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12:37 AM
CEO finally doing what he should have done months ago... Too late, way not enough. Meh. (and without addressing any of the explosive stuff that set SE on fire.)
@Bart no popcorn? 🍿
 
@YaakovEllis Got reminded of this request of mine from a recent filing. Basically, if an established user accidentally makes a post through a new account which is then later merged with their main account (as expected), that post will continue to be marked as "new contributor", resulting in a confusing display. Would be nice if you reviewed it.
 
1:09 AM
@FĂ©lixGagnon-Grenier vtc cooking XD
More seriously, depends on the grade
You don't heat extra virgin olive oil too much apparently
the less fancy stuff can be more heat resistant
 
Rob
1:21 AM
@Shadow9 All your popcorn are belong to me
 
1:32 AM
I don't see why one would get out of that popcorn bin
 
Rob
1:46 AM
But not as big as this:
Thanks for the question @MadScientist - We have ideas for how to better integrate technical content from across SE with the knowledge sharing that happens on SO, and vice versa. For the broader SE community discussing non-technical topics, we have no plans to change anything at the moment. — Pchandrasekar ♦ 9 hours ago
 
 
1 hour later…
2:59 AM
@FélixGagnon-Grenier Refined olive oil can be used for cooking, just not the unrefined stuff.
 
 
1 hour later…
4:17 AM
Just noticed a bug of sorts, and can't tell if it's been reported already (or what to search for to find whether it has)
 
@V2Blast color of achievements?
 
yep
 
already on MSE. Tchrist posted it, IIRC.
 
I got the Civic Duty badge on MSO and noticed that it turned all of my achievements listed below it a reddish-orange color
thanks. found it:
6
Q: Notification links sometimes showing in wrong color on some sites

tchristWhen you check your notifications, they can come up the wrong color. This is brand new, and it depends on the site. This is on ELU: Whereas this is on MSE (or SO): and this is on Mi Yodeya: It’s also been reported to happen from a cell phone, where some links are red and others...

 
@FélixGagnon-Grenier - Not that I can remember. // I had to make myself a user ID for something a long time ago and I happened to have a printout of something on my desk, that included the word "apparently." The site where I needed the user ID was Spanish speaking. So, "aparente" was born. I added "001" thinking, foolishly, that others might have chosen the same user ID.
 
4:33 AM
Uhm
I feel a bit embarrassed to ask but is there any way to separate two
quoted text blocks with nothing in between?
 
4:56 AM
Assuming it's in Qs/As?
Are you allowing for the possibility of filler characters/HTML? If so, then yes, this is possible. Literally nothing in between quote blocks, in the source formatting? Then no.
14
Q: How can I separate multiple quote blocks?

StevoisiakI have a series of quotes which I want to display in two separate quote blocks. > Are questions about Microsoft Word Online on-topic here? I don't > really see any posted here, but perhaps I am not searching correctly. > - mweiss > > Yes, they are. We even have a specific tag: [tag:word-online]...

 
tl;dr use HTML comments between successive quotes
 
6:00 AM
12
Q: Is there any multi line comments available in CSS?

HearamanIs there any multi line comments available in CSS? I used /* and */ comments in NetBeans, but when i applied them to my CSS code the web page is not working with those CSS properties.

hey what the heck is this message saying?
> It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, visit the help center.
?
 
6:22 AM
@Stormblessed closed as "unclear what you're asking"
 
@V2Blast Poor person that has to plan the next RPG session with him ;)
 
6:50 AM
@Stormblessed The old "not a real question" close reason
 
7:12 AM
!!/watch Al Roker Keto
 
@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog That pattern looks like it's already caught by Bad keyword in answer and Bad keyword in body; append -force if you really want to do that.
 
7:49 AM
morning
 
hey :)
 
How's everyone today?
 
Mostly missing a work from home day already. It was too early this morning.
And you?
 
nursing a minor headache
 
oof...
I hope for you that it goes away soon.
 
8:00 AM
Currently not looking forwards to getting my mouth numbed again.
 
