[Poll] What to do about SLU?

[Quercus]

@JamesParrott

Hanlon’s razor provides another strong suggestion.

@CAM-Gerlach

Just speaking for myself here, but I feel “assuming good faith” is a central ethical precept of cultivating the civil, collegial discourse (pun not intended) that our community and its guidelines exists to facilitate …

@JamesParrott

If standards and ethics committees are to do their job, and get a university employee who makes a stupid mistake to rectify it and noone to repeat it, then incompetence and stupidity must be complained about …

The instructor’s intentions were probably benevolent. Hanlon’s razor applies here. Let’s give @CAM-Gerlach’s collegial approach an opportunity to succeed without anyone’s having to get grilled by a committee.

[Quercus]

The poll closes in something less than two days, and it will assuredly go in favor of an action to “Request instructor discontinue requirement (& suggest other forms of interaction)” and nearly as likely in favor of the action to “Merge all SLU posts into single megathread”.

Though I did not vote in favor of the latter, I do think a merge that is carefully crafted to an anticipated perspective of the reader of the resulting SLU megathread could work well. It should begin with a preface, which would be a new original post that explains the context of the megathread. That would be followed by the merged SLU threads, beginning with the oldest. The content should be arranged chronologically by thread rather by post, so that each original post is followed by all of its replies, then by the next thread with all its replies, et cetera. That chronological arrangement need not be perfect, though, because to achieve that might entail checking the time of each original post to determine where its thread fits ideally within the ordering. That would be an onerous task, and not a good use of @CAM-Gerlach’s time. Instead, just merge the SLU threads in from bottom to the top of their ordering within the Welcome to Discourse! category, making sure to keep whole threads together as units.

While the current plethora of separate SLU introductions is a concern among some of us, the future readers of the megethread might be largely former students from SLU who return to reminisce about who their classmates were. To them, it would be a nice story, even if not to all of us. If done as above, the ordering of the threads could approximate the succession of the class rosters through time, keeping whole classes together.

[hugovk (Hugo van Kemenade)]

@Quercus

That would be an onerous task, and not a good use of @CAM-Gerlach’s time.

100% agree with this! I’m certain there’s much more important stuff on CAM and the other mods’ todo lists.

I wouldn’t bother going through any of the old ones. We already have an existing pinned “Welcome to Discourse, say hi!” thread. Let’s create a new megathread called “SLU students, welcome to Discourse, say hi!” and pin it. Then any new stray posts can be merged in.

[Quercus]

@hugovk

Let’s create a new megathread called “SLU students, welcome to Discourse, say hi!” and pin it. Then any new stray posts can be merged in.

Yes, good!

@CAM-Gerlach

Merge all SLU posts into single megathread

Accordingly, let’s construe the outcome of the vote for the above to mean:

Merge all new SLU posts into single megathread