Tavern on the Meta

7:23 AM

@mootinator Nice.

Purmou

7:39 AM

it's been so long since i've done anything on these sites

PearsonArtPhoto

1:07 PM

Waiting for a domain registry change to take effect is like watching paint dry...

1:21 PM

Is it a good idea to copy with attribution from MSDN forum? Like what I do here? stackoverflow.com/posts/15247488/revisions

2:01 PM

Err, anyone?

CBenni

2:48 PM

is SO the correct place to ask about licensing? Or where would I else place my question?

3:05 PM

@CBenni No, SO is not right. Licensing questions are okay on Programmers SE though, according to its FAQ.

in 2013 Stack Overflow Moderator Election on Stack Overflow Chat, 11 hours ago, by animuson

Let's all save our answers in Notepad then send them all to Tim Stone afterwards to make his work more difficult. :P

@TimStone ^

NO DIAMOND FOR YOU, @animuson

CBenni

@PopularDemand I figured, yeah, ty

3:29 PM

Ugh. I implicitly agreed with casperOne last night. What was I smoking?

3:44 PM

@PopularDemand can we just give Barber the diamond now at 3500 votes

Well, nobody listened to me when he reached 171 after like 18 seconds of voting.

Daniel Fischer

I'm almost afraid he won't make it because everybody thinks he's a shoo-in and spends their votes elsewhere.

Who knows, maybe during the Town Hall he'll let slip that he hates unicorns and freehand circles and the color orange.

Ah yes, the Brad Larson effect.

Have we really had every possible discussion about this election already? This feels really deja-vu-ish.

yesterday, by Popular Demand

Andrew Barber is already at 171. I move that we give him the win by acclamation and continue the election for only the remaining three slots.

in 2013 Stack Overflow Moderator Election on Stack Overflow Chat, yesterday, by Brad Larson

@LordTorgamus While the odds are in his favor, this isn't necessarily a foregone conclusion. Two elections ago, I lead the primaries for a while, finished third, and then ended up well out of the final election at 7th. Surprised to see the number of votes in there so far without the 99 notification glitch from last time.

in 2013 Stack Overflow Moderator Election on Stack Overflow Chat, 24 hours ago, by Lord Torgamus

A strong primary showing could also (yep, continuing with hypotheticals) backfire by making supporters think "oh, everyone else will make him 1st choice, so I can safely make him 3rd or not vote for him at all."

@TimStone Almost like someone wants their THC answers to be accidentally replaced with profanity during the translation to meta...

@Shog9 How terribly crass, sir! No, no, I should think it would be preferable to simply replace all occurrences of "Stack Overflow" in his answers with "Experts Exchange."

3:59 PM

And every verb with "bieber".

Anonymous

Is there any way to find out what users have favorited something without using the data dump? It doesn't look like it...

I'm looking for specific problems here, things that can be clearly identified and agreed on by both flaggers and moderators. I'm sure you have something in mind, but I keep hearing, "I want a flag that can be used on answers with links" - which are not necessarily problems in and of themselves. Drop into chat if you wanna discuss this further, @gnat. — Shog9 5 mins ago

@Shog9 I am thinking about a "contract" like that: - flagger says, "can't stand on their own". - mod says, "okay I imagine URL goes 404 and evaluate if it matches standard not an answer". Match determines valid flag, mismatch means decline - and provable one, the one build over existing standards, 404+not-an-answer. Does that make sense?

@JeremyBanksᐛ no. See: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/824/…

@gnat And what does this provide over what we have now?

quoting the relevant portion of the site FAQ for reference:

> Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …

- commentary on the question or other answers
- asking another, different question
- “thanks!” or “me too!” responses
- exact duplicates of other answers
- barely more than a link to an external site
- not even a partial answer to the actual question

Guidance is: answers should at least partially answer the actual question, and be noticeably more than a link to an external site.

4:20 PM

Is there not some easy way to see the primary candidates ordered by score?

