Tavern on the Meta

Q: Endless nights of redirect loops for questions with titles where "closed" is in brackets

10

While reading through a question here on Meta, I saw this question listed under the Related section. Gritting my teeth and clicking the link resulted in a whirlwind of redirects and an error in Google Chrome. The webpage at Please append the reason for closing to the title along with "...

bug title redirection

Anonymous

Oh, thanks. I just duped that, then.

10:53 AM

Me and Stack Overflow. http://t.co/uXQ1Qeml

Tweeted by kcunning on March 19, 2012 at 2:15 PM

7

11:20 AM

@balpha every time.... every time :P

Q: I lost my prevous account on StackOverflow due to the forced "Social Login"

12:12 PM

0

I used to have another account here but not I am being forced to log in with social channels. The email I used and password are not accessible. Has anyone else ran into this and do you have a fix? It is rather annoying being cast as a noobie. Did StackOverflow move the "login by email and pas...

support login

When was SO ever 'login by email and password'? And is he referring to OpenID as 'social channels'?

12:54 PM

@balpha ahahahaha! So true.

1:04 PM

@ama - I'm skeptical about THAT

1:33 PM

@jadarnel27 That request is soooo months ago ;)

@TimStone That's hilarious =)

Unfortunately I realised that it was best if I took a slightly break from focusing primarily on SE stuff to uh, you know, do real work, so I'm a bit behind..but should turn that around this weekend I hope (your request will definitely be handled, since it is actually done, just needs styling tweaks).

@TimStone Real work is so overrated. I look forward to seeing the actual implementation =)

I suppose this means you deserve some kind of checkmark.

It is. Plus, there's no menacing @RebeccaChernoff act-alike that carries a poking stick at real work.

@jadarnel27 You're welcome to wait until it's actually out there. :P

@Lix :-P

1:44 PM

(what it looks like for the moment, anyway)

Hehehe - meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/126525/…

(debating if the question mark is clear enough, it does have a tooltip, but eh)

1:59 PM

@Lix Both of those comments are hilarious

@TimStone I think it makes sense. Especially since that bar is already clickable to show the field names and whatnot.

Yeah, the tooltip text is "show the contents of this table", so I guess if people are at least inclined to hover over it they'll get the message.

@jad - sometimes its just too easy :P

@TimStone - I asked this question before but no Mods were around to answer "definitively": Does having 10k+ users flag "not an answer" flags as either invalid or "not an answer" actually help the mods?

Haha @Tim Post!

@jadarnel27 Damn...missed that...need more coffee

2:07 PM

@cdeszaq Hehe, that happens a lot. TimStone has some sort of moderator aura that confused people.

@Pekka "This is tricky" made me laugh

Heh, "Tim"s

@cdeszaq Somebody asked that exact question on meta somewhere, but I can't find it

Q: What actually happens to "Invalid flag" flags?

Oh yeah! I think it was JeremeyBanks. Hang on.

Here it is (@MichaelMrozek and @cdeszaq), but there is no official answer:

5

I'm getting mixed messages about what happens when I use an "Invalid flag" flag: What actually happens? I thought I was being helpful by using "invalid flag" to push bad flags down in the queue. Am I actually creating more work for the moderators by raising them in the queue?

discussion support flagging 10k-tools

Q: What should 10k users do with flagged answers?

I also found some others:

20

Every once in a while I take a look at the tools page and see a high number of flags - like right now. And there is indeed some pretty spammy stuff in there. It's fairly self-evident what to do with flagged questions, I think - just vote to close/delete if the flags are in fact accurate. But w...

discussion flagging 10k-tools

32

Q: Which actions using the 10k-moderator-tools do really help the diamond moderators?

So, I'm now (since some weeks) a user with more than 10k reputation (on Stack Overflow). I can access the moderation tools, one of them is the flagged posts page. This lists some of the flags on posts (questions and answers) which were not yet handled by a moderator, as I understand. In the time...

discussion moderator-tools

20

Q: As 10k+, how does it help that I review flags?

