Tavern on the Meta - 2019-07-25 (page 1 of 4)

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1:24 AM

@GeorgeStocker The featuring tag shouldn't be removed just because the company has been briefed on the issue, featuring a tag is so that the community is made aware of something. We already expect the company to be responsible for having someone or a team review feature requests and discussions and bugs and inform the applicable members of the company as needed irrespective of if the post is featured: that's one of the purposes of Meta. The featured tag isn't for the company's awareness, it's for that of the community. — Davy M 9 hours ago

The accepted answer to that question is hilarious.

It boils down to "If you want us to stop doing this, make it illegal!"

-3

A: We’re removing “Hot Meta Posts” from Stack Overflow's sidebar for now; moderators now fully control [featured]

I’d like to add some context to the “why” we are doing it. Tim, kindly, wanted to shield me from ire, however, in taking this job I signed up for this. I'd like to come here, own my decision, and deliver this feedback. Stack Overflow Employees have panic attacks and nightmares when they know th...

oh. my. god.

So met me get this straight... This change was made to shield new staff from having to suffer through being criticized when they do something harmful to the community? That is the reason?

4

I also resent how she uses "panic attacks" so lightly. It's not a synonym to "having a bad time".

"This post has been locked due to the high amount of off-topic comments generated. ^W^W^Wcriticism it exposes staff to, which makes them sad."

I mean... this is the kind of thing even a person as cynical as me couldn't come up with.

But now we hear it straight from the horse's mouth. It's almost like a parody.

I really hope this whole tension between staff and community is short-lived. :/

1 hour later…

2:54 AM

Why do people even make posts like that...?

Why does /b/ exist...?

touché

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

@JNat Cross-site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/16383157/owuzoh-dorcas

3:16 AM

Hm, I'm no longer seeing my per-site rep next to my profile image on the top bar.

Is this a known issue or is it just happening to me?

@forest None of the comments were removed... they were just moved to chat

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

Feature request: make old comment links redirect to the respective chat messages if comments get moved to chat

@Rob Yeah I know. I was referring to the locked post notice.

Not sure I follow, then

@forest No, forest. Having people accuse you of fraud for merely answering a question explaining a bug and that it's been fixed because you don't have a diamond or note on your profile that you work here... or having the discussion on your post be about your use of emoji instead of the content of the post...

3:23 AM

So the solution is to add a staff icon in the profile so you don't have to use the API.

But that's not what the answer said. It didn't mention friction caused by people not knowing that you're a diamond mod and assuming you're just a random person.

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

A great start would be to, you know, let users know the internal process behind the consideration of requests. There might be a lot of internal discussion going on around a particular request, but to a user it looks like nothing is happening and their request is just ignored.

That would be a good start indeed.

But the more important thing I think is for staff to listen to feedback.

Journeyman Geek

@forest Yanno? Seeing how some folks treat others?

I'm not surprised.

Well if someone is making a personal attack or threat in a comment, flag it.

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

For instance, if I knew that my question was indeed considered and was triaged as low-priority, I'd be slightly bummed, but still feel significantly better than if I didn't know anything.

3:27 AM

Or staffs getting death threat...

Has there ever been a credible death threat to any member of SE?

Journeyman Geek

@forest do we need to wait till there is?

Cause some people are just mean. They lash out a lot more than any sane person would. They fixate.

That comment is utterly void of informational or actionable content.

Journeyman Geek

You don't need to be a staff member for that to even happen.

Why not give staff bulletproof vests? Do we really need to wait until they get shot at?

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

3:28 AM

Okay, let me ask another question. Let's say that there is a lot of negativity being thrown around (to skip past people saying "there is no negativity, etc."). Just how exactly will eliminating Hot Meta Posts reduce said negativity?

Was there an A/B test conducted?

Journeyman Geek

@SonictheAnonymousWizHog it means someone actually decides what's hot

@SonictheAnonymousWizHog It won't. The locked answer admits that the purpose is to shield staff so they don't see the negativity, because it's upsetting to them. Not because it reduces it.

Journeyman Geek

as opposed to it being random and arbitrary

You can talk to people

You can go "Hey, geek, so... uhm, that post shouldn't be hot... "

and I could go "Um, no." or "you're right, I'll see what I can do"

@JourneymanGeek That's an ad hoc rationalization that is at odds with the official reasoning.

