Starred posts

Tim Post

Mar 19, 2015 18:13

A note about this room - It's gallery because we're testing to see what we might actually end up writing on something .. more blog-ish. If you want to talk to any of us about anything we've posted here, we have a site for that. Just tag it discussion, and link to the transcript.

11

Tim Post

Mar 21, 2015 08:35

Want to make a new user feel really awful about posting a question? Have an entire conversation about them, and how "new users don't do research" with someone else in comments, in plain view of the user, as if they weren't even there.

8

Tim Post

Apr 9, 2015 16:31

'Hiring from within' should become our default practice, and that must include people that have been giving us an enormous amount of time just because they like what we're doing. We should consider giving our moderators 'first dibbs' on our new job postings prior to making them public in cases where that makes sense.

7

Tim Post

Mar 26, 2015 13:10

I'm really proud of the way that we empower our communities to handle abuse on their own; we give them the tools and just trust them to do it. So many, so very many other sites get this completely wrong. One thing we'll never be is a fertile ground for bullies, and that makes me feel good.

6

Tim Post

Apr 2, 2015 12:25

5

Ana

Mar 25, 2015 16:15

So much of this job is about absorbing large quantities of information without getting stuck on any of the individual pieces.

5

Shog9

Apr 14, 2016 17:44

...but at least we can all agree that when gnat asks for data, it's going to be a long, annoying slog to provide it.

4

Ana

Jun 15, 2015 15:06

CM time management: you have to create buffer in your schedule because you're going to be interrupted by unexpected circumstances. The flipside is that when you get deep in this rhythm, its easy to accidentally make no plans at all. So, you must stubbornly make plans about your time, and expect them to be cast to the wind. We're a quixotic bunch.

4

Shog9

May 9, 2015 03:22

I propose we make that the default title-tip on every bit of the UI we're not currently explaining.

4

Ana

Apr 21, 2015 15:18

As the size of the network has grown, community team resources have been spread thin. This is no surprise, but the cool thing is how members of the team have come to this realization on their own, and begun coming up with thoughtful ideas about how we can work smarter. We're having more demanded from us, and in turn, we're pondering how to step up. It's a satisfying thing to be a part of.

4

jmac

Apr 7, 2015 02:23

Documentation: when you need it, it doesn't exist. When you're best equipped to create it, you don't have time to. When you do have time to create it, you've already forgotten what should be in it.

4

Jon Ericson

Mar 30, 2016 21:06

Sufficiently clueless users are indistinguishable from malicious ones.

3

Jon Ericson

Dec 2, 2015 00:06

> Extinguishing tire fires is difficult. The fire releases a dark, thick smoke that contains carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and products of butadiene and styrene. Burning tires are heated and as they have a low thermal conductivity, they are difficult to cool down. Moreover, they frequently burn inside even if they are extinguished from outside, and easily reignite when hot.

3

Ana

Jun 9, 2015 15:54

Seeing the questions raised for candidates during a moderator election is such a great way to uncover what a community thinks is important.

3

jmac

May 18, 2015 06:02

I had thousands of students. There was no chance that I'd remember her. And in a way it made me think of Stack Exchange -- we provide what little knowledge/expertise we can to a bunch of people we don't know, and yet some of those people we help will improve their life as a result. Talking to my former student reminded me of that fact, and makes me appreciate this community and the people who give their time to help even more. Thank you to everyone who's answers have ever helped me.

3

Ana

Apr 27, 2015 15:46

We need to need to consider our actions carefully when jumping into a tricky situation because moderators understand their sites better than we ever can. No matter how well intentioned we might be, when we lack context, it's easy for us to add to the noise. This doesn't mean we don't take action, it means we have to hold ourselves to very high standards when we do.

3

Shog9

Aug 19, 2016 23:18

One dedicated CM works until the wee hours of the morning responding to Facebook messages from people they know nothing about; another pleads with users griping on Twitter to DM account details so that their issues can be resolved (and presumably the stream of bad PR stemmed).

2

Shog9

Aug 19, 2016 23:15

It is a job that should consist mostly of listening to the people using your software, but often ends up being a Benny Hill routine of alternately chasing and being chased by them.

2

Shog9

Apr 9, 2016 02:03

It is our duty to remember that we are not gods, able to bend others to our will; we are not even legislators, commanding an army with a pen... We are mostly (and primarily!) tool-makers, and should strive to make tools that will be put to good use, observing their effects in order to build better replacements when and while we are yet privileged to do so.

2

Shog9

Apr 8, 2016 03:20

>
But I will still argue, not because I enjoy it but because it is my duty. Frequent, vigorous, respectful debate is good for a community, an industry, and an art form. Debate is the Darwinian crucible in which bad ideas are burned away and good ideas emerge, purified in fire.

2

bluefeet

Jan 26, 2016 16:22

Thinking less can be more effective.

2

Jon Ericson

Jan 22, 2016 18:41

Moderators who don't have a meta tag named after them are lightweights.

2

Shog9

Jan 19, 2016 07:00

Gotta love how the folks most concerned about staff comments unduly influencing others are the same folks who never let anything we say influence them.

2

JNat

Jan 5, 2016 11:08

Oh, and for anyone wondering about the drop in April, this is what happened ;)

2

Jon Ericson

Dec 17, 2015 19:32

2

Jon Ericson

Oct 12, 2015 04:39

Want to know what I was thinking when I changed the Last Answer review queue criteria? Me too.

