@user58 Oh and by the way ... Answer courtesy WSE (W = M 🔃): #1: "That's going to drastically slowdown the job I was hired for" or #2: "Don't bring that up again, you're interrupting my work".
When you possess the skull that understands the mistake that was made one realizes the cost.
@JourneymanGeek It doesn't look like it it would be much help unless you were on the council. If I seriously thought it would improve my chances of saving this burning, sinking ship I'd do it, but I don't think it will, because the indications are that SE doesn't really care what its moderators are saying anymore.
hi tavern! is there a current reference for all community site blogs? I know of a few sites that have them, but couldn't find anything complete by searching (this was the closest and both links are dead now :P). wanted to double check before I write a whole faq-proposed...
Searching for Stack Exchange/Overflow Blog/twitter turns up a list that you can pick through. You can ask and answer your own question on Meta, thus creating such a list. Here are two I found quickly by following that suggestion: thesffblog.comtwitter.com/stackoverflow?lang=en
now I'm not sure whether to include Retrocomputing's blog in the "active" or "archived" section, since it's hosted off-site, but hasn't been updated since 2017..
maybe it would make more sense to list as "off-site" vs. "blog overflow"?
@BryanKrause how would you recommend Monica respond to defamation. How long should she have waited? She gave them every opportunity to resolve this without lawyers.
@mag Good enough. Mom has the flu but I'm still standing, work goes fine... I broke a crochet hook this weekend but the new one will arrive today... Nothing really bad, nothing very perfect ;)
@Tinkeringbell not anymore it's not. I was the last year that got stufi for my master without it being a loan. Bachelors is getting leaner and leaner as well.
(been reading transcript. Seems like another bombshell landed)
@JAD That's true... but while I was studying, graduating without a loan wasn't a privilege... it was something everyone could do.
Right now it might be more of a privilege, but it's still not as bad as America where you'll basically only succeed in doing so if your parents are rich.
true. The loans are also relatively cheap. The big cost is in the hit you take in the amount you can loan for a home. It's created a situation that you have pretty much no chance of buying a house if you have student loans in the current housing market.
an issue with the loans is the max mortgage one can get. This is based on income minus debts. Student loans count, based on the initial amount, not the remaining balance. So loads of people find that they have to pay off their loans entirely in order to be able to buy a house in the current market.
so it's creating a situation where people are forced to rent due to their loans, have higher costs due to renting, so not being able to pay off those loans, being more stuck in renting, etc etc.
I mathed it out some time ago with a comparable apartment instead of the 375€ all utilities included rent I pay now I'd pay at least 550€ in additional obligations, utilities and interest on the mortgage. That is not counting principal payments
sure the interest would drop over the loan but this is all assuming the ridiculously high housing prices here hold so in reality it'd be an even worse deal
well, because renting out appartments is so lucrative, loads of investors are buying them for more than market value, making it even harder for people to buy.
@mag Before I bought a home, I rented an apartment of 65m^2, which cost €850 a month. Buying a similar apartment in that block would cost me €400-500 in mortgage
I think so? I'm still waiting for the legal stuff... but at this point, I don't think it'll fall through. Worst that can happen is that my application for a home-loan expires, in which case I'll have to spend another 750 euros on the advisor/new loan.... I have that lying around somewhere too ;)
I'm getting a dishwasher too, but that's mostly because of my bad skin washing by hand means I'd either have to wear gloves or wash without soap (and even then hot water makes my skin dry and eczema play up). So... dishwasher ;)
because constructive it is not and it's not something you do for SE management to listen to (as if they even would) but for yourself to vent some anger
@Tinkeringbell I have no special access to anyone who decides anything here so what I write is not just useless I would have to kafka trap something to say the opposite to even have a glimpse at getting a word in
What can I do? Answer the survey? I'm pretty sure nobody actually reads that except for categories. Post on meta? If anyone reads that it'll be in the frame of toxic meta users.
Even mods feel like they can't get a word in what hope does a non mod user have?
@mag Also, the survey is just a very tiny high-level thing-y... the one linked in the blog post, that is. There might be others that rely more on 'we're (planning to start) working on this, what do you think should be improved' (I did one of those already).
I guess everyone with white skin counts the same, even though ethnicity makes such a massive difference on the continent. In experience, viewpoints and perspective
@Shadow Those identity questions in the survey were a terrible, terrible move. I'd be surprised if they don't at least make an attempt of a half-assed apology, because now, they are accused by everyone (including people of minorities) to be, themselves, creating discriminations, through these very questions. And that is probably one of their biggest fear (or at least that is what their policies convey).
they identified that they need to improve the SE experience for marginalized users. You can't measure how you're doing in that department unless you ask. It's not like there's some shadowy scheme going on, it's literally what they said
This express purpose and aim has been stated every time it's come up starting with the welcome wagon.
you can disagree with the aim (lord knows people do) or the methodology used to measure it or the original data, but it's perfectly internally consistent for them to do this
Isn't that plainly obvious? If your goal is to improve the experience specifically for marginalized people then you're going to want to carefully examine what the people you're doing this for say. It's used to contextualize and weigh the survey results, otherwise they wouldn't ask.