I've recently passed the 10k limit and gained access to the 10k tools. Reviewing edits certainly helps as well as reviewing posts flagged for closing (where I can directly cast a close vote myself if I think it is correct). But I don't get the value of reviewing flags, where the only thing I can...

support 10k-tools flags

I think the last 2 are the most helpful (for me, anyways)

2:19 PM

@cdeszaq Oh, indeed! Good finds. Answers from mods on both of those. The I linked could probably be closed as a dupe of one of those.

I think the highest-voted one covers the one you linked to best (Shog's answer anyways, at least for when "flag weight" existed)

Flag weight still exists. It just isn't displayed publicly anymore.

stackoverflow.com/suggested-edits/225573

The edit is valid, but the comment is rude

*sigh* Why do they always make it difficult

Hm. Reject and resubmit?

@YiJiangsProble_ The editor does have a good point though...

2:27 PM

The comment will still be saved in the rejected suggested edits history....

@PopularDemand Is it used for anything anymore? I know the number of helpful flags gives badges, but is that it?

Oh well, too late, already approved.

Yes, it's still used for what its primary purpose always was: sorting flags in the mod queue. They still see flags from higher-flag-weight users first.

stackoverflow.com/suggested-edits/225751

This is... so weird

@YiJiangsProble_ I'd say reject. While I don't have anything against adding that info (well, not really), there are other things in there that should have been cleaned up

@cdeszaq It's just that the editor is obviously not the OP

2:35 PM

An urgent "pbm"? That one's new (to me).

@YiJiangsProble_ True, but it definitely looks like the same problem (same repro steps) and added the stacktrace, which might be helpful. My issue with that edit is primarily the fact that the OP's post had so many issues that didn't get fixed with the edit.

@PopularDemand He's obviously looking for a Poultry by-product meal

mmmm... pink slime

That post was already edited by a 46k user?! Sometimes I really hate SE users.

@PopularDemand I agree. Just adding a tag is pointless in many cases. For a high-rep user to be lazy like that...

Sometimes I wish I could down-vote edits

(and just about everything else on the Internet, but that's a different story)

2:40 PM

@YiJiangsProble_ I left the guy a comment. Probably won't make a difference though =/

Q: Which HTML5 mobile framework do you recommend?

-1

jqMobi? Sencha? Or other one? Why? Thank you! I have to repeat contents above in order to being able to post this question. jqMobi? Sencha? Or other one? Why? Thank you!

html5 mobile sencha

Needs closing, not sure how this managed to slip past in the first place

My edit must be more substantive than Yi Jiang's? Staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!

@PopularDemand >:D

I thought Singapore was unsupported, man! What happened to our deal?!

Oh, whoops, was that out loud?

Speaking of leaving comments, I left this one yesterday.

I initially wanted to reply to the guy that we want to provide answers, not just signposts... but that's the opposite of what we do with "close as exact duplicate."

A: How to efficiently write to file from SQL datareader in c#?

0

Here's a link! And a reference-style link to a panda. References don't have to be numbers.

Huh? Is this user testing out the editor or something?

2:44 PM

@PopularDemand But those are signposts within the system, so they won't rot like external links will (hopefully)

@PopularDemand His response to that is incredibly irritating. I just NAA flagged the answer, by the way.

@jadarnel27 Samezees

Nice.

Thanks, glad I'm not crazy. Or at a minimum -- and much more likely -- that I'm crazy in the same way as other people who patronize this Tavern.

@YiJiangsProble_ I'd bet a large sum of money that that is some meta-frequenter's sock puppet =)

2:47 PM

Jan 5 '11 at 3:29, by Rebecca Chernoff

y'all are nuts. so very nuts.

Classic @RebeccaChernoff :P

Unicorn please, I've been coming in here since way before rchern.

