Tavern on the Meta

12:00 AM

Feeds agrees.

1:03 AM

@Ro-ReinstateMonic-Alsop they are given the tiny morsel of "dark theme" and they jump for joy. It's almost a blessing that they don't know how good things once were.

Kids these days just play with TikTok and people whine about it being a national security threat (???).

Rob

Stormblessed, now it's a Review Fail.

Rob

1:44 AM

Don't worry so much, things could be worse.

Feeds

5:09 AM

What’s the worst bug you’ve ever dealt with?

Ben Popper on November 05, 2019

We’re back with another Stack Overflow podcast. This week our guest is Clive Thompson, journalist, programmer, and author of the book Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and Remaking of the World. He shares the secret to getting any developer to open up during an interview: ask them about the worst bug they’ve ever had to deal with.

The crew discusses Google’s declaration of Quantum Supremacy and tries to wrap their mind around qubits and superpositions. Ben mangles the pronunciation of ASP.net, Sara finds a name for her new pet snake, and Paul wonders how JFK would have pronoun …

mag

7:18 AM

morning

rene

@mag Morning!

!!/tea mag

SmokeDetector

@rene brews a cup of green tea for @mag

rene

!!/coffee

SmokeDetector

@rene brews a cup of Americano for @rene

Tinkeringbell

Morning!

Shadow The Princess Wizard

7:28 AM

Morning!!

waves through all the smoke

rene

→ 21 messages moved to Chimney

Shadow The Princess Wizard

lol

Tinkeringbell

8:05 AM

!!/coffee

SmokeDetector

@Tinkeringbell brews a cup of Cappuccino for @Tinkeringbell

user58

@ShadowThePrincessWizard if you can convince everyone to stop smoking....

!!/brownie

SmokeDetector

@user58 Brown!

Shadow The Princess Wizard

8:23 AM

@user58 actually I think most people here don't smoke anyway. Just a feeling... ;)

!!/cupcake

SmokeDetector

@ShadowThePrincessWizard No such command 'cupcake'.

Shadow The Princess Wizard

buh

aloisdg says Reinstate Monica

9:02 AM

My wild guess that Microsoft is a solid buyer of SE has just increased stackoverflow.blog/2019/11/04/…

Journeyman Geek

Actually they're a long time customer

aloisdg says Reinstate Monica

@JourneymanGeek I dont doubt that

Journeyman Geek

@aloisdgsaysReinstateMonica Actually they apparently literally bought a copy of the early SO codebase

Meta Andrew T.

wasn't it SE Enterprise?

Hitodama

@ShadowThePrincessWizard .....

Shadow The Princess Wizard

9:17 AM

@aloisdgsaysReinstateMonica and that's good or bad?

@Hitodama well without SweetieBot I have to find alternatives...

in Shadow's Den, May 6 '15 at 7:14, by SweetieBot

~ One cupcake on its way for @Shadow Wizard ....

Hitodama

@canon thanks, I had missed that little gem in the dust. Upvoted.

Hitodama

9:31 AM

.... snarky question of the day....

Should we open a feature request for supporting Twitter as an OAuth login provider on the site?

rene

@Hitodama please support the snark posted in 2011: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/74551/…

Hitodama

@rene you know, since having a Twitter account is getting increasingly important to actually see news, provide feedback....

Meta Andrew T.

With an automated About Me filled from their Twitter's profile? Looks good~

Hitodama

maybe we could also somehow tie the site rep to the number of Twitter followers?

rene

I have no Twitter. My newspaper serves me well.

Meta Andrew T.

9:37 AM

not until we have Twitter.SE ... their rep only belongs to there

djsmiley2k - CoW

I have no newspaper. The news sucks anyway.

user58

@MetaAndrewT. Web Applications

Cerbrus

"theregister has been around since 1994 and they have ~100k followers on their twitter account. I wouldn't exactly call them unreliable." Then you must think Kanye West (29.3M) is a better source than the Encyclopedia Britannica (26K). Twitter follower count means nothing. — Cerbrus 1 min ago

Relevant to current discussion

xD

Meta Andrew T.

Doing counter-snark is hard...

djsmiley2k - CoW

@Cerbrus Who said that about the register?

