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@DeNovosupportsGoFundMonica They did use this data (both SE and other users) but all agree its not very accurate. For instance, I put "not disclosed" or "nan" (whatever the non-answer was) simply because I don't disclose that and I definitely have a defined gender.
(if you want the TLDR; it was "the results were within a margin of error of what one finds in the Tech industry itself" which, IMO, makes it less a question of "how can SO be more welcoming" as the general problem of "how can tech be more welcoming"?....which is an interesting topic of research but outside my focus)
@Zoethetransgirl nope, luckily hard deletion was used, so the post is not readable even to 10k users - they removed the history.
@Catija just a quick reminder: when the next data dump is released, check that the post is not viewable there. I don't know how the dump is generated, but since lately we haven't been very lucky... Thought it was wort to point that out even if my fear makes no sense.
Just like SEDE I assume it is taken as a snapshot from the backup that is run on Sunday. It would only be a problem if it was posted just before the backup and then redacted after it.
I think I recall only one case where SEDE was sanitized somewhere midweek for a specific post.
...... ok, nope, I was wrong. Seems it still works. And anyway, someone asked a meta question about it, and the question includes both a link to the archive and the original url of the question.
So, even if someone removed the archived version now, the question title already gives out the proposed change.
That said.... if that is the change...
"We are all going to die! The gates of hell will open and the dark spawn of Yog Sothoth will cover the earth"
^ was someone actually expecting anyone to react like that? Seriously?
right now, I will agree that this leak was useless at best, a deliberate attempt at stiring more drama at worst.
Or, to be more precise. I wouldn't dismiss the fact that someone wanted to do that.
You have a problem there, and the problem is not that someone leaked private info.
the problem is that even you (as in: the company and the moderators) now have internal grudges and fighting, and this incident is only an effect of the problem.
Again, this is just my humble suggestion, but you will have to work on solving those grudges.
*sigh* There was going to be an official announcement a bit later on, I'm sure, but the company wanted to keep moderators in the loop a bit earlier than most users. Someone decided to sabotage that.
They are trusted users who should be expected to be able to give constructive feedback to the company instead of the overwhelming deluge they get on Meta.
And I'm disappointed, because this is the second time someone has decided to betray the trust placed in them as a moderator on the network, and that is only going to hurt things moving forward.
Anyway, if the company really wanted to announce it to everyone and get feedback, one week is hardly enough. One month in the very least, to get actual feedback.
This whole thing is pure shit for us all by the way. SE was trying, actually trying with this, to improve on their mistakes. Could they have been doing it better? Probably. But we can't just indiscriminately kick them for anything. If we react to steps in the right direction with "not good enough" over and over we just validate the assumption that we can't be reasoned with
@ShadowThePrincessWizard I guess SE users are really afraid of any changes now? Looks like those ranters were actually right, this community resists changes.
I don't think that the change got anything to do with gender, that's bullshit, agreed. But still, it's a major change that they were going to make without getting feedback from the users of the network.
You have a whistleblower so brave they possibly copy pasted the contents of what should be a private post, possibly hid their tracks, and intentionally mangled their spelling
providing no other context.
Does this seem like a particularly trustworthy person?
Or someone trying to attract more drama and mouthbreating internet trolls from the dark corners of the internet because they clearly find that's better than trying to deal with things in the open like we often do.
maybe the meta-goal of this person is to deteriorate the relationship between company and community further because they believe the company deserves it, and the way they go about pursuing that is stirring the maximum amount of drama
@StopHarmingMonica are you sure it has been framed that way? From what I know, the only quoted part is a "since you mod are bound to be getting lot of question in the next days, lets try to build some guidance on what could be asked BEFORE this happens so we don't come out unprepared again"
@Tinkeringbell You sorta do, yeah. At this point, you're shooting down the leak and @StopHarmingMonica but you aren't committing to saying that leak is false, from what I can see.
@StopHarmingMonica is there really something to hide at this point? The leak hit MSE twice (four times if you count the questions regarding it) and it has hit Reddit. I'm sure everyone in this room knows about it.
Doesn't mean we should put all of it in here, so anyone that doesn't know yet can find it too...
Propagating leaks isn't nice.
Find each other somewhere more private if you both know what you're talking about and want to talk about it even more without being vague... That's the best advice I can give.
@StopHarmingMonica that's exactly what I'd disagree with. I think the reward of answering should be higher because it requires more of an effort. Anybody can get stumped by an issue and post a question but that not everybody can find a (good) fix for the issue. Therefore the rewards should be higher for answering.
@StopHarmingMonica I'd say the reason you see fewer good questions is because majority of the topics have been covered extensively and most people don't know how to pose a good question (not an insult).
I'd be willing to concede that it is unfair if a valid argument is provided. As I stated that the effort needed to post a (good) answer is much greater than to post a (good) question therefore the rewards shouldn't be the same.
@Script47 That really isn't true at all. Or, it can be, sometimes, but certainly not always. If I post a question, I need to do my research, actually investigate the issue, then collect my thoughts, write it out clearly, show that research. It isn't easy. Sometimes I need to work a lot for answers, but very often it's stuff I know off the top of my head and can post an answer in a couple of minutes.
Asking, on the other hand, often requires more effort, more research etc.
Most importantly, answers cannot exist without questions. They're the seed. You could have the best experts in the world but they'd be useless without good questions to answer.
