A risk when using tex.sx.com

Question

Today, this is exactly one year, when I firstly met this tex.sx.com. I found out that this is very interesting phenomenon from (web)-technical, TeXnical, social and psychological points of view. There are many very nice questions and answers here. Moreover, a group of very hyperactive users is here and I should ask them:

Do your activities at TeX.SE steal too much time from your real life?
Do you feel that you are absorbed by this site and your normal activities are faded?
Do you spend too much time in front of your computer monitor with TeX.SE open?

I personally must answer: "I do" for all these questions. So, I decided today: to stop with my activities here. This is my last post (except short comments, maybe). Compare, that I was not such hyperactive as other users. I selected only interesting questions where the beauty of TeX and of ideas can be shown. I didn't deal with questions where questioners are drown in the useless LaTeX complexity nor very simple questions with straightforward answers: "read the manual" or "read the log file carefully" or "your misunderstanding is due to the different TeX and LaTeX terminology" or, finally "do it yourself, this site isn't a code generator". Such type of questions are about 90 percent here.

It would be better for me to stop my activities here because (for example) I really don't want to dispute with @egreg (one of hyperactive users) again and again. I hope I leaved the clear trace in my answers here with the messages:

• There is not only LaTeX, don't forget the existence of TeX.
• The solution using straightforward TeX tools are more elegant and more simple and compact (but this was rarely understood and upvoted because users don't know TeX, unfortunately).
• It will surely pay to know TeX language firstly. The higher level languages have a potential dangerous bend: they hide the TeX from your thinking and TeX will repay you (for example) with the messages of the type "missing \endcsname inserted" which you cannot understand if you avoid basic TeX principles.
• More and more complicated higher level layers do problem less and less traceable (using \tracingall, for example).
• LaTeX was born as a template only (modular template: article, book, report) for users-authors. It was supposed that a TeX-specialist is ready to help users-authors during filling the template. But if an user-author needs to do more (to program the document, to control the design) he/she must to understand the TeX language first. LaTeX level only is not good choice for this.
• Very bad practice is the blending of layers (mixing \newcommand with \def for example). The user is lost in the Babylon of languages. But the first language in the TeX word is only one: language of TeX primitives.
• The answer explaining how TeX works is more valuable than the answer of the type "use this package and don't think how this is done".

Good \bye, tex.sx.com. If somebody needs to contact me, please use my email, no this forum.

Edit: My decision to leave this site is not due to my opinion discrepancy with LaTeX masses here but simply it is my personal failure: I feel that the concept of this site drags me into a "sx.com addiction" and I want to break this. This is the reason of my questions in this post. IMHO the sx.com concept can be very interesting subject for psychologists.

Answer 1

As someone who was very active for a while (and at one point even tried to keep up with David Carlisle's rep) and then weaned my self off TeX.SE, I can relate a bit to how you feel and thought I should contribute to this thread.

Do your activities at TeX.SE steal too much time from your real life?

I never felt it stole any of my time. Yes, it took up quite a bit of time (at still does sometimes), but it was (and still is) a lot of fun for me. I learned a lot, and by participating here I learned the hacking that I needed to start my project. I have received so much help here and for that I am so grateful. I think you even answered a few of my questions. Even though I probably did not use your plain TeX answers (more on that later), I am pretty sure I tested it and upvoted it.

Do you feel that you are absorbed by this site and your normal activities are faded?

Absorbed? Yes? But then, the activities here are part of my normal activities so I don't see a problem with that.

Do you spend too much time in front of your computer monitor with TeX.SE open?

Yes. But, it isn't too difficult to step away for a while and come back when I need to look something up, need a break from my work, or need to procrastinate as I have to do stuff that I don't enjoy.

The solution using straightforward TeX tools are more elegant and more simple and compact (but this was rarely understood and upvoted because users don't know TeX, unfortunately).