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

But I don't understand how it will reduce negativity. So, as far as I understand, it will reduce negativity by not auto-featuring controversial staff posts? I thought the Hot tab algorithm (which is what is used by Hot Meta Posts) excludes those?

Journeyman Geek

3:30 AM

@SonictheAnonymousWizHog unless a mod chooses to.

that's a critical thing

15

A: Cannot send a message to moderator

A mod has to respond because so many contacted by a moderator continuously reply with something like this: Eat my big, orange traffic cone, or I will continue to bang my head on your bridges. It also (unfortunately) sometimes looks like this: I will kill your whole f**king family you n...

Journeyman Geek

I mean, right now, it feels like it has a bit of the opposite effect

Will mods be forced to not mark controversial posts as featured? I saw some mods stepping on each other recently because one mod made a question critical of staff a featured question.

Journeyman Geek

@forest nope

I hope you're right.

Journeyman Geek

3:31 AM

For most part, the most intervention I've gotten is people talking to me about stuff

and CMs talking to mods directly's positive

@forest mods have their own private per-site chat room, they can handle themselves

Journeyman Geek

SPEAKING OF WHICH...

I need to go warn folks about stuff before I bring it up on meta.

ominous thoooom

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

The only kind of negative I should see is the one that is developed.

Journeyman Geek

@SonictheAnonymousWizHog eh, there's a lot of work to be done, or maybe redone towards that.

That's all I see as well.

Modulo a few trolls who quickly get slapped down.

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

3:34 AM

A lot of chemical work, for sure.

Journeyman Geek

@forest trolls getting smacked is positive

I agree.

I just meant to distinguish between negativity from people saying "staff are ignoring us and stabbing us in the back because X", and "u staff r dum go eat a dik lolol".

But well, SO (and its MSO) is already so big, that even the community can't have fun community-driven events/trivia without getting downvote

@forest They're two examples of many. The people I work with are genuinely hesitant and often unwilling to go to meta and, often when they do, they get slapped around for their troubles. It's tiresome and just leaves people uninterested in it at all.

Journeyman Geek

To quote G'kar, the warrior philospher of Narn

> By G'Quan, I can't recall the last time I was in a fight like that! No moral ambiguity, no hopeless battle against ancient and overwhelming forces! They were the bad guys, as you say, and we were the good guys. And they made a very satisfying thump when they hit the floor.

@MetaAndrewT. Well - its worse on MSO than some other places.

3:35 AM

@Catija For their troubles, or for doing things that harm the community and which were done with absolutely no feedback from the people who are affected?

Journeyman Geek

@forest oh... k....

Maybe staff should back up and consider that they are causing the negativity by ignoring users.

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

Would things be better if MSO were structured as it was prior to the big meta split?

For just posting answers to bug reports or stupid rote crap. Nothing that harms anyone.

Journeyman Geek

@forest honestly, I'm not happy with that line of reasoning.

@SonictheAnonymousWizHog eh, no

So, the problem with MSO as it was was...

it was a prototype

3:36 AM

@JourneymanGeek It's a line of reasoning which is the dominant view on MSE and MSO right now. This is what's called a "vicious cycle". Staff do something bad -> users complain -> staff ignore users -> goto 1.

Journeyman Geek

no one had any idea what they were doing.

@forest I don't agree its dominant

and you keep accusing folks of dishonesty and harming the community all the time

@forest it also makes it harder for folks to break the cycle

@JourneymanGeek Again, I am not accusing anyone of lying. You thought previously that "hypocrite" was a synonym to "lying", which is insane. Pointing out something bad != accusing someone of lying.

Journeyman Geek

@forest It might do you well to read back what you say then, and consider how people see it.

@JourneymanGeek I can honestly say that I've never once considered that anyone would think hypocritical meant, or even implied, lying. And yes, I am a native English speaker.

Journeyman Geek

@SonictheAnonymousWizHog I hear a lot of folks say "MSE would be better if it acted like a per site meta"

@forest that's your failure in understanding, not mine ;)

3:39 AM

@JourneymanGeek Would you like me to ask on English.SE?

Well, IMHO? Force comment-lock on all meta posts by staffs so they don't get hundred of pings from notification and force them to read...

I'm pretty sure that you are misunderstanding the meaning of the English word.

Journeyman Geek

@MetaAndrewT. that would cause drama too

@MetaAndrewT. Why not just give them the option to disable pings?

