Tavern on the Meta

1:34 AM

@EKons - assuming you are you I think you are on twitter - its a linux joke. pwd = print working directory (passwd changes password). cd .. goes one level up.

Meta Andrew T.

3:26 AM

Mo

Journeyman Geek

Moo?

Sonic the Bracketed Hedgehog

3:38 AM

Barnyard Moo

►

Stormblessed

22

Q: Tip box for Story ID questions

Editing a question on Movies & TV.SE, which was tagged identify-this-movie (their equivalent of story-identification, I saw this awesome little reminder box pop up automatically, reminding OPs to include relevant information: It asks for language, country of origin, and approximate year of rel...

Journeyman Geek

4:07 AM

Some context would be useful

Meta Andrew T.

waffles

Journeyman Geek

@Shree hah, I recognise those addresses as being Singaporean

Shree

:)

iBug

4:53 AM

I read that SE has been short of money

What do you think about a "VIP" or "Premium" system (like US$7/mo for GitHub), offering useful but subtle privileges like increased length limit / history for "About Me" or more customizations (site appearance in particular)?

I was shocked upon first seeing Grammarly offering their premium service at US$30 a month, which even if reasonable, was unaffordable to an average user like me.

Journeyman Geek

@iBug this is incorrect

ALso

-10

Q: Are there any great reasons for or against having a paid for tier for the main SE sites, and what could that entail?

There's been a few suggestions from fellow users that we should consider having a paid tier on SE. Now, SE's fundamentally against being behind a paywall of any sort. I also remember someone suggesting it be a way to get around early user restrictions or even buying reputation. I personally don'...

discussion payment

Already asked because people keep suggesting it.

Its an unpopular option

iBug

My roommate just said he would buy some if SO offers any "VIP" just for its content being helpful, despite his having an inactive profile with a sum of less than 50 rep across the network.

Journeyman Geek

20

A: What changes have resulted from SE network sites becoming a source of income?

There's a lot of this I can't answer because I'd need to convey context surrounding departures from the company and that's, well, private. I also can't really speak about strategy when it comes to the business end of the company specifically enough to provide you a thorough answer to your questio...

ALSO official response to "SE is short of money"

It isn't

(or so they say. DUN DUN DUNNNNNN)

iBug

well, but this I saw

I think more that just Teams is failing. To be, this is decision is more than a red flag, and more of a burning inferno of a signal fire. 18 months ago there was a 20% reduction in staff. A few months before that, Documentation was sunsetted. And a few months before that, shut down Blog Overflow. Teams hasn't appeared to pull in enough revenue, and Careers is apparently not enough to maintain. — Web Head Jun 20 at 14:53

wait, why am I 10.5k? I thought I had 10.9k?

Journeyman Geek

@iBug Its worth considering a lot of this is "we don't want to spend resources on these things/its not working to plan"

rene

5:32 AM

@iBug serial down voters? You made a lot of users angry ;)

John Dvorak

User removed. Perhaps they skipped their Spanish lesson.

iBug

@rene but still safer than making the president angry ;P

rene

:D

Journeyman Geek

5:49 AM

@iBug Specifically - SE seems to be increasing technical headcount again, Documentation never worked as planned. Blogs are something SE never really 'got' and probably meant maintaining a separate set of servers for one thing

Careers... well, I'd be beating a dead horse. I've said what I've felt about it a lot of times

Meta Andrew T.

6:13 AM

A personal question: would you be happy if you get a job at SE?
From another PoV: what is the most happiest job role at SE?

Journeyman Geek

Ohh

That's hard

1) Yes

2) There's actually two things that interest me, but I've never felt good enough for one of them ;)

And I think all y'all know what one of those jobs is anyway. SRE seems fun too, but man, I'd need a year or two of actual real sysadmin work atop of what I know to feel confident in applying.

Meta Andrew T.

I'm saved(?) by your 2nd answer...

status-norepro

Journeyman Geek

@MetaAndrewT. how?

@MetaAndrewT. happiest is tricky

It depends on the person

SRE for example

they do seriously neat stuff, and apparently folks work really well together.

If you're a people person, or like wading into messes, CM's good.

I'm sure there's actually folks who'd be happier in the background stuff we never notice.

Meta Andrew T.

Yeah, I realized it can't be generalized as simple as that, because if your job is to become the frontline of the community...

Journeyman Geek

lol

@MetaAndrewT. and different people could do the job differently

and still be as effective

Megan Risdal

6:29 AM

@JourneymanGeek We're going to have two entire full complete PMs for public Q&A. Get hype

4

Journeyman Geek

@MeganRisdal less confused, and yay.