They're a news site, you can't call them reliable or unreliable

Cerbrus

9:43 AM

Follow the link

djsmiley2k - CoW

the only way they'd be unreliable, is if they said they're reported on something they hadn't?

Cerbrus

Yea, you can call news sites unreliable

djsmiley2k - CoW

whoops, missed the link haha

my reading is unreliable

Shadow The Princess Wizard

Cerbrus

Fake news, fake numbers, having "Fox" as a name, being based in China...

Hitodama

9:44 AM

@Cerbrus Don't tell me you don't agree. We should leave moderation to >10k followers Twitter users.

Cerbrus

@Hitodama Good luck watsching the site burn :P

Hitodama

@Cerbrus aren't we already doing that lately?

Cerbrus

A little too much if you ask me

djsmiley2k - CoW

@Cerbrus but in this case nothing the register did/said is 'unreliable', it's simply biased towards the only source of infomation.

JAD

@Hitodama reminds me of this

I sympathize with the TPP protagonist because I, too, have progressed through a surprising number of stages of life despite spending entire days stuck against simple obstacles.

Cerbrus

9:48 AM

Some users seem to be putting too much effort into fueling the fire... It's getting annoying seeing certain usernames all over the place, which is turning unrelated discussions into SEpolitical discussions...

@djsmiley2k-CoW Semantics

djsmiley2k - CoW

@Cerbrus INTO THE SUN.

@Cerbrus .... that's a terrible argument.

Man, woman, child, unicorn.... pfft Semantics

mag

@Cerbrus The tire fire is still burning

djsmiley2k - CoW

Unreliable suggests false/incorrect/unproven infomation.

Cerbrus

... This guy called that site reliable because of the site's twitter follower count, when being accused of portraying only one side of the story

djsmiley2k - CoW

@mag And until SE/The Mods/Someone puts their foot down and starts punting people directly into the sun, it'll continue

s/punting/yeeting

Cerbrus

9:50 AM

That reliability statement is a terrible argument

One we don't have to take seriously

Hitodama

@JAD ..... this... makes sense.... Someone, quick, check if there is a "Twitch Plays Stack Overflow" live broadcast somewhere!

Cerbrus

We're not calling the site unreliable. We're disputing the "Twitter count === reliability"

JAD

@djsmiley2k-CoW but where does blindly copying single sources come in here?

is that doing your due dilligence as journalist?

mag

I'm calling the register unreliable

the job they did was shoddy at best

Hitodama

@Cerbrus sorry, I am just somehow annoyed that we (as in: the company) continue to use Twitter as the new news/announcements/polls channel

Meta Andrew T.

9:53 AM

As always, if there is an alternative Q&A site that as ~~strict~~ high-quality as SE, then let me know.

Cerbrus

@MetaAndrewT. There's one project where some people are attempting to build a SE clone, but better

... It's not gonna be successful, but whatever

Meta Andrew T.

aah, DevDoodle ...

Cerbrus

That name is new to me

Hitodama

@Cerbrus unless the next step in SE and Microsoft patnership is SharePoint integration, in which case " an alternative Q&A site that as strict high-quality as SE" will surely arise, if only because adding SharePoint will drop the quality to negative figures.

Cerbrus

That's some assumptions there...

And a massive load of speculation

Hitodama

10:00 AM

@Cerbrus no, just knowledge of the Beast. I am unlucky enough to be a SharePoint dev.

Cerbrus

You are making assumptions about integration and how that would work. If that would even ever happen

Which is pointless to discuss

Hitodama

@Cerbrus to be fair... I was making a joke. Sorry if that was unclear, I guess.

rene

@Cerbrus that comment is rude to Kanye West ;)

Cerbrus

Yea... Jokes don't work that well in chat

@rene Eff Kanye West

:D

rene

@Cerbrus correct

JAD

10:03 AM

@Hitodama I thought there already was a SharepointSE?

Hitodama

@JAD the joke was that they would try to integrate Stack Exchange in the SharePoint wiki site template

JAD

ah

Hitodama

which, if my memory serves, has a forum like structure and "Likes" instead of "Votes"

rene

And Meta can move to MSDN Forums. It will be awesome!

