedral dice, and that you don't want to do lots of math to count the dice, and you can't count in base 6.
May 7, 2019 at 15:15 history answered Sycorax CC BY-SA 4.0