Ah, fun.
(not)
 
8:27 AM
31 messages moved to Chimney
 
Good job, flower. Puts rene outside to enjoy the rain
 
rene is at least a class IV reality bender to create that constant blur...
 
watching a lighting bolt hitting @rene
 
@Magisch Still digging down the rabbithole? ;)
 
@Mithical more teeth to fix? :/
 
8:30 AM
@Shadow9 Nah, it's that nice, drizzling rain without lightning ;)
 
@Tinkeringbell yeah
 
please move on, there is nothing to see here clearly
 
@Magisch Good use of time, really :)
 
you know what is really weird if you think about it
we're like 10 people talking to each other in chat, having never met, having never spoken, most of us don't even know each other's real names
 
We should keep it that way ;) Trust me, it's easier to break up if you've never met in person ;)
 
8:32 AM
@Tinkeringbell it was lighting-ish in my place yesterday evening, including tons of hail...
 
@Shadow9 I like rain/wind... lightning, not so much. Hail damages too much.
 
@rene I see you
@Tinkeringbell yup
 
@Tinkeringbell aawwwww ....:'(
 
@rene I still have this game I haven't played for years, and people keep inviting me to meet ups :/
 
@Tinkeringbell I like my pseudonymity
there's just a handful of people who know my real name on here
 
8:38 AM
Same :)
 
@Ash yet, if you think about Pokemon, some 'Mon in the console games are indeed hidden behind the Pokemon GO! paywall.
Melmetal....
 
Pokemon GO! is still going? It started with a huge blast, but didn't hear about it for ages...
 
so, I am mainly fearing something like "transfer your furniture from the mobile game to the home version"
 
@Shadow9 it's one of the most profitable mobile games ever
I think it made top 10 of most profitable games of last year
 
and since some furniture in the mobile game is "premium currency only"....
 
8:47 AM
@Magisch ever might mean "in the past"... ;)
@Magisch oh
 
1.300.000.000$ in microtransactions in 2018 and 1.400.000.000 in 2019 for pokemon go
 
@Shadow9 I have coworkers that still play it a lot.
 
That could mean having unattainable items in the console game that you can only get from loot boxes in the mobiler version.
 
in case you were wondering
@BlueSoul I fully expect MTX to hit pokemon at some point
 
Doesn't really help that lately almost every good furniture in the mobile game is available only via premium currency - in some cases even with a loot box aspect on top of it
 
8:50 AM
they're already kinda doing it with the new DLC updates
 
@Magisch MTX?
 
microtransactions
expect experience boosters, premium pokeballs and more in the next iteration of pokemon after sword&shield
 
@Magisch I am fine with a dlc. It is not the best, could be avoided, but at least they give me new areas, story, plot and such.
In the mobile Animal Crossing version you pay 50leaf ticket (the game premium currency) for a loot box.
for reference:
As you can see, 50 tickets are about 2$.
 
The anchoring + bonus pricing structure for secondary currency
 
For a single lootbox
 
8:54 AM
you know once you know how the sauce is made all these tactics to bilk extra money from people start seeming really gross
 
There are some items that you can directly buy.
Those can cost up to 300 tickets.
that is more than 10$
for a single virtual item
they call them "micro" transactions.
 
vis-a-vis
 
@BlueSoul wasn't there a recent law in Europe stating those are considered gambling, thus not allowed in any platform meant for underage people?
 
belgium
 
they are everything but MICRO
 
8:57 AM
other parts of europe they're still legal
 
@Shadow9 As the parrot said, belgium.
 
@BlueSoul micro refers to what you get, not what you pay
Path of Exile sells virtual armor sets for 120$
 
and yep, the game is not available in Belgium.
 
literally a set of armor that costs 120$
I can buy a full set of clothes for less
 
8:58 AM
 
@Magisch for $120... I can buy 100 socks
 
@Magisch there are single ponies in the MLP mobile game that costed up to 3000 gems. Done the math once, that was more than 90$
 
@BlueSoul well yeah. They've designed their whole progression and gamefeel around "expected tiers of spend" ripping out lootboxes would make the game if not unplayable at least intensely unenjoyable
 
oh, no wait... that was worse. My bad....
 
