Tavern on the Meta

8:06 AM

@AlexisKing Well, is the post actually helpful? I've yet to detect any useful information in it other than opinion. Sure, some people made it work, but it is like using goto: terrible bad practice, learn to properly code instead.

Unihedron

Time to head home

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Repeating characters in body: Redirect the tail output to a file then stop when match found by nolram16 on unix.stackexchange.com

Alexis King

@MartijnPieters There might theoretically be some value in it, but I don't care. The vast majority of it reads like a blog post with no actual useful value to the problem at hand. It's an irrelevant tangent at best and a rant at worst. If the author cannot condense it into something I care about, I will keep my downvote.

Ian Kemp

8:20 AM

stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/7814425 bad question, bad edit approved, can we do something about the editor and the reviewers who okayed the edit?

Bart

If only we knew someone with a diamond ...

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in answer: Dangers of sys.setdefaultencoding('utf-8') by Red Pill on stackoverflow.com

Jan Dvorak

nuke-pls

Ian Kemp

jebus smokedetector, you're gonna have to give me a bit more than that to go on

also that may be the longest answer posted on SO ever

Alexis King

whines to @Martijn more

Bart

8:25 AM

"So I investigated quite deeply and found that the subject deserves a far more thorough investigation than usually seen by opponents." ... LET'S GET READY TO RUMBBBLLLEEEEEEE!!!!

Alexis King

Argh, why does it have 2 upvotes?

Can I have a mob downvoting, please?

Jan Dvorak

proof that long =/=> good

Bart

That's what I keep saying.

Ian Kemp

that's not a deep investigation, that's a DISSERTATION

Alexis King

> Working in a 'byte stream sandwich' model, is far better suited for applications for inter-systems communications than working with unicode APIs.

What does this even mean?!

Bart

8:27 AM

Don't know. Makes me hungry though.

Jan Dvorak

Maybe it's an OS sever versions before the Ice Cream Sandwich?

Bart

Okay, so retag it Android and let them deal with it

Jan Dvorak

Can't we just get @MartijnPieters to delet it?

Anonymous

@AlexisKing He seems to be arguing that it's wasteful for programs to need to encode/decode their output, and they should just use the same encoding internally, instead, if possible.

Alexis King

Okay, I'm actually reading through this answer now... the problem is that it is an attempt to answer the question, it's just very msiguided.

Anonymous

8:30 AM

Nothing to do with Android. The dude seems to understand Python's behaviour accurately (based on a skim -- could be wrong), he just has some... opinions I would disagree with.

Alexis King

@JeremyBanks That is a Very Bad Idea for a whole host of reasons.

Anonymous

@AlexisKing Yes. When I first saw the post, I thought of responding, but the amount of comments it would take to comprehensively refute that post would generate flags.

Alexis King

@JeremyBanks Here's my take: the top half of the post is okay. Wrong, but okay. The off-topic rambling/dissertation about "How Global Standards Work" and whatnot is utter garbage.

The entire answer is based around cherry-picking irrelevant arguments that are mostly just of the form "this person uses it, so it must be okay" without actually really discussing the underlying technical issues.

Then the entire tirade about Unicode and standards in general is basically an excuse for those technical problems while totally sidestepping the issue that those technical problems are real.

The whole post could be summarized in one sentence: "This feature can be turned on, and it probably won't bite you, so I think the productivity increase is worth the risk."

I would disagree with that premise, but that's that user's opinion.

Anonymous

That's a good summary of not a very compelling post.

Alexis King

The problem with the post isn't the core argument, per se, (that can just be downvoted) but the completely off-topic tangent and rants which are just fluff that do not belong on Stack Overflow.

I'd comment with some of these points politely in the hope that said user will clean up the post into something shorter, more to the point, and ultimately more useful, but it would probably just invite a flame war.

SmokeDetector

8:55 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Email in body: Indolering, Vitalik, Toast.. Is actual hard coding being done on Decentralized DNS, or is it on hold? by ken Code on bitcoin.stackexchange.com

bummi

offensive android.stackexchange.com/a/106471/39544

Alexis King

I posted this comment. @JeremyBanks and @MartijnPieters, do you think this is reasonable, or is it too inflammatory?

This answer is really far too long, and unnecessarily so. Most of your supporting arguments, the ones that take up the bulk of your post, appear to be nothing more an argumentum ad populum at best, and a proof by verbosity at worst. Furthermore, the entire section about standardization and encoding is irrelevant and belongs in a blog post, not in an answer in Stack Overflow. Your answer would be much better if you simply distilled the technical reasons for your opinion, nothing more. — Alexis King 34 secs ago

Unihedron

What to close as? stackoverflow.com/q/29826063/3622940

Alexis King

@Unihedron off-topic -> MVCE

Unihedron

Thanks! :D

Alexis King

9:05 AM

Wait a minute... this answer is community wiki! I can just edit it.