On this point, I have admit I am guilty. Many of the plain TeX and expl3 solutions are just beyond me (not to mention expansion issues). I don't understand fully how they work and prefer to not to use them, even if they are more elegant and more efficient. The reason being is that if I don't understand it, it will be difficult for me to modify it, should I need to later at some point. Now, partly because of this, I am suffering form a very lengthy time to do a complete build. I really do wish I could better understand plain TeX and had the time to rewrite all my base code, but unfortunately that never really happens. I am slowly tweaking things and improving compile times when I can, but also do need to keep my project moving forward.

The answer explaining how TeX works is more valuable than the answer of the type "use this package and don't think how this is done".

Totally agree. I spend quite a bit of time reading and rereading those answers, especially when I get stuck. But, at the end of the day, if a package does the job for me I'd prefer to use it as it is less work for me. If the package comes around much after I already have my solution working then I'll just leave my code as is until I run into a problem.

One things that I would like to add is that to keep in mind that not everyone on this site is here for the same purpose. There are other uses for TeX/LaTeX other than just publishing a paper or writing a thesis. I try very hard to make my questions generic, but sometimes it is difficult and they come across as bizarre. Two examples I can think of are How to ignore everything in the document environment? and Remove page number from index entries. All my questions have been actual problems that I needed to solve and really don't know how I would have been able to solve them without help from people like you. I am sure that there probably are many other people you have helped that you are not aware of. If others disagree with you, I think that's ok as they are looking at it from a different point of view. That shouldn't be taken as a negative thing.

In closing, if you need a break, take a break. If you find that at some point you are not having fun here, spend less time here. If you feel like contributing then do so. If not, we'll just have one less person here who actually knows TeX and that is a loss for the community, but you should do what is right for you.

Answer 2

I'll paraphrase the questions in a somewhat modified form:

Do your activities at TeX.SE steal too much time from your real life?
Do you feel that you are absorbed by this site and your normal activities are faded?
Do you spend too much time in front of your computer monitor with TeX.SE open?

My answer to all three of these questions is a resounding "Maybe...?" It's because I have other things to do and sometimes need a break. So, I disappear for a while, perhaps performing more janitorial and administrative stuff on the main and meta site rather than answer questions. While the site is driven by a Q&A style interface, it still requires some housekeeping...

I joined this because I had a question, and it was also my first Tumbleweed... What I learned over the years is that you should consider this community just like you would those that you regularly hang out with at the bar or restaurant. They're very similar in many ways. Some you see all the time, while others come and go.

Ultimately you're dealing with people here, and people have emotions and feelings and the Internet. If you don't like it here, take a break. If you enjoy it, stay a while. If you love it, participate and chat. If you hate it, go and do good somewhere else. We don't expect a heartfelt thank you or departure with every user, just that you contribute to or learn from the body of knowledge that exists here.

You've been around for exactly one year. The site has been around for about 4 years, and many things have changed over this period. You're still very new in terms of the site's existence, in my opinion. If, for whatever reason, your \bye turns into a new \beginning some time down the road, brush off the dust, accept that you're part of a community (again) and move on. The intent here is to be scientific in nature (mostly unbiased) and factual. If that's not the case, the diamonds in the rough can be notified to sort things out.

Answer 3

---

Hi, Petr. I am Paulo. You probably saw a wacky duck avatar hanging out in the site, that's me. I will try to answer your questions the best I can.

Do your activities at TeX.SE steal too much time from your real life?

I wish I had a real life. :) Seriously though, I wouldn't say TeX.sx steals much of my time because it became part of my real life. Granted, we express ourselves in here through a virtual representation, but IMHO it doesn't make less real than making eye contact with other people; there is someone sit in front of a computer, somewhere in the world, expressing him/herself.

I have two jobs and study. At the end of the day, I'm tired and sometimes frustrated; life sometimes gives us lemons and, despite the fact we should make lemonade (and not make life take the lemons back, as Cave Johnson suggests us), it is still sour nonetheless; places where I can vent, talk nonsense, be myself, laugh, have fun, are the missing sugar to make this proverbial lemonade taste somehow better.

TeX.sx is my sugar. I hang out here because it plays an important role in my life. Of course I have my other sources of sugar and sweeteners, but this one is particularly at the distance of my click.

