New answers tagged discussion
5
It is site practice to delete unsupported answers
Admittely it's never really documented/discussed on it's own, but mostly in the discussions around fun topics like game recommendations and designer intent requests. Specifically, when the questions type really needs supported answers, aren't getting them, and we need to talk about how to moderate them.
But ...
2
"Why ..." doesn't necessarily mean "Why did the designers ..."
Possibly I've spent too much time adjudicating legal disputes but I find the answer to "What happened?" is far more useful in determining the "why" than "What did X say was the reason that something happened?" X is always an unreliable witness.
It'...
0
Expect Frame Challenges
Too many metas to list: https://rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=frame+challenge
Sometimes people will answer by targeting what they see as the problem behind your question rather than directly addressing the question you did ask. We call that a Frame Challenge and sometimes it can be better than a direct answer. Sometimes not.
1
Tangentially - you can check for this type of edit (or any others)
This is the 10 most recent Unprotect edits using:
SELECT TOP 10 *
FROM PostHistory
WHERE PostHistoryTypeId = 15
ORDER BY CreationDate DESC
The PostHistoryTypes are:
$$\begin{array}{c|c}
\text{Id}&\text{Name}\\\hline
1&\text{Initial Title}\\\hline
2&\text{Initial Body}\\\hline
3&...
4
A curious point of error can be the WoD/CoD mismatch, where players might assume the two share more rules than they do - and give advice based on the wrong system. Without pointing a finger, I have seen this at least twice.
6
I linked a couple in one of my answers here on one of the iterations of the "don't guess the system" question. One was a Dungeon World question people mistook for D&D 5E, another was a Genesys question people mistook for D&D 5E. People, plural.
They were both system-tagged at the time, as was this question about changing armor during combat ...
5
We have a high moderation capacity
One thing to remember about the protection feature is that it is a preventative measure that aims to reduce the amount of (reactive) moderation that is necessary. We have a high capacity for moderation – and most of that consists of community members using their flags and privileges. There’s very rarely more than one or two ...
3
Don't protect questions for esoteric systems
We've got several rpgs on here with almost no participation. I think I'm probably the only active user with extensive Polaris experience, for example. There was another guy who played Anima for a bit, but also one of those anti-optimization people at the same time so that's kinda dead now. I'm quite confident ...
5
Ask if you're interested
Back in the day, if we guessed a system wrong, it was usually because the question was genuinely interesting in another system. Then we'd repost the question we thought it was and the answers based on that system and the question for the OPs real system would also get answered and we'd end up with two (or, well, at least one) decent ...
8
No, the ability to ask questions about a topic on Meta is not part of any policy.
Meta posts will always be able to decide individual cases
This didn't become a new part of the policy following KRyan's suggestion; it has always been part of the policy. Creating a meta post to propose something, reaching community consensus, and then acting on it is a ...
4
If a question is unclear, close it until the querent engages and clarifies
That was the MO when I stumbled across this site over 5 years ago.
Perhaps our problem - as beautifuly illustrated by @Medix2's list of meta Q&As on this topic - is that we have, as a community, forgotten the KISS principle.
This SE didn't used to have any qualms about closing a ...
7
Use the site-wide guidelines
Protection was originally created to deal with high volume drive-by posting:
[Protection] is meant to be a reaction to persistent abuse from anonymous or unproven participants: when a page attracts a lot of noise or vandalism from outside the community, Protecting it reduces the amount of clean-up needed later on.
On our site, ...
-3
The community currently has no consensus on the policy
In the first thread you link the votes are:
+9 upvotes, -4 downvotes in favor of "The policy would not allow an individual poster to edit this question, but with Meta consensus, it seems near-perfectly safe and in keeping with the caution called for by the policy."
+11/-3 in favor of "[...
4
On our rules, policies and practices
Ok, this is more outside the box, but RPG.SE (and most stacks AFAIK) differ from forums in that rather than having a set list of rules to follow (or be sent into the shadow realm), we operate primarily on practices which leave a lot to user judgement. This is a hard thing to get to grips with, and usually is only really ...
7
Please let’s not.
The entire point of that section of my answer was that isn’t worth anyone’s time or effort. It would be “an approach,” that would avoid the biggest problems with “just editing,” but it still isn’t a good idea.
Why? Because there is absolutely no value in doing so. The entire Stack Exchange model is about amplifying signal over noise. For ...
4
A resource list of previous, related posts
FAQ post and revisits:
What to do when an edit guesses the system being used rather than waiting for the querent to clarify?
Revisiting our "never guess the game system" policy
Re-revisiting the "don't guess the system" policy
General Discussion:
When is it OK to assume the system without ...
6
We have lots of similar questions that are not closed. No reason to close this one.
My answer is based on this revision, which is the one that got discussion to begin with.