Hitodama

@rene at least it would solve the problem of link only answers that point to MSDN pages.

Also, think of the opportunities! The swag! ~~The kitties~~

Imagine the new prizes! Get 100k rep and win an MVP award!

Shadow The Princess Wizard

10:12 AM

@MetaAndrewT. Doodle Exchange

Hitodama

@ShadowThePrincessWizard a place to ask question about free hand circles?

Journeyman Geek

10:37 AM

@Cerbrus Unfortunately unless they seriously cross the line there isn't much we can do

mag

we didn't start the flamewar ~~~

it was always burning since the world's been turning

JAD

@JourneymanGeek at least not without causing even more uproar

Journeyman Geek

Well the fine line between passionate critique and being mean sometimes gets jumped

rene

Just call me passionate ...

mag

a passion flower

Meta Andrew T.

10:46 AM

a passion fruit

Shadow The Princess Wizard

10:56 AM

@Hitodama and about Doodles

Cerbrus

@JourneymanGeek Yea, I know... That's what makes it that annoying.

Tinkeringbell

@JourneymanGeek We need better lines ;)

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell Oh, you know roughly what I've been up to :D

Meta Andrew T.

... free-hand red lines!

2

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@Tinkeringbell line of people!

:P

Tinkeringbell

11:02 AM

@ShadowThePrincessWizard neh... even better ones :)

Hitodama

@Tinkeringbell here you go.

in Kirin Village Outskirts on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, Oct 18 at 10:46, by Derpy

'5 Lines You Need to Stand In’ Original Short MLP: Equestria Girls Season 2

►

Shadow The Princess Wizard

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowThePrincessWizard you stole that from @MetaAndrewT. .

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@Tinkeringbell no! All my lines are original art work. :D

Meta Andrew T.

@ShadowThePrincessWizard not enough lines... and better one...

Shadow The Princess Wizard

11:04 AM

@MetaAndrewT. one line is enough, crossing it makes you go to jail. :D

Tinkeringbell

Now we need a place to put that red, free hand line. Any thoughts?

Meta Andrew T.

Tour is always the best place to start!

Shadow The Princess Wizard

Tinkeringbell

That's a different free hand line.

I can see it.

Shadow The Princess Wizard

No it's the same

Tinkeringbell

11:10 AM

Hmmm. But where in the tour to put it!

Meta Andrew T.

which reminds me... that it's possible to add images on Tour & Help Center, but I don't think it has ever happened...

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@Tink ^

:D

Tinkeringbell

nah, that's fake too :P

Shadow The Princess Wizard

Rotated and stretched, but same line. ;)

Meta Andrew T.

Spoiler: apparently Tour & Help Center support full markdown, so it also support spoiler block...

Shadow The Princess Wizard

11:13 AM

If you rotate and stretch something, it'll still be the same thing. No? :D

@MetaAndrewT. lol

Bart

11:24 AM

@ShadowThePrincessWizard that's what I told Tink, and she still doesn't want to take part in my LHC experiment.

Shadow The Princess Wizard

11:37 AM

@Bart your LHC experiment might move some cheese around, e.g. place her beak in a different place. While same parrot, doubt it's comfortable to eat when your beak is on your back.... :D

mag

11:52 AM

can one of y'all mods do something about monica-gate

think this is the second time someone tried to create it

Shadow The Princess Wizard

Either blacklist the tag, or warn those who try to put it more than once.

Journeyman Geek

We can't blacklist the tag without a CM

rene

So? Are we short on CMs? Oh, right, we are ...

mag

status-gate-gate-gate

Shadow The Princess Wizard

status-red-gate-is-red

Cerbrus

12:03 PM

the-stuff-that-has-been-happening-recently

the-stuff-that-has-been-happening-recently-you-know-with-the-demodding-and-coc-and-stuff

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@rene nah, sure our dear @JNat can help blacklist a tag, if he'll agree to the reasoning.

Without network spammers around, he should have some time to spare. :P

JNat

Actually, I cannot blacklist tags. Only Shog and Jon can do that

Shadow The Princess Wizard

Whaaat

How's that??