Journeyman Geek

see the reaction people had when comments were turned off on the blog

which for a significant amount of time was pretty much... useless...

3:41 AM

Ugh why does the chat tell you when you have 10 seconds left for editing?

Alright, then force collapse all comments on meta, even for highest voted one...

It's like a GPS saying "merge to exit lane in 12 feet".

Journeyman Geek

@MetaAndrewT. If there was an easy solution...

not to mention, quite a lot of this was small problems snowballing over time

there will never be an easy fix

and there's going to be a lot of people going "but if..."

The easy solution is to listen to the users, and to spend time on the site.

Journeyman Geek

but frankly, if folks are actually willing to invest the resources into rebuilding trust, we'll end up better. Or irrelevant and even more confused over what we are than before ;p

3:43 AM

I mean, you and Catija actually use the site, so you both have some experience with it.

Journeyman Geek

@forest which comes down to investing resources

Yes, staff do need to invest some resources in making the site better.

Journeyman Geek

So, one of the few things I try very hard to avoid talking about is, well, community management

I have a lot of folks who I like who work here - and they're a good lot

They're good, but they're misguided (note: misguided is not a synonym for lying or dishonesty).

Journeyman Geek

but they basically shrunk the team roughly as far as they could (and I'm a little confused over how Joel let that happen...)

3:45 AM

What they think is beneficial might not be, and when they refuse to listen to the community, it gets worse. That is what starts the vicious cycle. The only way to break out is to listen.

Journeyman Geek

And honestly - some of the things they did before made a lot of sense - just that they expected them to scale too much

Even small things to restore trust. Example: "We've heard that you all really hate the new requirements for site design, so we've decided to restore the previous designs."

Journeyman Geek

You can make software clean and efficent, but at some point, you can't make people so.

@forest How small the things that the community need to restore the trust?

Journeyman Geek

@MetaAndrewT. lets say you had unlimited resources...

you'd have dedicated CMs per clusters of sites (SE used to do that)

3:46 AM

Or perhaps "We've noticed that you all really dislike the new ad policy. We'd like feedback on how we can do this better." That would give a huge boost in trust.

Journeyman Geek

So, one of the things that works really well for me, as a SU mod is, well, people know me.

(and rotate whichever person gets SO ever 6 months or so. MSO's likely going to be high stress, least until things get better)

But they don't so, well, there's always politics.

@forest You wouldn't be able to do that elsewhere

say with the issue with offsite avatars...

Never mind...

Meta is hard. Let's go shopping...

@JourneymanGeek But you can at least start. When every suggestion is either ignored, or replied with "that's too complex for us to do", people begin to be suspicious.

Journeyman Geek

with openid, there was 1. a technical reason (and a massive technical debt reduction) 2. a fairly clean upgrade path 2. no actual content to sync.

with avatars, we currently have 3 providers people want gone.

I use gravatar at the moment - in theory I can swap avas quickly using that and keep old ones. A replacement would lose that ability. You'd need to sync avatars over (which would be a massive one time thing). You have copyright (does SE have the right to actually sync avas?)

@forest and elsewhere you wouldn't even be able to do it....

We're still dealing with a company (who have their own priorities) and people (who can be influenced, and are made of meat)

I can't directly influence the company

I'm not on Joel's twitter follower list.

I can influence people, and the best way to do that is to well, have them feel you're not the enemy.

@JourneymanGeek Sure, but there has to be somewhere you can start.

Journeyman Geek

3:54 AM

@forest sure - by convincing folks its in their best interest.

Uh oh, stalemate in 1 move...

Journeyman Geek

"Ads are evil" vs "These specific ads are tracking us - are you sure you can trust the provider?"

"Intrusive ads are evil"

Journeyman Geek

@MetaAndrewT. meta. sometimes the only way to win is not to play?

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

@forest Actually, they did respond sort of like that to site designs. "We know you don't like the new requirements for site designs, so we've implemented much of your feedback to try to come up with an acceptable compromise between maintainability and design."

3:56 AM

SE users never had a problem with ads, but animated and intrusive ones.

Journeyman Geek

@forest so bring those up specifically.

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

For instance, they were previously planning to unify error images across the network. Thanks to my feedback, that didn't happen.

@JourneymanGeek People have, and they were shot down.

They were told "no, we're doing it this way".