Megan Risdal

Very yay

Magisch

@MeganRisdal :o

I approve

Megan Risdal

Me too

Journeyman Geek

@MeganRisdal even if its probably one of the toughest jobs there is I suspect. you need to deal with.... US .... ;p

Magisch

6:31 AM

probably is. there are parrots and terriers involved

Meta Andrew T.

Good news must be optimistic

Megan Risdal

Hey, once I have a buddy/sounding board, we'll be invincible. ;)

Journeyman Geek

@MetaAndrewT. well, more in a broader sense?

Can't say I'm averse to seeing resources going the Q&A way.

... however that should be parsed.

@MeganRisdal that's typically useful.

Meta Andrew T.

Well, anything that can return the trust...

Magisch

@MeganRisdal you could call that PM team the Q and A, and alternate who is the Q and the A

punnery in project management

Megan Risdal

6:35 AM

Lol. I love it.

Journeyman Geek

ponders defenestrating @Magisch but has no idea how to pick up a cactus

EKons

@JourneymanGeek yes that's me, and I was referring to exactly that Linux joke :D

Journeyman Geek

ah ok

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@iBug legit but I'll quit SE the day it happens. It's a business and I respect that, but if they go this way, they'll go without me. And likely many other old time users.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard erf ;p

I PROBABLY need to apologise to someone for all the drama that question caused :/

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

6:43 AM

Nah I said that before that question.

Journeyman Geek

I was actually thinking of posting that as aibobot, but that felt like a copout

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard Its pretty much impossible short of basically SE getting bought over by, I donno. EA.

Meta Andrew T.

Well, if SE wants to be The Hyphen Site, then let it be... /s

Journeyman Geek

Its pretty much not in the company DNA. Actually to the point where I don't think anyone wants to mess with core Q&A

On one hand, it works pretty well as is

On the other hand, most changes are ... dramatic

Meta Andrew T.

Like... changing chat message dramatically...

Journeyman Geek

@MetaAndrewT. ooh, I'm slightly mixed on that

apparently they got burnt pretty badly the last time there was an SE store, and I'm not sure that's going to be a big revenue stream

Meta Andrew T.

6:47 AM

(I think I'll confuse someone who read from the transcript again...)

Journeyman Geek

My fault, I got confused ;p

(I'm a wee bit unwell the past few days, Cold med's knocked the edge off it, but I'm only really braining at maybe 70%)

Marshmallow

7:36 AM

You also assume even we know what the channel topic is about.... Honestly we just have been altering what was there from as far back as I can remember — Journeyman Geek ♦ 9 hours ago

Pfft. Yet another proof that you're unfitting.

I know what this place is about.

But I'm not gonna spoil the surprise.

@JourneymanGeek Except Nicael

Meta Andrew T.

@Marshmallow of course, crickets and waffles!

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@MetaAndrewT. excuses

Magisch

8:08 AM

shh

2

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

chu chu

agh

choo choo

Jul 21 '17 at 19:51, 5 seconds total – 11 messages, 9 users, 0 stars

Bookmarked Jul 21 '17 at 19:52 by Shadow Wizard

lol oops

!!/blame

SmokeDetector

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard It's Tim Stone's fault.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

meh

Magisch

@JourneymanGeek Side note of this, I don't think Tim has it in him to just out and out lie to the community, so I'm willing to take his clear and unambigous statements at face value

Mithrandir

!!/blame᠎ ‌᠎⁠⁠⁠᠎

SmokeDetector

8:17 AM

@Mithrandir It's Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard's fault.

Magisch

he strikes me as the kind of guy who'd quit before directly and blatantly lying

Journeyman Geek

@Magisch some people are going to have doubts told that the sky is blue

Mithrandir

@JourneymanGeek well it's not, it's actually violet. you just can't see it ;)

Magisch

it's important to leave the cat in the barn with the mistrust at some point. We can all gripe about how our priorities might not align with SE's and they're avoiding telling us that directly, but I don't know any SE staff member I've interacted with that would be actually dishonest

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@SmokeDetector correct

@Magisch Tim does not lie and always have good intentions. But when he says "Expect something awesome tomorrow/next week/at June 21!!1!!" then I learned that often it's just not true due to reasons not in his control. And what personally irritates me is that he never respond to "6 months later, any update?" comments. Ever.

Journeyman Geek

8:23 AM

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard well, honestly, I wouldn't either ;p

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

Too bad... so don't make false promises in the first place, and you won't have to ignore people who actually expected something to happen.

Journeyman Geek

Or a bad memory

Meta Andrew T.

cat in the barn? telkitty? or bjb?

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard which post was that?

I know I saw it...

Meta Andrew T.

