@Spevacus Posting a bug report, looks like a developer did some mistake.

hmm... on the other hand, MSE never had official chat, Tavern was just early experiment and now it's... just a mess.

o_O

Dang the room name is same as site name, so can't know which tab is the site, and which is the chat. grr

This is weird as hell

Not really, classic SE bug.

do you mean this happened before?

This exact thing no, but myriad of "small" bugs, oh yes. Bugs caused by developer misclicking something, removing code without knowing the impact, etc etc.

ah, that, yeah, that's classic :)

So there's probably some code causing the new site template to run or be applied, and someone activated it by mistake.

Or, much more annoying, they decided on their own to just add this room since it didn't exist yet.

I hope this is not the latter. The former is at least understandable.

Why am I not an RO here?

cool, no owner here so I could be auto appointed if I keep talking

How many messages do I need?

@rene I will talk more then! :D

Wait! No! Go away! :D

nah nah

@ShadowTheSpringWizard chatroom

let the Room Owner Games begin!

...

@Mast hello to you too! :D

@rene Den

@ShadowTheSpringWizard Haag

@rene hug

@ShadowTheSpringWizard cuddle

wondering what will happen when a mod will stumble to this room

You can ask Mast ....

@rene cats

@rene I mean MSE mod, with actual powerz here. ;)

@ShadowTheSpringWizard musical

@rene Dracula

@ShadowTheSpringWizard we can always go to MSE and go Mod abuse!

@ShadowTheSpringWizard teeth

@rene sharp

@ShadowTheSpringWizard C

@rene ++

@ShadowTheSpringWizard operator

dang you win... for now... got to work... maybe I'll ask @Pro to bring FOX here? :P

Cheers! Laterz

hmm, what's the threshold of a reasonably active room becoming an unreasonably active one?

6 to 8 messages

I see we are at the insane level already

@ShadowTheSpringWizard You think they're not aware already?

@rene I'm just as much a mod here as you here ;-)

This room being created all of a sudden is odd, but has 0 impact.

Oh, we can change that ...

oh-oh

@Mast mods? Perhaps. Staff? Nope.

You didn't talk about staff :-)

They probably won't care though, why would they?

It's one of the many odd-but-low-impact bugs SE has.

@Mast well someone said SEDE also got something odd today, might be related, and this already has impact.

Something happened, automatic chat room isn't created out of the blue.

I know staff don't care, that's SE biggest problem.

What exactly is the impact, more than that we just got something new and weird to talk about?

@Mast I mean SEDE being odd, don't have details though. See a comment under my bug report.

y'all are talking as if I am dead :) Nah, upon further inspection, it's just the usual weekly drop / recreate procedure bumping create_date for the databases

that leaves fat-fingering as the most likely cause

@OlegValteriswithUkraine oh lol didn't notice it's you who wrote the comment.... :D :D

@OlegValteriswithUkraine so all databases have creation date of today?

@ShadowTheSpringWizard yep; data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1239509/…

@rene awesome! So there's a job running on some server, that check creation date and if it's today, adds the default chat room if one doesn't exist yet. Wonder what other things it's doing...

Anyway this should probably be reported as a new bug. You'll have the honor? @rene

@ShadowTheSpringWizard I dunno if chatroom creation is automated, I doubt it is a bug.

@ShadowTheSpringWizard made me chuckle at least xD

@ShadowTheSpringWizard well, not all of them technically, but those that aren't are either utility ones, or is Data.StackExchange, yup

@rene well, it's part of new site creation. Why not automate it?

@OlegValteriswithUkraine oh well, nothing that will draw devs to fix it, sadly.

@ShadowTheSpringWizard it so uncommon. It needs better guidance / steps / governance for sure

@ShadowTheSpringWizard well, if it will start to [re]create the room every Sunday going forward, that's going to be fun :) Sadly, it's does seem like a human error after all

Impossible. Humans don't make mistakes.

One thing keeps bugging me, though - the room was created at 17:00 UTC. Does this particular timestamp speak anything to anyone?

@OlegValteriswithUkraine Why, that's not long after brillig.

A community wiki question that prevents a huge number of PHP related questions was just closed as "needs to be more focused."

Is closing a precursor to removal, or will it just be left there as is?

@ElementsinSpace ... good one xD

@Mast 0 impact, huh? Somebody's already trying to have a general discussion here :)

@Danack removal - highly unlikely, too helpful. Such "list of common errors" questions are often closed as lacking focus, though. In fact, I once made one in my field - went pretty much the same way. If you wish to inquire more, it's better to ask on our per-site meta. Certainly not in a mistakenly created MSE general discussion room :)

ta

@rene let's replace all sE staff with ChatGPT bots! :D

@OlegValteriswithUkraine why trying? Doing it with great success. :D

@Danack NP - you are probably aware (given for how long you've been a member on SO for) that such Q&As often become a point of contention as to whether they are a good fit for the format. It's a shame, though, I personally find them hella useful.

@ShadowTheSpringWizard I suppose so xD [status-bug-by-design]

"for how long " Yeah.....I just can't remember what the appropriate course of action is since it's been years since I got involved in site drama....

@ShadowTheSpringWizard they seem to be doing that just fine on their own /s

@Danack well... if you feel strongly about keeping it open, try making a post on MSO. Although the debate is likely to get heated fast.

@Danack MSO discussion will give you more insight, and lots of downvotes. If you're up for it, that's a better way to get feedback. :)

@Danack meta, it's always meta. (NOT the company! ;))

@OlegValteriswithUkraine exactly, so only if ready for downvotes and angry comments.