JNat

There are some tools not all of us have access to

Cerbrus

Guess we'll have to employ JNat as a 24/7 tag watcher...

Shadow The Princess Wizard

12:05 PM

@JonE isn't pingable here... :(

JNat

@ShadowThePrincessWizard you don't need to ping either of 'em

I can relay the message

mag

@JNat I didn't think there were seperate CM permission levels

But it would be appreciated if you can get monica-gate blacklisted.

JNat

welp, not all of us know how to play around with regex, for instance ;)

in any case, we've been thinking we need to audit all of these tools, and figure out what we should all access, etc.

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@JNat cheers! So can you please ask them (nicely! ;)) to blacklist the monica-gate tag? Thanks!

JNat

will do

Shadow The Princess Wizard

12:07 PM

(better prevent users from using it than having to suspend them at some point)

Cerbrus

So, what about cellio-gate, monica-cellio-gate, monicacellio-gate?

Meta Andrew T.

kind of explains how Shog has access to many devs thingy :O

Cerbrus

I don't think the tag situation really requires a blacklist just yet...

Meta Andrew T.

blacklist *-gate :p

2

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@Cerbrus better kill it while it's young

Cerbrus

12:09 PM

Why? Two users added that tag in what amount of time?

Let's not blow things out of proportion here.

mag

status-in-chat-there-is-no-space-limit-to-how-long-your-tag-can-be-so-shenanigans-like-this-are-possible-to-write-out-for-giggles

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@Cerbrus I count on Shog/Jon to make the judgement call.

Cerbrus

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196442881097566593344612847564823378678316527120190914564856692346034861045432664821339360726024914127372458700660631558817488152092096282925409171536436789259036001133053054882046652138414695194151160943305727036575959195309218611738193261179310511854807446237996274956735188

Hah

That works

Shadow The Princess Wizard

Define "works"

:D

Meta Andrew T.

it breaks the website though :/

Cerbrus

12:11 PM

I was just about to say that, @MetaAndrewT. :P

Shadow The Princess Wizard

Ninja Andrew :D

Bart

@Cerbrus is that not what we've been doing for the last 2 months or so? :p

Hitodama

@mag 𝕴 𝔰𝔱𝔦𝔩𝔩 𝔥𝔞𝔳𝔢 𝔱𝔥𝔞𝔱 𝔟𝔲𝔱𝔱𝔬𝔫 𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔡𝔶 - 𝔭𝔩𝔢𝔞𝔰𝔢 𝔡𝔬𝔫'𝔱.

Tinkeringbell

@Cerbrus Hmm, pi :D

Meta Andrew T.

@Hitodama the ~~font~~ typeface is now wired to my brain that it's instantly readable... hmm, weird...

Journeyman Geek

12:27 PM

@Hitodama You monster

Tinkeringbell

@JourneymanGeek We should write you a script that automatically undoes such fonts ;)

Hitodama

@JourneymanGeek you prefer the five lines long tags?

Meta Andrew T.

well, at the very least, tags can be synonymized...

Hitodama

@Tinkeringbell or we should mix Fraktur and Zalgo.

Meta Andrew T.

@Hitodama You monster

Tinkeringbell

12:29 PM

@Hitodama And make a script that automatically undoes it? Sounds feasible :P

Hitodama

@JourneymanGeek seems we could actually do worse

Cerbrus

Good answer, @Tinkeringbell.

I've updated mine slightly to reduce the implication that all cards should be out in the open :-)

Tinkeringbell

Thank you :)

Hitodama

was just talking about that question in another room.

Been thinking about posting a reply. Probably won't do it

Shadow The Princess Wizard

Far away room

Hitodama

12:48 PM

@ShadowThePrincessWizard Listen to that song, and you will understand why the room is now called that way.

Zoe did :P

Meta Andrew T.

@Tinkeringbell well, I hope I didn't describe anything secret about TL

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@Hitodama if you'll make @Bart listen I promise to instantly listen too. :D

Meta Andrew T.