Although there is no way to tell a priori, the number of possible ways to do that is quite short. An answer including all ways is completely feasible, as was shown by the answers already.
...
-3
Yes, it should be closed until details are included
The question currently doesn't have a clear indication of what sources are available for a relevant answer and what levels they are at and playing to to understand the implications and risks of multiclassing.
While it could be answered without that, the potential answers grow and we see that even in the ...
10
I don't understand why you think this is a list question
The OP has a problem.
They want to use the feats Crusher and Elven Accuracy at the same time.
Crusher requires them to deal bludgeoning damage. Elven Accuracy requires them to use Dex, Wis, Int or Cha for the attack modifier.
There is no immediately obvious way to deal bludgeoning damage while using ...
12
I opened that question
Perhaps in retrospect I jumped the gun but I'm not about to undo it. I came across the question from the review queues. Typically I skip close/reopen reviews, I just check them to see if there is something I need to weigh in on.
What I saw was a question that IMO is completely answerable. There were a lot of comments asking for things ...
4
Because mods get a say too
Mods are allowed to be site participants like anyone else. When that comes to close and reopen voting, that means via their rep and election they get the equivalent of 5 votes. They don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to cast that vote.
When I was a mod it was customary to cast your close or open as you saw fit. Then if more ...
answered Jul 23 at 12:35
mxyzplk - SE stop being evil
167k2 gold badges103 silver badges283 bronze badges
11
Your edit did go too far
Because the answer, from your point of view1, is (partially) wrong, and you tried making it right. That is best done by submitting a new answer, one that is right, and backing it up accordingly. If you think the answer is mostly right but there is one point you disagree with (i.e., you think it is a mistake), it's best left as a ...
2
At least 24 hours after the OP stops responding, and then only if you would ask it on your own behalf
First, you shouldn't repost the question unless you want to ask it on your own behalf. If and when you do repost, you should be posting as yourself, rather than in lieu of the OP, and you should be able to fully justify the question based on that.
Once you'...
3
I just wanted to extract a few replies from the comments above:
From Medix2's comment on the number of deleted answers per protected question (note: this is all-time, not just the 700 recently unprotected questions)
11% had no deleted answers
26% had 1 deleted answer
29% had 2 deleted answers
18% had 3 deleted answers
9% had 4 deleted answers
4% had 5 ...
4
We have to unprotect things intelligently
Out of the ~700 recently unprotected questions, 5 have gotten answers in just 21 days. All 5 of those answers have since been deleted and/or are at -1 or lower. This works out very roughly to around 2 Very Low Quality (VLQ) answers per week for this group of posts. All of these posts would have been prevented by ...
3
Summarizing criteria that I find relevant
Things that are a +1 point in Protecting a question:
The question already has an accepted answer, that is most likely up-to-date.
The question already has a highly upvoted answer, that is most likely up-to-date.
The question already has 2 or more deleted answers from low (<100) rep users (I'm using <100 ...
15
Here's how this breaks down:
We do not, in point of fact, have a problem with answers talking about designer reasons.
We do have a problem with answers making big claims without proportionate citation, and with misleading answers. This usually gets corrected by downvoting.
Questions asking about designer reasons were banned because, simply, we saw a ton of ...
17
Users are not required to know the answer to their question in order to ask it.
This is a fundamental, doesn’t-even-need-to-be-stated, tenet of a Q&A site—any Q&A site. Questions cannot be closed based on what the answer is. Note that designer-reasons questions aren’t—they are closed because of the kinds of bad-and-wrong answers they tend to draw. ...
8
don't ask why
It's a simple change, but simply asking for how the alignment of orcs have changed over the editions is probably fine.
Asking why it's changed seems pretty clearly to be a designer question.
8
Answers are for answers, not comments
The flip side of answering in comments, it might be good to explain to new users why answers should answer the question and not be more like comments, addressing other answers or just providing some tangential point.
I see this a lot with new users, a lot of what comes through the Late Answers and Low Quality Posts ...
3
A quick reference for What is Meta?
So, our most upvoted and accepted answer tells us that we should link to meta. But for people not familiar with SE, they may not even understand what the meta is.
The existence of this sub-site does not appear in our Tour nor in our Help front page. Users will only find out if they go digging in "Our model", and ...
1
Encouraging users not to accept straight away
This one might be a bit more controversial, and I don't think it matters too much, but based on the accepted answer to this Q&A: Should we encourage users to wait 24 hours before accepting an answer?, it might help to encourage deeper engagement rather than hit-and-run users who we never see again.
This ...
3
Don't signal your edits
If new users are more used to forums where it's common to say "EDIT: Blah blah" instead of just making the edit, it might be good to point them in this direction to explain why that's not necessary.
