Tavern on the Meta

12:00 AM

@animuson nice :D

@hichris123 evidently not - care to post to any official Stack usage guidelines? (and not some anally retentive meta argument) - It's not the correction that bothers me - it's just a little pathetic that this is what mods are spending time on! — Emissary 9 mins ago

Ug. @animuson tried to help you there... :P

Undo

@animuson A little harsh IMO :P

@hichris123 Ehrm... meta arguments are official guidelines :P

animuson

So is calling the discussion on Meta "anally retentive"

Lance Roberts

@ManofSnow, no, I'd say that you can be gifted at a subset without being gifted in the superset, but in reality you probably just don't have the interest in theoretical math and thrive better in the more practical hands-on world of programming.

Man of Snow

@animuson Is quoting considered re-posting?

michaelb958

12:03 AM

@Emissary Uhm, meta is the guidelines. And if you don't want to have our mods spend their time fixing wrong formatting, don't use it in the first place! — Doorknob of Snow 2 mins ago

+1 to that.

Doorknob of Snow

:D

Undo

+1

Man of Snow

I would +1, but he won't get the message. I am ignored.

Doorknob of Snow

@animuson Perfect timing with that comment-purge, it made me feel satisfied as I clicked "post comment" and all the others disappeared :D

Emissary

ha, so this is where the barmy army is messaging me from...

:P

animuson

12:09 AM

The secret fortress.

Doorknob of Snow

hey, @Emissary :P

Emissary

112.4k close votes for review and you're telling me you having nothing to do lol

hi :)

michaelb958

Call us barmy if you like, but we're just presenting and enforcing democratically-hashed-out policy.

Undo

@Emissary You can't expect us to review CVs all the time :P

Doorknob of Snow

@Emissary Never said that, I just said that this is one of the things we're doing.

Braiam

12:10 AM

meh, the queue was pushed back in Xmas... so, there are enough people to go bananas in the queue

Undo

@DoorknobofSnow Is your spam thumper running?

Emissary

well like I said it wasn't the edit that bothered me - just seems a like time could be better spent :)

Doorknob of Snow

@Undo yup

woah, what's with the new multicollider design? :O

jmac

@Emissary Here's the funny thing about a volunteer site -- people volunteer to do whatever suits them at the moment. If someone is volunteering to make a webpage for their church, it doesn't do much good to tell them 'you could better use your time volunteering to make a webpage to help runaways' or something.

2

animuson

FWIW I only have about 3 million more posts to search through in the Data Explorer.

Doorknob of Snow

12:12 AM

@Emissary I suppose technically it could, but we still do work on things that aren't of the highest priority

jmac

Now I understand that with the immense amount of intellect sitting in this room we could probably solve world hunger and develop sustainable electricity from nuclear fusion. Unfortunately, we prefer making quips about unicorns and posts about programming and spam here. So, y'know, at least we're making the world a better place.

Emissary

I get it - was just my two cents. in any case the <kbd> tag ultimately seems redundant on a site for programming - if it bothers people so much would it not be better to remove it?

Doorknob of Snow

@Emissary But it is useful for giving people keyboard shortcuts and such.

And removing it here would mean removing it all across SE, including Super User where it's used a lot to tell users to press keys and stuff

animuson

Oooo can that be our motto? "Slowly but Surely™"

Emissary

clearly an uphill battle i'm waging here...

sorry for the aggro :)

Undo

12:16 AM

no problem ;)

michaelb958

No problem (as far as I'm concerned).

jmac

@Emissary It ain't a battle. If you want good content, we're all on the same side. That's all it's about. Good content sometimes means editing posts here and there, and sometimes it means working on close queues, and sometimes it means making massive meta posts discussing various issues facing the community.

@Emissary If you truly want to help out the quality of the site and direct our attention as appropriately as possible, my suggestion would be to let whatever it is that the issue is slide, so that we focus on improvement rather than explaining to you why we improve stuff (which is also an improvement)

Best meta post ever:

0

Q: Small electric motor and battery power

I have a small electric motor that is designed to have 4 AA batteries. If I added one or two more batteries, would the motor go faster? How much more could I add without burning up the motor, if at all? We are designing small derby type cars that will culminate in a speed race across the gym f...

discussion

michaelb958

Another demonstration of why we need off-topic -> off-topic.

jmac

And like that -- poof it's gone.