I remember when I first joined. TeX.sx was different from start, and I decided to hang out in the chatroom for a while. I am usually very talkative, I like to be friendly, I like to make new friends; all of a sudden, there was I spamming the chatroom with random sentences, as we say in Portuguese, to break the ice (messages along the lines of "Oh, it's cold here!" and "I like ice cream." and "Do you guys enjoy soccer?"). And the community was there for me. I know, for example, that Joseph Wright and Christian Hupfer are Monty Python fans, egreg doesn't like Chopin, percusse is a very skillful drummer, and David Carlisle is a heavy vim user in disguise. This information is surely not related in any way to TeX and friends, but it make us feel welcomed. That's why I wouldn't say TeX.sx steals time from me, it deservedly earned this time. :) They are not TeX users for me, they are my friends. And surely you are one of them too.

Do you feel that you are absorbed by this site and your normal activities are faded?

To be completely honest, I don't feel I'm that absorbed, mostly because I am not good with TeX at all neither with janitorial work. :) So, besides of being a chatroom regular, there isn't too much for me to proactively contribute to the main site, apart from voting and eventually flagging something that deserves moderation attention.

By the way, I even miss questions that are tagged with arara! I believe I somehow have the moral obligation of at least posting comments to them, since I am the author of such contraption and the one to blame in case of fire. :) This silly example probably illustrates how much of an abstracted person I am. What I do on a daily basis, almost religiously, is to use all my 40 votes; I think I am the top voter of the entire StackExchange universe for a reason. I have two downvotes so far, so I think I am more inclined to provide positive feedback and be supportive. Again, it's probably my nature, I like being friendly. Internet is already a heinous place, full of hate and aggressiveness, so I'm trying my best to encourage the good in people.

Do you spend too much time in front of your computer monitor with TeX.SE open?

My browser is opened almost all the time I am using the computer, and of the default tabs point to the TeX.sx chatroom. Once in a while, I take a look at the main site, and that is it. Sometimes, someone in the chatroom mentions a main/meta site activity, so I go there and take some action, if needed.

---

I will surely miss you. I wish someday I could understand the bowels of TeX as much as you do; your answers are fantastic (my research currently involves macroinstructions and I learned a lot from your code), and I really want to thank you for your invaluable contribution to this site and TeX in general.

I don't want your message to sound like a goodbye. How about see you soon? At least, consider the possibility of hanging out a little in the chatroom, it would be great for us to say hi to you once in a while.

Thank you, pal.

Answer 4

Don't your activities at tex.sx.com steal too much time from your real life? Don't you feel that you are absorbed by this site and your normal activities are faded? Don't you sit before the computer monitor with tex.sx.com too much time?

I am trending in the direction of becoming more active. Nowhere near the most active users in terms of answers or questions, who usually help me rather than I being able to help them. But I am more active however than the average user, apparently. So perhaps my answer is worth something.

I use the site in three ways:

1. Randomly browsing periodically (as when I check the news) to improve my TeX usage. I hope to learn more elegant or productive ways to do whatever typsetting I'm already doing. For I am not an expert at it. Yes, I have taught TeX to grad students. But that's not because I'm any expert. Rather, whenever nobody else could be found to lecture on it...

2. Writing a paper with notation or figures easy to produce by hand but not so easy to typeset. Typesetting the handwritten article, to submit for publication, I tend to post a question. Maybe I'm making a presentation. Well, high chance there's another question in there. Also having to do with figures. I started out with questions about complicated commutative diagrams.

3. I also answer questions, partly to clarify my own thoughts.

This doesn't cost too much of my time, I think. Measuring the results in terms of whether it ultimately saves me time when it comes to notes or publications.

Answer 5

The whole Stackexchange concept is an evil genius. <-Period.

Getting reputation, getting badges, getting access to more tools for contributing ... This is online gaming addiction, the knowlege edition. Stepping back every once in a while seems to be a good idea. Having a fanatic badge, not so much.