Jan Dvorak

inb4 rollback

Alexis King

If it gets rolled back, I'll get a mod to deal with it. This person made it community wiki, and the community consensus is clear.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Email in body: My ipad is not working my password is stored but I cant access it as i have forgot the password I want to set my account on my lap top by Maria on apple.stackexchange.com

Martijn Pieters

@AlexisKing That's entirely reasonable, I don't see anything inflammatory there.

Alexis King

@MartijnPieters I'm currently in the process of more or less rewriting the post to be more neutral while trying to maintain the author's intent.

Martijn Pieters

9:17 AM

@AlexisKing you are an angel for doing that.

Alexis King

@MartijnPieters Alexis King for moderator 2016! ;)

Martijn Pieters

And for actually reading through the whole thing and distilling what it is about.

I came to the same conclusion: You can do it, it probably will work, others have done so. They are ignoring that you can still run into issues and that you probably won't know about it until it is much harder to debug, but hey, I'm staying away from the post because I'm dealing with someone just a tick too passionate about the subject.

Bart

"passionate"

Ian Kemp

@MartijnPieters s/passionate/obsessed/

Bart

@AlexisKing /me grabs a screenshot of that

SmokeDetector

9:24 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Blacklisted website: Increased Ejaculation Control by Brend Benson on meta.stackexchange.com

[ SmokeDetector ] Email in body, nested quote blocks in body: USPS API Sept. 7 2014 Web Tools Release by sailfish on magento.stackexchange.com

Alexis King

@MartijnPieters Here's my initial revision. stackoverflow.com/a/29832646/465378

I think I'll make some initial changes to actually try and explain the point of this answer besides just the evidence of "this doesn't break things" that dominates it.

Jan Dvorak

Yep. It's shorter. I might actually read it whole now.

Alexis King

9:44 AM

Okay. I just updated it again. I think I'm done for now, and I need sleep.

Jan Dvorak

night!

Alexis King

sighs I sort of feel like I wasted my time polishing a turd, but I suppose it doesn't hurt.

Even though the arguments are more clearly stated now, I think they're rather wrong and in some cases outright misleading.

But hey, that's what downvotes are for.

I'll keep monitoring it just in case it ends up in a rollback war.

For now, 'night all.

Ian Kemp

night

and thanks

SmokeDetector

10:06 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] All-caps title: CLASSIFICATION OF FINITE SIMPLE GROUPS by rafiee on math.stackexchange.com

bummi

spam drupal.stackexchange.com/q/156248/20140

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in body, blacklisted website: You for the fetal position is fame by shakh umer43 on drupal.stackexchange.com

bummi

@SmokeDetector tpu

SmokeDetector

@bummi Blacklisted user and registered question as true positive: added title to the Bayesian doctype 'bad'.

bummi

spam askubuntu.com/a/613285/184892 allavsoft.com again

blacklist candidate texts.io

blacklist candidate writage.com

J. Steen

10:34 AM

cv-pls rec stackoverflow.com/q/29845117/64976

Or too broad.

Or unclear.

Unihedron

or, you know, fix it to remove the rec'

although it will be too broad then

J. Steen

But then it's still too broad.

If an edit puts it in the reopen-queue after it's closed, I would rather leave it closed than reopen it just to be able to close it for the "right" reason.

Fair?

Unihedron

true

J. Steen

Just trying to do the right thing. =)

rene

anyone here using selenium 2.9.0 in FF and having the selenium-ide only throw all kind of errors?

Hmm I have this issue: github.com/SeleniumHQ/selenium/issues/382

J. Steen

10:42 AM

^ fp

rene

@SmokeDetector fpu

SmokeDetector

@rene Registered answer as false positive.

[ SmokeDetector ] All-caps title: HOW MUCH POWER DO LEDS USE? by Freelance-Website-Designer-Mum on diy.stackexchange.com

hichris123

cv-plz stackoverflow.com/questions/29843260/action-in-form-using-php

Qantas 94 Heavy

closed

J. Steen

^^ Looks like spam seed.

SmokeDetector

10:45 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Email in body: need help merging two Unix files by mdx on unix.stackexchange.com

PeterJ

@J.Steen, the LED question looks like straight spam to me. Question makes little sense without mentioning a particular LED and that just points to a vendor's homepage.

J. Steen

THe original account has been a member for years and years. Weird.