Undo

animuson thumped it.

Doorknob of Snow

12:20 AM

0

Q: New multicollider wording ("more communities") is misleading and should be changed

So, I noticed we have a new multicollider design: But then I scrolled down and I saw this: Isn't "More Stack Exchange Communities" misleading? "More" means that they're different than the previous ones, but clearly they aren't. I suggest that it simply be "All Stack Exchange Commun...

feature-request stackexchange-button

Lance Roberts

Wow, @animuson, I was leaving him his answer in a comment. You must have had your coffee today :)

animuson

Pffft I don't drink coffee.

Undo

Then your tea with lots of sugar.

animuson

I drink milk and water.

Doorknob of Snow

Then your milk sweetened with honey.

jmac

12:21 AM

@animuson milk and water? like mixed?

animuson

No, not mixed. xD Milk or water.

Doorknob of Snow

@animuson Which one? </taking-it-ridiculously-literally> :P

animuson

Don't make me get a large trout!

Doorknob of Snow

@animuson Delicious!

jmac

I feel reassured about the youth of America. I was worried you were mixing them. Everyone knows that mixing milk and water is like mixing ammonia and bleach. (Note to impressionable youths: do not mix ammonia and bleach, you will die)

Doorknob of Snow

12:23 AM

(I actually don't like seafood but I felt like that was obligatory)

jmac

@DoorknobofSnow It ain't seafood, trout are freshwater fish.

Doorknob of Snow

@jmac Okay, food that comes out of water :P Waterfood!

jmac

@DoorknobofSnow What do you have against seaweed, water chestnuts, and cranberries?!

animuson

^ @hichris123 Since 2014-01-23

Undo

Wow

Doorknob of Snow

12:25 AM

:O

I wonder why SE-spam-detector-izer-er isn't picking anything up lately. Have the spammers moved to answering instead?

Emissary

l8r

Man of Snow

I remember this :D

22

Q: 'This question has been - no more answers will be accepted' browser bug?

I was about to post an answer, when a weird box that said 'This question has been' appeared. I think it means to say 'This question has been deleted' or 'This question has been closed'. Is this a bug or does it mean what it says? It might be a bug with FireFox, though.

bug status-completed closed-questions notifications ajax

Undo

@DoorknobofSnow We need a network-wide realtime answer feed :P

Doorknob of Snow

@Undo Indeed :P

animuson

I wish the all-time stats page would load. :(

Doorknob of Snow

12:29 AM

otherwise it's just over 100 API queries every minute or so because there's over 100 sites :(

Undo

Yup

Doorknob of Snow

0

Q: Can people stop guessing about my project and just answer what I asked?

I have some questions, including some very behind in the past, where I had to explain lots of project or even personal stuff to convince people to answer it... Sometimes the question is very clear, simple, and have only one answer, and the context does not matter, yet people keep nagging me with...

discussion

animuson

I wonder how many times I can attempt to reload this page before the devs get mad at me for filing a bunch of errors.

Doorknob of Snow

^ rant rant rant, although not as bad as some posts I've seen

animuson

I remember the sysadmin at the Election Commission laughed at me because I filed a bug report for a divide-by-zero error when all of your tasks have been completed.

Doorknob of Snow

12:32 AM

cv-pls stackoverflow.com/q/21445645/1223693

Doorknob of Snow

1:02 AM

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] Allcaps title: superuser.com/questions/708902/… (CAN A NETGEAR R7000 BE CONFIGURED AS GATEWATE TO GATEWAY VPN)

jmac

1:29 AM

When you have a good question that is being made worse by the asker's involvement, how are you supposed to handle it?

