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01:00 - 13:0013:00 - 00:00

01:03
Re this:
I seriously don't understand how Stack Overflow benefits as a company from ending relations with the community. Are they developing a new product that replaces Stack Exchange or something? Because for Stack Exchange to work there needs to be a community.
@JBis I guess the assumption is SO can coast along in it's reputation while ignoring the smaller, vocal part of the community that actually cares
@JBis I don't think they find that a true statement
and thus they're willing to do what they're doing, thinking there is no or little risk in that
@JourneymanGeek Sure, but how does coasting benefit them? Unless they are trying to reduce costs and coast until they inevitably close.
short term this might be true, long term we'll all have to see how bad things can get, and because this is a long term thing we can't easily convince them with our current data set
Practically as long as they can sell teams seats, and Enterprise licenses they make money
01:08
but by the time the stats are convincing the damage done would be very hard to reverse
We are a cost center
Are people really buying the team products?
I highly doubt it. To me, it would only work in large companies (Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) but those companies would just develop something in house.
@user1306322 How could they not? They must know they are destroying the community.
yea, but not their profit from their teams sales/support fees!
01:11
Even the people that come from google searches and don't have accounts. They only come because we have answers...provided by the community.
at this point in time what brings them money are conversations like this: "Hey do you know that site, Stack Overflow?" "yea?" "can we make a site like that but for just our developers?" "I guess, but we could just pay them, and they're gonna support it too" "oh great!"
and none of them care about user politics
the site could be frozen today and these sales would still go on for a while
@JBis that's something hard to explain to sales and management not from the community
@JBis MS used enterprise internally
@GeorgeStocker has a series of tweets that tries to make sense of SE's strategy. Worth a read.
I'll dig it up once the current chunk of work is done
now I wonder at what point the company turned from Q&A only into sales of a non-public Q&A for companies service
@JourneymanGeek damn
I wonder how much they got paid for that.
@JourneymanGeek ping me please. thanks!
@user1306322 well, the search for the big revenue source isn't new
Just that invariably it's the community that bares the brunt of the losses when they fail
01:22
I know I just wonder when (and possibly why if we can discover that) the decline started
Sometime after Jeff left
did he leave for related reasons?
He left cause he probably did what he came here to do. Discourse was his next adventure
as an aside, maybe I'm spoiled by data-heavy interfaces but I feel like Discourse wastes a lot of screen real estate with that generous spacing between all elements
01:28
thanks again, will do
there may be more
 
6 hours later…
07:26
> "....where once was light... now darkness falls... where once was love.... love is no more..."
07:36
2 days ago, by Mithical
> "Wake me up inside... Call my name and save me..."
Jan 13 at 18:00, by Mithical
> "But there are dreams that cannot be... And there are storms we cannot weather...."
?
All is well? @Mith
@ShadowTheBurningWizard I think they're ok. All, less so.
07:55
@Mithical well, Jon's case is different, but yeah.... another big loss and huge hole left. :(
@ShadowTheBurningWizard did you see his blog?
@ShadowTheBurningWizard I'm feeling pensive today. I tend to turn to music when I'm in such a mood.
08:15
@Mithical fair enough
@JourneymanGeek Jon's? Not yet. Why?
It's well worth reading.
He said his resignation is planned, not a layoff.
It sheds some... light on recent events.
Oh... OK, will read.
Especially if you also read George Stocker's Twitter thread.
08:16
@ShadowTheBurningWizard you need to
@JourneymanGeek related to my apology? Was it misplaced after all?
@Mithical Remember that George is just speculating, so as intriguing and well-argued as his points are, they're merely speculation.
@ShadowTheBurningWizard not really
but it has some stuff not in his post here
I don't want to really send you in with preconceptions.
@CodyGray Of course. But that interview with Joel... really makes you think.
@Mithical and some of Jeff's comments too
that's an interesting thing though. I wonder if it would have been possible to build a viable SE without a ton of VC money, and if such an org could have kept its heart
08:20
Yes.
I get the idea a lot of folks saw it coming in hindsight
SE didn't require the VC money.
@CodyGray we don't know the finances, or the costs
Not for Q&A, I mean.
@CodyGray well - that's an interesting thing with the video - that careers was Joel's main idea for money, while Jeff shrugged and threw in ads
08:22
I believe SO could stick with being a Q&A site, focus on that, and thrive. The decision to grow into different directions is what killed the old SO.
@ShadowTheBurningWizard well - I think there was a point where it got... uninteresting
from a business standpoint
It worked
@ShadowTheBurningWizard It's a steady moderately profitable venture
VC money wants x10 growth every couple years, not steady and profitable
ALL the money not some of it
08:50
@Magisch well the decision to get the dirty VC money was the biggest mistake SE ever made, no doubt. But they had no choice, I think.