PeterJ

Yeah noticed that, no visible posts though in all those years though.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in body: Consume meal by using a partner when you by Alexis pex on meta.stackexchange.com

PeterJ

Looks like a DIY mod agreed it was spam

Unihedron

10:55 AM

I have to say that it's more handy to have that "duplicate" flag reason under and not above "close".

bummi

blacklist candidate mobitsolutions.com

Jan Dvorak

11:13 AM

all gone

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector ] Email in body: What is this? Hack or just a normal comment? by Joci93 on security.stackexchange.com

bummi

@SmokeDetector ignore

SmokeDetector

@bummi Post ignored; alerts about it will no longer be posted.

Pureferret

I find it interesting my old DVed question has basically been done

-8

Q: Allow users to set 'target' badges

Is something similar possible on the SE network? It should be specific to each site would encourage people to attain badges (and as badges generally encourage better members, everyone wins) Tool tips with descriptions would be good too We could limit the number to something sensible (3,5...?) ...

Which also happened with another suggestion....

Patrick Hofman

@Pureferret I do understand it though. The motivation given: "because it would require a new option in the user's preferences". I think with the entire overhaul, they had to change it anyway, so they thought it was a good time now.

Jan Dvorak

11:34 AM

@bummi gone

bummi

@JanDvorak with respect to the flags on English yesterday, it was nothing other than NAA

Jan Dvorak

Which one?

bummi

@JanDvorak you have been asking only NAA? (NAA with glibberish hedwhdhlqhedl) , learning from mistakes ;/

Jan Dvorak

That one. Was inappropriate declined? :-/

bummi

@JanDvorak yes, I already expected ... (looking for boundaries like a child)

SmokeDetector

11:48 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] All-caps title: HOW WILL APPLY LOG LIKELYHOOD TEST FOR CATEGARICAL DATA? by Raghava on stats.stackexchange.com

[ SmokeDetector ] Bad keyword in body: Classificar usuarios por area de acesso by Victor Aune on pt.stackoverflow.com

Bart

@SmokeDetector is it "PHP"?

Jan Dvorak

@Bart nike

PHP is a good candidate, though

Bart

I'd blacklist it

Madara Uchiha

12:06 PM

Looks legit

@SmokeDetector fp

SmokeDetector

@MadaraUchiha Registered question as false positive and added title to Bayesian doctype 'good'.

Pureferret

@PatrickHofman I agree too, though most responses said it'd not get used

Patrick Hofman

12:42 PM

0

Q: Master duplicate question missing (deleted?)

Looking if a certain site problem was already reported (asked as a question) I found it, opened it, and it was marked as a duplicate of another question, that also had 2 answers. But when trying to open that other question, I get a page saying it was deleted. I don't see the purpose of marking a...

support

^^^ as per that one, please cast reopen vote on this one: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/173785/…

Ian Kemp

that seems like a bug

if a dupe's "parent" is deleted, surely the question should no longer be considered a dupe?

Qantas 94 Heavy

I would think so, but what if it's undeleted 5 seconds later?

Ian Kemp

that sounds like a "i deleted a question by accident" edge case

why else would you delete then undelete so quickly?

Jan Dvorak

shake off dups?

Qantas 94 Heavy

Yeah, that's what I meant.

Ian Kemp

12:54 PM

perhaps i am being obtuse (it is friday afternoon), but are you saying that someone could reopen a question closed as a dupe by getting the parent deleted?

Jan Dvorak

That's what you propose

Would be really problematic when both questions have the same author

Ian Kemp

yes, but my impression is that the instance of a "parent duplicate" being deleted should be very rare

or can askers delete questions even if said questions are closed?

Jan Dvorak

Sure can

Ian Kemp

ah okay

then my proposal has a fatal flaw and i retract it unreservedly

it could still work if we introduce a special rule that says "asker cannot delete their question if it has child duplicates"

but that would introduce other wrinkles

Mooseman

NAA stackoverflow.com/a/14230646/1234256

Jan Dvorak

1:01 PM

Such as people creating dupes just to lock others' questions

Ian Kemp

that would be some next-level trolling

bummi

@ProgramFOX could you add the latest blacklist candidates to smokey, some are already tying it again

wow superuser.com/a/905668/172747

Ian Kemp

@bummi leet skills there

Jan Dvorak

inappropriate, right?

Ian Kemp

@JanDvorak how about: if someone deletes a question that has children marked as duplicates of said question - copy the question being deleted into a new community wiki question and fixup all the child duplicates' links to point to the CW question

Jan Dvorak

1:08 PM

@IanKemp that's... horrible

Ian Kemp

@JanDvorak well what would you suggest then?

Jan Dvorak

Accidentally preserving some hardcore spam this way would be fun, though

@IanKemp status quo is god

Ian Kemp

@JanDvorak i can live with that :)