Concrete example here

hichris123

@animuson Weekly stat?

animuson

Yeah

hichris123

Do you get custom stats? Or is it just day, week, month, year, all time?

animuson

day, week, month, quarter, all-time

Man of Snow

What do you do when someone makes a spam detector?

a. Use it
b. Make a better spam detector

The answer is b.

hichris123

1:39 AM

I want to see you load all-time in 10 tabs at the same time @animuson. :P

animuson

It doesn't load. It always errors out.

hichris123

If I was a SE employee, something I would fix: the all-time mod stats page!

:P

Braiam

anyone can explain me how the questions?sort=faq works? (not finding anything obvious on meta)

jmac

I saw that @Man, you definitely said an untruth!

hichris123

@Braiam I'd bet my money on most duplicated questions of. Or linked questions, whichever of the two.

jmac

1:46 AM

@hichris123 Yeah, I think it may map out canonical questions (questions which have the most questions closed as a duplicate of), and post the ones with the most dupes up there

Undo

0

Q: Let's meet spam waves with flag waves!

I've been helping in the Great Ask Ubuntu Spam War recently, and one thing I've noticed is that 10-20 flags usually isn't enough during a wave. It feels, quite frankly, terrible to have to sit out during a spam wave. Therefore, I propose the following: If there is currently a spam wave (i.e. pos...

feature-request flags spam

^ What's everyone think?

hichris123

@Undo Yay!

Undo

8

Q: Helpful spam flags should not be counted to the per site daily flag limit

During spam attacks we, as a community, are happily flagging posts as spam. On most sites spam posts are not long-lived. However on sites with low traffic it can take a while before spam posts reach their 6 required flags, more often than not by community members that call out for help in chatroo...

feature-request flags spam

^ This. Please this. (thanks @hichris123 for finding)

hichris123

@Undo I was part of that discussion. :P

Undo

Although it would open some loopholes with sock puppet rings being able to unilaterally delete posts once every five seconds :P

hichris123

1:52 AM

I should point out that I thought for a while that the use of a ring of sock puppets to spam-flag something into oblivion was a purely theoretical exploit. Then we had two separate people do this last year, and others try over the last couple of months. So it is possible, although really rare. Needless to say, we come down like a ton of bricks on anyone we find doing this. — Brad Larson Jan 20 at 18:27

Man of Snow

@Braiam It finds questions with the faq tag

hichris123

@ManofSnow There is no faq tag on SO...

Man of Snow

@hichris123 Exactly, so I think it doesn't do anything

hichris123

Huh?

> You are on the FAQ tab.
There are no frequently asked questions at the moment.
Perhaps you'd like to select a different tab

@ManofSnow It does.

stackoverflow.com/questions/?sort=faq

Man of Snow

@hichris123 @Braiam Then it's probably the same as &sort=frequent

hichris123

1:55 AM

@animuson Is this off-topic? stackoverflow.com/questions/356759/…

Undo

@hichris123 +1 for coming down like a ton of bricks.

hichris123

@Undo No +1 on the comment from you. :P

Man of Snow

Most of my meta questions have about 100-200 views, but only about 5-22 votes

Braiam

my two most upvoted questions are bug and rant... (in MSO)

Man of Snow

My secret to meta questions is just find tags that you think shouldn't exist

hichris123

2:01 AM

@ManofSnow Just burn some yourself, unless they're big tags.

Braiam

the problem with those requests is that I try to make a truckload of them because they are closely related...

Man of Snow

@hichris123 I don't think I can burn tags

Braiam

@ManofSnow you have 10k somewhere?

hichris123

@ManofSnow I mean in terms of manual retagging.

Man of Snow

@Braiam No

Braiam

2:03 AM

:(

Man of Snow

This is the best tag question I've made so far:

14

Q: Should gui really be a tag synonym of ui?

I think gui should be its own tag, because according to What is the difference between GUI and UI?, 'UI can include non-graphical interfaces such as screen readers or command line interfaces which aren't considered GUI'. So let's say I want to ask a question on gui, and when the user clicks on i...

discussion stackoverflow tags synonym-request

hichris123

@Braiam Why? Do you get tag burning privs?

Oh, inline tag editing?

