The future

3:11 AM

@PM2Ring Teams was worse - remember when basically the whole SOPy room was temp suspended?

Documentation was just a bad implementation on top of bad planning. Caused by too small a beta test for what the task was, a bad name ("there are 3 big problems in CS...") which made the scope and goal confusing, bad communication caused by only having like 3 people at SE who responded.....and.....

^ I just realized the rest of the reasons never stopped being the problem

LinkBerest

3:25 AM

@PM2Ring We have the Sandbox on WB.SE and it works well when people are willing to help....however right now most of the people who helped askers (including me) are taking a break or at least answering much less: its kinda not working as well

See 2018 sandbox has 36 users (at least) and 95 questions "graduated". While, 2019 one has 15 users with several not active anymore (I know the post creator JBH left and myself and another user are taking a break too) and only 33 questions "graduated"

Sonic the Reinstate Monica-hog

4:59 AM

0

A: Should the weight of question upvotes be increased back up to +10?

I can't say much for the regular Q&A sites as I don't participate in them much, but here on Meta Stack Exchange, I believe that it should be increased. Here on this site, it often takes much more research, thought, and effort to write a question than it does to write an answer. When writing a qu...

An argument as to why (here on MSE) the rep should be increased.

Journeyman Geek

Its a bit funny to ask if something that is already possibly on the cards should happen.

Also I know a few folks argue MSE should have no reputation at all

Sonic the Reinstate Monica-hog

There is data showing that if MSE adopted a different model for privileges (specifically the sum-of-all-sites model and the max-of-all-sites model), it would unfairly bias SO users.

Journeyman Geek

5:14 AM

Yup

But we also, somewhat naturally have a bias towards hardcore MSE users

so some folks feel its not representitive of the wider community

Meta Andrew T.

and then there are some users who have the highest rep on MSE...

Sonic the Reinstate Monica-hog

in Tavern on the Meta, Jul 13 '18 at 1:11, by Catija

I have more MSE rep than anything else.

(Check the date on that timestamp)

And also me

PM 2Ring

6:34 AM

@RebeccaJ.Stones From the way this question reads, yes, I think they're referring to a retroactive change. (Note: I am definitely not saying that the SE team may have brought it up somewhere specifically saying that it's a retroactive change, and I'am also not saying that I may have previously posted an answer about it.) — Sonic the Reinstate Monica-hog 1 hour ago

Cheeky. ;)

@LinkBerest Yeah, that was kinda hilarious. But I was only looking in on the sidelines. Same with Documentation, I made a couple of posts when it started, but bailed out pretty quickly when I realised that it was an unworkable disaster that was creating a lot of tension & animosity between the long-term experts and the relatively clueless newbies.

@LinkBerest I'm a big fan of the sandbox concept, and I think it should be more widespread across the network. But (as I mentioned previously) I think it needs a few things to be more successful. Mentors need more tangible rewards & incentives, both rep & badges. And it needs more appropriate software, more like a threaded chat, rather than trying to shoe-horn it into the Q&A software.

Sonic the Reinstate Monica-hog

2

Q: Add a magic "question sandbox" tag for question sandboxes on per-site metas

The trend of having a question "sandbox" on a per-site meta so that users new to the site (or not) can post a draft of their intended question as an answer, and have it reviewed by site regulars before they go on to actually post the question on the main site, has gained a lot of traction on many...

(read the last paragraph)

PM 2Ring

@SonictheReinstateMonica-hog That would probably help. But as I said above, it'd be much better if we had custom sandbox software

I know they did have something special for the Mentoring experiment, so it's not totally out of the realms of possibility.

@SonictheReinstateMonica-hog Yes, it would give hardcore SO users possibly more weight than they deserve. OTOH, the current system gives hardcore MSE users possibly more weight than they deserve. ;) If someone mostly hangs out on MSE, talking about meta stuff, they're likely to have a different perspective to those who work on the coalface of the main sites, where you have to interact with a lot of newbies who don't know much about the SE model or philosophy.

But how would you feel if MSE privileges were based on your max rep on other sites, but with SO getting a 50% reduction? Eg, 20k rep on SO is worth 10k in the MSE rep calculation.

Journeyman Geek

7:03 AM

Maybe 25%. But SO folks would be unhappy at either level

The ~~excuse~~ arguement I have is well - to a certain extent, MSE rep reflect expertise in the SE platform.

As useless as it is elsewhere D:

mag

@PM2Ring would it though? the cap of all useful privileges is 30k. That is quite doable with any site

and 10k is where most useful privileges are at

Sonic the Reinstate Monica-hog

@mag More like 20k, since you need that much in order to participate in deleting off-topic questions

Journeyman Geek

30k is kinda the point beyond which more rep is useless

100k and 250k swag tier rep levels in theory but both are insanely hard

Sonic the Reinstate Monica-hog

@JourneymanGeek Technically it's 35k, since at that point you stop gaining delete votes for every 1k.

Journeyman Geek

@SonictheReinstateMonica-hog eh, I guess

Sonic the Reinstate Monica-hog

7:13 AM

Pedantically it's 180k, since that's when you stop gaining rep-based helpful flags, but you can also earn those much easier from net helpful flags

Journeyman Geek

tbh, past about 10k, I stopped looking at rep ;p

also the only way I can get marshal is presumably to take a long break and focus on flags :D

PM 2Ring

7:28 AM

20k is rather useful for cleaning up rubbish answers on popular questions:

44

Q: We need better tools to prevent "long tail of crap" on popular questions

protected by helmut Feb 31 '18 at 12:34 This question is protected to prevent "thanks!", "me too!", or spam answers by new users. To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site (the association bonus does not count). Is that thing always set at 10 reputation? Any c...

discussion feature-request protected-questions popularity

@mag I suppose it's doable, but it probably takes a lot longer on other sites compared to SO. On SO, you can earn useful rep even if you just specialise in 1 language tag. Eg, the total number of Python questions is roughly equal to the total number of questions on Mathematics.SE or Physics.SE.

mag

@PM2Ring tbh I found getting rep on SO harder then on say, the workplace

or IPS

PM 2Ring

@JourneymanGeek Sure, MSE regulars mostly do have more in-depth knowledge of how SE works, and the rep they have from MSE is certainly valid, IMHO.

Journeyman Geek

@PM2Ring to various extents ;p

PM 2Ring

:)

Journeyman Geek

I wouldn't count myself an expert in the community dynamics of say SO

PM 2Ring

7:38 AM

@mag Ok. I'm not really familiar with those sites. I only visit them occasionally, when an intriguing HNQ pops up.

@JourneymanGeek I'm reasonably expert on the SO dynamics on the Python tag, but stuff like PHP might as well be on a different planet. ;)

Journeyman Geek

Yup

JAD

@PM2Ring that's one side of the coin. The other side is how upvote-happy a site is. From what I have seen TWP is much more generous with its upvotes than SO for example.

It's not surprising to see a TWP HNQ question with multiple 100+ answers

PM 2Ring

Also, my impressions of the SO Python dynamics are a little skewed from participating in the Python chat room. Sure, we get a constant trickle of newbies visiting the room, but the vast number of SO Python users don't visit chat (or only rarely), and I assume that the vast majority of SO users aren't really aware of the chat network.

Journeyman Geek

@PM2Ring chat's kinda not really super busy in most places

PM 2Ring

@JAD Interesting!...

Journeyman Geek

7:44 AM

its kinda hard to find compared to the early days

PM 2Ring

Yes, we often get people with rep in the thousands visiting, saying they just discovered chat.

JAD

interestingly, there is currently no TWP question in HNQ

Meta Andrew T.