2

Tim Post

Jun 20, 2015 16:38

A waxing crescent moon rising in the far east seems to bring out an enormous amount of crazy on our sites from all over the world, making a note to look into that.

2

Feeds

Jun 15, 2015 16:34

abby hairboat has added bluefeet to the list of this room's owners.

2

jmac

Jun 2, 2015 05:59

I love that feeling of excitement when I actually manage to complete a task (in this case an SQL query) successfully in a short amount of time. Especially when it's something I haven't done before. Growth is possible. Especially when you use Stack Overflow as a cheat sheet.

2

Shog9

May 9, 2015 03:21

What does it mean? It means you're ALIVE, man! Alive and living your part in this crazy improv skit and now you have a new non sequitur to pretend to make sense of for a few minutes until the next one comes along. I woke up and there were two toothpicks next to my coffee grinder. They were there because I had made muffins the other morning, but that's NOT what they MEANT - they meant that I was ALIVE! HALLELUJAH!

2

jmac

May 6, 2015 14:44

Not to take anything away from working remotely, but the occasional chance to visit an office and speak to people face to face gives you all sorts of great ideas to think about when working remotely. Especially when the people you run into aren't people you talk to on a regular basis. (It doesn't hurt that the people here are stupid-smart)

2

Shog9

Apr 8, 2015 04:17

A new site / community is the same. A blank slate to do with what you wish. Once that's gone, and the rules and norms have been established, you cannot wish it back.

2

abby hairboat

Apr 7, 2015 21:22

A benefit of having dedicated team@ folks that we didn't anticipate (or at least I didn't): having the same eyes on the tickets week to week means we can be quicker to pick up on recurring themes. It's harder to do that when each person only looks at a week or so's worth of tickets.

2

Ana

Mar 27, 2015 00:27

I should start tracking the amount of time it takes for users in our different private betas to reach certain (as yet undefined) rep thresholds, and see whether 'time to x rep' early on correlates with an engaged community down the road.

2

Ana

Mar 20, 2015 01:59

There are occasional, beautiful moments when a new user shows up in an established community and reads the Help Center, gets a feel for preexisting social norms, and asks about things like navigating duplicate questions. It's mindblowing. What leads a few users to do this and not others? Are there dials we can turn to increase the number of people who do?

2

Shog9

Aug 19, 2016 23:20

...and besides, if anyone does have something to say about it, they'll say it on Facebook or Twitter. Which is where it'll be announced and promoted and hopefully found before sinking beneath the waves.

Shog9

Aug 19, 2016 23:19

A more proactive CM writes blog posts for an audience they hope may some day read it. There are no comments; that would be too optimistic...

Shog9

Aug 19, 2016 23:16

My twitter feed occasionally blooms with advertisements for services that purport to allow you to "listen to your community"; somewhere between stalking tools and a glorified Google Alerts interface, they represent a profound disconnect between the people making software and the people using it.

JNat

Dec 5, 2015 11:55

Sometimes, we get really pleasant messages from our users.

Jon Ericson

Aug 19, 2015 20:54

> I've decided I don't want to be a manager. Every time you try to be responsive to your employees, they say you're being reactive and not proactive. And when you try to be proactive, they accuse you of being capricious and arbitrary. So I don't wanna be a manager... - Larry Wall

Jon Ericson

Jul 19, 2015 06:41

There's a ton of interesting ideas in this article from a few years ago: Seeing Around Corner.

jmac

Jun 25, 2015 03:52

I often have hunches about why something doesn't work the way we think it should work. I have always been wrong -- until today! There was a huge gap between our HAProxy logs and Google Analytics on how many users of SOjp are using IE6 -- apparently that's because GA may not support IE6. Now back to my regularly scheduled program of hunches being totally wrong.

jmac

Jun 22, 2015 07:39

My productivity is inversely proportional to the amount of evidence of my productivity. Three days of silence usually means I'm actually thinking hard about something and need time for that thought to ferment properly. Tossing out stuff halfway through the process usually causes more questions than it answers (even though I may look busier that way).

jmac

May 21, 2015 04:22

Metasyntactic variable

A metasyntactic variable is a placeholder name used in computer science, a word without meaning intended to be substituted by some objects pertaining to the context where it is used. The word foo as used in IETF Requests for Comments is a good example. By mathematical analogy, a metasyntactic variable is a word that is a variable for other words, just as in algebra letters are used as variables for numbers. Any symbol or word which does not violate the syntactic rules of the language can be used as a metasyntactic variable. For specifications written in natural language, nonsense words are commonly...

Jon Ericson

Apr 17, 2015 19:33

Lately, I've been calling my random snacking "tapas".

Ana

Apr 7, 2015 18:42

Folks just don't realize that deleting their own posts in an effort to mitigate their poor standing in our system is the equivalent of being caught in a spider web and struggling harder, thereby getting yourself further immobilized by sticky thread.

jmac

Mar 30, 2015 07:17

A haiku on Japanese efficiency:

jmac

Mar 30, 2015 07:17

> Submit paperwork
Get address written on card
Takes half of a day

Jon Ericson

Mar 26, 2015 17:39

248

Q: Can we make this meta site work for mentoring?

Last month Shog9 proposed Stack Overflow Academy on Area 51. I was skeptical and thought it was sort of a joke. The idea that anyone would go to yet another Q&A site in order to a ask a question on Stack Overflow seemed crazy. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked the proposal. Over t...

CoGro Musings

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