Doesn't matter, we're all nuts

@YiJiangsProble_ I'm more of a cashew really

@YiJiangsProble_ are or have?

now im getting confused.

2:53 PM

@amanaPlanaCAnalPAnaMA No! Bad Amanap! You can't have ALL the nuts! Leave some for the rest of us too!

2

@YiJiangsProble_ Ummmm, I am not sure how to take that.

3:10 PM

"studies show cats have a better chance of surviving falls when they’re from higher than nine stories. “The cats were able to relax, orient themselves in a flying squirrel position with the legs spread out. It slowed their descent down.”" - Cat survives 19 story fall.

What awful people decided to study the effects of dropping a cat off of a building?

@jadarnel27 For science. You monster.

@jadarnel27 Especially from buildings of varying heights...up to (and presumably beyond) 9 stories!!!

@cdeszaq Haha, exactly! What was the supposed benefit, I wonder, from gaining this knowledge?

Actually, in all likelihood they simply compiled cases where cats fell off buildings then looked at the survival rates

@YiJiangsProble_ See, the past tense in the quoted statement makes me wonder though. "The cats were able to relax...It slowed their descent down."

3:14 PM

Yeah, it would be a lot better as "The cats are able to relax. They are slowing down."

"OH GOD GET THAT PEDESTRIAN OUT OF THERE!"

Oh. Haha, something's wrong with my brain.

I meant that the tone implied they had observed cats falling (as opposed to just looking at past cases of cats falling) =) Sometimes my words don't match what's going on in my head.

@jadarnel27 The words not matching thing is most of my life

Q: Careers 2.0 Featured Listing: Web company needs successor for retiring unicorns

Yeah, good luck getting that past IRB.

I asked about this yesterday, but then immediately said something else that got more attention, so: where's the 2012 version of

60

You know what day is coming up, right? Just to get you up to speed: Stack Overflow's first April Fool's day came with glitter, cornify buttons, lots of pink, and Comic Sans. Last year, all user avatars turned into unicorn images, provided by a web service created by some weirdo with too much fr...

discussion april-fools

(And what happened with "we plan to reward great ideas with a little more than just a Meta rep bounty"? Did balpha just keep the prize?)

@PopularDemand Well, given that none of the ideas were actually used, I guess none of them won the prize

@PopularDemand Since "great" is relative, they never really have to give out a prize

3:28 PM

@cdeszaq To be fair, I don't think any of them can match the greatness of dancing unicorns on upvotes. So maybe @balpha really did keep the prize for himself :D

Be right back, apparently "The Internet is down". ::sigh::

@YiJiangsProble_ True... nothing really beats dancing unicorns.

The Dancing Unicorn Supervisors Local 508 would disagree.

In general, the only thing that beats unicorns is more unicorns. It's fantastical recursion at it's finest.

@PopularDemand hmm... oops?

I guess we just forgot it

@YiJiangsProble_ they were Jeff's idea though :)

3:30 PM

meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/126544/…

Quick, someone please reply to this if The Internet is down, so that I'll know for sure.

@jadarnel27 Clearly, the Internet is down...

Q: Terms of Service prohibit editing other users content

52

Currently the TOS, section 4 "Restrictions", second paragraph reads: Under no circumstances will Subscriber use the Network or the Service to ... (d) post any false, inaccurate or incomplete material or delete or revise any material that was not posted by You. The part delete or revise ...

bug terms-of-service

@cdeszaq Oh God! What are we going to do!!!11. I guess I'll have to go reboot it.

@jadarnel27 Yup, no other choice. Just give IANA a ring and ask 'em to push the bug red button.

@PopularDemand That's one of the more interesting things I've seen on Meta in a while. I'm odd like that, however, and find TOS tomfoolery interesting.

Anonymous

3:42 PM

@cdeszaq It's very interesting. It kind of undermines the legitimacy of the TOS when it contains things like that.