@JourneymanGeek the product team something something?

certainly not the 3rd time Shadow mentioned about it and I replied to it and felt deja vu for the 4th time

Journeyman Geek

8:33 AM

@MetaAndrewT. I think it was 2 days back and I was wading neck deep in drama that day ;p

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@JourneymanGeek any post where he announce some non trivial change/update and gives a time range or date.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard ah yes

I feel some sympathy. We're supposed to be on a new helpdesk system and.. it has gone... poorly

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

Journeyman Geek

@KolappanNathan Yes, product updates will be moved to the blog. The next update could be as soon as the 21st and will be on the blog. — Tim Post ♦ Jun 19 at 12:57

"as soon as"

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@JourneymanGeek in the answer itself he use "as early as".

> You can use as early as to emphasize that a particular time or period is surprisingly early.

Journeyman Geek

8:40 AM

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard but could be later

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

afaik it does not mean "It can be on that date, or years later."

Journeyman Geek

Actuallyyyyyy

It could.

Or at least a 6-8 days.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

Well... so he should also mention "This answer is better be read by English experts only". ;)

Mithrandir

"as early as" is putting a lower bound on it.

Not an upper bound.

Journeyman Geek

Though....

There's no natural category for it

I mean, it could go under company, but ... ehhhhhhh

Meta Andrew T.

8:46 AM

@JourneymanGeek there seems to be a ~~subliminal message~~ riddle based on the orange-colored objects....

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

Rather nice icons

Home made

Rob

11:34 AM

@JourneymanGeek The Helpdesk (Contact Us link) always (including a couple of days ago) gives me an automated reply within a few minutes and then within an hour or two I get a second email saying that someone has reviewed my message and accepted it (and provides a Ticket Number). The slowest it's ever been is about three days.

Journeyman Geek

@Rob I don't work here ;p

I mean my actual day job helpdesk software

Rob

Ah, your Helpdesk.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@JourneymanGeek well... since you often talk about how you're in contact with SE staff, when you say "we" it's nearly impossible to guess if you refer to you and SE or not. :)

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard I'm very cautious about that, especially now

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

Especially since SE itself appear to have switched helpdesk software recently.

Journeyman Geek

11:39 AM

yup, zendesk to livedesk

Dayjob is trying to switch to a new jira build

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

o_O

Journeyman Geek

live or lime, I forget

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@Rob but did you always get an actual reply from human CM? I submitted about five tickets, all of them long ago... think that for one I didn't get any reply to this very day, and the fastest was a week.

Meta Andrew T.

I submitted once requesting a Duck hat on Winter Bash. No response :(

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

hehe well my requests were bit more.... realistic. :D

Journeyman Geek

11:43 AM

I don't keep track ;p

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

And you should have gotten the canned response "Ask that on Meta". @Meta ;)

Journeyman Geek

lol

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

hmm..... one of those wasn't "contact us" submission but rather a direct email to Pops who was a CM for a while and published his email in the profile. Is he still around in SE, somewhere?

Rob

12:12 PM

Haven't seen Pops around in a long time

Magisch

@Rob I think he left the company with the 20% ROF back last year

Yup, he did

:/

it's g3rv4!

indeed!

12:25 PM

what!

g3rv4

not sure!

Journeyman Geek

POSSIBLY MAYBE FOR CERTAIN!

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@Magisch yeah, but some of those are still active as regular users.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard There's a lot about the RIF and people we don't know. And well - folks reacted very differently

and having had that happen to me

it is super awkward to discuss

So, I used to work for a VFX company that's not that famous. They merged with an indian company and lost their local subsidies due to changes in government policy. So... they RIFed hugely. And well, even when its a no-fault of yours situation, you're constantly second guessing yourself, and wondering if you messed up.

(They replaced us with 6 or so new sites in india. Which is a huge market for them and it probably made a ton of business sense).

But doing something like this is hard for everyone involved. My old boss was hung over when he gave me the bad news. My entire office was drunk for a week before the layoffs started...

So you're unlikely to know the full story :/

nor would you want to ask

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

12:43 PM

Sounds like obvious "It's not your fault", so really no need for any second guessing.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard you still do it when you're one of the early batch cause you didn't work there that long.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

Can see the reasoning for being angry with the company though, which prefer making money over keeping you.

Journeyman Geek

tbh? If My old boss went "Hey, we need a guy", I'd work for him in a heatbeat

and I have fond memories of that job

and I do suspect, the terribleness of the situation aside, SO has a ton of brand recognition.

g3rv4

it still hurts

Journeyman Geek

@g3rv4 like a punch to the gut

Magisch

12:46 PM

my coworkers view so as a type of "enjoy from afar" kind of thing

useful when you need to find stuff, not in consideration for actually asking or answering

Journeyman Geek

But who'd I be mad at? The company that did actually lie to us (and told us there would be no job losses), the government which changed changed its policies and resulted in the RIFs, or ....

I do know its hard to talk about, and I'm sure there's also survivor's guilt

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@JourneymanGeek you mean "Why me and not the others" for those who "survived" the layoff?