@Rubiksmoose I find it's very true on technical sites. For one thing, since I'm often at least familiar with the technical field I'm asking about, if I can't figure it out and need to ask, that usually means I've already put in a lot of effort.
Most importantly, answers cannot exist without questions. They're the seed. You could have the best experts in the world but they'd be useless without good questions to answer.
This. Everything we do here starts from questions.
So treating questions as somehow less important is just strange.
@MetaAndrewT. Conversely, new OPs can't upvote answers, since they don't have enough rep... unless several answerers (or interested bystanders) upvote the question.
Another benefit of giving new OPs more rep is that it'll make it easier to invite them to chat. Quite often, they need to have a dialogue to fully understand how to solve their problem. True, you can have a bit of dialogue in comments, but that's limited & messy.
If good questions were easier to write we'd see more of them. OTOH, doubling the rep on question votes won't magically give OPs the ability to write good questions.
But that's not the same as inviting them to an existing chatroom with a pool of expert regulars.
@StopHarmingMonica It happens semi-automatically if the comment trail becomes too large. You get the option of "Would you like to move this conversation to chat?"
@PM2Ring And it has to meet some algorithm as well. Eg it is more likely to be triggered by just two users in my experience and adding a third person into the mix means the comments have to be longer.
@Rubiksmoose Yes. And even if only 2 people are involved you can sometimes go back & forth for quite a while without the chat thing kicking in. It's a bit of a mystery...
@terdon right, and what you've described there is nothing special, or rather, it shouldn't be. You should be expected to research, investigate the issue, and present your thoughts in a coherent manner. At the end of the day, the reputation you gain as result of a question is an added bonus and compensation for you for providing a quality Q in the Q&A but what the asker actually wants is want an answer.
Contrast that with the answerer, they have to firstly understand correctly the context and issue, thereafter they need to formulate the answer just like the asker did as you explained. Their compensation surely needs to be greater than that of the asker, no?
@Tinkeringbell I dunno, I think what made SO successful among other reasons was its gamification. At the same time, it has been described as the factor that is bringing SO its downfall. Catch-22 it seems.
It is a fact that across the system answers are more likely to get upvotes than questions are. That's partly because answerers have had a lot of practice writing answers & are more familiar wirh the SE system. But partly it's because we get a lot of questions from low rep OPs who have zero desire to contribute to SE, they just want their question answered.
@Script47 I don't see why. As I said, it often takes more effort to write a good question than to write a good answer. And it almost always takes as much for one as for the other. Good questions are rare. I don't see any reason at all to reward one more than the other.
@JourneymanGeek Sure, but they can't exist without questions. So I really don't see how one can be more important than the other when neither can exist alone.
@Script47 But why get less rep? We give rep to make this a game and to indicate useful content. Well, questions should be as much fun as answers and good questions also need to stand out, just as much as good answers.
Meh. I don't see any reason not to give the same rep to all. Both askers and answerers are doing the same thing: they are providing content for the site. Both are needed for a functioning site, so both should get the same reward.
I was using SO for a couple of years before I joined. I found lots of good answers via Google, I didn't need to ask my own questions. I eventually joined, not because I needed to ask a question, but because I wanted to contribute by writing answers, to pay forward the system that had helped me so much.
@terdon I'm not sure if you're just missing my point but the reward for the questioner is the answer and the bonus rep. The questioner needs the help that's why they're asking, no one is obligated to answer hence you get a greater reward for answering successfully.
@Script47 I hear you, I just don't agree. We don't want people to ask just to get their answer. In fact, that's the least important part of it. What we want, is to collect useful content. So a well written, well researched question that attracts multiple, useful answers is extremely important. That is what we want to reward. I can ask a question and be "rewarded" by getting an answer. What we want is the extra reward, the incentive that will make you ask a good question.
A year or so ago, one Python room regular, sick of the flood of low quality questions, quipped that question asking should be a privilege, requiring 1000 rep. ;) Of course that'd never work, but it'd be nice if more OPs put in the effort to investigate how the site works, and what a good question should look like, before posting.
@Tinkeringbell right, so self-answered questions still include a problem that someone faced, no? So I couldn't do X. Instead of just asking how to do X, I went and figured out that I need to do Y before X, so surely you should be compensated more for knowing how?
Isn't this how the real world works? You get paid for what you know, no? The old quote comes to mind: 'You don’t pay the plumber for banging on the pipe. You pay him for knowing where to bang.'
Yeah but equating fake internet point to real life payment is not a good equation. If I don't pay the plumber, I'm in trouble. If I don't thank the person recommending me said plumber, I'm going to have to face social consequences. If I don't upvote a question or answer here, there's neither.
@Script47 Why? You keep saying "surely" but I really don't see it. Your knowledge is useless on a Q&A site if there are no questions. So I don't see any reason to reward you more for knowing how.
And unless you only want to see self-answered questions, the questions are content that makes the site just as much more useful as just having people around that know things.
@Script47 Yes, but the content is the point. Rep is awarded for increasing the amount of useful content on the site. You could even argue that a good question is far more important than even the best answer since the question is what caused the great answer to be posted in the first place and a great question can result in multiple great answers whereas a great answer will only ever be alone and can't bring anything else in.
Also, the premise that 'these are things that people know' is a bit flawed, there's plenty of questions where I looked stuff up before answering something.
