meta.stackexchange.com/questions/338899/… 10 downvotes, 5 upvotes on a question about basically an area 51 proposal, isn't that a bit harsh?

I know, I know, votes on meta work differently, yada yada, but any initial reaction to a new user would be discouraging. I'm just kinda "bumping" this issue, nevermind…

Yes. Likely because they didn't start with a site-proposal or site-recommendation tag, which often tanks such questions, and adding the wrong one didn't help. It may look ugly but (10*-2)+(5*10) = ...

again, I don't think [new] people look at their rep first and foremost as the indicator of public acceptance, but at the post's total score

this will never happen on this site at this point, but imagine a world where there were no "votes" to "downvote" but users could just comment with what the poster could improve or use a commentless system to add such notices, like close plaques but without the "closed because you personally suck at this" connotation

So... basically a threaded forum?

no, just better UX design, built from ground up

No, I mean literally, you're talking about a threaded forum

reputation system already needlessly incentivizes more problematic behavior on SO than useful behavior, at least in my opinion

well, SE is a kind of forum where replies to starting posts are answers and comment-replies are being regularly removed when no longer needed

I don't think I'm talking about a forum, as I see forums

You're pretty much talking about a forum

Lets take SE. Remove all the votes.

Its basically a non threaded forum with randomly arranged posts.

Which turns into bad UX. Lets go back to having them arranged by time or activity.

oh I didn't mean remove all votes everywhere, but a redesign of the voting system to do not what it does now

Keeping comments basically turns it into a threaded forum, with an original post, replies and replies to replies.

yea I didn't really convey that clearly, sorry

basically, I'm against the all-encompassing "up" or "down" votes which can mean ANYTHING AT ALL

what I want is specific votes on things like quality of the submission and usefulness, "agree/disagree" (despite the same user voting on the post as high or low quality)

different sites could also use different vote types

hm

that complicates things ;p

yea and I like that

complex bad ;p

look around and think again lol

(casually blowing out flames off my shoulders)

like I said, no way this happens on SE/SO but maybe somwhere, someday

when the humanity is ready :D

at least Steam has a [helpful] / [unhelpful] + [funny] vote system on reviews which is very nice because it allows people to vote [unhelpful] + [funny] whereas normally it would have been upvoted to hell while being useless

not to draw attention to the post under which this comment sits, but the abstract sentiment of the comment's text:

I've always felt it would be a great thing to have at least 2 vote types for "[does not] deserves attention" and "[not] useful, high quality content"

funny thing is. its a post worth thinking about, if not for the hyperbole

I could reply to the answer poster but they seem to have made up their mind already, so I'll skip this one

[dis][agree] and [not][useful]

but better somehow

I'm not a UX-ician!

@Tinkeringbell my guess is their combined human psychological battery reached 0 and is unable to recharge faster than it is being drained while they're trying to maintain their normal rate of interactions with users on meta.

that is understandable, but it's also kinda the same for the meta users who, too, don't feel like they're being talked to and instead are being talked at

the whole situation with staff saying they're unable to interact with meta is like kindergarten nannies locking up in the lounge and letting toddlers on their own -- you'd think it's ridiculous and take your kids to a different kindergarten if you found out about this, but unfortunately other places are even worse

I guess they could mitigate staff's need to use meta as much by hiring a bunch of "customer support" people to act as "first level call center" personnel to respond to every feature request or bug post, but then those people's bandwidth would still be limited by the actual developers' ability to answer those questions

snort

those are called CMs

You might know them.