I've ranted about this before but the psychological and design means they all go to to get people to spend, spend and get addicted to spending are extensive and widely documented. Nothing, literally not a single thing is an accident or mistake in these games. It's focus tested and supported by scientific studies, every inch and pixel has been engineered to maximize spending.
 
9:03 AM
.... the only thing I can say to their defense for honesty sake.... you can get free gems in the game far more easily than in the Animal Crossing one.
and if you are patient, soon or later they will do a sale on most of the ponies.
Usually on black Friday week.
Still, some character are never on real sales.
unless you consider this insult a real sale.
70% off.....
40$
FOR CELESTIA SAKE for 40$ I can buy a 4DE REAL LIFE PLUSH, not a bunch of pixel in the game....
 
or a bunch of actual games :D
 
and... it is 70% off??? was the real price 130$???????
you know what?
 
@Shadow9 yep
 
I got this for LESS
including shipping from Japan
and... it is Kotobukiya, so not exactly your low quality figure.
 
@Yaakov I did it:
1
Q: Change the way deleted users are shown in the Community Moderator Elections page

Shadow9In the Community Moderator Elections page, when there is a former moderator who since deleted their account on the site, it's showing an image saying "Departed" instead of their flair. Example: This is... not ideal, to say the least. Can this please be changed? Following is my own suggest...

Thanks!
@BlueSoul kids can't order stuff from other countries, but they can easily buy stuff inside games.
 
9:14 AM
@BlueSoul That's almost certainly done to entice people with the % number
the technique is called anchoring
 
@Mithical ouch. When will it end?? :/
 
If you convince someone the original price was 120$, then paying 40$ seems like a subjectively good deal, even if the thing isn't worth nearly that much
 
@Magisch heh
I few local tech companies basically have perpetual sales :D
 
@Magisch I know, I was just pointing out that it would be even more foolish if that was actually real.
I was pointing out that the 70% off thing is just not believable
 
I mean people spend 150k$ on clash of clans, why not something like this too?
The industry is all about targeting whales
 
9:25 AM
@Magisch mainly.. the problem is that it was never on sale for 130$ in the first place.
furthermore... you know what that item gets you?
Just a small pony walking around the city.
no form of advantage or anything.
it is not even like an armor.
I am not even sure it is any better than a skin in Fortnite, for example
 
the armor set in POE is cosmetic only
 
@Magisch at least some other player will see it.
this game... is single player only.
 
unlikely, it is largely a solo game
but I'm biased, I love PoE and I've spend entirely too much money on it
it's my second most favorite game of all time and I got thousands of hours in it
 
POE?
 
path of exile
a semi-indie action RPG
 
9:35 AM
My last played MMORPG was BOI
 
It's really good but doesn't have a learning curve, but rather a learning cliffedge
 
Ah, I don't do RPGs. Way too addictive, I'm too scared to start one.
 
@YaakovEllis It's more than that. The blog title mentions Stack Overflow, not Stack Exchange. The overall feeling, even after reading the blog, is that Stack Overflow is the only favorite site, and all other SE sites are second class citizens, which are a burden SE should carry. The fact he says somewhere "The sites will keep operating as they do now", or something along those lines is also not encouraging, to say the least.
Personally I don't care much since I'm not hooked in other SE sites, but totally understand the anger of those who are, especially mods.
And sorry, but the CM team can't possibly act as a channel between the MSO post and MSE post for those without enough rep on SO. It just won't work and create even more frustration.
 
@Shadow9 in theory, TPTB could read it
 
@Shadow9 That is all correct. There is definitely a greater emphasis on the SO site and brand, and the products that are all associated with it (Ads, Jobs, Teams/Enterprise). And that is where the revenue will be that will allow the company to grow. And that is why there is an emphasis on that here. From a strict business sense, I could understand the argument to stop supporting the rest of SE. But that is not happening. Support for the rest of the network continues.
 