I'm not making a value judgement on the effort because I don't really have an opinion on it (having one tends to get you labeled so I don't participate in the subject)
Someone's cultural background can tie in to a lot of things (Like how they prefer to give/receive feedback on their posts, what they consider friendly/unfriendly, what might block them from participating more/less, English language speaking skills, how those are taught and how that influences their participation...). But this question seems way to narrow to capture all that!
I've been told point blank before (not by SE) that being european, white and male means having an opinion on identity politics is offensive for me, regardless of what it is, and that I'm unqualified to participate in the discussion. I appreciate that's not a widely held view but it signals more trouble then engaging is worth
Sounds more like a bar where the barman look at the client and gives them a drink based on their skin color alone, aka discrimination. By paying more attention to people with certain skin color, SE is discriminating all those not having that same color.
I can somewhat open up here because it's almost anonymous but I'm really reserved in real life, mostly because being honest about being asexual or autistic is a really bad idea unless you're a glutton for mistreatment
@ShadowThePrincessWizard Ehh, I got the impression it was just getting together a diverse group of skin colors for the bartender to serve, not just serving one colour over others...
@Tinkeringbell lol sure! But they'll give weight to each person in the "council" based on their skin color and race, not based on knowledge or experience.
And that council will be hand picked from those who give correct answers in the surveys.
@ShadowThePrincessWizard That, I don't know. I hope they do not, some good principles for surveys mean you take both into account (culture as well as experience/knowledge).
@ShadowThePrincessWizard Which might just mean handpicking a few users from each 'category'... I think you're now making assumptions that I didn't read anything about as being true?
Just hypothetically, if I fill out the loop, and then refuse cookies, does that mean I'll be able to fill it out later again in case I need to provide additional feedback?
I'm also wondering why they didn't let me self-identify as "somehow being older than the universe itself". ">99" doesn't even begin to describe the essence of me.
Okay... so there's a lot of talk about filling in 'funny' or 'snarky' stuff, like 'older than the universe itself', 'human' ...
I'd like to remind people that if you fill in your survey like that, chances are you're ruining your own voice here. Generally, the people taking these surveys are looking for serious input... And if you disagree with the way there's a load of questions about you as a person, or the way those questions are asked, fine... but probably best to put that (and how you think that might be improved) in another free form text field that asks for input like that... :/
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"I don't want to say" would probably be a better answer to those questions than filling in 'space alien' under 'other'.
@JourneymanGeek I only took a quick peek, but I believe each of those questions had an 'other' field... you could put it in there ... but that's a good point, don't want to disclose should probably be an option too.
(Can you actually skip those questions and turn in the survey?)
@Tinkeringbell be aware though that this comes after that old famous tweet about an event that asked for people with specific "racial backgrounds" to join (keeping this pretty vague on purpose). I am not really surprised some users now are somehow suspicious.
@Tinkeringbell It's a valid answer because I don't care about guesses about my gender. it amuses me. The same way it amuses me that Amazon seems to think I'm a farmer.
Heh. Youtube seems to think I'm a small child fluent in multiple languages including Hindi, Russian, English and Czech (the last of which it's actually being correct about)
you know it doesn't, unless you write a whole essay and hit the jackpot of someone actually reading it. What we know is that they have a ML algorhitm tagging responses based on problem categories and demographic data. That result set will probably be used
I'm fairly certain "oi answer quality is a trash mate" lands in the same category as a well thought out post of 400 words about how duplicated questions encourage quick answers and that makes you sad
@JohnDvorak Hmm. It is however missing the point of a question asking for ethnicity/geographical location/culture... And it's kinda multi-interpretable... is it just meant to show discontent with how the question was asked, to show that you personally don't think this question matters, are you not wanting to disclose the answer? So it's probably not great survey feedback :/
@mag It's a chance to pour your heart out ... But yeah, from what I've seen from the SO dev survey results, they might just go by keywords?
@mag There's apparently still also a human involved from time to time... so it's up to you how much effort you want to put in, on the chance that yours will be read (perhaps, length does factor into what they send onwards ;) )
Random musing: the whole "who you are doesn't matter on the internet" seems to be one side of a spectrum for how people interact with the internet. Some people use the internet and its anonymity and cold, impersonal nature is great for them. Some people use the internet as a place to be themselves and to interact with other humans and be human in which case they expect to be treated as human not a faceless bot. I think that both sides are valid use cases.