@JeremyBanks Yes and no. A TOS, in general, is there for a "worst case scenario" sort of issue where legal action is required to resolve something. Having a more strict TOS gives the business a stronger position to stand on when push comes to shove and ultimately a TOS is for the business's benefit, not the user.

That said, a small percentage of users actually do read TOS agreements and discover that they don't like what's in them. 99% of the time, none of the "you can't do this" language in a TOS never has an impact, especially for a free service like Stack Exchange.

But, since the people working on Stack Exchange are awesome, I expect that such language is just an oversight and was included in the "template" that was used to create it originally and it will get removed.

Anonymous

@cdeszaq True, I appreciate that.

The reality is that if you strictly abide by the TOS, you effectively can't use the site, since "complete information" is technically impossible. (If it was the TOS for my business, I would have a few things to say to my legal team for being sloppy. (no, I'm not a lawyer, but most of my family is, so I sort of am by-proxy)

@PopularDemand Ok, you were right.

> we do not condone the throwing of cats from anything

Anonymous

IANAL, but I feel like it takes away some of the TOS' weight when it contains a term that contradicts the point of the site and nobody (including the staff) seems to have noticed.

Anonymous

3:49 PM

"Oh, I violated section 1.24? Well, you've violated section 3.14 five hundred times."

@JeremyBanks Yup. Sloppy writing on the part of those who put this together (or looked it over).

4:02 PM

@PopularDemand I think the joke should be that every framework is getting its own site. The Zend Framework people probably won't like that, though. </area51 joke>

A: I can not find question on stackoverflow.com which I answered. I also lost point that I got for accepted answer

4:14 PM

0

You should read this

Flag as NAA ;-)

Okay, we're all used to crappy off-topic questions on meta, but how in the world did this guy choose his tags? (10k)

I was wondering about that one, too.

@balpha I was also startled to find out that he was everyone.

4:26 PM

@jadarnel27 You appear to be confused about how Will works. It's quite simple: 1) Post non-answer. 2) Get upvotes. You're messing with the process

@MichaelMrozek My mistake, won't happen again =)

Anonymous

5:30 PM

Drawing this with the trackpad has killed my wrist, but it was worth it.

5:51 PM

Hi all ^_^

6:02 PM

I like it how everyone is downvoting my posts just because... it is refreshing.

:-\

I'm not entirely sure how you've decided it's "just because", but as I'm not the one doing it I suppose I can't comment much either way.

@Amana - you should read this: blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/…

David

6:24 PM

(resists the urge to point @amanaPlanaCAnalPAnaMA to a canonical post about how "votes mean something different on meta" just to be a wise-ass)

@David its been done

David

6:35 PM

@amanaPlanaCAnalPAnaMA Being a wise-ass has always been done before :)

@David :-P

Is there a way to flag offensive chat rooms ?

@cdeszaq History is not on your side.

@PopularDemand It never seems to be

Needs removal:

chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/9204/toilet

@cdeszaq @balpha

6:40 PM

@balpha ^^^^^^^

...

Should I bother with pinging others? (eg. shog)

@cdeszaq idk what he can do.

Yeah, I don't know what mods can do with chat rooms. I would think that they can close them down, but I'm not sure

heh, taken care of :D

(fyi, they can delete the rooms)

I couldn't resist posting a last message before deleting it :)

6:45 PM

@balpha Haha awsome

@balpha Well done sir! tips hat

@balpha This one also was created by the same person: chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/9197/creative-comics idk how useful it is...

meh, it's just another tavern...

as long as they don't puke in the street

@amanaPlanaCAnalPAnaMA Meh. It will get cleaned up at some point since it's useless (or get recorded for all time in the archival bowels of the Stack

@balpha yea, but isnt the tavern-type rooms only for meta?

6:48 PM

The only real issue I had with the other room is the profane nature of the title and tag-line. If they want to potty-talk in a room with a less offensive name, go for it.

