TheTechnician27 @ TheTechnician27 @lemmy.world

"Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come t

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"Outdoor cats" are an invasive species that kill billions of animals every year, are a significant contributor to dozens of species' extinction, and live shorter lives than cats properly cared for (i.e. kept indoors) including nearly 3x the risk for infections.

It's a plague. We can't keep normalizing this.

This hypothetical misunderstanding already assumes too much geographical knowledge on the part of Trump – namely "the Sahara exists", "the Sahara is in Africa", and "the Sahara is specifically in northern Africa".

That's mainly why I'm curious to see specific examples: I've fixed hundreds if not thousands of typos and can't remember this happening, even long before I had much experience editing. I'm long past the point where I'd be considered a new editor, so any results I'd get now would be bullshit anyway short of violating the rules and starting a smurf account.

Regarding "in the clique", people give a shit about who's who a lot less than you'd think. Despite having 25,000 edits over 8 years, I've interacted with maybe three people in the top 100 by number of contributions (let alone even know who they are). I'm not a social butterfly on there, but I've interacted in hundreds of discussions when needed. Not only am I almost never checking who an editor is when I check their edit, but I maybe know 100 people total (orders of magnitude less than the pool of very active editors); even among the few people I'd consider acquaintances, I've had my edits reverted and reverted theirs.

The only instance I've seen of someone trying to play king shit of fuck mountain and not immediately failing is in our article for San Francisco, where they were insistent that there was a strong consensus for using only one image in the infobox instead of the usual collage we do in 99.9% of major cities. The image used was a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge in front of the San Francisco skyline – neither of which were represented well. They'd been shutting down ideas for a collage for years, and when other editors found out about this, it turned into a request for comment (RfC). Despite their now having 500,000 edits in about 18 years (this ought to put them in the alleged "clique" even though I'd never heard of them before) this swung wildly against them to the point of the RfC being closed early, and the article now has a (I think really nice) collage.

(TL;DR: the policy against trying to dictate the contents of an article isn't just there so we can say "but c it's agenst da rulez so it dusnt happin!!"; it's there because the wider editing community fucking hates that shit and doesn't put up with it.)

If you don't mind, I'd be interested to take a look and see what the reason edits got reverted. Obviously it's stale enough now that I can't ask anyone involved to not bite the newcomers or tell them why reversions they made may not be correct, but I'm still curious to see what kinds of edits by new editors commonly get reverted.

A good feature if you ever decide to edit again (on desktop, probably mobile too) is that in the source editor, there's a Show Preview button. This renders out the page as if you'd committed the change. I said in another comment that almost 2% of my edits have been reverted in some way, and many of those are self-reverts. The only reason there are fewer immediate self-reverts these days isn't because I'm making fewer mistakes; it's because I've mostly replaced the "oh fuck go back" button with being able to quickly identify how I broke something (unless what I've done is unsalvageable).

The other day during a discussion, a few editors started joking about how many mistakes we make. Cullen328 (yes, the admin mentioned in this post) said: "One of my most common edit summaries is "Fixed typo", which usually means that I fixed my own typo." The Bushranger, another admin, replied: "I always spot mine just after hitting 'Publish changes'... " And finally I said: "It feels like 50% of the edits I publish have the same energy as Peter watching Gwen Stacy fall to her death in slow-motion in TASM 2." Between the three of us is about 300,000 edits, two little icons with a mop, and over 30 years of experience editing. Not only will you fuck up at first, but you'll continue to fuck up over and over again forever. It's how you deal with it that counts, and you dealt with it well.

Inject whatever weird, obscure fucking drama this is into my veins, please. I know Bloodborne has an indie wiki; do the Souls games not have one?

There's fortunately no such thing as control of the page. Like I explained above, reversion is considered a normal but uncommon part of the editing process. It's more common at the outset for new editors to have their initial edit reverted on policy/guideline grounds but then have a modified version of the edit let through with no issue. In order not to not bite newcomers, experienced editors will often bite the bullet and take the time to fix policy/guideline violations themselves while telling the newcomer what they did wrong.

If you go to discuss the reversion with the other editor on the talk page and it becomes clear this isn't about policy or guideline violations (or they're couching it in policy/guidelines through wikilawyering nonsense) but instead that they think they're king shit of fuck mountain and own the article, ask an administrator. Administrators hate that shit.

That makes sense. "Probably over 20 years ago now" probably means that there weren't any solid guidelines or policies to revert based on, since it was only around 2006 that the community rapidly began developing formal standards. I'm betting a lot more reverts were "nuh uh", "yuh huh" than they are today. If you still remember the account name, I'm curious to see what bullshit transpired. If the watchlist even existed back then, someone probably saw a new edit, didn't like it for whatever reason (I have no capacity to judge), and hit the "nuh uh" button. (Edit: I bet it was 'Recent changes', actually; probably more viable in an era of sub-100 edits per minute.)

Something new editors get confused about (me especially; I was so pissed the first time) is that edits can be reverted by anyone for any reason. (By "can", I don't mean "may"; a pattern of bad-faith reversions will quickly get you blocked). Almost 2% of my edits have been reverted in some way, and plenty of those have been by people with 1/100th the experience I have (some rightly so, some not so much). Reversion is actually considered a very normal if uncommon part of the editing process, and it's used to generate a healthy consensus on the talk page when done in good faith. But the pertinent point is that reversions can be done by anybody just like additions can be done by anybody; it's just another edit in "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit(TM)". I remember reverting an admin's edit before (normal editing, not administrative work), and we just had a normal conversation whose outcome I can't remember. It happens to everyone.