They were too big at that point already.
@ShadowTheBurningWizard actually I think they started off with it too
and I guess it helped them grow. Its one of those "what if" questions
\o/
09:05
lol
Bit busy for now ._.
there's a damned stupid bug in the application we support generating a bunch of tickets
and I have an hour of helldesk left :D
09:31
Just call it by design and move on ....
@rene only if I can get popcorn
*calls* NIIIIICK WE NEED POPCORN
(I'm pretty sure our client will not think its a feature. And I'm pretty sure its not a bug we can charge for :D)
You can at least pretend it is a feature until your shift is over ...
spend that 1 hour telling the customer how important they are to you
09:46
@AndrasDeak fortunately I don't always have to interact with customers
just try to read their minds, and send their cases to the appropriate one of about 30 different assignees including ones from other companies :D
Then I guess you'll have to actually work...
.... Almost makes me miss desktop support but the money is better :D
(insert rant about IT outsourcing here)
or more precisely the inefficiencies having different jobs done by different lowest bidders and...
OOH LOOK A CASE
> "...we can battle the dark, when the evening ends... we can carry the spark, when the spark starts to dim... 'cause we are fighters..."
(if anyone finds my inserting song lyrics into the room like this annoying, just let me know and I'll stop)
10:05
@Mithical the opposite. Please keep them coming! :)
To lighten the mood I might add some Schlager music ...
> "...they tell me I'm too young to understand... they say I'm caught up in a dream... so wake me up when it's all over... when I'm wiser and I'm older"
10:17
whoo. helpdesk is over
> "...I don't know what you're expecting of me... ...every step that I take is another mistake to you... ...I've become so numb, I can't feel you there... become so tired, so much more aware... ...can't you see that you're smothering me...? ...holding too tightly, afraid to lose control... 'cause everything that you thought I would be... has fallen apart right in front of you..."
(that's the last one for now)
How nostalgic :P
@Tinkeringbell you know all the classics, don't you? ;)
Most of them, I guess ;)
11:04
blatant NAA, del votes will be welcome.
@Mithical .... that's one of my emo songs :D
Which is funny cause I hadn't listened to linkin park for like...
from when I was your age :D
@ShadowTheBurningWizard poof
uhm
Apparently picture uploads on whatsapp are borked
Yep, repro'd.
11:14
@Mithical paf
@Mithical a rediculous part of my workflow depends on whatsapp :D
welp
> I can't send stickers on WhatsApp ... you don't know what I suffer for that 😭😭😭😭😭 I don't know if it has fallen or what happens ..
oh... fun
Can it be even downer?
next week would be good :D
@Mithical it mostly made me think how much of it is even true and accurate. The only point where I knew what the truth was, it was very detached from the reality.
It's maybe good from a promotional point of view, but I'd take it all with a grain of salt.
11:34
@JourneymanGeek everything can be worse
@Magisch no, better
They could make MSE read-only
and they could pull the plug on chat
I wouldn't warn us first
"weird chat rooms we can't get rid of" -Joel
@AndrasDeak I have an inkling feeling that'll be coming soon
11:42
If they kill chat they'll suddenly discover a massive problem with spam
killing chat also makes you lose a certain amount of control.
I still have a pretty bad feeling about that happening
I don't know... I guess I'm more worried about more rules for what can/can't go in chat than chat being killed entirely.
Well that would be fun to enforce
Actually, more than just spam. Killing chat will kill off Charcoal, SOBotics, SOCVR, the comment monitoring bots, Bhargav's user stalker bot... moderators will suddenly be unable to coordinate across a single site, let alone across the network... If they're smart, they won't do it. But then again, they fired Shog.
11:45
Pretty much
Hopefully we will have warning 😟
@Tinkeringbell If they start dictating more about what's acceptable in chat they better be prepared to enforce it themselves. I'm not enforcing anything I don't support at the moment.
Pretty much
An a slightly related note, I find it a bit suspicious that there's this new "#StackOverflowKnows" blog post that just so happens to take precedence over the featured meta posts...
I think blog posts do that
@Mithical ever so convenient, that.
11:48
@Magisch I don't think anyone on meta really cares about the blog posts :D
@JourneymanGeek s/meta//
also the 3 featured posts are also in the FAQ bar
block
thing
What percentage of spam gets killed by Charcoal / SmokeDetector, compared to what gets killed by flags from regular users who don't participate in the SmokeDetector stuff?