Man of Snow

^ Wow, someone actually starred that question :D

Undo

@hichris123 Yes. Inline editing is so fun. And so terrible when you're used to it and go to use it on a site where you don't have privs :P

hichris123

@Undo Screenshot please? I can't get over inline editing in general. :P

Undo

2:05 AM

ok

Man of Snow

Of all the many upvotes on my meta questions and answers, I only have 519 rep :(

JoshC

@hichris123 screenshot of what? Inline editing?

hichris123

If anyone wants to help burn the market tag: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/215179/…

Undo

hichris123

@JoshC Inline tag editing.

Undo

2:06 AM

JoshC

hichris123

@Undo You even have a spam userscript? :O

Undo

@hichris123 Yes, but it no worky ;(

hichris123

What is it?

Undo

It does increment the counter in Cinder, though!

But does absolutely nothing else.

hichris123

2:07 AM

Oh, it's Cinder? Why doesn't it work?

Undo

Because I haven't made it work.

Man of Snow

That reminds me, I'm still trying to figure out how to use OAuth for Charcoal

hichris123

@Undo I mean what part of it doesn't work?

Undo

@hichris123 Oh, the flagging part. And the question-to-cinder sending part.

It just sends that there was a spam question. It doesn't know which one :P

My toolbar on Space is horrific :P

hichris123

@Undo Hmm, the flag as spam part? Just send a POST to the URL that spam thingys are sent to.

Undo

2:09 AM

@hichris123 Yes. I need to do that :P

hichris123

@Undo Wow. I want my close button! :P

@Undo Hmm, I don't know...

Undo

@hichris123 It was manageable until that protect button started showing up. Then add in userscripts...

hichris123

When you POST it you need the id of the question/answer... so somehow you need to get that.

@Undo I still want my close button. To clutter everything more. :P

Undo

:P

Oh, wait. That's not the worst of my space toolbar.

hichris123

wonders why I don't get serial upvoted now

But then the script would just take it away... :P

@Undo Hmm?

profile views: 407
helpful flags: 2347

Heh.

Undo

2:12 AM

^ That is :P

hichris123

Oh gosh. ;)

Undo

For mods it would be worse except that the protect button gets eaten by the mod button.

hichris123

I wonder how they leave our milk out... what button they press. :P

cv-plz stackoverflow.com/questions/21446581/…

Undo

It's under the mod button.

@hichris123 voted

hichris123

@Undo Flag already valid. 4 seconds. :P

Undo

2:14 AM

wow :P

JoshC

I flagged it as VLC before I closed it.. lol

hichris123

Closed already.

@JoshC I can even double flag! :P

Undo

that was fast even for SO

hichris123

It would have been faster if I could CV. :P

JoshC

..so my goal for this week is to earn more rep than Jon Skeet. So far it's going well stackoverflow.com/users

hichris123

2:17 AM

@JoshC GIVE ME YOUR REP. ;P

JoshC

As long as I get ~300+ each day I should be fine, I think.

hichris123

How can people beat Skeet in terms of weekly/daily rep? That's impossible according to the laws of physics!

Braiam

/me upvotes Jon just to mess up with @JoshC

>:)

only 7 rep difference

JoshC

@Braiam He hits the rep cap every day anyways. It wouldn't make a difference

I just need more accepted answers :)

Braiam

heh, so you need more suittailored solutions (see @JoshC having the unsung hero badge)

JoshC

2:22 AM

@Braiam That's one gold badge Jon doesn't have

Braiam

D:

Doorknob of Snow

hai

I is back

hichris123

@Doorknob More edits by me! stackoverflow.com/users/2581872/…

Doorknob of Snow

:P

hichris123

Hey, I get bored. :P

thinks that if I answered a question for every edit I made, I would be Jon Skeet.

Doorknob of Snow

3:21 AM

crickets

hichris123

Not anymore. :P

Doorknob of Snow

@JoshC Jon's ahead by 3... :O

@Undo and @Qantas just appeared at the exact same time... this must have been planned :O

hichris123

Heh, I'm trying to find questions to answer, not edit. Though I hope I can use my willpower not to edit... :P

Qantas 94 Heavy

@DoorknobofSnow: we are not liable for any damages whatsoever caused by events that we cannot or do not control, including but not limited to acts of God, ponies, unicorns and love problem spammers.

