Tavern on the Meta

12:02 AM

2 days ago, by PM 2Ring

@Magisch Maybe. But how do you do that? Block all questions from new OPs who haven't read the Help tour? And maybe add a quiz to the end of the tour to make sure they've read & understood it...

I quite like Catija's concept of making all questions start as closed, or at least all questions from low-rep members. Closely related is the concept of having a Sandbox, where questions are immune from votes and can't be answered, all you can do is assist the OP in improving the question so it can "graduate" to the main site.

Jon Ericson

I don't think the tour is really sufficient. It's a good overview, but there's an awful lot more required to ask a decent question.

Journeyman Geek

@JonEricson I guess the difficulty is in working out how to get a new user to work all that out with low friction

PM 2Ring

Another idea I thought of recently: give newbies a starting rep of 50 so they can comment everywhere and so they aren't immune to downvotes.

Journeyman Geek

We had the benefit of not having those rules and creating/growing up with them

@PM2Ring erf. Immune to downvotes isn't true

Comment everywhere - we can just shift the privilege levels

Jon Ericson

@JourneymanGeek Yeah. I wrote about some of that on my blog and referenced the sandbox idea.

@JourneymanGeek I think the idea is you stand to lose something when you get downvoted. If you have +1, you can't lose anything noticeable.

Journeyman Geek

12:12 AM

@JonEricson until you couldn't ask questions ._.

PM 2Ring

@JonEricson Agreed. There's a big learning curve, and the Tour just scratches the surface. Even people who are vaguely familiar with Stack Exchange from Googling answers for a few months can get easily bamboozled when they start actually writing questions, or answers.

Jon Ericson

@JourneymanGeek Which isn't quite so surprising as it was before the system started warning people.

Journeyman Geek

@JonEricson Yup

@PM2Ring I guess the question is (and all the people who I suspect could crunch the numbers are gone :/) is stickiness and how the learning curve actually is

Jon Ericson

@PM2Ring By the way, at my new job I'm starting to map out user cohorts. So instead of lumping every new user into one bucket, we'll be able to (knock on wood) provide custom guidance for what people are currently trying to accomplish.

Journeyman Geek

I could create a new account now but it wouldn't be the same as it was for a new user when I was a newbie, or for a newbie user. And a newbie user wouldn't know the best ways to ask for help

Jon Ericson

12:16 AM

You can never be new twice.

Journeyman Geek

Yup

PM 2Ring

@JonEricson That sounds sensible. :)

Jon Ericson

Hope I get used to it. ;-)

Rob

The thing about the mandatory Tour is that it requires a minimum of participation, they could just flick to the bottom and hit the back button; but it requires a minimum of participation and knowledge - it avoids: come, dump, return anonymously, create new account in a few months without remembering what to do. --- Starting a 5 points (or 50, with privileges bumped up) highlights people with one or more bad questions - so 'rep one users' aren't lumped in with new users whom might turn out to

be great.

Jon Ericson

By the way, this is the controversy I'm dealing with on the new job. I need to tell a customer to stop spamming or we'll need to give them their money back.

user400654

12:24 AM

what if we eliminated the need for them to create new accounts? let them ask, and be answered, and devise a way for said questions to end up being deleted without needing to resort to pushing people into a perma ban. it's not like we have a lack of people willing to answer them

Rob

As for sandboxing or mentoring, some (few) people are willing to do it but many are not (even moderators, a few months ago; when they might have).

Journeyman Geek

@user400654 People do and would abuse it

the friction for creating new accounts is really low

user400654

like they do now?

lol

PM 2Ring

I mostly stick to SO and "scientific" sites like Physics & Mathematics. On those sites, it seems to me that the new askers roughly fall into 2 categories: people who are enthusiastic and want to learn about the topic, and then there are the students who aren't so enthusiastic.

They're struggling with some course, and they just want to get the info they need to pass that course. They may never use the knowledge later on. Obviously, it's much more fulfilling to help those in the former group. ;) But the latter group need help too...

Journeyman Geek

@PM2Ring When I did uni the first time

we had an entire course on using a search engine

Unis do not do a job at teaching someone to fish

and we're not here to teach people to fish :D

Rob

12:31 AM

@JonEricson "Repetitive" is mentioned a couple of times in the Rules of Conduct, was it the CC'ing that's objectionable or that two of those users are the most active this month?

PM 2Ring

@JonEricson Oh, that sounds like fun. Not. ;)

@Rob We had a mentoring experiment a year or so ago on SO. I was going to volunteer to mentor, but my life got kinda complicated around that time... But anyway, the experiment didn't work as well as people had hoped. I think I spoke about it in here a month or so ago.

Jon Ericson

@Rob Before I joined our CM told the mods not to delete content from the "Verified Expert" because they are paying us for access. But they want to plug their service every time the post, which is against the rules. (CC = College Confidential in this context.)

We see this on SO quite a bit, obviously.