Because I''ve always been cautious not to say anything about this case, due to this precise matter of "the missing link"

Shadow The Princess Wizard

(But I do plan to listen at some point. Really! ;)) @Hit

Tinkeringbell

@MetaAndrewT. It's hard... Because every time anyone talks about the TL and what happened in there... it's another 'fact' on the pile of 'things stated about the TL' that people can put their own interpretations on. But I think these comments are good.

@MetaAndrewT. I think this is my first answer on the whole thing because of that too (or at least, it's a major reason I've been mostly silent)

Bart

12:51 PM

@ShadowThePrincessWizard to what?

Hitodama

@Bart you only have to claim to have listened to this and Shadow will be morally obliged to listen to it too... just saying...

Shadow The Princess Wizard

lol

watching @Bart scratching his head

Bart

@Hitodama listening right now

Hitodama

it is not that I am suggesting you should lie just so that Shadow will have to listen to it but... you know... we can't know if you really listened to it....

.... sorry, @ShadowThePrincessWizard. Guess you will have to endure that, now :P

Bart

At least now I know shiny apples sometimes come with worms.

Hitodama

12:55 PM

.... I guess you really listened to the song then.

@Shadow, you are next.

Bart

@Hitodama it won't make my playlist, but it's catchy.

Hitodama

@Bart basically, the story of Meta.

Shadow The Princess Wizard

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell And that even the folks there at the time are entirely unsure to what actually happened

Shadow The Princess Wizard

The what happened is clear... the why is not. No?

Tinkeringbell

1:03 PM

Yeah, that's probably a better way to phrase it... though even the 'what' is a bit fuzzy if you further than 'Monica got unexpectedly demodded'

JNat

@ShadowThePrincessWizard Shog and I agree this doesn't warrant blacklisting at this point

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@JNat thanks, fair enough. If it will escalate (e.g. users will use the tag many times) I'll update you.

Maybe it also warrants a meta post... hmm...

Cerbrus

No

Don't draw too much attention to it

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@Cerbrus those who would use it know it's possible already.

Cerbrus

Not everyone that would add that tag has thought of adding that tag

Shadow The Princess Wizard

1:06 PM

@Tinkeringbell the rest is non relevant history at this point anyway. :)

Cerbrus

Don't give people stupid ideas by discussing something that doesn't need to be discussed.

Journeyman Geek

Just custom flag if you see it

Then roll back

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@JourneymanGeek nah I'll just remove it.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowThePrincessWizard There's already a meta post discussing tagging things, and the user answered that already :)

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@Tinkeringbell oh, nice.

Tinkeringbell

1:07 PM

@ShadowThePrincessWizard meta.stackexchange.com/questions/337237/…, link if you're interested.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowThePrincessWizard Some folks may need extra demotivation 🤣

Tinkeringbell

@Cerbrus Too late :(

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@JourneymanGeek well if I'll see same user adding the tag repeatedly and/or having edit war over it, then yeah I'll flag.

Meta Andrew T.

@Cerbrus there's a comment mentioning the existence of the tag, should it be flagged as NLN?

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@MetaAndrewT. LAN is more fun

Meta Andrew T.

1:19 PM

Time to pull back before I lose control and go full on the meta drama~

Cerbrus

@MetaAndrewT. You sure? :P

Meta Andrew T.

Been there, done that...

terdon

1:41 PM

@ShadowThePrincessWizard Why blacklist the tag? Because it acts like a drama magnet? Isn't it useful to categorize all these posts together though? Also, people can choose to ignore the drama by ignoring the tag, right? So what benefit in blacklisting?

Meta Andrew T.

because we still try to focus on the behavior, not the user? we don't have muze or someone else either...

terdon

Hmm, true. On the other hand, the tag isn't about Monica per se, but about the situation triggered by how SE handled her. But would another tag like moderator-firing be OK?

I'm just thinking it might indeed be useful to organize these questions together

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@terdon not sure

terdon

Me neither. Just thinking out loud.

Shadow The Princess Wizard

I agree a single tag might be proper, but dunno which.

Think there are some good suggestions in the post @Tink linked to before...

terdon

1:46 PM

I think something like moderator-firing might work. We can then make all the Monica* ones synonyms.

Meta Andrew T.

exceptional-case ... nah, this is meta-tag...

terdon

@ShadowThePrincessWizard Oh, nice. I completely missed that.