@amanaPlanaCAnalPAnaMA The PHP room gets pretty chatty, ant The Bridge over on Gaming is much like Tavern on the Meta

yeah, relax

it's the third place after all

@cdeszaq yes, but the php room has the general idea of PHP

@balpha kk

@amanaPlanaCAnalPAnaMA True

But The Bridge over on Gaming is very much a tavern (just... on a bridge)

if it's a bunch of devs hanging out and behaving, that's fine

you won't believe how many chat message mod flags I've seen complaining that the message is "not programming related"

oy

6:51 PM

@balpha As long as "behaving" is flexible. Devs can be a rowdy bunch from time to time. ...Angle brackets flying ever'where...

@balpha Having just gotten to 10k status on SO, it does seem that chat is very minimally moderated

@cdeszaq as long as they close every open angle bracket

$Brains aside, I wonder how many poorly-written xkcd.com-parsing scripts will break on this title (or \;;"\''{\<<[' this mouseover text."$

@balpha Oh GOD! Now I'll have that tension ALL DAY! Why would you POST that! It's like a leading chord than NEVER RESOLVES!!!!!1

@balpha )

phew.

fixed it.

@amanaPlanaCAnalPAnaMA Oh my. Phew. Thanks pal.

The real value for that one comes from the mouseover text.

Anonymous

6:55 PM

The image's filename is even (.png. :P

@balpha It would be really funny if that alt-text tripped up the oneboxing ;-)

@cdeszaq no prob bob ^_^

@jadarnel27 it worked fine even back when we scraped XKCD :)

when I learned it has an API, we switched

so now it's not problem anyway

Haha, right. That makes sense.

Jan 18 at 19:02, by jadarnel27

http://xkcd.com/606/info.0.json

And what's really evil is an unmatched right paren, anyhow. You can't just fix that in a followup comment.

6:58 PM

@balpha Too much fun is grounds for immediate suspension, of course.

@PopularDemand You would need to re-write history

@jadarnel27 but for the record, the first thing I did when I read xkcd 859 was making sure our scraper handles it. It did :)

:-D

@balpha You thwarted Randall Munroe!

And his evil plot to break people's codez.

You misspelled "magnificent plot to slightly improve the universe's average code quality."

7:05 PM

The keys are like right next to each other, sorry.

@jadarnel27 Isn't that what the guy who invented the RegEx was doing? Oh wait, he was trying to make their code unmaintainable, not just borked. My bad.

No worries. It is a common typo indeed.

This data explorer query has provided me with some amusing reading material =)

I wonder if you compile all these sentences together you'll eventually get an actual book with a plot and characters.

@jadarnel27 Something tells me you could probably publish that

Perhaps as poetry?

7:12 PM

In other news, I couldn't think of a good way to get an arbitrary 50 revision notes from that query. I thought ORDER BY newid() would do it, but that didn't seem to work.

@animuson This might interest you =)

@cdeszaq I'd buy that for a dollar.

@jadarnel27 If you make that into an iPhone app, I get a sizeable cut

Dibs...

Ah, yes. The legally-binding "internet chat dibs". You've got your foot in the door now =)

@jadarnel27 Hmm....Should look into making the column sizing more intelligent for cases where you don't have columns that will take up the whole space by default.

makes note

Good job! You've given @TimStone something to do! Impressive!

@animuson I'm apparently all about that today.

@TimStone Probably a good idea =)

7:19 PM

@jadarnel27 Not quite random, but if you add in the RevGUID, it's essentially a "fixed random" order

better yet with less ugly data that isn't fun

@cdeszaq Indeed, that does change order. I was thinking of some way to get a new 50 whenever you re-run the query.

Although I don't know how the caching works there, so perhaps one of my attempts was working and I didn't even know it.

Yeah, i knew what you were after, so I aproximated :)

@cdeszaq I appreciate it! That was a good call.

@jadarnel27 Heh :P

Yeah, it won't play nice with "random" queries.

Ahhhh, that makes a lot more sense. I just knew that at least one of the things I tried should've worked.