PM 2Ring

Ah no, it was on Physics:

in The h Bar on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, Jan 5 at 16:30, by PM 2Ring

Also, there was a mentoring experiment on SO about a year ago. New OPs could opt-in to post their question to the mentoring room, where they'd receive personal assistance in getting their question up to scratch. In theory, nobody was supposed to actually answer the question in the mentoring room, only give meta advice, but that didn't work out so well.

in The h Bar on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, Jan 5 at 16:30, by PM 2Ring

Some mentors had a tendency to just answer trivial stuff, and some OPs couldn't comprehend why the other mentors wouldn't answer their question, and got frustrated & angry. The overall conclusion was that the outcome of this experiment wasn't good. But perhaps it would've worked better if the guidelines & goals of the mentoring room were made clearer, and it had better supporting software (it was a slightly enhanced chatroom system).

Journeyman Geek

@JonEricson that's a fun problem

Jon Ericson

170

Q: Mentorship Research Project - Results + Wrap-Up

Check out SO Podcast 117 to hear Kristina talk about the mentorship experiment. First, if you haven’t read the original announcement post about the Stack Overflow Mentorship Research Project, you should go and do that now. If you don’t, the rest of this probably won’t make a ton of sense. From ...

It was a good system. Needed some work to scale, but lots of promise. No idea why it wasn't pursued.

Journeyman Geek

12:43 AM

@JonEricson "Needed some work"

That's kind of a thing

Jon Ericson

Yeah. :-(

Journeyman Geek

I'm pretty much of the opinion that at this point, investing in the community is something management dosen't get

In theory, I guess we can still informally do it

but that needs folks to, well care.

PM 2Ring

@JonEricson Thanks. A few of the mentors discussed it in the Python room. I agree that it needed some work, and I was sad that it got shelved. But one problem with that kind of thing that Rob alluded to earlier is attracting & keeping mentors. It's really easy to burn out doing that kind of thing, especially if you don't have a clear solid system that supports the mentors & students.

Jon Ericson

@PM2Ring Agreed. I had a sketch of what that might look like, but I never got the buy in I needed.

PM 2Ring

@JonEricson I really like that idea!

ert

12:58 AM

@JonEricson Because the only(?) developer working on it.... suddenly wasn't working there anymore

But yeah, I was really looking forward to a production-ready version of it. I thought it worked well

Jon Ericson

@ert I might have the timeline wrong, but I believe the decision to not work on it happened before the layoffs.

Rob

@JonEricson We have some hickory Charcoal for what ails us (them).

ert

@JonEricson Oh, maybe... but it only happened about a month after that meta post, which listed 'next steps' :(

Rob

@JonEricson This, sorted by votes is what happened, from the user's point of view. Essentially replaced by CV, flags, generated (UserScript) comments, human comments, and silence.

On a couple of sites a few, maybe a half dozen, will hand-hold the new user through their question or answer, almost writing it for them in the comments. Then they come back and delete their 30-40 comments made over a period of two or three hours. Needless to say that doesn't happen everywhere. The new user might score a hundred reputation for their excellent post in a day or two, often several hours.

Jon Ericson

1:24 AM

My experience on BH was that it was a lot more effective to edit the question (yes, writing it for them) if you saw a question worth answering. Or, just answer the question you wish had been asked. I'm always baffled with the idea that someone needs to ask just so in order to deserve an answer (or an upvote). That's not how people learn to ask better.

Journeyman Geek

@JonEricson On technical sites though....

Question quality really shapes the answer/answerability

But I'm happy to spend a week or two crafting the perfect question :D

Jon Ericson

Eh. BH is pretty technical. ;-) I know. Details matter. But it's amazing how often I can guess the real problem if I've had a lot of experience with the technology.

@JourneymanGeek So am I. ;-)

Journeyman Geek

@JonEricson well technically - your "documentation" is a little more standard :D

Jon Ericson

I'm a fan of the robustness principle. I understand the criticism of it, but I think it's in social situations too.

I gotta bounce. Good to talk to you all again in different circumstances. :-)

Mark Mayo

1:39 AM

would love input on this

-2

Q: If a ? is detected in an answer, could we post a warning?

We've hinted at similar checks in the past: Automatically warning when adding post containing greetings and signatures? Detecting questions in answers but at a very simple level, could we not put up a nice red warning when a ? is used in an answer, for low rep users? This to prevent users wh...

feature-request questions new-users

seems like there must be an easy way to prevent this sort of thing

Catija

1:53 AM

O hai, @JonEricson! :D

And bye. :(

Journeyman Geek

@MarkMayo what if someone uses rhetorical questions in answers?

Bryan Krause

@MarkMayo In my experience, questions posted as answers tend to not contain any punctuation, let alone helpful punctuation

Mark Mayo

2:53 AM

@BryanKrause maybe, but I've seen a ton. Maybe it's a travel thing. But I tend to look most times before binning them, and there's usually a ?. Not that there won't be false positives.

@JourneymanGeek false positive. But also if restricted to users with <100 rep, the false positives would reduce massively.