Journeyman Geek

@forest I distinctly recall they mentioning talking to ad providers about some, and doing some technical changes

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

Keep in mind, also, that the SE team has emphasized that the advertisement thing is a test

Journeyman Geek

3:58 AM

hm

70

A: Are animated ads on SO questions accepted?

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I work on the advertising team here at Stack Overflow. We have paused the animated placement on Stack Overflow for this campaign. We have also notified the advertiser that they need to update their creative to a static image before we resume this placeme...

July 15th on SO

Oh nice!

That supersedes a previous post that did change the policy.

Journeyman Geek

426

A: Why is Stack Overflow trying to start audio?

Update: 2019-06-27 We’ve been working on a lot behind the scenes and wanted to give an update here. On Stack Overflow specifically the ads are delivered directly through us or relayed through specific 3rd party providers. The latter is where the fingerprint issue lies. We are trying to address ...

Yeah I remember that one. That was an AudioContext fingerprinting issue.

Journeyman Geek

Granted, its MSO

and I'm not sure how much direct influence it will have on the experiments elsewhere

but this dosen't sound like "nope, we're doing it our way"

And that's an elegant question

It mentions the specific ad. It includes enough information for folks to investigate.

That example was a clear violation though. I had no (or few) doubts that SE wouldn't respond.

Journeyman Geek

4:04 AM

uhm

Even Google disallows that kind of thing (AudioContext fingerprinting), IIRC.

Journeyman Geek

@forest and that's kinda effective.

as opposed to being super general

unrelatedly...

user image

Did someone retract their vote, by chance?

I didn't. Odd.

Btw, how can images be inlined in chat next to each other? Is it possible?

Or do they have to be on their own line?

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

I find it not constructive that not a real close vote would show up there.

4:14 AM

One onebox per message, afaik

You could just make an image which had the two images side by side, though

Well yeah but I'm lazy and graphicsmagick has a stupid command line interface.

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

(Yes, I felt like "not a real question" was more relevant to the question than "too broad", and so I cast a symbolic vote knowing that very likely I'd end up overridden.)

@JourneymanGeek That was me, sorry.

-1

Q: Possible to vote to close for old, decommissioned close reasons (with proof of concept)

tl;dr install this user script, and it becomes possible to vote to close for old close reasons such as "not constructive" and "too localized". After doing some twiddling with Stack Exchange JavaScript, I discovered it's possible to vote to close for old, now-decommissioned close reasons such a...

bug vote-to-close close-reasons security

Journeyman Geek

@SonictheAnonymousWizHog I did tell you not to do that IIRC

Dishonour on your cow.

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

@JourneymanGeek Okay, I'll uninstall the script right now.

Journeyman Geek

So, here's the thing. Since it was 3 closevotes, I was more comfortable with using my closevote - since I didn't really want to closehammer it solo.

if it was 2, I might not have :/

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

4:27 AM

Sorry, I figured I could get by this time since I'd probably be overridden by others voting as "too broad".

Journeyman Geek

You know it works. You got asked not to do it.

:/

That is what we call in my profession "client-side security checks". And it is a bad thing.

As in totally useless. If you don't want that to happen, fix the bug.

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

@JourneymanGeek Well, technically you did also argue it's not worth plugging the hole...but as you wish; I've uninstalled the script.

Journeyman Geek

@SonictheAnonymousWizHog uhm, who knows better my intent?

Google does.

Journeyman Geek

4:33 AM

@forest well, considering everything else that needs fixing, and that its mostly harmless, I just felt my favourite tool of moderation's enough. Strongly suggesting people don't do that.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes people get eaten by raptors

Seems more like a power trip than legitimate prohibition of harmful actions.

Journeyman Geek

@forest well - a power trip would be suspending him for that, or even actually scolding him.

Unless you're saying I'm abusing my power of sad puppy eyes.

That would just be a bigger trip.

Well generally a mod telling you not to do something means that they will punish you with moderator tools if you continue doing it, so it's something which should typically be reserved for harmful activities (spam, harassment, that kind of thing), not selecting an old close reason.

Journeyman Geek

@forest actually...

that has never been how I've worked

and most folks know that

Really? If he continued doing that, you wouldn't suspend him?

Journeyman Geek

4:36 AM

Nope

...but you'd suspend me because you thought the word "hypocrite" meant "liar"? O_o

I guess I'm just the exception to how it works. Welp.

Journeyman Geek

No, I'd suspend because asking nicely dosen't work sometimes.