There's also a small team (that's kinda adjunct to them) that handles emails and such

yea I feel like we've overloaded them to 400% already and it's not getting any better

I'm torn between support and wishing a better work-life balance

Well - there's a solution to that that the Management hasn't quite gotten on board with.

why not both, right?

as per my dual-vote system :p

@user1306322 practically - if you want to actually understand the community, you need to spend time in it

not as "Oh I'm management, and I'm hanging out with the plebs/mob" - but actually as a user and peer

at this point I am almost sure the current corporate has no interest in understanding the community, but instead maximizing profits, because I have not seen any explicit blog posts about the opposite lately

I'm just trying to figure out how the community can maximize its use out of this platform now

part of it is learning the mistakes

most of it is learning from successes

@user1306322 hmm

So in the early days, basically Most of the blogs were written by Jeff

another thing to note is that blog is… who is it for, these days, exactly?

it's not ... public-facing, I'd say

who even knows it exists

it's not here

are there public visit stats on the blog pages?

podcasts have listen counts

now that I am back

the SE blog became more of a marketing thing some time after Joel took over

and more heavily so as they pushed careers

the blog was for a good chunk aimed, at well, corporatey types

Now, I donno

is there a chronological list of blog post links?

"Most Recent" is not a clickable link to such a page :/

@user1306322 No, it's in the site selector dropdown.

at the bottom right, yea, and in a pretty weird place too

why would they choose such a location for it, hmm

Anyway, I don't think it's considered a "product"... it's a marketing tool to draw attention. I'm guessing the sidebar and the tweets account for the bulk of the views.

has such a blog ever worked well enough in history of such blogs though?

It's an old placement that I'm guessing no one has really thought about recently. Presumably we want it visible on all sites, so a link on the SO part with Chat doesn't make much sense, though I think that's where the per-site blogs used to live, when they existed.

ah I see

No clue. All I know about blogs is that I am a failure as a blogger.

:D

I know blogs work for some people who don't like to tweet and otherwise like to make long thought out posts, it's basically foruming but a blog is your personal forum where only you can post threads and everyone else can only comment on your posts

I’m neither well-known enough nor interesting/thoughtful enough for blogging.

I used to write blogs once but then I discovered a couple things: I didn't really care about the topic, the forum was eating my free time at insane rates, OneNote, StackExchange as an alternative where people actually care about different interesting stuff and it's not a total waste of my time, and if I really want I can write a blog-post of an answer on a topic I'm knowledgeable about

don't worry about fame, it doesn't really do any good to most people

if you look at most of the famous folks, they all say "being famous isn't worth much at all"

the most genuine people out of them will say they actually have hobbies and interests they want to further, or they're actually enjoying what they're doing, and fame is a byproduct, not the end all goal

somewhere along the way it became a thing to delude ourselves that fame is the actual valuable thing

but you knew all that already :p

Nah, but that’s a bit of a privileged view. I think Scalzi would still have a following on his blog regardless but I think that being known increased the initial takeoff while the rest of us have to hope that something we do goes viral. ;)

what I'm saying is you're cool enough without blogging, fuhgeddaboudit :p

I’m not cool. I promise. 🤣

if the opposite of cool is hot, that's fine with me, I've been told I'm not cool by a lot of people :D

talking about viral, have you seen the CyberTruck?

But I agree with your POV. I’d much rather write here on SE where it’s well-indexed and has a better chance of helping people. Plus, figuring out what to write is often the hardest part.

DeLorean on steroids.

I think the opposite of cool is warm.

@user1306322 yeah. It looks like the new mad max car.

just as people predicted the opinions are almost exactly 50-50

half hate it, half love it

shame the presentation was cut short because of the glass shattering, they didn't show off all the extra trunks

I don’t know much about it other than the images. It’s not that terrible looking.

it looked like a demo prototype, not a ready for production version

especially the steering wheel and I didn't see any door handles on the inside, the demo people opened the doors for the visitors from outside

I suppose they'll have to harden the glass by release after what happened

Ah. The demo design usually changes quite a bit.

and there were no side mirrors

some countries and states mandate them, suppose they'll be added for those places

DeLorean

yea stretched vertically in photoshop

but it's definitely the coolest look out there

and no paint! nothing to scratch!

See also: nme.com/news/film/…

all of those tesla keying haters will be mad

you can key stainless

Does it look like an Aztec, too?

Also... no headlights

aztek looks like just another car to me

unlesss those slits are some high tech projector thing

@Catija blogging well is hard

If it makes you feel any better, SE has had people whose only job was to do that...

and...

they sucked

tesla.com/cybertruck?redirect=no do you mean the main feature of the promo teaser? pbs.twimg.com/media/EJdJP1_UUAAgaiU?format=jpg&name=orig

Also, the trials of working on the weekend

I need to actually wait for the next episode of the mandalorian

or to work our some way to grab it off my desktop ._.