@Danack one thing I can assure you of is that it's not going to get deleted (especially given that multiple moderators have been involved in it over the years - somebody will notice if the worst happens).

@ShadowTheSpringWizard yeeaah, there is definitely going to be a lot of contention: that Q&A specifically is on its 4th close/reopen cycle already judging from the timeline

@Danack FYI: meta.stackoverflow.com/q/314618

@Danack As one of the close voters (and the user who raised a cv-pls request in SOCVR), I don't want to see it removed. But I just want to stop others using it as a duplicate target. Each of the 'errors' it addresses (each with its own answer, unrelated to others) should be a separate question, IMHO. Link to SOCVR discussion.

... What "started me off" was seeing a post in the Reopen Votes review queue that had been hammered as a dupe of that. But the warning in the new question isn't listed in that so-called canonical. So, should we just close all PHP error questions as a dupe of that and then just add a new answer, completely unrelated to anything else?

Well, now that it's been reopened, I guess I'll just have to keep voting to reopen any posts closed as a dupe against it. Shocking state of affairs, IMHO.

Or, let's just merge all SO questions into one for each language, and collect all the answers on that.

Here is the question that was hammered against that list-of-errors question, even though the warning it asks about isn't mentioned there. It has now been reopened but, with that question "in play", this sort of "lazy curation" will continue.

It's like saying, "I'm closing this as a duplicate of my post <here>, even though that post doesn't address your question. However, I'm gonna edit that question and add a new answer that does address your issue."

@AdrianMole an unfortunate side-effect of these mega-canonicals is, indeed, scope creep. I personally do not find them, in themselves, unfit for the Q&A format we have (and hence do not believe they should all be closed [disclosure: I've cast one of the reopen votes as you probably noticed]). That certainly doesn't mean I am in favor of them becoming an uber-guide for every error imaginable, just for the most common ones.

@OlegValteriswithUkraine OK, then suggest a way we can prevent gold tag-badge holders using it as a lazy dupe target.

Each of those answers should be an answer to a separate question. That's precisely how SO is designed to work. It's not a general documentation site.

That question wasn't created due to Documentation being un-shipped?

Dunno. Long before my time.

Maybe we can get some active PHP curators and a mod (or three) to break that question up into its component, single questions? { Runs away and hides! }

@AdrianMole to be honest with you - I don't know how to do that, just believe that such Q&As do not go against the spirit of the Q&A format in principle. Many errors are, indeed, way too common, and some form of common reference is, from my standpoint, warranted. Although I have just as much of a distaste for duplicate closures such as one you mentioned (but, IMO, lazy closures by gold badge holders are not specific to and not stem from the existence of such references [1/2]

[2/2] - I've seen just as many baffling closures against single-valued targets that have nothing to do with the question at hand. I believe this is a fundamental problem with badge holders that cannot be solved by applying band aids like this...)

But such 'grouped' canonicals should at least have a common theme. That one is just a vague "any PHP error/warning" clump. There's the very nice (IMHO) canonical in C++ about how to write operator overloads: this one. I can accept those sort of Q/A posts.

@AdrianMole frankly, maybe this is actually a way forward - provided such an effort can be organized that is. While not being in favor of solving the problem via closure, I'd support such an effort if it's become way too bloated for its own good.

I can't improve on the word, "bloated". :)

Also note that most (all?) answers on that PHP monster have links to earlier (arguably better) questions that have then been closed against it. Sounds very dodgy, to me.

@AdrianMole dunno? It's going to take me a while to check all of them :) From the several dozen I've just checked, only a small percentage is closed against the target, so... not sure.

@OlegValteriswithUkraine More fragmentation of information, just what the doctor ordered.

But isn't it better to close any new questions directly against the actual duplicate, rather than using that middleman link?

@Mast we even managed to hold a mini SOCVR convention here already :)

@AdrianMole we definitely have common ground here - I don't like using reference-style Q&As as dupe targets either...

OK, so the question that originally got me going on this does in fact have an answer on the monster-canonical, as pointed out by a commentator. But I'm no happier about it.

@AdrianMole if not, such answer should be added there, that's how things work in MSE when closing stuff as dupe of actual faq. (I'm on the fence with that SO conflict.)

that conflict is probably as unsolvable as the monorepo-polyrepo schism

If a new user came along and posted a question with content like, "What do the following errors in D-- mean..." (followed by a list of error messages), then I think it would be rapidly closed as needing focus. So, do we have double standards?

@AdrianMole I believe YCS has just reclosed it against a single-valued target if that's any consolation?

@OlegValteriswithUkraine Yes, indeed. And I have no problem with that closure.

Ideally, Stack Overflow will have a separate section for FAQ-like stuff, e.g. one question with answers to many errors.

That may be your ideal but it's not mine.

A single-error question is open to multiple answers - and that's a good thing. How would you organise "competing" answers to one particular error on such multi-error questions?

@AdrianMole as a Q&A with the explicit goal and justification for common errors that also provides actual content from the start, that doesn't duplicate existing efforts, and is of decent quality? Then I'd be inclined to leave it open, but that's me.

On an off-note, if tag wikis had any damned visibility, I'd happily move all such references there

@AdrianMole several sections in same answer?

As I said, I'm not in favor of this, however I can see and understand both sides.

@ShadowTheSpringWizard So, if I think one section is good and worth an upvote but another is really bad and worth a downvote, how would I express my feelings via the established Stack Overflow mechanism.

@AdrianMole it would all be CW anyway, votes won't have real effect, and in faq, or such faq-like facility, all answers must be good or correct, that's part of the "deal". At least that's how I see it, and here on MSE trying to maintain it.