I don't know if it would literally just be a link to this: Don't signal your edits in text
Or whether we'd write a new one ...
5
We are an edit happy community
To try to avoid situations like this one, it might be worth having something here to explain how here at RPG.SE, we tend to edit posts into shape, so new users who might be rather attached to "their" post should perhaps not take it personally; it's just what we do here.
Users who are not used to such an "edit ...
-6
Our "Don't guess the system" policy, but easier to maintain
This is similar to my other answer, but the suggestion is done in an easier way to maintain.
If you see a question closed due to not specifying the game system, but you think the game system can be added with the information provided in the question, see how to proceed at Re-revisiting ...
13
"Closed" doesn't mean "banned forever", but more like "work in progress"
"Closed" can seem rather final to users who are more used to forums, so explaining to them that it's more like a "work in progress" state and that the community can reopen any closed question might help to make it feel less final, and ...
4
Answer in comments
This is a problem that shows up quite often, especially when a question makes it to HNQ. Should users refrain from answers (or partial answers) in comments?
When users don't have the time or complete necessary knowledge to provide an answer, they often provide "insights" or "guidelines" as partial answers in the ...
11
On specifying the game system
This might be one of the more crucial things for us to inform new users about. However, our current meta's aren't written with the asker in mind, so I propose we create a support question to cover that and how to do it (and have done so). Suggested wording on the help page:
You need to specify which game system you are asking ...
1
Our "Don't guess the system" policy
We revisit it often and I believe the most up-to-date meta question is this one:
Re-revisiting the "don't guess the system" policy
I guess we would have to update the page yearly as we revisit the policy, but nonetheless, it is a reason questions are often closed and discussions are often started, ...
-11
You are not wrong. In fact, you are right.
The purpose of this place on the internet is for people to ask questions and receive answers from experts, answers that are corroborated by research.
Looking at the question I see no valid reason why it should be closed.
As you have articulated, a vote to close maybe a presupposition.
I have the answer to this ...
3
Pursue if the answers do not satisfy your question
You do point out that
In any case, I'm not super attached to or invested in the question
anymore.
You've answered your own question. You have completed the SE process.
Where I'd recommend trying to get a question reopened is where you have a question, the few answers don't satisfy you, and you haven't ...
1
Up to you
First, let us make something clear: your question is a somewhat strange question in how things happened. From the timeline, the question was asked, received its answers in about 5 hours, had a (failed) attempt to close it within this same time window, got to HNQ, and was closed about 18 hours later. That is, it wasn't clear that the question should ...
3
Things I think we should cover
That you need to explicitly mention the game you are playing if you are asking about that game’s rules, setting, lore, and really anything at all that isn’t a purely social question. Mentioning the importance of tags here is a good idea.
The process for working with questions, e.g. closing and/or editing. Something to try to ...
4
Until you are actually having the problem in that original question.
From our tour:
Focus on questions about an actual problem you have faced. Include details about what you have tried and exactly what you are trying to do.
This is reinforced in the help page.
You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. ...
6
There is enough evidence to say it's D&D 5e. We still shouldn't edit and reopen it without OP editing it.
I will refer to D&D 5e as only 5e for the remaining answer.
I will borrow from KRyan's and mxyzplk's answers to other meta talks about this. Even if the chance that this is not 5e is 0.01%, it does not matter. There are meta-reasons for following ...
-9
No, the original post lacks strong evidence that explicitly points to a particular system.
While the original question does mention several terms that are strongly associated with D&D 5e, it does not provide evidence that we can use as per existing RPG.SE site policy. Specifically:
The original question mentions the Wildemount setting, but not the ...
6
There is enough evidence to conclude that this question asks about the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons
Something to keep in mind: People agreeing with answers here does NOT mean the question should be immediately re-opened or kept closed. Some amount of time would need to pass before an actual consensus can be made, after which action could be taken.
...
10
Yes, in this case, there is enough contextual evidence that we can deduce the question is meant for D&D 5e.
The original question mentioned several terms that strongly suggest the system in use:
Wildemount, a setting in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount, a book published for D&D 5e only.
"Chronugy" wizard, likely a misspelling of the ...
25
Thought I'd add my PoV here - the mods kindly reached out to me about this when it first happened and I'd been talking with them about it. The ask on our end isn't as simple as Dopplegreener's answer makes it out to be. We'd have to build a dev route that doesn't currently exist to re-protect them, rather than undoing the protection. It's not a five-minute ...
8
Spam prevention doesn't seem to be the main use for protection (volume-wise)
Given the previous data, this would mean that only 212/943 = 22% of protection activity involves spam.
58% of posts which receive spam are never protected
This tells me that spam has been not the main use of protection for us in the past. In fact, it seems like a very minor or at ...
Top 50 recent answers are included