9:42 AM
fish could start flying and firing lasers from their eyes too
 
If possible, better hack something up to allow anyone to answer on that specific MSO post regardless of rep.
 
though, i ended up posting on MSO cause I wanted a taller soap box ._.
 
given precedent, both of these are equally likely
 
@JourneymanGeek TP who?
 
@Shadow9 in theory, and its ugly, we could migrate a MSE post to MSO and merge it
The Powers that Be
 
9:43 AM
And will continue. There are no plans to cut loose any sites. And if we can get in a better place revenue-wise, then we can start once again to be able to invest more in CM and new sites, and a bigger Community dev team who can build more features.
 
I am not Tping anyone
 
@JourneymanGeek I wouldn't go there if I were you
just leave things be
 
@YaakovEllis Mergers are messy and painful :D
@YaakovEllis or more simply...
I assume the people in charge might actually read the post on MSE :D
 
@YaakovEllis support is not caring. It's "OK, I let you live". It's.... cold.
 
which is less messy.
 
9:44 AM
@YaakovEllis I really worry about that. I have a feeling jobs and teams are on the cusp of hitting a steep decline courtesy of the loss of advocates in the industry
 
@Shadow9 that's how its been for years shrug
 
@JourneymanGeek As I said, they are reading MSE as well
 
@YaakovEllis >_>
I'm going to assume that's a typo not a slip :D
 
@YaakovEllis well Area 51 is now dead, for sure. Which also means, no new sites.
 
I'm not a marketing or sales professional, but just from some people I know SO has lost out on hundreds of thousands in future teams revenue or jobs revenue from the events of the past months
 
9:45 AM
@JourneymanGeek correct, typo fixed
 
and I'm a nobody somewhere nowhere in germany
 
@JourneymanGeek true, but now more than ever, those sites need some love and affection...
 
@Shadow9 it's what it is for the time being. Size of CM team aside, just about all of the work that we are doing on my team is going to hit the entire network
We dont have the time right now to do custom coding things for individual sites
 
How can we put the size of the CM team aside? Is something in the works to automate a lot of their workload?
 
@YaakovEllis that's actually not really a bad thing ._.
 
9:47 AM
@YaakovEllis sure, not asking for that. :)
 
@Magisch probably not.
 
but "just keeping the lights on" and making sure that feature improvements work everywhere is actually a non-trivial task
 
Iirc even before 3 CMs left or got laid off the backlog was building. You would have needed to double the CM count, not cut it by a third to make a dent in that
 
@Magisch and when things go wrong, I suspect this will be brought up. Or wronger anyway.
 
who is going to run the elections, who is going to handle escalation tickets, all that stuff?
 
9:48 AM
@Magisch Yes, to automate things that should have been automated long ago, to leave the CMs freer to do the skilled community work that should be taking all of their time
 
@Magisch tickets are handled by two who are still in SE
(not CM's)
 
@Magisch CM team is still going to work on those things. We have a project in the works to hopefully automate much more of elections than was done before
 
@YaakovEllis if you ever end up tackling more automation on the serial voting detection front, let me know if you want to
I got quite a bit of perspective on that
 
@Magisch I am literally working on that right now
 
I never was
but I did flag 1600 or so serial voting cases
 
9:49 AM
:D
 
and worked on some automation on my own end to flag and find more
 
Much to some of our annoyance since the tools were that were not that great. :D
 
do you know of other users who are knowledgeable in that area?
 
Yvette handled a lot of my flags, but she stepped down as a mod. Brad Larson is sort of the go to authority when it comes to unraveling voting rings. Cody Gray has some impressive work in that field too
 
@YaakovEllis on the SU team, Mokubai's probably the person who's best at this. I'm just the fuzzy face people trust :D
 
9:52 AM
if I were so inclined I could produce around a thousand flags more of unreversed serial voting incidents on SO right now. I have SEDE automation that detects cases the script doesn't find
 