I watched Crazy Rich Asians today.

._.

oooh the struggle of having to wait for all episodes to finish releasing and also not being able to go on the internet out of fear of spoilers

lol

I don't mind spoilers

I'm... impatient though

I hate waiting, and cliffhangers

@Catija yang's campaign? ;D

Singapore looks cool.

@Catija y'all should consider it for a meetup :D

@JourneymanGeek what's your opinion on the Prison Break tv show?

Never watched it

good

you wouldn't like it :D

That said, the people are ultra rich so I’m guessing the actual experience is quite different.

(Actually in better days, I was kinda hoping they'd consider singapore as a place SE would expand to - great access to the asian markets, english speaking...)

@Catija very

But it looks pretty.

Have you watched it?

Well - its a really nice place

nope ._.

in other viral news, I'm gonna have to seriously consider rearranging furniture in my room and budgeting a VR headset + desktop for the 2020 releases of Cyberpunk and Half Life: Alyx

glares at his sci fi and TV backlog

It’s currently on hbo, so... and Gus was home sick today so I watched movies.

at least on this 4k monitor I can see all of my backlogs at once

ah

Yeah, that would help

And next week is thanksgiving.

ah

yay break?

lucky you thanksgiving-having folks, having a break before january :I

@JourneymanGeek I just feel useless. Did almost nothing (on site) this week between the meetup and Gus being sick and I’ll only have two days next week.

@Catija :/

@Catija the "on site" ....

as opposed to...?

invisible stuff we will never see?

ANd eh, y'all have been under quite a bit of stress. Gotta appreciate the lull periods and family

Being in meetings all week. Good for talking over big company things, crap for getting day-to-day stuff done.

ah

Eh, that's still work

And y'all are our interface for big company things

And while we do wish y'all got all the time you needed for day to day stuff - well, there's only so many of you.

Yeah. Not saying it’s a waste of time... just that I didn’t get to do the stuff I need to do. I had awesome chats with all sorts of people. Mostly other CMs but not only.

I'm saying "That's not useless" ;p

I know. But it’s still leaving me feeling like I did nothing because the other stuff got ignored... because I’m just one person. I think I got 4-5 hours of sleep each night.

Nowhere near enough

I got 7 ;p

well… as employees we can only do as well as our management has set us up to be able to do, so… it's kinda their problem

sometimes you get put on 2 projects at once and the manager kinda omits that you're the only dev on both…

that's life!

But I got doughnuts with Robert and fed everyone cupcakes without them all getting sick and ate tacos twice in the same day with JNat, Jon and Shog and went on long walks where I got to play tour guide.

And how often do you get to do that? ;p

One thing I realise from being the career equivilent of a drifter is...

you gotta take those moments and appriciate them

yea!

Well, technically I’ve seen JNat and Nic and Cesar three times this year and the others twice. But more often would be better.

Well - true

Oh, I appreciated them. Very much. I admit that I’m still somewhat star struck.

Y'all kinda missed a annual CM meetup or two in all the 'excitement' right?

and I can't remember the last time a companywide meeting happened

I don’t think we generally have any cm-only meetups. We had one scheduled in February but it was delayed until May after some of us were already there. There’s usually a remotes meetup annually. This was the first all-company meetup in like six years.

what was the philli one?

a few years back

All remotes.

I vaguely recall it was before your time

heck, before I got on zee twitters properly

There was one planned but the layoffs happened and it was cancelled. The layoffs were in 16, I think?

yeah

There’s not been a meetup since the layoffs.

Well, that's kinda (IMO) kinda sparked off the current round of gloom

(in the longer term at least)

Dunno. I think it’s all before my time.

Well yes

I mean even using the site.

At this point, I think I count as almost an oldtimer ;p

Oh, you mean the layoffs caused the gloom?

Well it was one of many

So - here's my read on it

I'm told by folks it could be inaccurate but...