I was starting to think I was incompetent.
Well. More incompetent.

7:30 PM

0

Q: Am I at Level 2 or not?

(Obligatory) Eeeeeeek! My progress bar shows that I've hit level 2. I've received a notice on the site. However, the number of shares and questions/answers with 2 up votes has gone down. I can understand the Q&A getting downvotes, but how can a link be unshared? Is something broken?

bug contest

@Moshe level 2 on what?

Thenewipadishere.com

Chacha102

Hello

Blog - Stack Exchange: Respect the community – your own, and others’

@Chacha102 Shaloom

Anonymous

7:49 PM

Shog9 on March 22, 2012

In “Why Can’t You Have Just One Site?” Jeff wrote about the rationale for creating three sites instead of one, and the process for determining where a question belongs:

Is it really so hard to figure out which community you belong to, and thus, where your question belongs? Ask yourself this:

what is your job title?

which community do you consider yourself a part of?

what are you trying to accomplish?

You can use the same mountain to go downhill really fast on snow — but it’s plainly evident to the participant which culture they consider themselves a part of, “skiers” or “snowboarders”. …

Anonymous

> because it’s completely off-topic (“How do I cook a fish in a dishwasher?” obviously belongs on Cooking, not Home Improvement)

Anonymous

I'm not sure that's the best example of an on-topic question for cooking, but what do I know.

Q: Is it possible to cook a whole fish in a dishwasher?

72

I heard that there is a way to cook a whole fish in a dishwasher - any techniques, tips??

equipment fish sous-vide

Lol. How do you cook fish in a dishwasher?

^^^ Best. Example.

Anonymous

7:55 PM

I've seen the question, and I know it's been accepted by the community, but I feel like it's more of an occasional "fun" exception than a full on-topic question. If I went and asked "Is it possible to cook an egg on the sidewalk?", I'd expect it to have a good chance of getting closed.

Anonymous

(I don't mean to be too critical, it's a very good blog post. And I'm only slightly familiar with the site so I could be entirely wrong.)

Yep. There aren't hordes of people out there routinely using their dishwashers -- or sidewalks -- for everyday food prep.

@JeremyBanks Now, "which concrete is best for cooking eggs on" would be an interesting DIY / SA border-maker...

3

Anonymous

Haha. :P

In a lot of cases, "this is one of the most upvoted questions on our site" indicates "do not use this as an example question to draw in new users."

Chacha102

8:03 PM

I like that my message has been starred twice..

Two people want to hold you.

A: Is it possible to cook a whole fish in a dishwasher?

32

Surely the authors of the previous (sublime!) answers will throw the "Sure it works in practice, but does it work in theory!?" at me, but this great SE question and its answers still lured me into creating an answer backed up by empirical evidence. The Answer YES! It's certainly possible. At le...

haha

8:27 PM

@AdamDavis What do you think about this nonsense from congress?

@Moshe That's some bull**** if I've ever seen it. While gathering info about how popular apps deal with securing information is cool, going in to those specifics is way more than any political person should go. That's up to a regulatory body, not some random politicians.

That said, by downloading the app, the user is inherently giving the app permission to do whatever it wants. Pestering users with "privacy" concerns goes against the Apple ideals of "it just works"

Q: Hide votes on feature requests for 48 hours

8:50 PM

3

From time to time, people complain that unpopular suggestions on Meta get effectively censored by downvoting: questions with a net score under -7 vanish from the front page. Most recently Nicol Bolas: The problem is that, on polarized topics, fast mass downvoting can quash any idea that is n...

feature-request voting

2

@Pekka Thank you.

@Pekka I'm not convinced that there's actually an issue there worth development effort, personally. :/

9:10 PM

We were just talking about that somewhere. I can't remember if it was meta or chat

@TimStone as said, I don't think there is much of a real issue either - by and large, the system works. But I've seen some really bizarre voting over time. Like once, I posted a suggestion as an answer to a question, netting 20 or 30 upvotes; then I posted it as a feature-request, and it got downvoted into oblivion. In hindsight, the idea was probably bad and deserved the downvotes, but voting is weird sometimes.