Shog had a few thousand-line userscripts that were used by CMs to dig more into these reports. I am cataloging what they do. Aim to see what we can build into the site, what can be opened up to mods (and perhaps trusted users). And try to figure out how we can better automate detection. This is going to be a side-project/initiative of mine.
@Magisch would be awesome to see that
I am kind of hesitant to post to MSE asking for people to give their input there, because it would never end, and for the non-experienced users giving advice on it, much might not be worth following, high noise vs signal
 
hop over into the RO room and I'll link it. I don't like linking it in public because people tend to jump on and use it as a witch hunt tool, and because mods have asked me not to link it in public for that reason
 
@YaakovEllis That's always a bit of a problem with meta :D
 
9:57 AM
Oh, and then even if people don't really know what they are talking about, it will not stop anyone from making it their hill to die on
 
@YaakovEllis is that why the CEO doesn't post on MSE? But MSO isn't any better.... or is it?
 
@Shadow9 Look, he posted. And he answered in comments on just about every single answer that wasn't obvious trolling. I am quite happy about the whole thing.
did anyone wake up yesterday (other than me) thinking that that might happen?
 
@YaakovEllis not me, I was certain we'll never hear from him.
 
As I said elsewhere, we've been whining about how the CEO hasn't made any sort of contact with the community. Now he has. That's an improvement.
Whether we like what he has to say is a separate discussion. That he posted is a good step either way.
 
@terdon could be a real leap forward if he would say anything along those lines. But he didn't even mention any of the... mishaps. So yes, it's a step forward, but a small one.
 
10:10 AM
@Shadow9 Heh, this is a perfect example of what I was talking about in my answer there
 
@Mithical still didn't read it, but yeah, looks like we share some opinions over the whole thing. :)
 
33
A: CEO's 2020 Kickoff Blog: Where do you see Stack Overflow going?

Mithical [G]iven that supporting the Community is a top priority for Stack Overflow, where do you see the network going in the next five years, and what do you think should be done in order to get there? To say that the community-company relations have been... turbulent lately would be a severe under...

 
10:38 AM
@YaakovEllis I've very quickly learned not to put serial voting stuff on meta
it never ends well, and any semblance of a list of things to maybe flag leads to a massive uncalled for witch hunt
 
@YaakovEllis I was hopeful.
 
@YaakovEllis none of my answers got a comment. I hope they are not seen as trolling, just difficult to answer with a single comment.
 
@CodyGray you around? Yaakov is planning to do a pass at the serial voting reversion complex that has built up and is soliciting feedback. Could you share something in the SO mod room so the experts there and you can chime in?
 
@rene you're in the black list
!!/list rene
 
@Shadow9 No such command 'list'.
 
10:49 AM
:(
 
@Shadow9 valid reason
 
:)
 
11:07 AM
@SmokeDetector why
@SmokeDetector f
Since then Fascism is offensive as a word?
 
@Shadow9 some people assume things not going their way is facist :D
 
lol
 
Rob
11:22 AM
@SmokeDetector The problem with that word detection is that another word is a form of the former but not detected; there's a few words in that post which should have all been detected together but we're missed. In any event the answer isn't out of line with the question.
 
aka "false positive"...
 
11:41 AM
@SmokeDetector ..... those answers...... URGH
Risiera di San Sabba (Slovene: RiĹľarna) is a five-storey brick-built compound located in Trieste, northern Italy, that functioned during World War II as a Nazi concentration camp for the detention and killing of political prisoners, and a transit camp for Jews, most of whom were then deported to Auschwitz. SS members Odilo GloboÄŤnik and Karl Frenzel, and Ivan Marchenko are all said to have participated in the killings at this camp. The cremation facilities, the only ones built inside a concentration camp in Italy, were installed by Erwin Lambert, and were destroyed before the camp was liberated...
 
Rob
@BlueSoul Smokey doesn't permit you to reply, your comment wasn't recorded.
 
never wanted to... but if someone reads my message, the small reply arrow icon will tell them that the message was about the question Smokey linked
 
Rob
OK, but a comment on the answer serves that purpose better.
and making such comments is likely to go against you, should you request permission to reply in the future.
 