Practically - the layoffs were a result on a super heavy focus on careers

Someone within the company was pushing it hard. The non SO folks were told pretty much that it was essential for the company to thrive and we'd get more resources.

It failed. Hard.

And well - for some odd reason...

We lost quite a few folks close to the community as a result

The CM team certainly - Jmac wasn't replaced, we lost pops as a direct result of thos...

which certaily wasn't "bringing in more resources to the community"

Taryn switched

SHe did

but she's also still kinda in touch.

She wasn't replaced either.

I think we'd have basically not had a CM team if they hadn't gotten you to replace Ana

and of course, Cesar was basically the first actual expansion of the team

Still - it was a big promise that folks had trusted that was broken, whether or not it was the company's fault :/

And in a sense - we lost a lot of our contacts with the company as a result

Yeah. I don’t know. I definitely agree that it’s been a hard three years. You’re focusing on the CMs but there’s also oded and balpha.

I mentioned oded

balpha left a bit later?

Jeremy was also supposedly working on a chat API - which is almost certainly not going to happen now

And yeah, we miss all the folks who hang out here who left :/

(here or regular chat or even meta)

Yeah but I’m talking about after. But, meh.

Oh, true. But that's even more depressing :D

Yeah.

I do get folks may get/want a new challenge

but there's a certain degree of institutional memory lost in the process, it feels like

Yeah. 7-10 years is a long time in one position.

It is. But you don't really need to 'lose' that 7-10 years of experience

Ok, hypothetically... (knocks on wood hard)...

lets say if shog decided to quit

and farm tomatos

Would anyone be able to step up and cover what he can do?

Or less scarily - How long would it take to bring up a new CM from 1) outside the community 2) inside the community?

Likewise for a dev or SRE but... Dealing with us might not be seen as a core competency

but that's a skill folks like Oded and balpha had in spades (Some of the new folks arn't bad as well, but its not really a common/core dev skill I suspect?)

as an aside - in order to grab file off my home PC - I'm currently 1) SSH tunneled into my router - and connected to my home lan through that 2) using that tunnel to proxy my browser 2) running a python simplehttp server... just so I can grab one file

I was considering doing the proxy anyway, work wifi isn't secured.

and I can't throw a proper VPN on this (work already has one but its slow)

@JourneymanGeek sorry. You scared me off. ;)

I'm PRETTY sure there's a simpler way to do this...

@JourneymanGeek Depends on how much they interact and what kind of interaction they have.

@Catija pretty much

@Catija but also training those folks is a competency - and that's well, not exactly practiced that much

For example... Cesar knows his stuff but keeps having to be a bearer of bad news.

On a smaller scale - if I stopped being an SU mod - who could step into my shoes, and building an environment where folks could is important

@Catija poor lad

I'd say something about building charecter but that's just silly.

There’s a lot of knowledge that we’re losing due to people leaving, both employees and mods... and users, too.

Yup

but that's a realisation that needs to be made by folks higher up the food chain

and well there's no simple answer

.... chain of command

Must be lunch time :D

I don’t know enough yet. Stuff is still really nebulous.

For y’all?

@Catija for me

that things are nebulous isn't that good ._.

(I kinda work alone and pack lunch so lunch is when I am hungry ;D)

It’s not really as bad as you might think... if everything was perfectly settled, that’d mean that the solution was easy and Prashanth had it from the beginning... knowing a general direction without specifics means there’s wiggle room

well, a general direction isn't nebulous. ;p

And well, Prashanth is still an unknown quantity to me, least for now

SO, we'll see, and hopefully hold the line till then ;)

@Catija I figured all y'all simply drew straws to determine whom delivered each announcement, otherwise it makes sense to hire a PR person (even an external company) and have them deliver the message (good / bad / neutral).

@Rob Depends. Usually it’s tied to whoever is the person primarily working on something.

That's unfortunate, when the news isn't well received.

@Rob I'm not sure what will be well recirved these days

Lots of work to do ._.

True, sometimes it's hard to predict. Some idea might come up, and thought to be an improvement, but the community has the opposite view; and the end of it is not heard.