ThiefMaster

javascript:(function(){var%20posts=$('.vote-count-post').get();posts.sort(function(a,b){return+(a.innerHTML%20||%200)-+(b.innerHTML%20||%200);});var%20tbody=$(posts[0]).closest('tbody');$.each(posts,function(){tbody.prepend($(this).closest('tr'));});})();

Anonymous

@jadarnel27 Hang out in the election chat room!

ThiefMaster

use this bookmarklet (source: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/76438/…)

 @UTC 15:42
 1. Andrew Barber        [ 3499] ( 21k rep, 9259 helpful flags)
 2. Flexo                [ 2668] ( 28k rep, 7390 helpful flags)
 3. minitech             [ 2148] ( 57k rep, 3195 helpful flags)
 4. animuson             [ 1859] ( 14k rep, 1573 helpful flags)
 5. Gordon               [ 1808] (110k rep,  563 helpful flags)
 6. ChrisF               [ 1651] ( 60k rep,  434 helpful flags)
 7. Lord Torgamus        [ 1425] (  7k rep,  573 helpful flags)
 8. JNK                  [ 1337] ( 26k rep,  325 helpful flags)

If you just wanted a quick recent snapshot.

Oh wow, thanks guys.

4:22 PM

Oh, hm, it only brings over nine lines.

Sorry for being a lazy bum =)

@PopularDemand Man, you are really a rep outlier in the top 8 there.

@Shog9 guidance you quote says nothing about flagging (same as famous "reference" post), as such it is useless for the matters we discussed, isn't it?...

@jadarnel27 He's the Anna Lear of 2013

...btw regarding bounty, my concern there is more of personal nature. You see, I am pretty comfortable with status quo, I even gather some meta rep in this category and I want to somehow balance that innatural happiness over confusing matters by investing rep into helping community make up their mind on these ("draw attention")

@gnat I gotta confess, I still do not understand why anyone bounties anything on MSO

Tim Yi Jiang

4:26 PM

@Shog9 It's sort of (ab)using the feature to make questions stand out a little

I don't understand why people delete their bug reports once I mark them as duplicate of something that was reported but still not fixed.

@gnat Flagging should follow from actual violations of site policies. Everyone agrees that answers which don't answer the question should be removed. Most everyone agrees that answers which consist of nothing but links should be removed - which is why you actually have to go out of your way to even post one in the first place. What remains are answers that include links as a major portion of their content and may or may not be answers in and of themselves.

So... When does a link in an answer become a problem?

@TimStone Shame

@Shog9 :) oh okay to simplify at least my bounties for you: my plan is to spend 400 rep (2x200) on two bounties related to "hotness formula": first is targeted next week, second closer to end of March.

Yeah, but then I have to go edit the old post to remind people that it's still not fixed, instead of them following the duplicate link. Making me work, pssh.

A: How to copy a file in Python?

What concerns me the most, @gnat, is that answers like this already get flagged:

3

If you are reading outfile, why do you open it with 'w+'? This truncates the file. Use 'r'to read. See the link

4:31 PM

Did that get flagged before or after the edit that actually explained what to do instead of what not to do?

@TimStone both

Oh, that's extra silly then.

And by folks who really should know better

@Shog9 to give me rep of course

A: Should there be a policy about 'One-Link-Only-Answers'?

@Shog9 well per my reading of authoritative sources these become a problem instantly. We've been through it already, more than once. Look...

9

Well. To start with, link-only answers blatantly violate guidance given in How to Answer instructions: Provide context for links A link to a potential solution is always welcome, but please add context around the link so your fellow users will have some idea what it is and why it’s there...

does that work for you?

4:33 PM

@gnat Read that comment again. Surely you're not against answers that happen to contain links?

@Shog9 Better not have been any of the candidates brandishes Stick of Shame

@Shog9 that comment is interesting, I need some time to figure about it...

@TimStone That I cannot reveal

@gnat the one you replied to

@gnat The context bit is fine, but... If the answer to your question is FormatMessage() or $.on() or whatever, I should really just drop in a link to the official docs on that rather than duplicating them.

So again: presuming the answer consists of something besides a link, where's the line when that "something" becomes insufficient to justify the answer's continued existence?