@PM2Ring The vast, vast majority is killed by Charcoal
impossible to tell without DB access
11:50
@PM2Ring VERY little
@JourneymanGeek The ironically named Community Bulletin.
and the guy we used to go for that got laid off
@PM2Ring let me put it this way
I got 2500 flags from spam before I became a mod
most of charcoal is automated these days
I used to mod Ask Ubuntu, which is the second most spammed site on the network. I almost never even saw spam flags at all once CHQ was up and running.
11:50
as a mod, I see none, and delete about 20-30 users a day
blatant spam only needs one manual flag these days, in any case. Most of the time that's someone from charcoal with the overlay, which allows you to flag in a second or two directly from chat
(when other people don't beat me to it)
I think I reported maybe 5 posts in a whole year that smokey missed?
Sad thing is....
Yanno who would know the answer?
Shog
Shog can still take part and contribute a lot, wonder if he will.
11:53
If he has any sense at all, he'll stay away for at least a while. If only to get over the shock.
Anyway, it would be interesting to see SE totally shoot themselves in the foot by killing chat. I doubt they'd even make the connection between the sudden moderation problems and the removal of chat. But maybe I'm cynical.
@ShadowTheBurningWizard in his time. Getting sacked ike that is a gut-punch
Thanks, terdon & JourneymanGeek. That's what I suspected. Perhaps it's time to show SO Inc exactly how vulnerable the network's precious content is by turning off the spam killing stuff for a week or so. Keep the data, so the spam can be killed at a later date.
@Mithical Imagine the last say, dozen times you thought "That would be so stupid they'd never do that"
@Mithical You're still assuming they would notice or care about moderation problems, that isn't cynical enough.
11:53
@PM2Ring I think that might hurt, but the folks who run smokey need to agree
@terdon If its SO....
I suspect they will
@PM2Ring I was tempted the other day to run the command to stop autoflags. But I resisted.
@PM2Ring That was brought up and discussed in charcoal for a while when the monica situation was boiling over, iirc the consensus then was not to do it
Who would? Most of the people who even used the sites are gone.
although that leads to the interesting conclusion, who even makes the call on that now
most charcoal people are around less or flat out left
@Magisch we had Shog then
11:55
Side note... a large percentage of the people who created Charcoal and maintained it aren't so involved with the project anymore. It's a few people and the automated systems at this point.
There's also the fact that when we turn off charcoal we're essentially putting a ton of extra work on the mods
people haven't had to actually look at and flag spam for so long
@Mithical if they'll kill chat they'll also surely kill the whole "moderated by the community" idea in the same blow, getting rid of all moderators, relying on whatever social networks rely on to moderate... if there will be mods, they'll be well hidden behind the scenes.
@ShadowTheBurningWizard moderated by what?
@ShadowTheBurningWizard They can't afford that
11:56
facebook and twitter run sweatshops of manual paid mods
it's one of their biggest cost centers
Ordinary users don't care a bit about spam and clutter of crap.
facebook spends dozens of millions paying moderators in third world countries
SE simply doesn't have the money for that
@Magisch because they have millions upon millions of posts.
Or maybe, if they shut down all but the very most profitable sites
@JourneymanGeek Of course. I certainly don't advocate doing anything that's permanently destructive. I wouldn't be on the network if I didn't care to preserve the quality of the content. But SO Inc needs to understand that that content requires active expert curation.
11:57
@ShadowTheBurningWizard I don't think they quite get how moderation on their own sites work. I doubt it'd be intentional that they'd be killing community moderation, it would simply be a result of ignorance and finally getting rid of those "weird chat rooms" that have caused a lot of problems in the past.
I gather in SO numbers, it will cost thousands, not millions.
in SO Numbers if they shut down most sites besides say 5 or 6 I'd guess that's around 15-20 full time positions
conservative estimate
@Magisch make it $1 per hour... 20 hours a day... how much you get?
20*30*20
(per month)
Thats not how this works
SO would need actual professionals
11:59
if you look at facebook etc they barely get rid of actually illegal shit
only because they have to
@Magisch Looks like these are gone now :(
Of course it needs, but that's the last thing that interests the people who now make the decisions.
facebook likes its scammer haven. It brings them money.
12:00
yeah but actually getting rid of 90% moderation alltogether would not turn this into quora, it would become much worse
@πάνταῥεῖ or suspended.
But I still believe the first step will be closing down the meta sites, before closing chat.
^maybe they won't get rid of chat alltogether just disallow use for anyone but mods
I'm not gone. I'm just on permanent hiatus, watching the fireworks and wondering if they're ever going to allow the firefighters on their premises.
Poetic ^
handing a silver harp to @JohnD
It's still worth having popcorn while watching the decay.
12:03
and occasionally customering in those parts that aren't quite on fire just yet.