We already seem distant. Having pr people shoulder the burden will just make the CMs seem more disengaged.

Yes, but you come to chat (as do a couple of other CMs) while a few others do not come to chat; so they seem distant (avoiding the fire). Some are popular, hopefully all feel welcome at their workplace, and some work behind the scenes; preferring not the interaction. Same for some moderators, some users (whom don't fair well in chat) too.

On a particular site we have to beg people to write / vote on our meta, and join us in chat - and there's been nothing come up to drive them away, other than what has eventually become a polyopoly for a half dozen of us; and that makes them alienated.

@Rob I think there’s (at least) two considerations. I rely a lot on the interactions I have with individuals. That’s not necessarily the “correct” way to CM (or mod) when you’re dealing with thousands (millions) of people. Also... it’s really hard to be in here and on meta right now for me, particularly.

You have to remember that I was a Tavern regular before I was hired and... well... I’m here on a Friday night instead of out doing fun stuff... so that’s likely going to indicate that I have more online relationships that in person... which is the case. Chat is my primary daily social interaction with people and has been for... at least four years.

@Catija Yes, it's difficult (or different) to have 1000's of fans (or not fans).

I've moved around within a 100 mile radius a dozen times over half a century, so the chance of someone popping up all of a sudden is pretty good. I lost touch with almost everyone when I went back to school a few times, and saw none of the previous friends there.

I went out a few hours ago, didn't see anyone, came back to chat here (and visit elsewhere on the Internet). I brought the Internet with me when I went out, since my phone has fast Wi-Fi and my area has Wi-Fi hotspots everywhere (so coverage is continuous, like cellular Internet but it's free).

When you get older what is there that's "fun" to do on a Friday night: go to the bar (and whom (what types) would you meet there, people whom hang out at the bar), go to the movies (so that's $30, I have TV and the Internet), do teenage guy stuff (nah, too old for that) - so here we are ...

SE should try out one video chat room.

@Rob that's actually a core... thing

to a lot of older folks, we're used to seeing CMs interact directly with folks, and its a good way to handle the handful of "regular" users

but that kinda needs a lot more people

This is definitely one of the busiest chats, for example the Monero Chat has been frozen for ages and is unusable.

Older chats tend to be healthier

amazingly you need people to talk for chat to work

and it was a lot easier (for better or for worse) to find chat in older designs

Ok, that was all manner of fun

I can grab files off my home linux box by

1) using putty to SSH tunnel into my router

2) SSH from that to my linux box to move files where I need it. Also lets me, least in theory use any service that I can use a proxy to connect to from my work laptop

3) start up a web server on my home linux box

4) use a browser to download the file

.... that was a lot of work to grab my schedule ;p

Is reasonably fast though, even on unsecured work wifi

and critically didn't need any unapproved software

Oh, yes, nice trick. I used a similar setup to get passed "only port 80 and 443 are allowed for outgoing connections" restrictions. And yes, we were an IT consultancy firm but the IT requirements where only tailored to office workers, not to software developers or system engineers. I ran a SSH daemon on port 443 on my homebox.

the python web server was a nice/easy touch

every linux box has it, if you know its there ;p

yeah, every serious toolstack comes with their own httpserver

Hi! I am planning on posting my thoughts about the war between us type 1s and type 3s. My main point is that while StackExchange the company continues not to do anything to mediate that war, any effort to help the newbies will be a waste of time. Their questions will continue to become collateral damage.

Anyway, since I need to refer to type 3s in a constructive way, what terms (other than the retired one) are currently in use and acceptable.

Apologies, if this is the wrong place to ask.

@JyrkiLahtonen I think rep-hunters / rep-farmers is a bit less abusive.

to be on the safe side maybe it is better to simply describe the behavior instead if trying to use a single label.

yup

or help vampires.

Talk about the behaviours not the people

whew just got back from the Chimney

Thanks for the suggestions @rene, @JourneymanGeek.