Shadow The Princess Wizard

hehe

First we need to find a proper name for this whole crisis. One that pops to mind is "The Big Exodus of 2019", so exodus-2019 might fit. :) — Shadow The Princess Wizard Oct 31 at 11:19

The word "exodus" is pretty neutral, it describes the fact of mass leaving.

terdon

I've been using different names à la Big Bang Theory episode titles.

Hitodama

@terdon because that specific tag is somehow offensive and in a way it seems to be yet another mockery against Monica. If we really need a tag, make it something that doesn't seem to be taken from some random term a gossip newspaper made.

Tinkeringbell

1:51 PM

@Hitodama MonicaGate is also used to refer to this sometimes, and yes... that seems a bit too much to have as an undertone in such a tag.

terdon

OK, that's fair. I get annoyed at the overuse of -gate anyway. I thought you all were objecting to the general idea of having a single tag.

Here's some I've used in chat:

The Monica Insufficiency
The Monica Singularity
The Monica Meltdown

Not suggesting them as tags, of course :)

Tinkeringbell

I'd still avoid naming based on the idea of 'focus on behaviour, not users'

terdon

But I kinda like "The Monica Insufficiency". Like "We need moar Monica!"

Tinkeringbell

@terdon Yeah, if we can avoid 'gating' this, I'm happier too :)

terdon

@Tinkeringbell Sure, those aren't tags. But possible names for the Monica Event.

John Dvorak

1:53 PM

hypomonicasia?

Raedwald

Not everything in the current crisis is about Monica and her firing.

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@Tinkeringbell highly doubt it? It's about Watergate

Watergate scandal

The Watergate scandal was a major American political scandal, lasting 1972 through 1974, that issued from the apprehension and arrest of five men in process of burgling the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. on June 17, 1972, and the subsequent attempts by President Richard Nixon to cover up any involvement his administration had in such trespass. With the five arrested burglars examined, and a conspiracy discovered – chiefly through the work of a few journalists, Congressional staffers and an election-finance watchdog official...

> array of clandestine and often illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration

Meta Andrew T.

It's always Gatinggate!

Shadow The Princess Wizard

So I can see the point of comparing SE to "Nixon administration", in a way, but still... too much.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowThePrincessWizard From my link: The wide reporting of the scandal led to criticism of the press for over-coverage.[8][9][10] The scandal is sometimes referred to as "Monicagate",[11] "Lewinskygate",[12] "Tailgate",[13] "Sexgate",[14] and "Zippergate",[14] following the "-gate" construction that has been used since Watergate.

Raedwald

1:54 PM

The tag you proposed, "monica-gate", is a loaded term. It presupposes wrong doing. Although I and many others believe SE has done wrong, discussing the events should not presuppose that is so. And arguably not all of what SE has done was wrong. — Raedwald 44 mins ago

No -gate tag is good.

Tinkeringbell

@Raedwald That too... the question discussing a possible tag states "sometimes they are about licensing, legal issues, reinstating Monica, code of conduct, pronouns, etc."... good luck finding one tag that suits them all? :|

terdon

moderator-firing seems nice and neutral.

Shadow The Princess Wizard

@Tinkeringbell hmm... still, I prefer to have good faith in those who tried to use the tag on SE.

Hitodama

@Tinkeringbell friendship-problem

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowThePrincessWizard Oh, not saying that everyone is aware of that... but it's something to keep in mind too as to why this tag isn't very suitable...

Shadow The Princess Wizard

1:57 PM

@terdon but not enough to describe the magnitude of the events. The firing/demodding alone is small part of it.

terdon

@Tinkeringbell se-caster-flak?

Cerbrus

current-events Always relevant

terdon

cough meta tag cough

:P

Tinkeringbell

@terdon +1 but don't do that...

Shadow The Princess Wizard

lol

Meta Andrew T.

1:57 PM

when in doubt, waffles ...

terdon

@Tinkeringbell Oh good grief, no! Only a joke.

Shadow The Princess Wizard

!!/joke

SmokeDetector

@ShadowThePrincessWizard No such command 'joje'.

@ShadowThePrincessWizard No such command 'joke'.