@Shog9 "If you are reading outfile, why do you open it with 'w+'? This truncates the file. Use 'r'to read. See the link" - with "link" being plain text, and as a mod evaluating not an answer flag, would you accept or decline it? That's exactly how I suggest to handle proposed flags. Difficult or not, but you just do the same as before, with only difference...

...that you assume link goes 404

instead of thinking what's there behind it

Difficult or not, it's the same job you already do

that's the point

@gnat Why do you think that answer was flagged?

4:37 PM

@Shog9 Not even for some of these delicious sriracha-flavoured chips? I think I have an NDA, you can trust me. ;)

But no, whoever flagged that knows who they are and should feel ashamed in solitude.

@TimStone Ashamed for not down-voting it perhaps

nods

@Shog9 well that's easy. I do not care why, I expect you to perform quick, competent and independent judgement of a situation, business as usual isn't it?

@gnat Not if adding a new flag reason generates 50% more bogus flags

same stuff you do every day, day by day

same approaches you apply to not an answer flags

only difference is you assume underlying link is 404

that's it

4:41 PM

Not an answer flags are very quick to handle because legit NAA are almost always very short and instantly recognizable. You can evaluate them in seconds - and not the double-digit sort of seconds either.

So when folks abuse them and start flagging answers that are wrong, or just short, or include links... Those are easy enough to throw out.

Last I checked, links don't even render in the mod flag queue's preview (correct me if I'm wrong on this, @mmyers). So if someone flags an answer that's complete nonsense without the link, that's pretty easy to see.

mmyers

@DanielFischer Normally I'd say that isn't a problem because of STV, but in this case with four open positions and only three votes, I don't know

@Shog9 Yes, that's correct

A recent example: "A similar question has been answered here. Hope that helps :) Regards, Matt." That's exactly as it appears in the queue.

@Shog9 well put that "50% bogus" projection into your answer, wipe out "doesn't describe why" and I'll be fine with it. That reasoning sounds convincing to me. As opposed to "doesn'tdescribewhy" (that one made me raise eyebrows, kind of why do we have that "universal reference from devinb" then)

Q: Why were my edits and flags on posts with offensive words rejected?

It's the lack of "why" that makes me concerned it will increase the number of bogus flags, @gnat.

Imagine if we replaced "spam" with a "contains link to commercial product" flag.

Spam is already misused, but not so much as to be a huge problem. If folks suddenly saw a mandate from the system to go out and start flagging any and all links to commercial products, it'd be madness.

Ditto for offensive...

-9

I flagged some posts which contained offensive words, but my flags were rejected with this comment from a moderator: "simple edit could do the right job". When I edited those posts, my edit suggestions were rejected without comments from moderator. I just want to know, is there any other way to ...

Remember, flagging is available to anyone with at least 15 reputation points on the site. Not that you can depend on folks with 15K even agreeing on what qualifies and what doesn't, but particularly with folks new to the system you have to provide some sort of clear guidance on what is, and what's not appropriate.

And that's why I keep coming back to NAA, since if you boil down the problem with "link-only" answers, it's almost always that they don't answer the question. Maybe that can be fixed, maybe it can't, but if there's a problem then that's it - and that's what the flag should describe.

user159834

Does anyone know where I can find help using the data explorer? I'm not too familiar with it. For instance, what do the different PostTypeIds represent?

user159834

Are there any docs or how-tos out there?

4:56 PM

@WesleyMurch: There is another table that lists out name and PostTypeIds

Just do a join with that table

Or just print it out first and refer to it

user159834

Ah I see, thanks @nhahtdh

You don't even have to do that - just click the little question mark next to the table name:

And then thank @TimStone for putting that there

Anonymous

Oh, sweet, I didn't realize that was added. I was just manually querying it earlier today.

Hey @Shog9 so what's the viability of anyone actually caring enough to give feedback on that meta Q for downvote/upvote reconciliation and rep-cap?

@Shog9 lack of why, I see, you mean this...

25 mins ago, by Shog9

So again: presuming the answer consists of something besides a link, where's the line when that "something" becomes insufficient to justify the answer's continued existence?