For a municipal wireless network, I'm not too bothered with how OP describes it if it's accessed through Wi-Fi.

Be me

Placed by aliens in a tiny cell with no hiding spot

Suddenly there's a wolf spider with a 20-meter legspan outside staring me in the face

My mind goes blank as I realize I would be torn limb from limb but for the flimsy bars of my cell walls

"Quit assuming the human is afraid. The spider is probably friendly. You're just projecting, bro."

Not only would the cat stress the hamster, but more importantly long-term is that these "Critter Trail"-style enclosures are not big enough for hamsters. At all. Full stop. Maybe for a weekend if the hamster is over and you can't bring the full thing, but especially for what looks like a Syrian(?), this is a solitary confinement cell, not a living space.

For background before I get into specifics: hamsters' entire lot in life is that they love to run long distances, explore, and burrow. When they spend hours running on their wheel at night, it isn't because they're bored; it's because that's naturally what they do, but in a vast, open wilderness.

It's widely accepted among the hamster care community that the barest bare minimum floor space is 450 square inches. And this is often below what veterinary organizations recommend. It seems pushy and elitist, but in reality – similar to goldfish in aquariums – the pet industry are greedy fucks who want to do everything they can to lower the barrier of entry for hamster ownership, so they market hamsters as Tommy's first pet that he can keep on his night table. 450 is arguably a compromise just so it isn't as daunting to hamster owners who didn't know before and want to do the right thing. Moreover, the recommendation for Syrians specifically is 600. (The 450 figure applies to dwarf hamsters as well; they're just as ridiculously hyperactive.)

For context, these "Critter Trail"-style enclosures are often maybe 150 sq in, or about 1/3 of that (1/4 for Syrians, which I think this one is). Hamsters have to have room to run around and explore. It isn't a nice-to-have; for them not to is, without any hyperbole, animal abuse. Additionally, they need to be able to burrow. It seems like that isn't possible in this enclosure, but hamsters really need that to feel secure and not constantly stressed. By "burrow", I mean several inches of bedding (ideally throughout, but if you're in a pinch, one corner can be the burrow mound). The combination of needed floorspace and the fact bedding needs to be stacked high for burrowing pushes a lot of hamster owners to get a glass aquarium on a good sale and use that as the enclosure (it works super well). Some also use plastic tubs, but this has a DIY aspect to make sure your hamster has enough air.

If this hamster has to live in the enclosure pictured for the rest of their life, they'll be nothing but chronically stressed – quite probably even fated to die early from it. This isn't meant to be preachy; it's just a reality that hamster cage companies are lying to you to make you feel better.

EDIT: Wheel is also – unfortunately – comically small for a Syrian. Syrian wheels are much larger, and wheels this small can permanently injure them. If anyone reading this specific part doubts this, I want you to look back at the picture and, in your mind's eye, try to put that hamster on that wheel without bending it into an elbow macaroni.

I don't disbelieve you, but I think a huge part of the mis/disinformation problem right now is that we can just say "I read something not that long ago that said [something that sounds true and confirms 90% of readers' pre-existing bias]" and it'll be uncritically accepted.

If we don't know where it's published, who published it, who wrote it, when it was written, what degree of correlation was established, the methodology to establish correlation, how it defines corruption, what kind and how many politicians over what time period and from where, or even if this comment accurately recalls what you read, then it's about the same as pulling a Senator Armstrong even if it means well. And if anyone does step in to disagree, an absence of sources invites them to counterargue based on vibes and citing random anecdotes instead of empirical data.

What can I immediately find? An anti-term limits opinion piece from Anthony Fowler of the University of Chicago which does do a good job citing its sources but doesn't seem to say anything about this specific claim. Likewise, this analysis in the European Journal of Political Economy which posits that term limits increase corruption but in return decrease the magnitude of the corruption because of an inability to develop connections.

Internet comments aren't a thesis defense. But I think for anything to get better, we need to challenge ourselves to create a healthy information ecosystem where we still can.

blackbox/BlackBox

I just don't watch American football, even the Super Bowl, so I know the team exists but have to think about it maybe once a year.

Just don't let Google kill JPEG XL.

Any stray pixel in a (EDIT: exported) LaTeX document is a confirmed skill issue.

Text rotated 90° clockwise and only occupies the left 1/3 of the page in an MS Word document whose pages are all numbered '2'? Default assumption is "not your fault."

This is an ad for a proofreading service, so nominally it's meant for you to use in formal writing. In that context, only a small proportion of these words are "fancy".

That said, a thesaurus is best used for remembering words you already know, i.e. not like shown here. Careful use of a thesaurus to find new words provided you research them first – e.g. look them up on Wiktionary (bang !wt on DuckDuckGo) to see example sentences, etymologies, pronunciations, possible other meanings, usage context (e.g. slang, archaic, jargon), etc. – can work, but if you're already writing something, just stick to what you know unless it's dire. You should make an effort to learn words over time as they come up in appropriate contexts rather than memorizing them as replacements for other words; this infographic offers a shortcut that's probably harder and less accurate than actually learning.

A one-night stand with a word you found in the thesaurus is going to alienate people who don't know what it means and probably make you look like a jackass to those who do.

Just do what Josh Nichols does.

Yeah, I retract my comment. The SVG cat with the Peter Griffin ballsack chin told me it's fine.