To level up, you need a strategy, as noted on some help page here. Having a strategy means a need for efficiency and this is where the system tumbles over. A call for facts and clarification, where a slow approach would be more suitable for the user. The system does not allow the slow approach. I somehow feel like answering a completely different question. Somehow, this is not even an answer, but a pretty long comment.

I'd like to see you around every once in a while, if you decide otherwise i wish you all the best. :-)

Answer 6

1. Tex.sx.com is where I come when I get stuck---which is often---but I have asked only very few questions and I have never proposed an answer. (And this is my first, accidental, time on META.)
2. I once bought a book on TeX which, unfortunately I still have to study but the little I read convinced me that Wipet is right: Truly to understand LaTeX, you need first to understand TeX. (But it is so easy "just" to LaTeX it!)
3. All of this to say that I would urge both those who might have been a bit unfriendly and wipet to be a bit more ... indifferent because, when somebody competent leaves, everybody loses. Obviously those who, like me, survive by scavenging existing answers, but also those who, directly or indirectly, caused someone to leave, and even the one who left. (I have been there and I know.)

Answer 7

About "LaTeX hiding TeX from your thinking": In my humble opinion the terminology introduced and coming along with expl3 does another one. :->

I fully agree with you that you have to understand TeX in order to be able to use LaTeX in a really well-versed manner.

But someone who has to cobble together whatsoever paper with LaTeX on a one-off basis, because some profile neurotic instructor at university absolutely wants it that way, and for whom it is foreseeable that s/he will never use LaTeX again afterwards because in practical life everyone works with Microsoft stuff anyway, gets that as long as s/he has someone on hand to help her/him every now and then, even without knowing all the subtleties of the TeXbook.

But someone like that has to be able to live with the awareness that, from a TeXnical point of view, her/his work is not an elegant masterpiece, but something that has somehow been put together.

You ask very personal questions:

Do your activities at TeX.SE steal too much time from your real life?

I wouldn't call that "stealing".

This is because the consent of those from whose property something is taken does not play a role in stealing.

As far as my dealings with this forum are concerned, I don't see myself deprived of deciding myself about the amount of time I spend here. (Keyword: Self-determination.)

The words "temptation" or "seduction" might be more appropriate.

In my case, however, "temptation" or "seduction" are not that much due to deliberate (subtle) manipulation by this community or its framework with the nice reputation game and badges, etc., but more due to my own desire to find diversion and distraction from other things, and sometimes to find recognition.
If this community did not exist, I would probably find something else to distract me from these other things, and to seek/find recognition, which would then take the same place in my real life. ;-)

I know they are common parlance. Nevertheless I have problems with phrases like "real life" or "virtual reality", which you encounter everywhere these days:

From what other kinds of life is the word "real" supposed to differentiate a so-called "real life"? In what way is this differentiation important?

I consider my whole life to be real. Otherwise, it might not come to the point sometimes that things involving concepts like virtuality or fiction bother me in a very real way.

(I am now trying desperately to present my point of view in a short manner without this distorting the gist of my thoughts - you know I'm not good at that - should it go wrong, I hope that at least the goodwill is evident.)

When I become aware of aspects, this becoming-aware in any case is something real. The effects of this becoming-aware, e.g., the effects on my well-being, are real, also.

There are several possibilities for initiating a process of becoming aware of whatsoever aspects. With a subset of these possibilities starting points for the process of becoming aware can be the "activities" of sense organs/perception organs, which deliver to the information-processing-system "brain" connected with them information about perceptible "things" lying "outside".

The perceptible "things" can be both real and have properties related to "virtuality" at the same time:

Virtuality is the property of a thing not to exist in the form in which it appears to exist, but to resemble in its essence or effect a thing existing in that form.

This definition also subsumes the following case:

The property of a real thing not to exist in the form in which it appears to exist, but to resemble in its essence or effect a (different) thing existing in that form.

(Someone might ask about non-real virtual things:

The holodeck from Star Trek, which can represent pretty virtual three-dimensional objects that look like something, although according to the story they are just some photon conglomerates, does not really exist, but exists only in fiction. When you refer to these pretty three-dimensional objects, you refer to fictional virtual objects, not to real virtual objects.)