5:02 PM

Or if I'm entirely wrong on how it should be done, as well. Because I've got users who are curious if that's how it should be (hence I posted a Q and tried to give specific data sets as examples)

...correct?

@Shog: The visibility of the feature is quite poor though. I never pay heed to it until you mention it

@jcolebrand I don't personally care very much

@Shog9 well yes, but you're not on the dev team :p

@nhahtdh blame @TimStone ALL THE THINGS

@jcolebrand If Nick gets bored, he might give a rundown on what it would take to implement that. Probably more likely if it gets a ton of upvotes.

5:04 PM

@Shog9 so I should harrass all the users. Got it. ;-)

@nhahtdh Meh. It's visible enough for me.

@gnat Right. When does the link-heavy nature of the answer go from being a bonus to being a serious liability?

@Shog9 Yeah, I kind of felt the same way. Just a handful of reps, meh.

@jcolebrand Pssh.

@TimStone users.

I didn't just notice it and go "oh, look, I'll annoy Josh with this"

Wha?

I had it thrust in my face and researched it and asked folks about it and posted a (hopefully) thought out and explicit post that details the problem and the expected output, which helps us devise tests which helps us get the right behavior :p

5:09 PM

I didn't mean that there was no point in you asking, just that in the grand scheme of things fixing the problem is only so worthwhile. :P

@Shog9 okay, would this work for you? the line goes exactly where it is now for [not-an-answer]s, assuming that linked URL is unavailable. Same stuff you do every day now, the only difference is you deliberately ignore what's on linked URL. No harder, no easier, just... the same

But not my call to make, so maybe you'll get lucky. Of course, if Nick gets bored, I have some stuff for him to take care of too...

@gnat Like I said, moderators don't even see clickable links when they're reviewing these flags unless they go out of their way to dig into the answer a bit. So if it's not clear that the answer addresses the question without a followable link, there's a pretty good chance it'll be deleted if flagged.

that's all I got to say on the topic there @TimStone ;-)

5:12 PM

lmao, well played.

A: parse xml namespace with php

(and while we've been discussing this, I've been digging through recently-rejected NAA flags... Haven't found one in there yet that I would dispute)

0

Checkout this answer: http://stackoverflow.com/a/622363/195835 Basically it recommends using an xPath call, eg. $xml = new SimpleXMLElement($r); foreach($xml->xpath('//event:event') as $event) { var_export($event->xpath('event:sessionKey')); }

^^^ look at that... Links to another answer on SO and then relates it to the question asked. That's great!

Q: Links to answers are not formatted to show the title automatically

@Shog9 Ohh, a half-bug.

Thankfully someone's already reported it:

5

When including a link to a question in a post (question or answer) by copying the Link URL at the bottom of the question, the link is automatically formatted to appear as the question title: For example, http://tex.stackexchange.com/q/39017/2552 becomes How to influence the position of float env...

bug hyperlinks formatting

/blame @balpha

...Autocomplete fail, whoops.

Actually I'm going to revise that to a /blame Kevin, because he hasn't implemented my API feature request.

A: Is it forbidden to use "Other" flag for link-only answers?

5:47 PM

@Shog9 well yes, the only problem is, this feels more a coincidence than playing by fair rules. And that coincidence is easy to break: one cen note answer is well upvoted, go to it, find the link, follow it and here's the point when mod can't say anymopre "does not attempt" - and, if playing fairly by rules, flag should be declined...

...you see, the rules here clash with practice (and with community understanding, as expressed in that "ultimate reference" answer). For a regular flagger that's not a fair game anymore. My understanding is, proposed flag intends to resolve just that. Having it would save us from getting game fairness go away: it would set a clear rule to follow (and one that would be easier to er "triage" in case of misunderstanding)...

