@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
@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"
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.
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.
@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-hog1 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.
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...
@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.
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...
@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.
@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
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.
True @MetaAndrewT, OTOH, it's relatively easy to get upvotes on Astronomy, but the amount of traffic is so small that it does take quite a while to accumulate a lot of rep. It's not unusual for the most recent active question to be more than half a day old. OTOH, it is a beta site, so most privileges kick in at lower rep levels.
I first visited several of my main sites via HNQ, and decided to hang around. But HNQ can be a mixed blessing. Quite often the big HNQ Physics questions are not the kind of question we want to encourage. But I can't complain too much: a few months ago I had high scoring answers in two HNQ Physics questions at the same time. ;)
Indignant complaints about a leak that advertise the leak are probably a little counterproductive...
I downvoted this for 2 reasons: 1) This is a discussion based on a leak from TL. Similar questions have recently been posted before and were removed, so posting it again doesn't work. 2) This question talks about a gender gap that, if it should be talked about, should be so in a different question. Don't confuse the two issues with each other. Post 1 question at a time. — Mast44 mins ago
@JAD It's a radical concept, but it just might work.
First and foremost, I don't understand Tim Post's reticence to say which SE post or posts were "responsible" for the Twitter spat. Which, if I understand correctly, lasted a relatively short time.
The tweet that started the controversy was this
stack exchange: the #1 site for your questions...
@SonictheReinstateMonica-hog Yeah, that episode was ridiculous. FWIW, I read the "stop flirting with me" post before the Twitter stuff happened, and it seemed reasonable & totally not sleazy to me.
@PM2Ring Meh, having those two show up, one after another, did more damage than just 1 alone. There was also a third question in HNQ at the time, which IIRC was tweeted first by someone (with a question of 'how to block HNQ), then that was retweeted, then this tweet made by the retweeter in reply to their retweet of the first tweet.
All in all, I like having just one question on HNQ on IPS now, so we're good.
That first question was just failure from our side... it could so easily have been edited to make clear it's not about sleeping with someone else's girlfriend, but actually warning them that their girlfriend is making such plans...
@SonictheReinstateMonica-hog I know of the events, I was wondering about your role in it, since I wasn't aware of that. But I figure that one of the questions in question was yours?
@Tinkeringbell I suppose so. I expect people to actually read posts, and not judge them from the title alone... but I admit the title was a bit click-bait-ish, and probablt should have been edited for that reason.
@PM2Ring Yep. We've been keeping a closer on them from then on. Having not-so-clickbaity titles also helps with HNQ... if people think the question is boring, less clicks ;)
On Physics & Mathematics we have a secret weapon to keep stuff off the HNQ: MathJax. :) The HNQ algorithm rejects questions with MathJax in the title because they look ugly on sites that don't support MathJax.
I once saw a case on Politics where a question had been removed from HNQ simply because it was a zero-research question that "should never have made it there". Is that a valid use of the tool?
@PM2Ring How many flags would make 'decided'? :P And if they're flags from people that are bothered by the post, but you've never seen their names on flags before, do those count? :P
One of the Physics mods has a habit of editing MathJax into titles that have mathy stuff in them that don't really need MathJax. I think he mainly does it to make them look nicer, not to keep them off the HNQ, but it's hard to tell... ;)
Now that questions selected for Hot Network Questions have a record attached to them, those can be queried for in the Data Explorer.
However, the Data Explorer is only updated once a week. It would be nice to also have a full list of questions that are selected for Hot Network Questions and the ...
@Tinkeringbell I guess that depends on the mod handling the flags. IMHO, people should discuss unwanted HNQs on the site meta or chat and come to some consensus, rather than just going straight for the custom flag without discussing it.
@SonictheReinstateMonica-hog Good idea. IIRC, a CM (Jon?) said that it's currently hard to get a record of when a question drops off the HNQ. And it isn't mentioned in the post's timeline.
@JourneymanGeek IPS has a ticker feed in chat (we can't get a message feed working somehow...) and a chatroom with a message feed (because it works there...). It's easy enough to keep track :)
The easiest ones (for me) are when the asker asks for us to take their question out. Often this means it's a bit controversial, and getting too much comments/answers that aren't helpful...
Getting a consensus in meta isn't feasible since HNQs are only relevant for a day or two and that's not enough time to get a meta consensus on most sites.
And mods can see how much attention (deleted comments, deleted answers, crappy answers etc) a post is getting, so that's a good reason to remove from HNQ.
That said, I have never done so myself, I haven't needed to. But if I do happen to find something problematic, I don't see a problem with deciding to unHNQ it.
@terdon Fair point. Chat is probably more practical, assuming the site has a sufficiently active chat community. And sure, in many cases it's perfectly fine to act unilaterally, or in response to a flag or two. What's the point in electing mods if you can't trust them to do stuff like that?
And even chat won't really work. I mean, on Unix & Linux for example, the chat room has <10 regulars. These are core users, part of the group of most active users, but asking them is hardly a "consensus".
That's true too, but such differences tend to indicate that there isn't a clear-cut solution. So you should at least consider the other opinion, even if you don't agree with it. And I guess it's a bit different on the more technical sites, where there often is a best-practice solution to a given question. There's a lot more scope for variation with softer topics.
@PM2Ring yeah, threading in chat would help a lot of issues
true threading I mean (as apposed to this half threading reply ability) :)
Yeah, having participated on Docs (I think its 1/3 of my SO rep) I couldn't agree more. Its why I'm completely against all the proposals for separating SO into amateur and expert sites - Docs was the proof that this does not work with the SO model (now if that model was edited, and I mean hard, might have something)
@PM2Ring I can note (from experience with both new Python & Java & C# users): my Python students who use SO tend to end up on chat (which was the first reason for the name change actually) even if not regulars, Java avoid it like the plague after one use (its not pretty or newbie friendly), C# end up asking their questions on SO Python cause they know I hang out there and C# has a lot of downtime in their chat
I'll also note the high ratio of Python users to chat (comparatively) was due to many active Python users adding the "let's continue this in chat" when answering/commenting on questions (but that was a year ago - haven't really paid attention in a while)
As an aside, I'm kinda proud that my two highest voted answers on WB have finally surpassed all my HNQ answers - "better answers give more points given enough time" for the win
@LinkBerest Nice. But the HNQ effect can sometimes have long-lasting benefits. A couple of my highest scoring answers on U&L got nice boosts due to HNQ, which probably makes them more visible in search results, because I continue to get upvotes on them, even though they're fairly basic answers.
oh, I have 1 or 2 HNQ answers that did well too (3 actually but one was completely subjective - if funny - so I kinda feel bad that it has more votes then some of my "I researched this enough to start a paper" style answers)
yeah, I went down my list of network wide answers, and I think the highest answer I really researched some stuff for was at like... 40 votes. Highest overall is 426, which just rode the wave of HNQ all the way home
oh, my top voted answer on the network has nothing to do with HNQ - its here on Meta and has to do with Docs, Welcoming, and the whole thing (before whole thing number 3, 4, and 5 came along)
wow, that was a year ago (which was about a year after my break after the whole Teams & Docs things)
@Rubiksmoose A ticker feed? Or messages? In the main chatroom, or a separate one? (sorry, I really want to know why a message feed isn't working in our main chatroom :P)
....hmm...time for new SEDE query me-thinks (I really should save some of these but I usually just make them as one-offs and remembering the scheme takes so long I run out of free-time to post them....then just forget)