@Rob mu
 
Rob
12:03 PM
@BlueSoul Does that abbreviation mean most unusual?
 
The Japanese and Korean term mu (Japanese: 無; Korean: 무) or Chinese wu (traditional Chinese: 無; simplified Chinese: ć— ), meaning "not have; without", is a key word in Buddhism, especially Zen traditions. == Etymology == Old Chinese *ma 無 is cognate with the Proto-Tibeto-Burman *ma "not". This reconstructed root is widely represented in Tibeto-Burman languages; for instance, ma means "not" in both Written Tibetan and Written Burmese. == Pronunciations == The Standard Chinese pronunciation of wú 無 "not; nothing" historically derives from (c. 7th century CE) Middle Chinese mju, (c. 3rd century CE)...
 
12:19 PM
@Rob what, really? I've often replied simply as a way to link what I said to the message smokey posted, not as an attempt to actually reply to smokey. You're saying this is a bad idea?
 
@terdon It saves it as a metasmoke comment
@SmokeDetector Testing that functionality
 
@Magisch only for selected users, which kinda makes it a moot point when you aren't one of those and you are just trying to make thing more understandable.
 
Relying on not having a privilege undercuts your ability to get that privilege in the future.
 
@Magisch Oh. I thought only commands (fp,tp etc) would work that way.
 
it's for quickly and painlessly adding extra info to a post
so people looking it up can see later
it needs privileged access iirc, but you have that since you're a mod and all mods get it by default
 
12:28 PM
@Magisch Which is why I shouldn't have been commenting like that... Oh well. I doubt I've even done it 5 times, so it isn't a huge deal. But good to know!
 
@JohnDvorak again, mu
 
Rob
@terdon I see that Magisch has correctly answered your questions.
 
One day I could become a dog, but until that comes ... I will still eat chocolate.
 
@Rob yep, thanks. And sorry if I've screwed this up in the past!
 
12:32 PM
I didn't know that either :D
 
so, if you want do assume that one would create problem by doing something because they did something when it caused no problem.... good for you I suppose.
 
I think y'all are overthinking this.
 
maybe it's written ambiguously or I can't read today but aren't the graphs and surrounding text on the latest blog saying that their newest experiment results in higher posts/day and lower quality than before?
is the way they measure quality widely accepted and has no notable flaws?
63
Q: How is question quality measured in A/B tests?

Jon EricsonAs sites grow, there's a noticeable increase in community unhappiness with question quality. Quite a bit of the problem is simply a matter of scale, but sites sometimes optimize for extremes. Bad askers don't notice or care that their questions are bad and potential good askers tend to be more se...

 
@Shadow9 During the last six to eight months, yes, SO has been better. A lot of cleaning out and putting in order was done. It's rare to see a rant, now, from anyone but "newbie" site users who disagree with a ban they've gotten or one of their questions having been closed as a duplicate. The manners of people handling those cases has been close to exemplery.
 
12:44 PM
@CindyMeister Some of that seems to have just 'moved' to here though... which is like saying the room is clean after sweeping stuff under the carpet :/
 
@Tinkeringbell Well, there is more on SE Meta, these days, true. Mostly since the mod-firing back in September. And a great deal of it (from what little I've seen) not from SO regulars, but from other sites' people. In general, the SO names I've noticed in those discussions have been "mannerly", at least in comparison.
Even with the ComMod firings, recently, the SO folks have been mannerly IMO.
 
I might misremember then. There was so much going on (and still is, more stuff to handle coming down every week, on schedule, it seems), and I got the impression that a lot of the most vocal/troublesome names also had SO accounts.
But I must admit by now except for a few very prominent names I mostly lost track and rely on moderation tools for histories.
At least for now it seems people are all being busy being angry at the company, instead of also being busy with being angry at each other... makes things just that little bit more manageable ;)
 
common enemies unite
 
@shadow don't think you can escape. The wall of text is still there in the other room, waiting for you to read it :P
 
12:59 PM
but also it's dumb to try to battle a corporation, like would you try to fight google or amazon? how? what are your goals?
 

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