See the difference though?

@RebeccaChernoff Yeah. Originally I looked on WA proper and it's "correct" there. Not sure why the metas are different.

Oh, but apparently only on the one question I looked at...WTF?

Links?

It isn't just WA meta that is different from MSO... webapps.stackexchange.com/posts/10134/timeline is "correct"

webapps.stackexchange.com/posts/10247/timeline

That one has a comment on the one answer which for some reason is missing a username.

But it's under the answer..

webapps.stackexchange.com/posts/9115/timeline

Then that one has it like the one you linked before.

What the heck? |:

Different even on the same site?

Apparently so. >_>

To the WOB!

It's Jeff's fault!

it's chronological

sort of

but yes, it exhibits a certain ability to cause the "um, what now?" effect

that page needs some work, but it's pretty hard to find a useful and non-confusing way to represent all this

@balpha In the sense that comments which are posted as the next item after a particular post will appear as attached to that post instead of standing alone, or?

to me it looks like the difference is whether the comment happened on the same day as the post

I'm guessing as much as you are; I haven't looked at that code yet

Ah, OK :)

I can buy that, and if it turns out to be untrue we'll just call shenanigans on you ;)

Having the comments separate is basically the only reason I use the page. (;

@RebeccaChernoff so you just want to know what comments are new, regardless of the post they're on?

Sometimes the exact same discussion is taking part in pieces under different answers. This particularly happened with the NTI vs WA debate.

Yes, answers matter. But a global timeline can be useful as well.

Oh, I agree; I've used the (old) timeline view for that as well. And since that page is a construction zone, the information what do people use it for? is interesting to have

Hmm, seems you're right. If the comment is posted the same day as the post, it gets grouped. As I recall, the WA/NTI post was made maybe an hour before day switched over, which would make a big difference.

If you look at the WA/NTI post, and expand the data from the 1st, there are some comments grouped under the owning post there.

@RebeccaChernoff I do relatively frequently

@balpha While it is chronologically sorted, it isn't in any meaningful way: day granularity is a bit too... coarse

Real questions will hardly ever have enough activity to make it worthwile

If you want interesting timelines you need to go in not-really-question (domain name "questions" come to mind.)

For example, @CRoss wondered if one particularly bad option in a poll we're running on Gaming Meta did have a big spike in voting or not.

Timeline showed it really didn't. (The answer in question is DavRob60's)

Maybe a more interesting timeline view would have, you know, an actual timeline.

Like a chart with a line per question.

With comments and edits pinned onto it.

And the line changes colours based on the amount of voting per time unit.

In a full timeline view, I think it is important that comments be first-class citizens. But yes, they should also be attributed to the owning post, heh.

Run the lines vertically

Click on one to expand it and see text snippets of each event :P

Meh. Don't load a page just to hide information from me.

Just for completeness:

but I'll also bookmark this conversation

Hmm, yeah, I have seen that in the past.

> chronological timeline of everything that happened on a question

not true though.

@RebeccaChernoff when there's too much information, you need to hide some to get the full picture better

@RebeccaChernoff Migration Events: UNSUPPORTED

Disagree with Robert's answer. Ideally, there'd be a representation that preverses the true chronology as well as identify the owning post.

@TimStone I wasn't even talking about migration.

Wow, that question about the guy getting banned from physics has really exploded.

Yeah. ):

Hrm..

@Pekka cited this as an example of an "unfriendly conversation"

I don't see it though

The moderator edited some terms in the sincere hope of improving the text

Some arguing started about english vs german terms and history of science literature

...but that's not relevant at all

and there were no accusation of sabotage or threats in the discussion

I think there's possibly a slight undertone of "I'm moderator, and I chose to use the English words. I don't care about your rationalizations, because I also had a reason and this is what I like."

also, the moderator didn't start an edit war -- exactly one edit was made and it wasn't reverted. There's no edit war or anything...

But that's kind of "meh", so.

@TimStone the mod made a good faith effort to improve the question and, when asked why, replied. The owner didn't choose to revert the edit.

> @Robert: Of course you can, just many people may not understand you! I already clarified my point; foreign words are fine, but in my view should only really be used when there is no decent English equivalent. I don't even get your point. I'm English, I so write in English. – Noldorin♦ 4 hours ago

I don't really get the impression that they're "fine" if he's going to use his opinion to edit them out of the question, and the OP probably saw no point in reverting just to have that opinion re-expressed.

No, I'm saying that his defense of his edit relied heavily on him expressing his opinion.

Sorry, misunderstood you

> foreign words are fine, but in my view should only really be used when there is no decent English equivalent.

He could have just said "It will probably be more clear to people this way", and left it at that. :)

this was the correct retort

> Just edited out the one French and one German word you used in your text. :) ("ansatz" is sometimes used in English physics tests, but not very often, and many will not understand it.) – Noldorin♦ yesterday

Right, it's just the last few comments that I have an issue with. :P

Yeah, the discussion doesn't start well if you ignore its beginning :P

There's no doubt Noldorin overheated on meta

I just don't see the issue in this post.

Like I said, it seemed like a good faith edit. But his explanation kind of dissolved into rambling that I think went far beyond actually saying anything useful.

I would probably have acted similarly if I were in him, diamond or no diamond, that's why I'm puzzled.

He seems to take an oddly strong view of asserting English :P

Which is kind of beside the point.

> I'm also far too proud of the English language. – Noldorin♦ yesterday

I mean, this is not a good policy :P

but after all this is the Internet

there's no point in discussing the 1800's

Here and now, English is king

@radp Which is why it was a good faith edit, sure.

@radp I took exception only to the last few comments (Especially the Nazi remark). Personal insults are simply not conduct becoming a moderator.

