Tavern on the Meta

Travis J

8:00 PM

@Shog9 - So this was the captcha on that post, hidden messaging? :P

(vende means sells)

Shog9

BUY MOAR JOBS

user315433

@Shog9 You posted the "edit" link so we could add a title to your query, for once?

Shog9

yes. See, laziness is a self-correcting problem.

Jason C

The top voted posts on the Physics site are... really awesome. I never browsed that list before.

user315433

Well SEDE doesn't work like that.

Shog9

8:01 PM

It really should

Jason C

@TravisJ 9 times out of 10 my captcha has the word "calle" in it, I don't know why. I even got "calle calle" once or twice.

Travis J

hah, I live on a calle

@Shog9 - Intriguing, although not sure what conclusion to draw from the fact that more and more users are only posting one answer per month.

Jason C

Because almost everybody else is sick of putting in the effort to answer crappy questions

Especially when there's not much return on the rare occasion when you ask a complicated question

These days anyways

Travis J

@Gerry - It's true, if you remove the "expert requirement" (at least one upvoted answer) then it is the case that the trend does seem to be positive. I wonder what the correlation between the at least one upvote dropping off versus the total answerers increasing is, or if it just simply that the posts have not had enough time to garner a vote yet.

@JasonC - I feel like people have made that argument since 2010 though. "Quality is declining, there are no complicated questions". I think there are still complex questions that get asked. They are just like magnets though, everyone flocks to them immediately to give input.

(re enough time) although you would think a year is enough time.

rene

Is Nick manually tagging status-completed on all ssl questions or did he run a script?

Travis J

8:09 PM

I think he is editing in updates to his own posts in that tag as well, perhaps you could tell by looking to see if the same message was edited in to some of the posts.

(also if you mention pickles I think he will respond)

rene

:)

Shog9

@TravisJ not quite; here, this one's better: data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/674377#graph (fixed)

Jason C

@TravisJ It's been an increasingly valid argument for a long time.

And now it's at the point where tons of users aren't posting a lot of answers. Slowly but surely.

That said there will always be a fresh generation of users to keep it going. I'm not like, surly about it. It's more of a neutral observation.

Travis J

@JasonC Well, it may feel like that, that is how I felt. But if you look at the graphs here that may not be the actual case.

In fact, there were 92k unique answerers in March 2017, the most ever in one month.

Jason C

No but if you look at actual people's attitudes it's a bit different. Of course, to be fair, there will always be a cycle of old user -> burn out -> new users arrive to take their place.

Shog9

8:15 PM

Go back to 2011, > 10% of answers were posted by folks posting more than 100 answers/month

and > 50% were from folks posting more than 10 answers/month

Travis J

Yeah, that is crazy

Nearly 20% of users in 2010 were posting more than 100 answers per month

(slightly cherry picked)

Jason C

I remember even as recently as 2014 or whatever being able to ask complex questions and get decent answers. Now it seems like every one I see, nobody (including me) feels like answering, and the ones I ask rot away, although I don't ask many so it's not a great sample size. I could be projecting.

Shog9

Now, that's %ages. This is raw numbers: data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/674378#graph - single-answer-author answers are the only category that didn't fall/plateau after 2014

Jason C

I wonder if the number of "what have you tried" and other comments that indicate exasperation have increased over time relative to number of questions asked.

Travis J

Would be hard to tell @JasonC, the what have you tried comments were banned.

Andy

8:19 PM

@Shog9 At the risk of being told to read back in the transcript...what is the cause of that fall?

Travis J

@Shog9 - So, that could mean that (conjecture follows) there is a general base of users (perhaps some new) that will always post an answer here or there, but the group of highly active users seems to be in decline?

Jason C

The other thing that may negatively bias my view towards SO is the technologies I'm interested in are rather old and well-covered at this point. I don't spend a lot of time being active in the newer stuff, where more interesting questions and less cranky users may be.

Travis J

@Andy - I blamed the mso/mse split.

Jason C

@TravisJ Are you sure?

Travis J

@JasonC - That is a dead link?

Andy

8:21 PM

It is now. It was a "What have you tried" comment

Travis J

I deleted it :P

Jason C

Ohhh by banned you mean added to the auto-nuke list

Travis J

yeah, sorry, I guess I misspoke

Jason C

Oh boy free helpful flags for me, I've got a list of about 1000 or so just from the past week on sede.

Travis J

lol

I am not sure how regexy the matcher is though, if the comment used "wat has u tried" it would probably get through

Jason C

8:23 PM

No you don't need to do that

Just flag NC it'll be deleted

Travis J

Oh, lol, well nvm then

Jason C

Oh man I know what I'm gonna be doing for the next 20 minutes

Travis J

hahaha

Shog9

@TravisJ Probably. Would be interesting to track movement from one group to another

Travis J

Ooh, go on Mr. Holmes. This sounds interesting.

user315433

8:26 PM

Must begin with "What have you tried", case insensitive, and be less than 80 characters.

Travis J

So make sure you say it like 5 times if you want to really ask that of someone.

SmokeDetector

8:54 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer: Why are dot underscore ._ files created, and how can I avoid them? by Sedaray on apple.SE

Travis J

@Shog9 - (small nitpick) The raw numbers graph had *100 in there from the percent graph. I edited it out: data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/edit/674425#graph

Shog9

thanks

i'm... pretty distracted today

Travis J

You did 99.9% of the query, so, I didn't really do anything. It is really interesting to look at.

@Shog9 - The meta graph is interesting. data.stackexchange.com/meta.stackexchange/query/edit/… . Also, according to Jason's query earlier, 99.9% of users who posted on mSO in the past month also posted at SO main.

user315433

9:14 PM

Click "permalink" under the query window to avoid posting edit links like those above.