"No matter what flag you use, there can always be a feasible explanation that it was wrong..." that just doesn't feel fair

7

Although link-only answers are rather heavily discouraged, a flagger needs to take into account that currently, these carry a certain risk of flag decline. In addition, types of flags that go through 10K tools queue at Stack Overflow carry a risk of being disputed by one of few thousands * 10Ke...

that's my reading of proposed flag. Do the same as you do to not an answers, only without twisting between oh I didn't see that link, accept / oh I saw that link and it indeed answers the question, decline. Play by rules, fair and unambiguous... or to be precise no more ambiguous than those established for not-an-answer, does that make sense?

Q: TSQL 2008 R2 - Query does not return rows if inside store procedure

5:59 PM

0

I have a query that requires a some parameters. Executing it on a standard query screen of the MS SQL Management Studio it works just as expected returning some rows of data after about 15 seconds. It's a complex query. But executing it inside a store procedure returns only the headers without a...

query stored-procedures sql-server-2008-r2

Please do the needful: VtC TL he mistyped his query

6:22 PM

3 hours ago, by Tim Stone

NO DIAMOND FOR YOU, @animuson

animuson

I read that in my inbox. ;)

Didn't know if you'd been in recently enough for that to notify you.

So yeah, anyways, good race, but you can just drop out now.

animuson

Psh, Andrew agreed it'd be fun. I don't walk alone!

I'm surprised this never got closed. :/

I'm tempted to tell Tim to sink his candidacy, too, but that would contradict my previous promise to vote for him.

6:53 PM

@gnat Not sure I'm understanding that right, but... I think I disagree with your philosophy on it. Moderators are not supposed to be machines; most NAA can be obviously deleted without any further thought, but if something seems amiss then the mod should dig into it, read the question, read the comments, follow links if necessary and make a decision based on what's best for the question and the site not what's "fair" to folks playing the flagging game.

If, on rare occasions, a link-only answer is the best answer to a given question, well... So be it. That probably means the question itself has problems, but that's a separate issue. There are exceptions to every rule, and the reason why we have people handling this stuff is so they can use their judgement and look beyond strict interpretations when necessary. 99.9% of the time, that might not matter - but the flexibility is possible in that .1% of cases.

Face it: you could go through and flag every single answer under 100 characters with "http://" in it and probably be right on the vast majority of them. But if you're not thinking about it, if you're not reading and interpreting those answers, then someone else should be - otherwise, we might as well just run a script.

There are over half a million users who can flag, but under 20 moderators handling those flags - half a million robots and [any reasonable number] of thinking moderators will never scale.

@Shog9 well, I am not there yet, that probably probably some misunderstanding here. Look, the way I see it there are two steps in handling flags: 1) evaluation (valid / wrong) and 2) action (what to do on valid flag). so far we were focusing on evaluation, didn't we? As for how to action, I would prefer to discuss it separately, only after we get "in sync" on how flag is evaluated, are you OK with that?

Q: Link with 2 variables in 1 variable

@gnat Evaluation happens twice (or should): first by the person flagging, second by the mod responding. But yeah, that's fine.

Aside: which answer is best here:

0

I want to find out what the filessize of this file is filesize(). With an echo it works: $Data[textfile]; = Complete Filename with ending in Database echo 'http://myurl.com/files/'.$Data[id].'/'.$Data[textFile].''; But it doesn´t work like this: $file = "http://myurl.com/files/" . $Data[id...

php url

7:09 PM

@Shog9 good point, agree. First the flagger evaluates and submits a flag, then moderator evaluates as valid / invalid, right, these are "sub-parts" of what I called "step 1". No action on flagged post yet, no "step 2", we focus only on step 1 here yet, correct?

Correct

Step 1: What's the problem?

@Shog9 okay, and I suggested moderator evaluation to be as follows: flag validity (not action, that's important) is determined the same as not an answer, with intentionally ignoring content of the target URL. No action happens here yet, we strictly focus on deciding whether answer qualifies as link only ("can't stand on its own") and the validity decision is as described in italic, would that work for you

?

@gnat Back up - you skipped the first eval. Why is the post being flagged?

@Shog9 ah OK that's valid concern. One minute I'll re-check prior comments to find it out

that's the matter of "reason" text for flagging dialog, right?

Trivia: 43% of answers < 100 characters containing the string "http://" are deleted on Stack Overflow.