Plus giving feature requests a more "election-y" feeling would help shut up those who are alienated with Meta, and complain about the "elite" that "censors" questions away through mass downvoting. It's only for the first 48 hours, mind, and closed questions would lose their protection

Yeah. I do think there are cases where people behave irrationally for whatever reason, but I'm always wary of attempting to solve obscure people problems with technology.

On a somewhat related note, I was also going to point out on that other question that the heavily down voted content getting pushed off the page tends to save it from even more down votes, but meh.

@TimStone fair enough, fair enough. I think it would be worth considering in this case - as we all know, the Q&A format isn't a 100% match for community decisions.

@TimStone yeah - that is the price of transparency! There would be no mercy any longer, and harder "verdicts" on stuff the community doesn't like. -> more hurt feelings, no doubt

@Pekka Yeah, that's what I was concerned about. I don't really know how I feel about the issue as a whole, but I think people tend to overlook that when they complain about this.

@TimStone yeah. For most people I've seen complaining about the "censorship" in the past because their suggestions were downvoted, removing it would have been even more hurtful.

9:18 PM

@Pekka Well, sure. Feature requests are also not a direct indicator of what the team will do either though. ;)

@TimStone yeah, there's that as well... :)

As a bit of a side note, unless they fixed it without updating my bug report, < -8 content actually does surface to the front page if you rely on the realtime updates, heh.

Does Spolsky ever get on here?

Very infrequently.

Looks like his last message in here was back in April.

@RSolberg I agree with ur question. this is getting out of hand...

9:31 PM

0

A: Html table code

If you're confused how table layouts work, they basically start at x=0, y=0 and work their way across. Let's explain with graphics, because they're so much fun! When you start a table, you make a grid. Your first row and cell will be in the top left corner. Think of it like an array pointer, mov...

I spent a lot of time writing that answer even though it already had tons of other answers haha

Not everyone does and that is OK... But it just simply doesn't make any business sense. The question wasn't unhelpful, wasn't offensive, certainly wasn't off topic... It's a wiki and can be edited...

I will stand by my comment that it feels like Spolksy et SE have given the keys to the prisoners...

In my business, that just wouldn't happen. You can still maintain a community, but global policies should be set where the $$$ is at...

@RSolberg actually, I'm pretty glad SO's policies are not set where the $$$ are - or at least, to a lesser extent than on other sites - and focused on a specific idea of quality instead. Even though one may not always fully agree with that idea.

Reread my post... You'll see something in there that should stand out... "wasn't unhelpful, wasn't offensive, certainly wasn't off topic".... Are you staying that every question on SO should be closed then? Bam typo, gone!

@RSolberg it was clearly a poll type question, and hence not welcome on SO according to the FAQ. I agree the knowledge in those questions should be preserved somewhere. I've authored many many feature requests to that end. But the community consensus (well, and, at least as importantly, the owners' consensus) is that that kind of questions is no longer welcome, and keeping it around is harmful because they are examples to new askers.

And seeing as SO is still a quality resource with constantly growing traffic, it seems to me they are doing something right and stringent quality control is one of those things. As said, I'm actually very happy that quality comes before traffic for these guys. It's one of the reasons I'm here, and I'm very glad to see it seems to be working out business wise

It wasn't in the FAQ when the question was asked. Someone came up with the idea to alter the FAQ and the reasoning simply doesn't make sense. I also refuse to call people on meta the community. The stakeholders of SO are far larger, far larger, than the 32 people who come here often.

Well when quality questions go missing, it just doesn't make sense...

Breaking the Internet with bad links makes the Internet a worse place... This evolution hasn't been a good one.

