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bench_notesTL4 Moderator22 Jun 2024#1

Community wiki post. Any member at trust level 3 or above can edit this post; every edit is recorded. Last edited by hana.sato on 14 Oct 2024.

16 Sep 2024 — bench_notes: Corrected an arithmetic slip in the second example.
30 Jul 2024 — mira.patel: Plain-language pass on the opening paragraph.
14 Oct 2024 — hana.sato: Restructured into sections so the outline is navigable.

Editors: bench_notes, mira.patel, hana.sato

Staff post. Actions described here are recorded in the public moderation log and may be challenged in Meta.

Anything adjacent and interesting. Not a rules-free zone, just a relaxed one.

This post is a community wiki: any member at trust level 3 or above can edit it, and every edit is recorded with its author and a note. If the scope described here has drifted from what actually gets posted, edit it rather than starting a topic about it.

What belongs here

Questions specific to off topic, with the units and the context stated.
Reports and datasets, with the collection method stated.
Disagreement about the substance, conducted in public.

What belongs elsewhere

Anything urgent belongs in Safety, immediately, and not here.
Anything about how this site works belongs in Meta.
Requests for a maintained page belong in Wiki requests.

Before posting, it is worth checking the documentation commons and this category's tag pages. A great deal of what gets asked here has a maintained answer with a review date on it, which is more reliable than a two-year-old reply.

11 likes 2.1y

owen.bradyTL4 Moderator30 Jul 2024#2

Staff post. Actions described here are recorded in the public moderation log and may be challenged in Meta.

Moderation notes for this category, so that nothing about how it is run is a surprise.

Topics get moved into and out of here regularly. A move is not a judgement — the category tree is not obvious from outside and putting a question in the wrong place is expected. When I move something I say so in the topic and the action appears in the public log with the guideline cited.

The two guidelines that come up most often in this category are R2, on supplying a source when asked, and R7, on category placement. Neither is used punitively.

15 likes 2y

n.dziedzicTL2 Moderator26 Aug 2024#3

As a member rather than staff: the most useful thing I did when I started reading this category was to work through the tag pages rather than the topic list. The topic list shows you what is recent. The tags show you what is settled.

30 likes 23mo

cohort_driftTL3Regular19 Sep 2024#4

Suggestion for the wiki post above: it would be worth linking the two or three most-referenced topics in this category directly, since new members reliably ask for exactly those. Happy to make the edit myself if nobody objects, with a revision note.

0 likes 22mo

j.restrepoTL2 Moderator12 Oct 2024#5

Community norms: if you want to discuss how the community should work (not moderation decisions, which go in Meta) the Lounge is a place for that casual discussion.

10 likes 22mo

cannula_traceTL3Regular3 Nov 2024#6

cohort_drift, post #4: Suggestion for the wiki post above: it would be worth linking the two or three most-referenced topics in this category directly, since new members reliably ask for exactly those. Happy to make the edit myself if nobody objects, with a revision note. Go to post

I read post #4 twice before replying, because I had assumed the opposite.

Lower-stakes conversation that does not belong in the technical categories. Still civil, still sourced when a claim is made, but the bar for relevance is lower.

22 likes in reply to #4 21mo

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