Shadow The Princess Wizard

no fun

Tinkeringbell

@MetaAndrewT. Perhaps stroopwafels or pineapple-on-pizza then... they've been used as alternative topics throughout all of this ;)

@terdon Good :)

Hitodama

1:59 PM

@Tinkeringbell fun - as in here

Raedwald

A danger of tagging is that it can be used to frame the discussion.

Tinkeringbell

Yep, finding a neutral tag is going to be hardest. Have there been earlier posts about moderator demoddings and what tags did those use?

Raedwald

Framing: Was the current crisis started by firing Monica? Or is it just another stage of the Welcome Wagon? Or of SE's failure to address anti LGBT posts/comments?

Cerbrus

@Raedwald Yes, yes, and yes.

Hitodama

@Raedwald Do not tempt me to answer to that question again. Have done it multiple times already. Short version: IMHO, it is the second option you said - which is a consequence of option three - or the more general "failure to moderate rude content" fourth option that started FAR before many realize.

A floating head once said he doesn't get why people are surprised when rude content on chat gets moderated....

Rubiksmoose

2:09 PM

@Raedwald Very good point. I've seen multiple let's say ill-advised attempts to label this whole thing even in posts and they always get it wrong. Though, to be fair I don't think the attempts in the posts I've seen were an attempt to come to a neutral and fair label and largely had an axe to grind.

John Dvorak

Points a thumb at a huge pile of dull axes behind him

terdon

@Raedwald I think those are all aspects of it, but different people are angered by different sides. For example, I never had much of an issue with the welcome wagon, I really hate what they did with the licensing and I'm incensed about how they treated Monica.

I don't see much point in a global tag trying to collect all grievances against SE.

Tinkeringbell

Oooh! I think you've just found the tag though XD grievances :P

Raedwald

"There are no questions tagged grievances" Orwellian!

John Dvorak

I don't really care much about the relicencing. Yes, it's illegal. Yes, it demonstrates how little the company trusts its community or its team of lawyers, if they even have one. But whom does the license change actually harm?

terdon

2:17 PM

@JohnDvorak I worry that it is the first step towards moving to a restrictive non-copyleft license.

If they can arbitrarily change from one license to another, what's to stop them from changing to a full blown closed-source one?

John Dvorak

Then it'll be time for a class action lawsuit

terdon

The progression so far is pretty scary. 1) New rule to make users lose their right to take SE to court in a class action suit => 2) License unilaterally changed.

@JohnDvorak um...

John Dvorak

true

Tinkeringbell

@JohnDvorak I think Tim actually answered the licensing post to say that lawyers were involved with the decision?... Why would you still think the thing is illegal, is there that little trust left? :(

terdon

SE now tracking users and showing evil ads. Everything points to a road at the end of which is a full blown evil tech company that could easily claim to own all of my content.

John Dvorak

2:20 PM

I'm not convinced they actually convinced a team of lawyers, even knowing they said they did.

terdon

@Tinkeringbell Well, yes. Of course. There is no trust left at all. SE have basically broken every single promise they ever made. "We will never discuss private things in public" broken. "We will never show animated ads" broken.

Hitodama

> Who owns the rights?
If the publisher, then can relicense under 4.0 as specified above.
If the contributors, then need permission to relicense. Without permission (via terms of use or otherwise), then that content remains under prior version. [If this is the case, see the section below about dealing with mixed-version content.]

Took from here. This is the central source users seem to be pointing to.

terdon

And the legality is at the very least suspect. There are very valid concerns raised by many users, all of which have been ignored. SE claim their lawyers signed off on it but i) we have no way of knowing that is true and ii) corporate lawyers "signing off" doesn't mean "it's legal" it simply means "the risk of a lawsuit is low". So it could just be "we tricked them into opting out of their legal rights, so there's nothing they can do".

5

Meta Andrew T.

mixed-version content..? I wonder if a browser (extension) will show warning to this too...

Hitodama

To be more precise, it is not really like I care about the license change.

JAD

2:25 PM

It's not a hill many care enough about to die on. Doesn't mean they don't care at all

Hitodama

@JAD incomplete message, see next :P

terdon

It's the general principle this establishes that's scary: SE can blithely change the licence to whatever they like.