Do you feel that you are absorbed by this site and your normal activities are faded?

A fundamental question (also) in dealing with "social media" is:

Does one spend one's time on social media intentionally and voluntarily and with pleasure, or is one taken in by all this in a way that is actually not good for one, that one sometimes even feels as an impairment of one's freedom of will or one's own control of one's own life?

If that is the case, it might be good to get to the bottom of why one is putting up with this.

The medium itself, in which one spends that time, even though one is uncomfortable because of the time involved, and even though one could perhaps do otherwise, should not necessarily be the appropriate point of contact for this, because aspects often play a role that are to be located elsewhere, and whereabout other people know better.

About me:

I don't take my activities on this site for abnormal (although others might not agree in this point ;-) ).

The thinking about questions and "macro-puzzles" indeed sometimes absorbs me in a way where other things appear to be in the background.

It also happens that I get "carried away" when I try to explain to people how things work in TeX and LaTeX and how the different components / stages of processing intertwine.

But since I know that this can happen to me, I only go to TeX-LaTeX StackExchange when I know that it won't hurt if it happens to me, because the window of time in front of me is big enough, and the other "fading activities" are not really important things, but things where it won't throw me off track to postpone their getting done a bit.

Let's make an analogy between this site and a forum (marketplace) in the Latin sense of the term:

In my opinion it's a nice and rather comfortable marketplace with lots of Markdown features that I've come to appreciate. E.g., inserting code-snippets and images and the like is easy. The user interface is straightforward. Pleasant to use. It is easy to find your way around.

But I am not "absorbed" by the look and the features and the comfortableness of the "marketplace". In case TeX LaTeX StackExchange would cease to exist, I would not feel this as a great blow of fate. It wouldn't be nice, but I wouldn't have a big problem with moving to other places where TeX/LaTeX is also discussed, e.g. back to usenet, to comp.text.tex/de.comp.text.tex, where unfortunately there is rather little going on at the moment except for announcements.

I am fascinated by the "goods": I am fascinated and thus sort of absorbed by the questions—like a chess player who is not fascinated by the room where s/he plays but who is fascinated by the challenge provided by the game itself and by the tricks/techniques she/he learns from the other players. (Btw: I have often learned new tricks for using TeX from the code you have written, and in such moments my heart has leapt.) Seeing/learning how others program is sometimes of similar fascination to me as the fascination of someone studying the elegant movement of a panther. Even if I can never achieve that elegance myself, it's still "real steel" and an honor and a joy to witness it.

I do not think that for all people the boundary between normality and abnormality of the extent of their activities on this site is the same.

Whether the extent, be it normal or be it abnormal, is harmful also plays a role.

E.g., whether the extent causes one to mis-prioritize other aspects of life.

That in turn also depends on the living conditions. And whether the purpose of being here has to do with escaping other aspects of reality. And whether escaping these other aspects of reality for a little while is a good/recreational thing or whether it is a bad thing because the extent causes disregarding the need of improving living conditions and/or causes deterioration of living conditions due to neglect of other important aspects of life.

When I'm here, I'm distracted from my state of physical health. At the moment I don't see any possibility, which could be restricted by my being here, to change it. So it's more of a good thing for me to be here and to have the feeling (hopefully not just the illusion) that I might still be useful for something.

Do you spend too much time in front of your computer monitor with TeX.SE open?

Definitely yes. E.g., when watching a video on YouTube while having forgotten to log out from TeX.SE. ;-)

And from time to time, yes, when I am carried away by some intriguing macro-puzzle, or when I am carried away while writing about how TeX or LaTeX works. The process of learning how to explain things/how to word things so that they are more easily understood correctly is both fascinating and terrifying to me at the same time. Terrifying when I realize how awkward and incomprehensible my previous attempts have been and that my current attempts are just different but not better.

When I sit down and write an answer, it happens that at some point I realize that I should have eaten something long ago, or that my bladder almost bursts because I have not paid attention to the signals from my body.