@gnat Before that. You see a problem. You go to flag it for moderator attention. What caught your eye?

7:23 PM

@Shog9 my preliminary suggestion in question comments was like "This post deferred the actual answering to somewhere else", does that look OK to you? that's essentially my attempt to summarize the universal reference post: I believe it's easy for reasonable flaggers to catch

@gnat So... Scenario: I'm reading a question, and I come across an answer... It contains a link, which I click. While I'm waiting for the PHP-based site on the other end to load, I think to myself, "I can't tell if this answers the question or not - the suspense is killing me!" Out of concern for the health of future readers, I decide to flag the answer.

(replace PHP-based site with broken link, government network with only SO whitelisted, etc)

@Shog9 ok let's go through this scenario: it isn't precisely what's under suggested description, but reasonable to consider applicable for an irregular flagger

okay what next?

@gnat I click "flag", the dialog opens up, I see:

Which option best matches the problem I observed?

@Shog9 well the way I read things, "the suspense is killing me" => "defers the actual solution", feels like a good match doesn't it?

7:39 PM

@gnat Ok, so you have a clear problem (solution not immediately accessible) and a matching flag (which in reality you may have to just type into that text field). You click "Flag Answer", dust off your hands, and go on your merry way. Next: a moderator sees this flag.

You're the moderator. You see a couple lines of text, and the description "link-dependent answer" below it. What do you look for?

@Shog9 oh that's easy (assuming I have sufficient prior experience handling not-an-answer flags:) - I evaluate the text I see the same way I would do for not-an-answer flag. If it matches, flag is valid, if it doesn't I decline. Does that look OK?

@gnat So you're looking to see if the text addresses the question? Ok - here's the text:

> Have you thought of using group by for each player_id. www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_groupby.asp

@Shog9 oh I have seen stuff like that discussed at MSO in not-an-answer tag, that one is tricky, with or without link - so I just fall back to whatever I ("assuming I have sufficient prior experience handling not-an-answer flags") did before that and will keep prepared to deal with possible mistake on meta (possible no matter how I decide). Link here is the easiest stuff I can just turn it out of equation completely (as if it went 404 to me:)

the great thing about turning out link is, per "universal reference" I feel fairly well protected from any potential complaints about ignoring it :)\

FWIW, stuff like this gets flagged all the time as NAA, with or without a link; how it gets handled tends to depend on the experience (and possibly mood) of the mod involved.

whoever has balls to shout didn'tyoufollowthatlink will get the reference and potion of downvotes, that works well

A: Free or open source self hosted project management tools?

7:54 PM

How about this one:

0

Try qdPM. Using it more then 1 year.

(just realized that chat oneboxing has the same link-stripping behavior as mod tools)

so basically my idea is to keep it the same complexity level as NAA, only without twisting between I saw that link I missed that link - to get it out equation by rules

A: HTML5 FileSystem: How to revoke granted quota?

Another example:

1

This is a bug crbug.com/121463

@gnat Who's twisting?

A: Should I flag answers which contain only a link as "not an answer"?

@Shog9 both examples, no difference: my own ("assumed") prior intuition on NAA, links don't matter. Side note second example looks more like bug it to me I'd rather decline NAA (tho links have nothing to do with this)

@Shog9 oh I have references for everything I state...

26

Not every answer with just a link in it should be a comment. So long as the links are answering the question, I don't think flagging as "not an answer" is appropriate. So I'd leave a comment instead of flagging. I usually do something alone the lines of Your answer is helpful, but you can m...

you want it twisted the other way 'round? no problem, here we go...

4

A: Is it forbidden to use "Other" flag for link-only answers?

Flags other than the "moderation attention" one can also be handled by 10K+ users. Stack Overflow gets hundreds of "moderation attention" attention flags every day, and there's no reason at all to use the custom flag if any other type of flag applies. You are unnecessarily adding more work for ...

"second example looks more like bug it" meant "bug ID" here sorry for the typo

@gnat actually a link to the bug report, I believe but yeah

@Shog9 gotta go offline, was nice to talk to you - thanks!

bye