Doorknob of Snow

lol

animuson

3:51 AM

I always forget to test things in other browsers. Everyone should just use Chrome.

michaelb958

Blasphemer. Firefox will always reign supreme.

jmac

@Qantas94Heavy ponies problem specialist pandit ji +91 9694850756

Dennis Meng

@animuson At least you didn't try to present something in IE6, only to have it crash on you for the first time. In front of senior execs.

Doorknob of Snow

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: apple.stackexchange.com/questions/119248/… (kala jadu specialist aghori baba ji +91 9694850756)

hichris123

@jmac On cue... :P

animuson

3:59 AM

I built a fancier top-menu: animuson.net:6160/theme/panels/index.html

Doorknob of Snow

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: patents.stackexchange.com/questions/5973/… (best no.1 astrologer in canada punjab +91 9694850756)

hichris123

Spam wave again...

Braiam

@jmac arg! why... why had you to call them!!!!!!!11one

jmac

@hichris123 (best no.1 spam predictor in tavern jmac +91 9694850756)

6

Doorknob of Snow

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: biology.stackexchange.com/questions/14721/… (love problem solution specialist babaji +91 9694850756)

jmac

4:02 AM

@Braiam because anyone who is in the tavern at this time is either on the proper side of the world, or could probably use the support of a love problem solution specialist!

jadarnel27

@animuson I really like the progress bars.

Well done on the whole thing, though.

Braiam

@jmac is so sad the last statement...

animuson

Hmm, maybe if I ever stop going "Oh I have a better idea, let's re-design it" I'll actually get something functional.

hichris123

@animuson I like it, but still, why the Animuson network?

animuson

I have large expectations that will probably never come to pass.

Doorknob of Snow

4:04 AM

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/8187/… (wife vashikaran specialist babaji +91 9694850756)

jmac

@Braiam I see you are on the wrong side of the world. Unfortunate.

hichris123

Build an SE clone!

jmac

What does 'babaji' or 'baba ji' mean anyhow?

hichris123

Probably SPAM in all caps and red.

jmac

@hichris123 The moderator agreement has a very strict clause stating that any attempt to compete with the Stack Exchange Network will have you tossed out the nearest airlock at Shog's earliest convenience.

Doorknob of Snow

4:06 AM

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/41372/… (divorce problem solution baba ji +91 9694850756)

hichris123

@jmac The hidden part of the mod agreement. :P

Getting my spam flags in today. ;)

jmac

@hichris123 It isn't very hidden. Clause 3, subsection 6 enforces mandatory tattooing of said clause on to your body.

hichris123

You sure do have nice thoughts.

Doorknob of Snow

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: math.stackexchange.com/questions/656820/… (divorce problem solution by astrology +91 9694850756)

Braiam

err... I see that @TimPost should raise the whole spam scoring

hichris123

4:10 AM

Math one's gone. :P

Qantas 94 Heavy

4:39 AM

Flagged all

@jmac: watch free ipl cricket movies only 2995

Doorknob of Snow

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: apple.stackexchange.com/questions/119252/… (mohini vashikaran mantra in hindi +91 9694850756)

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: patents.stackexchange.com/questions/5974/… (husband wife disputed problem solution +91 9694850756)

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: biology.stackexchange.com/questions/14722/… (kala jadu vashikaran mantra +91 9694850756)

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/8188/… (intercast love marriage problem solution +91 9694850756)

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] Allcaps title: stackoverflow.com/questions/21448080/proc-report-in-sas (PROC REPORT IN SAS)

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/41376/… (govt. nokari problem solution baba ji +91 9694850756)

jmac

5:01 AM

@Qantas94Heavy Wow. We are flooded in spam we are.

Spam filter suggestion: +91 xxxxxxxxxx

It seems to match 99.9% of these.