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard yup

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

hmm

Journeyman Geek

Actually in our case it was pretty obvious - they basically just dumped anyone local and wasn't a transient artist

(a lot of VFX artists bounce between company and countries on projects.)

But that wasn't obvious at first.

and I was someone inside the company (and IT, and on hindsite there were a ton of warning signs) and I didn't quite see it coming

So folks like us speculating about the stuff that happened ... last year on SE is probably a bit.. uhm

awkward for a lot of folks whose fault it certainly wasn't.

(and heh, I didn't even check how my old company was doing until this year, and I've been 3 jobs and 2-3 years since)

rene

2:46 PM

does this need extra care: meta.stackexchange.com/q/330030/158100 it needs one delete vote but I'm unsure what Robert redacted. Maybe it is spam and needs a spam flag instead?

Journeyman Geek

@rene no way to check what was so just....

rene

okay

Meta Andrew T.

what web animation...

Journeyman Geek

There is no web animation, only zuuuuuuul

Rob

3:13 PM

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard The first reply is automated, the second reply is form letter (someone read the contact link info and clicked a button to personally reply). At least that's how it appears. Depending on the reason for writing there probably are different directions that you mail is directed and differing times for a response.

Magisch

4:12 PM

even the spider in the plant is enjoying the AC here

Rob

5:03 PM

@Magisch Air Conditioning is the best:

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Even my mom wasn't sitting outside when I came home today. That means it really is too hot XD

I was the popular girl at work today. We had a day full of meetings/planning stuff and they gave us the hallway of the building, which is basically one big greenhouse. I brought my fan :P

Though I guess I may have been beaten at the end by the manager that let us go two hours early, and just sent us home with 'just put 8 hours on the meeting code today'

John Dvorak

Isn't that Marv from Home Alone?

Kevin B

5:36 PM

probably

rene

@Tinkeringbell Tropen rooster ...

Tinkeringbell

@rene Well, to the person that romanticized tropical nights: I hate you.

rene

LOL

Sonic the Bracketed Hedgehog

5:59 PM

@rene It was a Wix link.

Tinkeringbell

7:51 PM

It's so hot, my chocolate pulls apart, instead of breaks :/

rene

A bit of wind cools it down here a bit

Tinkeringbell

It's windless here right now. We had a nice breeze during dinner though.

ArtOfCode

We only had 24-25 degrees today... warm, but not terrible

rene

I'm a bit surprised to find a user that claims to be q-banned on MSE. I considered that to be rare.

EKons

@ArtOfCode because that's the UK, here in Greece we're suffering :(

Tinkeringbell

8:03 PM

@rene rarer than you think ;)

rene

:D

Sonic the Bracketed Hedgehog

8:22 PM

I practically never see people Q-banned here on MSE.

Mithrandir

Of course not. If they're Q-banned, they can't post.

Catija

They can answer!

Mgetz

Dumpster fire in waiting

-1

Q: Would StackExchange consider moving away from Google services?

I've been following Google, and their growing pattern of content censorship and manipulation, for a while now. The recent expose by Project Veritas (more to the point, Youtube's/Google's decision to remove the video from their platform) has convinced me to hard-block all sites related to Google, ...

feature-request google

Sonic the Bracketed Hedgehog

@Mgetz China, anyone?

Marshmallow

@SonictheBracketedHedgehog I'm not expecting SE to move to another image provider just because imgur is blocked in Iran.

Mgetz

8:35 PM

@JohnManko as long as companies are made up of people there will be politics, however the violation of terms of service by one particular organization that is not affiliated with stackexchange in any way shape or form does not provide reason to move. China blocking google... that's a much much bigger reason to consider alternatives. — Mgetz 1 min ago

pretty much, it's not a bad request but politics aren't the reason to move when the politics aren't related to SE

Sonic the Bracketed Hedgehog

@Marshmallow I know how that feels. I remember, when I participated in SE in 2013-14, Imgur was blocked at my school.

Mgetz

@Marshmallow yet another reason to not use images in posts particularly on SO

Sonic the Bracketed Hedgehog

@ArtOfCode I understand your decision to roll back the extra paragraph I added, but why also revert the tag change? As far as I can tell, there is no concrete feature request there ("will SE consider [x]" doesn't constitute one IMO).

Mgetz

also the whole MCVE issue

ArtOfCode

@SonictheBracketedHedgehog mostly because there's no easy way to roll back a revision that isn't the most recent. I'm not entirely sure it's a [discussion] question either, but either way on that one

Rob

11:35 PM

@JohnDvorak Are you thinking of the bag of cement scene?

Sonic the Bracketed Hedgehog

11:47 PM

delv-pls 2k+ NAA meta.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/65511

choo choo

Transcript for