I was thinking eager beaver answerer, but the urban dictionary gave a very low brow meaning to "eager beaver". Non-native user of English here, so don't want to use that. At least not without checking :-)

@bobobobo yeah you're black

@ShadowThePrincessWizard I am covered in soot it seems

@bobobobo next time go inside the car, not its exhaust pipe. ;)

@JyrkiLahtonen yeah, that won't go well. Just say something like optimize for reputation over quality but non-native speaker here as well so I'm sure even better alternatives exist.

@JyrkiLahtonen I'd almost call it "paper clip optimisation for reputation"

but that's even more obscure

Hmm. The impression I have is closer to quantity over quality :-)

well - there's actually a few stratergies I have seen that don't go for qualiity

there's one gentleman I shall not name who mainly chases bounties

@JyrkiLahtonen "Rep mongers" say what they know will be popular. However, if it's going to be popular, the site wants it, so arguably they aren't making bad contributions in the apparent opinion of the site

@JyrkiLahtonen I particularly liked "rep skimmer"

That's a good one @bobobobo. Some of those will vehemently deny all interest in rep. Not that they could make it sound sincere. May be I give up the ghost of trying to initiate a good-faith dialogue. Those people never show up for peace talks anyway, because they give a higher priority to matters outside of meta.

@JyrkiLahtonen I'll also add that I find that "rep-skimmers" seem to try to tap into the zealot response, which CAN have the negative side-effect of promoting zealotry/fanaticism

Feels like there are some edits bumping things that don't need to be bumped... Anyway, I'm not sure how to clarify this edited sentence: "It has been a week since meta.stackexchange.com/q/334900/357396 [now deleted] was announced and made a faq immediately." It's confusing because the "now" in "now deleted" is a much later time than the "it has been a week".

Any inspiration about how to fix it?

Distant cough

@sourcejedi if it needs fixing then that whole sentence need to change to something like On the 11th of October meta.stackexchange.com/q/334900/357396 was announced and made a faq immediately. (Post was deleted on 23rd)

@M.A.R. so ... it is a tough time ... to have a cold .. :/

@rene Guten Abend

Ish.

Tough on-site or off-site?

Let's try off-site first.

I forgot how tough it is to read Dutch sentences even when they're in English.

specially if you keep mixing it with German

@rene Deutsch ist der Beste

Well, that can escalate quickly ;)

Aw, didn't realize how much you guys cared for me though, as far as distant 'internet' caring can go. <3

Except @Tink, apparently >:(

@M.A.R. yeah, you were MIA.

@202324 Yes, I Can Believe™

^ I want that on a T-shirt

CC @Mag, if you wanna see my commentary on stuff that I didn't personally see.

Even for someone like me who doesn't get into the news all that much except OMG SE ANNOUNCED TEH THING, last week, without any internet, feels like I'm just done with a meditation session

Lemme be profound now.

Uh. Iiiiiii ammm Oooooooogway. Things flow through things. And stuff. And chi, if you wanna blow up stuff, man.

And shudder I actually had to touch paper from reference books when Google was off.

It felt like when Gandalf tried to find out about the ring of hissing sounds.

@M.A.R. I'm sorry! I did start missing you as soon as someone else pointed it out, though!

@Tinkeringbell Yeah right

I promise!

@M.A.R. oh that's nasty

Hope it doesn't happen often...

@M.A.R. I care about you a lot! :D

Ding, he's back.

The wife is putting the tree up

what is this.

So this is christmas...

heh

@Tinkeringbell Disclaimer: Any relevant Santa Klaus incidents popping up right after I showed up is merely coincidence

I am now expecting presents tonight ;)

Only if I'm trespassing on private property

Through a chimney too.

Anyone else getting the feeling the myth was created by a visionary medieval thief?

Except more cartoonish

He was stuck, and he was gasping and the people mistook it for "ho ho ho"

That or he was laughing at the stupidity of the hosts in a Victorian manner. Wait, the centuries don't add up.

You're ruining christmas now... grinch.

@Tinkeringbell Adds "Jim Carrey" to the list of things he's been called

@M.A.R. bit scary that that's possible

@user58 Hey I've been living in this 1984 and it's not as bad as you think.

We still get 20 grams of chocolate.

Finally back, and on the other side of the world!

XSS script traps could be fun

yawwwwn