Qantas 94 Heavy

indeed

Doorknob of Snow

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] Allcaps title: stackoverflow.com/questions/21448245/… (ADDING WINDOWS PHONE TOOLKIT LISTPICKER FROM C#- WINDOWS PHONE 8)

michaelb958

I just misread "listpicker" as "lipsticker". *sigh*

Jan Dvorak

@jmac show me the 0.1% please

six pieces of spam are still alive

michaelb958

There are now exactly 24 000 discussion questions.

Undo

5:14 AM

Spam deluge in progress?

Jan Dvorak

cleanup pls: Biology (2x), Chemistry (2x), ~~Ask Patents~~, Mathematica

Undo

I thumped the Patents one, methinks.

or one of them, forgot which.

Yeah, 'twas the patents one.

Jan Dvorak

note to self: update so-post-monitor so that it refreshes immediately after a visibility event

Laszlo Papp

did this really non-answer get 3 upvotes? stackoverflow.com/questions/18680629/…

Braiam

@LaszloPapp O_O

Laszlo Papp

5:21 AM

I will still mark it as NAA, I think.

Braiam

it is NAA...

Jan Dvorak

@LaszloPapp it makes sense somewhat. "I've opened a bug at their site" could be a valid answer.

Laszlo Papp

no, it is a comment.

Undo

It's not. It's a comment,

Laszlo Papp

it might be that the bug is fully invalid, and will closed so.

anyway, glad it got -4.

Jan Dvorak

5:24 AM

well, that descalated quickly

Undo

I bet the guy that wrote it is kinda puzzled.

You've been Tavern'd!

Jan Dvorak

pub'd

michaelb958

If the Meta Effect is a shotgun blast, the Tavern Effect is an RPG.

Laszlo Papp

/me fails to see why people recommend deletion for "too short" answers without giving any more reason.

short != bad.

Jan Dvorak

TOTEM'd = Tavern On ThE Meta

\me notes @LaszloPapp is on a flag handling spree

Laszlo Papp

5:28 AM

well, it is weird to see people pressing NAA just because a correct answer is short.

and they do not provide any reason why it is "NAA".

Braiam

@LaszloPapp it doesn't solves OP issue...

nor offer an alternative

nor tells what is wrong

Laszlo Papp

@Braiam: "it"? I was not even talking about a concrete case... Surely, you have misunderstood something?

Braiam

it = answers that I flag as NAA

Laszlo Papp

/me is lost

Braiam

you are telling me that people flags short answers as naa, I'm offering you a glimpse to my ruleset

Laszlo Papp

5:34 AM

I am not talking about ruleset....

I am talking about people pressing NAA without any reasons, and why I ask why they used it, they tell me that answer: "The answer seem to be short".

jmac

How do you cure stupid? I really would like to know. Do you think baba ji can help me at +91 8675309?

Laszlo Papp

0

A: session_start() causing empty $_POST after form submission

..had the same problem too. The reason for the empty $_SESSION-vars were the incorrect rights in the /var/lib/php/session directory: 755 owner + group the user which runs the http (apache, www-data or cherokee)

"Invalid answer".... what a useful comment!

(This user has been doing this all around)

jmac

I have no idea what this answer is on about, but it is incredibly incredible in the most incrediblest sense (it is not credible)

Laszlo Papp

5:52 AM

oops, I ran out of the daily vote limit by going through the flags. :p

Jan Dvorak

for how long?

@jmac uh... definitely not an answer, maybe rude/offensive

Doorknob of Snow

6:13 AM

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/41378/… (love problem solution baba +91-9914724764)

Jan Dvorak

@DoorknobofSnow the previous one is still alive :-/

jmac

@JanDvorak It's been edited twice, so I don't think it's someone trolling or otherwise being unpleasant, it would seem to be someone who has a very thin skin or is super-easily offended, and really boggles the mind it does.

It actually got better as I was doing something else. That is incredible.

He even made a parody question in protest! Wow!

Jan Dvorak

offended doesn't mean not offensive

jmac

And some arbitrary commenter seems to have made an oddly eloquent comment to his parody:

so it is indeed commentary and not a question. rather than creating a new question, I think you should comment directly on the post that offended you. This is not a question. I am offended that you passed this commentary off as a question, allowing this subtle lie to flourish on this site is a disgrace! — JoeT 13 mins ago

Offense breeds offense breeds offense! The vicious cycle!