9:48 PM

@RSolberg t wasn't in the FAQ when the question was asked. I agree that is a touchy issue, and people are very divided about it. Re stakeholders - Meta is open to everyone; everyone is free to vote and post their opinion as they please. I realize not everyone is interested in Meta, but the way the site develops has to be shaped somewhere

@RSolberg I agree breaking the links sucks. meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=user%3A138112+archive

But AFAIK that is being fixed to some extent. An archive is said to be in the works, and there is the "historical lock" that can be applied to questions now instead of deleting.

But the question that is useful is now closed, can't be edited for the changes in frameworks or controls out there... So now we have an old stagnant question that will just sit in purgatory because some "users" decided they were the "community" and forced this down everyone's throat... Its simply crazy. Very disgusting.

You win, @RebeccaChernoff . I've decided to EEEEK! at the vote updater since it's freaking out on me. :P

4

10:11 PM

@TimStone: Oh almighty knower of things, what is the tag for the new automatic-updating vote counts and comments, etc?

live-refresh

Which you can /blame @Sathya for, I think. I was going to use realtime-updates or something, but I was too late.

@RSolberg as said - Meta is open to everyone, and none of these policies would have happened without the owners' consent. What else is there to say?

Q: The new auto-updater for vote counts is really annoying

0

It's been confusing me for too long already. Things I've noticed: When there are multiple votes being cast on the same post in succession of each other, it constantly keeps flashing back and forth between a bunch of numbers. I just want to see what the current count is. I really don't care what...

feature-request notifications live-refresh

I think the behaviours you're describing are (mostly) bugs, by the way.

I forgot to add the bug tag, but I'd still prefer a notification to reload them.

10:21 PM

I kind of wish the comments automatically loaded.

I always get confused when the comment update is actually just someone editing an existing comment.

Rebecca Chernoff

mm, edits don't trigger it I don't think.

Yeah huh.

I saw the link, clicked it, and the only comment on the question refreshed with the pencil.

Tim says they do, and he is the all-knower of things! Therefore, it must be true.

I'm starting to like this @animuson fellow.

Hmmm.

The (currently) code seemingly contradicts my observation.

I'm not sure what happened in my case, but @RebeccaChernoff is right. :)

Askville really is the new Yahoo! Answers.

The front page is full of nuggets:

> what are your favorite outdoor activities?can you describe that for me ?

> have you been to China, what's your viewpoint of China~(^__^)

10:34 PM

goes home

And one of the answers to the China question:

> I have friends from Taiwan. They are very nice. They are very artistic/thin/smart/hardworking/friendly/kind. I love them. Someone wore things from there that were outstanding in fashion.

I could go on and on.

Anyway, that sounds like a good idea, @TimStone!

A nice evening to you. I will be using mine (what's left of it) to work some more on my paper

See you all later!

Rebecca Chernoff

@TimStone your own fault for doubting me!

@RebeccaChernoff I love the new vote count. It's really cool

It seems to have some bugs that needs fixing, but I love the basic concept.

It totally gives you the feeling of live interaction....

Anonymous

> if someone has invested serious effort into an answer and has linked to it on their blog or from their résumé, then snatching it from them without due consideration won’t endear them to you.

Anonymous

Breaking links is bad, you say? ಠ_ಠ

10:39 PM

Ahhhhhh 9,995!!!

@animuson Psh, on SO. Talk to me when you have 10k on meta -- that's when you're cool

@Michael: Not far away, I have 8,400 there, up from 100 at the start of November last year.

@Jeremy: I thought you only serial downvoted?

Anonymous

@animuson I can make an exception for you. <3

@JeremyBanks true

More Askville greatness:

> > Olympic is around the corner so i just want to know that any change is there or what about the preparation?

> what is your favorite public holidays?why?

> When I first put on a thong does it feel like a wedgy

all from their front page

11:14 PM

Too technical, or good and thorough?

Anonymous

11:26 PM

@Moshe I'm going to go with "good", "thorough" and "ooh that's interesting I didn't know that".

11:53 PM

Lol, thanks.