If what he presented today is his usual style, this guy is not fit to be a moderator IMO

But maybe things look different when everyone cools down a bit.

I don't deny he's overheated on MSO.

I just think that in these situations everyone is wrong.

He overheated on physics as well. Look at the stuff Marek wrote that got him banned. You can't be a mod if you can't take that little bit of cheek

@Pekka Yep. It's weird to see the flames start on a discussion that started on topic.

Instead of, say, meta matters like textareas being used as large single-line text inputs and associated hacks to make it work.

@radp I must admit I've come to like that feature :)

@radp I don't disagree with that either. I just think it's a bit ridiculous that there are 19 comments about a few changed words. He changed them, he explained himself, the OP disagreed but didn't revert (and it wasn't causing serious harm to begin with, just perhaps a disadvantage to the OP), and it should have ended there IMO. The day had already been saved and what not. ;)

Although I can see how much it breaks.

@Pekka I do like it. It may be that @balpha messed with my mind, but it just makes sense to me now.

@radp Every time that someone calls that input box a multi-line textfield, your power of choice kills a kitten.

The fact that it no longer accepts the newline character drastically hampers its ability to, you know, be multi-line. :P

@radp I think @balpha is secretly in charge of emitting hypnotic, jQuery driven pulses

cough shift-enter cough

that make us agree with everything management says

I choose to ignore that. ;)

$.YouWillObey()

@Pekka all hail the benjamin dumke

Isn't it much better that all the new sites are under a .stackexchange.com domain now?

wait a second did I write that? Who the hell is benjamin dumke anyway?

The trick is to work with old CRTs.

The strobo doesn't work properly there yet

But they are working to fix it.

Although I did kind of hope that Jeff would agree to look into fixing that context menu bug, even though it's Firefox's fault. But it seems that won't be the case.

Nah, don't worry everyone. We're still safe.

jQuery has that strobo built in by the way

Why else do you think that framework took over the world within months?

But you need to pay John Resig huge sums in order to use it for your own purposes.

$(body).bind('thoughts', function(event) { return 'These are not the newlines you are looking for'; });

Just make the <textarea> an <input type="text"> and call it a day, heh.

I so wanted to suggest that. Then we could put in the formatting preview. :P

Seriously though. Seems most of the argument is that textarea's should allow newlines. boom no longer a textarea!

I was being serious too :(

HYPNOBEN!

I think Pekka's head merely flew in to flag

@radp no to star!

I never flag

All the flags I've seen on Chat so far were ridiculous.

Or rather, reliable guides to the really interesting conversations that had taken place while you were away.

Yeah yeah flag away

Someone flagged something in chat.SO asking a programming question, expecting the mods to show up to answer..

haha

I'm going to vanish that flag now with my magical superpowers.

Bah, you used to be able to remove your own flags yourself.

Then they got pissy when either Marc or balpha responded to tell them off, heheh.

See kids what happens when you abuse stuff? Nevermind it was me who started the abuse with those delicious public red flags right next to Welbog's posts.

Just kidding.

Like baaaaaack in the past.

One day public beta past.

Hmm....I definitely need to get my eating schedule in check. wanders off in search of food

@Pekka Yeah, now that flagging (flogging?) isn't as fun, getting 10k has become pretty meh

I love how so many people just greet each other by stating what time of the day it is..

Morning, Afternoon, Evening..

Long Damp Sunday Afternoon

good day @TylerChacha isn't that neutral?

The funniest part about it is that it works in any situation

For almost any statement...

The President Got Elected Today, Taxes are getting increase, This line is long...

At this point I would consider supporting a ban of the [roblox] tag on SO.

I've mixed feeling about Ivo closing and locking the complaint question in re Physics. On one hand moderators need some room to do their work without being constantly second guessed; on the other the users are affected and should have a say; on the gripping hand maybe enough had been said.

Ah! I know I don't like having the whole thing deleted. Curse you, waffles!

Besides, what's going to become of my arbitrary points?!?

Very mixed. It belongs on the math meta. It's essentially a 1:1 issue between the user and the mod, that needs to involve the core team. It was an argumentative sh*tstorm that I couldn't help from getting involved in, though I've sworn many times to stop fixing the internet. But:

Things look bad over on that SE. I would not want to be involved with that quality of moderation, frankly.

@MichaelPetrotta you mean meta.physics?

btw, meta.physics wins the best meta domain name...

sorry, yeah, on the physics meta.

@Jin I thought the same thing when I looked it up today.

i wonder if we'll ever have a Meta Physics proposal...

then it'd be meta.metaphysics.se...

Maybe there will be a Stasis site one day

So we can have meta.stasis

was looking at meta.math today, where it's apparently even more messy.

@MichaelPetrotta yes yes oh yes! I'm growing tired of that too.

@Pekka: easy for me - I really only care about SO, everything else is just for rubbernecking. I love that programmers.se exists, and that CW (mostly) went away. Don't know how they're going to pull off the question migration to programmers.se once it goes out of beta, but awesome.

I read programmers sometimes, and hover over where the close button would be if I had that on that site, then I remember, "wait! that's how it's supposed to be over here!".

I lie - there are some a51 sites I'm rooting for.

@MichaelPetrotta i'm glad to see a lot SE2.0 sites are growing nicely, organically.

my favs are English and Cooking.

I love english.se. Seems to be doing well, a good fit for the model.

@Michael: Hear! Hear! ...now if only I had anything to contribute there...

@dmckee: Yeah... I have an intuitive (IMO) sense for correct English usage, but I can never back it up with words like pluperfect or gerund. But then, answering questions on SO helped me improve that aspect of my programming skills.

cool TeX.se made it on the frontpage of Hacker News news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1997691