Said commenter has now answered in protest! This is the highlight of my afternoon so far.

Jan Dvorak

@jmac flagged as VLQ

jmac

6:27 AM

@JanDvorak Thanks, I really have no idea what the dickens was going on there. That just kind of came out of nowhere. And it's a month old. How does someone find that, in January, and then get so upset over it? People are incredible!

This boggles my mind too. Is it a full moon tonight?

Jan Dvorak

@jmac according to Nethack, yes.

jmac

Now I'm going to waste 10 minutes learning about moon phases.

Is it the same phase of the moon at all places on earth? Or does that change with side? Trying to rotate and orbit 3d spheres in my brain, and I assume that yes, it is the same. But now I have to look it up and make sure.

There is a moon faq and it says yes.

Jan Dvorak

@jmac yes. The moon phase is the earth-moon-sun angle

projected to the common plane of orbit

jmac

Yeah, the phase is determined by the earth's shadow which shouldn't change in 12 hours or whatever the gap is between two parts of the earth. That part makes sense. But now I have a dozen follow-up questions.

Jan Dvorak

go ahead

jmac

6:35 AM

So I'm in Japan, 14 hours removed from the East Coast of the US, but a similar latitude. The face of the moon we see is the same each day though, no? From both places? Or is that me making stuff up?

Does the moon just not rotate, or rotate at such a pace it always looks the same?

Jan Dvorak

The moon orbits Earth once per 28 days, and the shadow moves at that speed as observed from Earth.

The same side of the moon is always facing the Earth. It's called "tidal locking".

jmac

Now I can wikipedia the rest of my curiosity, thanks!

Yeah. Way to make it clear Wikipedia!

Laszlo Papp

@JanDvorak: how long what?

Jan Dvorak

@LaszloPapp when do you get more votes?

Laszlo Papp

@JanDvorak: I do not follow.

more flags than what?

Pops

6:49 AM

Tidal locking always makes me think of a sci-fi short story I read a long time ago. Not sure if it was famous or not. In it, the Earth was in tidal lock relative to the sun, so humans had mostly evolved into two groups. Those who lived on the dark side had huge eyes, pale skin and a lot of hair; the others had tiny eyes and dark skin. A narrow belt of people on the border served as traders.

Not the most interesting bit of story, but I've always found it useful as a memory device when the topic of tidal locking comes up. More useful than that equation, anyways, @jmac.

jmac

@Pops You know the name of the story?

Pops

No, sorry.

jmac

Sci-fi Stack Exchange to the Rescue!

(sorta, doesn't actually refer to the proper story)

Pops

Nemesis is actually a good candidate. I was pretty into Asimov for a while.

Manishearth

7:14 AM

jmac

@Manishearth You really want me to ask experts on space to explain the concept of tidal locking so that even a mere mortal can understand it?

Manishearth

Or on

Hey, apparently I am one of the "experts" on Astro. Rep-wise (there are many who are better)

Both sites have an enthusiast tinge, so it would work. Especially on Astro.

jmac

I will give it a thought, no promises though! I just wish that the people who wrote wikipedia articles considered their audience more. The geniuses who write the stuff don't need a dumbed down explanation, but us mere mortals usually do.

Manishearth

@jmac the audience is not normal people

simple.wikipedia.org

FWIW I find the technical things on WP useful, especially when I've forgotten a formula or something

Wikipedia is not where you get explanations from. You get a base to start off on, though

jmac

@Manishearth Simple wikipedia just uses 'simple English' and rarely actually explains the concept in a simple way. I have hoped so many times for things to be explained well there, but they rarely are (I work with many engineers, and I think it may just be the nature of the beast)

Fluid catalytic cracking

Fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) is one of the most important conversion processes used in petroleum refineries. It is widely used to convert the high-boiling, high-molecular weight hydrocarbon fractions of petroleum crude oils to more valuable gasoline, olefinic gases, and other products. Cracking of petroleum hydrocarbons was originally done by thermal cracking, which has been almost completely replaced by catalytic cracking because it produces more gasoline with a higher octane rating. It also produces byproduct gases that are more olefinic, and hence more valuable, than those produced ...