That's what I was saying. If asking nicely doesn't work, you take out the banhammer.

That's what a moderator "request" typically implies.

Journeyman Geek

Actually - threatening people isn't how we ever moderate

Quite honestly, the worst things I can do to folks do not involve mod tools

Oh?

Journeyman Geek

4:39 AM

I'll just stare at you with sad eyes until you feel bad about yourself of course.

I mean... that's true in a literal sense. You could hire a hitman. :P

"There's this one spammer... We need you to fix the problem. 5 grand?"

Journeyman Geek

More seriously - "moderator tools" involve positional power

the problem with that is you can lose that.

and its only in specific domains.

its dumb to purely rely on that - unless its a problem that needs immediate action.

Right. Like misunderstanding the English language. :^)

Journeyman Geek

Even then, real power's in convincing people to do the right thing, and that involves trust

And of course good intent on the other side.

Consider "Language!"

its not a threat to kick. Its a reminder - and something we do cause people flag stuff much after the fact, sans context.

People trust/understand the intent, and from being something I did, everyone does it.

Well, it is a threat to kick in that you will kick if not obeyed.

Journeyman Geek

4:43 AM

nope

However you define "threat".

Journeyman Geek

Its a defence mechanism

People have "Language!"d me.

So if I say "fu*k that", and you say "Language!", and I reply later with that same word.

You wouldn't utilize moderator powers to kick me?

Journeyman Geek

Sure

but that's cause you're being disruptive

Must be a new policy.

I fail to see how a single word is disruptive.

I mean yeah if I spam it in the form of ASCII art...

Journeyman Geek

4:44 AM

The typical response is to help the user delete it

@forest see - assuming its hostile is why stuff goes wrong

But that'd apply to any word. Or if I was using it as an insult, but then "go fuck yourself" and "go screw yourself" would be equivalent. Both would be harassment.

I don't think we should be kicking people for their choice of words

Journeyman Geek

@forest but people have an understanding about why we do it

so there's no need to kick

no implicit threat.

I've been kicked before for using the term "jerk" to refer to a harmful action.

And again for the term "hell" (or something similar).

Journeyman Geek

@forest well, there's also the overall impression you have on folks.

4:47 AM

Oh this was before any of that.

And to be fair, I'm a lot more chill than I was in my older troll days. >_>

Journeyman Geek

Also consider how the flagging system works or dosen't work

Objection, prejucide

Journeyman Geek

I like the policy of what happens in vegas stays in vegas

we hash stuff up, sweep up the broken bottles, and make sure we have things sorted out.

but on occation, well

you do need outside help

or a rediculous amount of organisation.

@JourneymanGeek Yeah I'm only considering times I was manually suspended.

Now that I understand how the flag system can be used for comments out of context.

@JourneymanGeek That policy can easily be abused: "I've been suspended for 10 years on <site> for nonsense reason" - "then wait it out and then ask there"

Journeyman Geek

4:49 AM

@JohnDvorak oh as far as chat goes...

It's even more easy to abuse when you can't appeal your suspensions.

And the suspension was due to a misunderstanding.

Journeyman Geek

in a sense, if I have a problem with something someone says - I'd try to let them know

@forest so - behind the scenes, we actually do discuss suspensions and sometimes whether something is too harsh

Still, waiting out a 24-hour suspension just to find out in hindsight it was unwarranted is ... suboptimal.

Then you can either 1) wait it out despite knowing you're innocent, or 2) risk going "out of band" and getting suspended elsewhere or for longer.

You can respond to the moderator message that comes with a suspension. Or, you can contact SE directly

Neither of those will earn you a further suspension, assuming your response is not mere abuse

4:51 AM

@Rob Doesn't happen for chat suspensions.

And in my experience, SE will actually ignore you until the suspension is ended.

> Or, you can contact SE directly

And only reply after that, even if it's weeks later.

@forest "I've been suspended for 1 year by <mod> because I'm <group>" "and here's 9 extra for telling us that"

@Rob Yep, tried that. Got the most "screw you" response you could imagine.

Well then, you appealed and the person who reviewed it agreed with the suspension

Or, do you want to be able to continually appeal until you get your way?

4:52 AM

No, they didn't even respond or review it until I was unsuspended.

If they actually responded in 24 hours as they claimed they would, I'd be fine.

But it's a dick move to respond with any appeal result after the suspension is long over.

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