Jason C

@TravisJ My query shows the opposite direction: Only 5.8% of users who visited SO main also visited SO meta.

That's seen in last 30 days, with 2 or more rep.

It's pretty much guaranteed to be close to or at 100% in the other direction. It's strange for people to visit mso without visiting so.

ɥʇǝS

Why does there seem to be no data on close votes in SEDE after 2013?

SELECT YEAR(CreationDate) FROM Votes
WHERE VoteTypeID = 6
AND YEAR(CreationDate) = 2013

returns plenty of posts but this returns 0:

SELECT YEAR(CreationDate) FROM Votes
WHERE VoteTypeID = 6
AND YEAR(CreationDate) = 2014

Travis J

@JasonC - I was talking about the inverse though, if a user posted on mSO, then they almost always also posted at SO as well.

Jason C

Yeah, true

12

Q: Why are there no close or reopen votes in the data explorer following June 25th, 2013?

I ran this query select distinct CreationDate from votes where (VoteTypeId = 6 OR VoteTypeId = 7) order by CreationDate desc and got (That's showing the top of the list.) What's going on? I know SEDE data isn't updated in real-time, but I remember reading somewhere that a dump was uploaded ...

ɥʇǝS

@JasonC hm. So they still haven't made it into SEDE? I didn't see anything else that looked like it would hold that data, although I didn't look hard.

Let's see.

Jason C

9:29 PM

@ɥʇǝS No it's in PendingFlags now iirc

Travis J

@JasonC - Also, what did you use to define "active"? Only reputation change?

Jason C

See meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2677

@TravisJ LastAccessDate

Page views

Travis J

Okay

user315433

Close votes were made a kind of flags, and we only have pending flags in SEDE, not handled ones

ɥʇǝS

Ahhh. Bummer. Thanks @JasonC @Gerry

Jason C

9:31 PM

@TravisJ Plus rep > 1 indicates they've done something. If you really wanted to be accurate you could combine data from all the other tables to get true last action (aside from votes) but that's expensive and probably doesn't matter.

user315433

To study closing dynamics, one has to look at PostHistory instead, which reflects the closures that took effect.

Travis J

@JasonC - Anyway, the only reason I associated your stat (was mostly just reinforcement) to the linked graph was that you can see a drop in meta activity. And if everyone posting on mso also posts on main, then it isn't that large of leap to consider that their main activity dropped off as well.

Jason C

^ And you have to parse the JSON in T-SQL, which is super fun.

@TravisJ Yeah in general I tend to leave meta sites out of any sort of meaningful activity or data analysis unless I'm specifically interested in meta activity.

Travis J

I agree that it is usually irrelevant. However, given the magnitude of the meta disturbance I believe it had a significant impact.

user315433

The one kind of chart we don't have yet is chat.SO activity.

Jason C

9:39 PM

@ɥʇǝS Btw here: data.stackexchange.com/superuser/query/674463 that's how you can parse the voter id lists out of posthistory

One way to do it, anyways.

ɥʇǝS

@JasonC Oh that's handy! Thanks

Jason C

Wait it's slightly broken one sec

Fixed check it now

ɥʇǝS

awesome, thanks! :D

user315433

10:02 PM

0

A: Why do blue jays eat my cat food?

I just witnessed a blue jay devouring the dry cat food I put out for my resident Ravens. Never seen a blue jay eat cat food before but I guess it makes sense as they are corvids

user315433

Feeding ravens with cat food, getting it stolen by blue jays...

user315433

10:22 PM

> "You're gonna take over this java code. We think it has some memory leaks." #notanightmare-thisreallyhappenedtoday -- Craig Peterson at 2:30 PM - 22 May 2017

user315433

10:35 PM

+1 for the new one-flag pattern

Jason C

Yeah I think it's time to lock meta.stackexchange.com/q/1939/230261.

@Gerry Ooo what new pattern?

user315433

sapienti sat

user315433

10:58 PM

Election roundup: Puzzling about to end, Sharepoint voting began today, Graphic Design nominations are open, Photography is on deck.

Journeyman Geek

talent.so seems to be VERY broken from where I'm sitting

user315433

@JourneymanGeek Works for me as usual.

Journeyman Geek

odd

caching?

user315433

I don't know what page you are looking at. I haven't tried to actually do anything on the site.

Travis J

it's always caching

Journeyman Geek

11:02 PM

ah!

trying going here stackoverflow.com/jobs/companies/stack-overflow

then clicking on the job opening at the bottom

or even going there, that gives me an error too

Jason C

@JourneymanGeek It's easier if you're not sitting on your keyboard.

Also remember to sit in front of the monitor, ideally facing it.

Journeyman Geek

I don't sit on my keyboard, I'm not a cat

> Server Error in '/' Application.
Runtime Error
Description: An exception occurred while processing your request. Additionally, another exception occurred while executing the custom error page for the first exception. The request has been terminated.

IS CLEARLY not my fault

user315433

@JourneymanGeek That's jobs, not talent. Compare to: talent.stackoverflow.com

Travis J

problem exists between keyboard and cat

Journeyman Geek

ah

my bad.

Still broken. Even more clueless over the right place to report said bug

@Gerry also throwing the same error

Jason C

11:08 PM

0

Q: Im so desperate... help me how to send an image file to client...

Been trying to send an image file to client but it wont work out. I seen lots of codes answered for it but they cannot be digested by my stomach. Could anybody tell me the basic principle of how to send an image file? From my understanding, the image file has to be converted to a binary numbers a...