I think that many of the more-technical wikipedia articles start with the assumption that the person reading has a good fundamental grasp of the topic to begin with. As a result, they often lack links to explain the more basic concepts, and you can end up reading through dozens of articles on the internet to try to piece together the basic concept. Case in point:

The whole issue with this article is that it assumes you know what the heck oil refining is actually doing, but most people don't. So you go read the oil refinery article and end up with the question, "Well why isn't crude oil useful?"

So then you start reading up on crude oil and it doesn't actually ever give you the explanation.

That's what drives me nuts about wikipedia -- the most important concepts are never explained anywhere. You need to piece together a bunch of random trivia, prioritize it, and then figure out what the heck the real point is so that you could explain it to someone non-technical.

Manishearth

7:57 AM

@jmac Again, Wikipedia is not for explanations

It's like asking recommendation question on StackOverflow. It may work, but don't expect it to

Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. You don't learn from an encyclopedia. You take facts from an encyclopedia. You learn from a textbook.

Laszlo Papp

"You don't learn from an encyclopedia." :-/

Jan Dvorak

^

Manishearth

OK, you do learn from an encyclopedia. But you don't use one as a primary source for learning something

Laszlo Papp

Right, I agree with that.

Manishearth

Meant to say that, worded it badly

FWIW I'm able to learn from the wikipedia article on tidal locking

The formula you give is explained by them

You have to learn to avoid being intimidated by complex formulae :P

Duncan

8:04 AM

Seems odd to me that the encryption tag is deemed synonymous with decryption on SO: stackoverflow.com/tags/encryption/synonyms

Given that they're antonyms.

jmac

@Manishearth When I was a kid, whenever I didn't understand something, the first thing I'd do is read the article in the encyclopedia. They were generally a lot shorter than a wikipedia article, but because of the editing they gave a good explanation of the basics.

Duncan

I suppose some questions will be related, but it seems a bit much to just lump them all together.

jmac

The nature of wikipedia attracts content experts (good), but those content experts usually start at a higher level than the audience who wants to learn about the topic.

@Manishearth (and I'm not intimidated by complex formulas -- I don't generally need to understand how to calculate them, so it bothers me when the formula is given without an explanation of why the formula is important)

I think that an encyclopedia should be the source to give you a brief overview of the topic so that someone can grasp the basics through a quick summary. Real understanding should come from something more than that if you ask me. Reference resources lose their effectiveness if you constantly have to shift from article to article and then do additional searches to understand their contents.

Compare the previous articles on oil refining to the article on Martin Luther King, Jr.. If you read the first paragraph alone, you get a great overview of what it is he did, with a link to the civil rights movement if you aren't familiar with it.

Doorknob of Snow

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: stackoverflow.com/questions/21165915/… (ClassNotFoundException: junit.framework.TestCase cannot be found by org.eclipse.xtext.junit_2.4.3.v201309030823)

Jan Dvorak

@DoorknobofSnow what's the bad keyword here?

Bart

8:13 AM

I would guess it's the number string?

Doorknob of Snow

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] SPAM - Bad keyword: stackoverflow.com/questions/21165915/… (ClassNotFoundException: junit.framework.TestCase cannot be found by org.eclipse.xtext.junit_2.4.3.v201309030823)

jmac

@DoorknobofSnow Would you mind adding in some way that we can respond to your spam alert with a fixed phrase like "Candy Canes" to get you to stop reporting it to chat if it isn't actually spam? That'd be awesome.

Duncan

Also, regarding synonyms, should we be encouraging synonyms that create a tag for no reason? Take for instance stackoverflow.com/tags/maven/synonyms, in which the tag mvn is essentially being created for no reason.

Doorknob of Snow

8:46 AM

[SE-spam-detector-izer-er] Allcaps title: android.stackexchange.com/questions/62317/… (LOW INTERNAL STORAGE FROM 32 GB TO 200 MB)

Jan Dvorak

@DoorknobofSnow agreed. This question sucks.

Bart

is it spam though ...

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