@πάνταῥεῖ COR that pops? Awesome! :P
I am thinking of myself as a prophetic person :P
@ShadowTheBurningWizard You're an ole language nazi nitpicker ;-)
claps on @πάνταῥεῖ's back
@ShadowTheBurningWizard Maybe they don't, and maybe SO Inc don't care much either. Spam makes a site look bad & low quality. OTOH, inappropriate ads also give users a bad impression, and SO Inc don't seem too concerned about those...
@Magisch I use chat so I can moderate more effectively 🤣
@PM2Ring All the upcoming decisions seem to come from ROI calculation Excel sheets. There's apparently no interest from SEI in keeping the content (future or historically gained) high quality.
@πάνταῥεῖ you missed the sharp stick in my hand.... ;)
12:17
@PM2Ring exactly.
@πάνταῥεῖ so you love pain? hmm... so many new ideas come to mind.... :P
@πάνταῥεῖ you sign first
!!/sign NDA
@ShadowTheBurningWizard No such command 'sign'.
Isn't it obvious that you must have masochistic tendencies when moderating and curating sites from SEI voluntarily? :-P
12:25
@πάνταῥεῖ some would say sadistic but yeah.... it means something isn't 100% normal... :D
Keep in mind that this applies for both of us!
Oh cool, there's a keyboard shortcut path to the timeline now. Cool.
I am heavily thinking about alternative hobbies when the ship has sunken completely :-/
@Mithical Shog9's last gift to the community :(
A couple of hours ago I re-read this answer by Tim Post about the changes that were made a year or so ago to try and attract & retain new users. Those changes indicate that SO Inc is concerned about the impressions & experience of new users.
12:31
@ShadowTheBurningWizard Well, thy know there's a new normal, which has taken place.
But they don't seem to understand that the huge majority of such users have little motivation to become regulars, even if the new user experience were perfect. On tech & science sites we get tons of low quality homework questions from "disposable" accounts.
They don't want to leave evidence of cheating on homework, and it's easy enough to just make a new account each time they have a new question. And of course, plenty of people who use the sites don't even bother making an account, they're smart enough to find their answers using Google, etc...
@PM2Ring this was before the new CEO
The direction SO/SE is going now tramples everyone, new or veteran alike.
@ShadowTheBurningWizard True, but they're still trying to maximize traffic, and growth of the userbase is a nice statistic to show potential investors.
That's one of the reasons I am suspended for a whole year, while I had
a (mumble) fairly innocent discussion with another user why a VLQ question should be closed (after being asked so), and claimed what loss it should be if a new contributor could be chased away from my actions.
It's now clear to me that the internal tension within the community between those who want to leave and those who want to stay is real.
12:36
@πάνταῥεῖ technically you would be suspended a week and a month before no?
Depending on whichever a post implies, it receives negative feedback (and downvotes, I guess implied by correlation, but that's tangential) from the other
I just hope it's not a bubble that would burst in the future.
@JourneymanGeek Yeah, I know about the 3 strikes rule. But it was Tim single handedly. :(
Well, mods and CMs typically have the ability to do so for a reason
It's always single handed
@It'sOver if someone wanted to leave they would
No I'm referring to the recent debates under community–company relations related posts
So am I 😁
12:41
@πάνταῥεῖ I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say there (but I often find your language a little hard to follow). But if you said something like "who cares if closing the newbie's question scares them away", I can understand a mod disciplining you for that, even if that mod doesn't personally feel comfortable with all of the implications of the Welcoming Wagon initiative.
We want something different
I want cake
I want my network with a heart. Others want more revenue. Others want to see the world burn . Or for the network to reflect their values
@PM2Ring And such I know, and even feel worse a bit :(
The cake.... Is a lie
12:42
:O NO WAY
@It'sOver All I can offer is popcorn
@πάνταῥεῖ Ah, ok. So it was Tim Post who suspended you. I assumed it was "just" a regular diamond mod.
@Mithical How the heck is a spark supposed to help you in a fight.
As an alternative we could try copporn :D
Unless it's some nuclear device
Thank you. I was meaning to read that thread when I got home
@yivi Yeah, that's a concise and clear statement about the situation.
Yellowcake (also called urania) is a type of uranium concentrate powder obtained from leach solutions, in an intermediate step in the processing of uranium ores. It is a step in the processing of uranium after it has been mined but before fuel fabrication or uranium enrichment. Yellowcake concentrates are prepared by various extraction and refining methods, depending on the types of ores. Typically, yellowcakes are obtained through the milling and chemical processing of uranium ore, forming a coarse powder that has a pungent odor, is insoluble in water, and contains about 80% uranium oxide, which...
Bon Appetite! :P
01:00 - 13:0013:00 - 00:00

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