Cerbrus

So, what changed from 3.0 to 4.0 that makes the license incompatible?

John Dvorak

There would be more backlash if the license change was bigger than a version number

@Cerbrus It's a different version, therefore different license, therefore you need the license owner's permission to change it. C'est tout.

Cerbrus

...

terdon

2:27 PM

@Cerbrus That isn't relevant. The point is that you can't change the license without asking for permission from the copyright holder (users). And that's basically impossible. So either you stick with the old license or make mixed licence content or figure the impossible and get consent.

Cerbrus

Yea, mosquito, elephant...

Hitodama

As I was saying before, I don't care about the license by itself. But, as pretty usual, we are somehow being handwaved with a "nothing to see here" and if someone points out that something IS changed they are pointed out as nitpicking, toxic, meddling kids (Scooby would be proud). And that is the thing that thicks me off here.

2

terdon

IANAL, so no idea how. Perhaps you can send an email to all users with "if you don't reply in 5 days, we will take that as assent to changing the license"?

John Dvorak

@terdon I suspect that wouldn't be legal

And it doesn't even work for anonymous contributors

Rubiksmoose

@JohnDvorak And would inevitably be stopped by a single troll and/or user with legit concerns.

John Dvorak

2:30 PM

Not even sure SE can glean my email from my Google login

Maybe "if you disagree with the license change, click this link and we'll dissociate all your contributions from you and relicence them anyways."

terdon

Dunno. But it does look like relicensing without consent breaks the license.

Cerbrus

@JohnDvorak You can check that with a GDPR request

John Dvorak

CBB

Meta Andrew T.

@JohnDvorak the only anonymous contributor is anonymous editor... posting as a guest still needs email address though

John Dvorak

Edits are still contributions

terdon

2:33 PM

@MetaAndrewT. It does?

John Dvorak

Also I think that's only true for SO proper

Meta Andrew T.

on Anime.SE (and other SE that allows guest posting)

terdon

Huh, yes. Although presumably you can just give one@two.com or whatever and get around that.

Cerbrus

It's probably safe to assume you've already entered your email address elsewhere, any way.

terdon

No, actually. SE is one of the very few places that I trusted enough to use one of my main emails.

I really which I hadn't now.

Cerbrus

2:39 PM

"elsewhere" as in on SE, aside from using google to login

terdon

Ah

Cerbrus

I generally use my gmail account for everything that isn't official business (like insurances / government).

Gmail has a pretty darn good spam filter :D

Mad Scientist

@Cerbrus It's been pretty terrible for me very recently, lots of valid emails that Google classified as spam

Cerbrus

I'll have a quick look at my spam folder

I had no idea I had familiy in Nigeria o.O

Bart

@Cerbrus Royalty even?

Cerbrus

2:46 PM

You know it

Rubiksmoose

@Glorfindel thanks for finding that dupe of my question. I swear I looked for a significant amount of time trying to find it.

Hitodama

3:22 PM

... Does this make sense to anyone? Or it is just free snake oil?

John Dvorak

I can't see how changing the CC version would possibly achieve that

Hitodama

@JohnDvorak only way I could see is that if the change is invalid, then the content would still be 3.0, in which case re-posting it claiming it was licensed as 4.0 would be invalid to. But in that case, SE is in a bad spot even before someone thinks to move the content elsewhere.

but... that doesn't seem to be what the writing there implies, so I think that the comment is indeed wrong on that point

John Dvorak

And even then, "I license this repost under CC4" - "Ha, we tricked you! We actually licence it as CC3!" "Well then, I licence this repost under CC3, and I'll warn everyone that your licencing ancilla is BS"

Hitodama

@JohnDvorak exactly

John Dvorak

... and if SE decided to sue for invalid reposting because of version mismatch - and it didn't get swept off the table immediately, or rejected because the poster was acting in good faith - the poster could then countersue for deception

Hitodama

3:31 PM

yep, I don't know why that comment was made.

Bart

3:56 PM

@Hitodama afaik that is plain nonsense.

Hitodama

@Bart As I said, that was my first assumption too.

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