Bryan Krause

@MarkMayo Yeah, I was being a bit facetious. I do think a stronger warning in the answers box just in general could be useful - not limited at all to a "?" indicator. At least on the sites I use I would say >90% of the questions-as-answers posts are not merely people <100 rep but people with no rep at all. They've simply never used the site and don't realize it's not like reddit or whatever other forum-style reference point they have.

PM 2Ring

3:12 AM

And then there are the questions and answers from people who don't realise that you're supposed to put a space after punctuation marks in English... I saw one like that a few hours ago (maybe on Physics.SE) with the added "bonus" that every sentence ended in an exclamation mark. Maybe they learned English from reading comic books. :)

Journeyman Geek

@BryanKrause "I don't have enough reputation to comment" is more common

as is "Did you find..."

PM 2Ring

And self-answers that say "Never mind. I figured it out." With zero details of their solution.

Journeyman Geek

PM 2Ring

I almost posted that one myself. :)

Meg Risdal

@Catija oh hai Jon and Catija #reunion

2

Catija

3:30 AM

Hallo!

Rob

4:06 AM

Jon Ericson

4:51 AM

@Catija Like (metaphorical) ships in the (literal) night.

Catija

@JonEricson Nah.

I'm still here.

user1306322

@Catija I feel like for 10 years people have been repeating to me and to others phrases like "the votes actually mean X" and the failure of the voting system in my view is in the fact that people have to explain what votes mean at all

Catija

My neighbor has band practice and... ugh.

user1306322

it's obviously too late now to redesign the "voting" system (or rather revamping it into something else) on SE sites but we'll see about this decade's generation of sites :p

Catija

@user1306322 Eh. votes mean whatever you want them to mean. I can say "this is what they're supposed to mean" but... there's a reason many sites use tags or reactions for ratings... The interpretattion.y're somewhat less ... up for

Rob

4:54 AM

Garage b̶a̶n̶d̶ banned?

user1306322

I've had long fruitless talks with people trying to explain them how it could be different and the current understanding of the system is so deeply ingrained into some of the users' minds that my many attempts at explanation just weren't getting through to them, it's comical in a sense but tragic if you value your time (btw don't waste yours reading some of my long talks lol)

Catija

@Rob It's almost 11 and they have all the doors and windows open.

πάντα ῥεῖ

@user1306322 ftziifzuigzuigzuiizguizgi

Rob

Noise bylaws?

πάντα ῥεῖ

Explains it at best

Catija

4:56 AM

Yes... but I don't like calling the cops on them.

Rob

True, but maybe someone else will. City or boonies?

Catija

They should have gotten a lot quieter an hour ago, I think.

City.

Rob

Relax, for 1/2 hour.

user1306322

@πάνταῥεῖ it was more like "what if we could press a button that would show the users feedback more specific than just -1 or „this bad“?" and they were like "you mean like post comments?" or "you mean like pressing the down arrow"?

Catija

I'm the only one around with kids... Gus got woken up... having trouble sleeping.

user1306322

4:58 AM

after a while I thought it would be easier if I just created a site that had things like that than try to explain it to people for 10 years :D

Rob

Is it every week, or day ...

user1306322

and so I started the work about half a year ago

Catija

Week, I think? maybe less. I just... need to work and I can't think.

πάντα ῥεῖ

@user1306322 I mean explainig why I pressed that button, and be forced to give an explanation (other than the tooltip already says).

user1306322

you can't force people do anything on the internet, they'll just close the tab and that's it

Rob

5:00 AM

Someone (you?) needs to do something. If you ask them nicely and they refuse they'll know you're the one whom complained later.

user1306322

if you think about it for a bit, doesn't it sound ridiculous? that you would have to explain why you pressed some button

πάντα ῥεῖ

@user1306322 There was work about already earlier: idownvotedbecau.se

user1306322

yea but that's not it

it's like how we have automatic comments like "Does this answer your question?"

you can't reuse other systems for things they aren't meant to be used for and expect high quality results

πάντα ῥεῖ

The "automated comments" come with close banners at least.

user1306322

what do the banners do? - display messages

what do the comments do? - display messages

why do we have 2 different things now instead of 1 that does the same thing

πάντα ῥεῖ

5:04 AM

Because it's not the same.

user1306322

is it better now though?

what warranted this change?

πάντα ῥεῖ

It works, and had been working for many years.

user1306322

is this a long term test to see if banner blindness can be remedied by adding the same message but in a place where users would actually more likely look (comments)?

the comments appeared recently, I don't remember them being there when closing a couple years ago

anyway I feel like this is the response to issues on SO and it has propagated to a lot of SE sites where this wasn't warranted

I really don't like that some changes which clearly don't fit on smaller SE sites are copied over from SO

the biggest one I take issue with the most, and this is going to be much more noticeable in the coming years I'm sure, is the reputation thresholds for certain very convenient privileges

nothing I can do about either of these issues here though, which is sad but such is life :p

and I feel like having multiple fresh starts in parallel is going to bring a lot of good into the world

πάντα ῥεῖ

Too many users put bad in the world against that.

shrug

user1306322

it's just SO and it's going to stay on SO thankfully

I'm not going to deal with that on my sites

Rob

5:12 AM

@Catija So, here's a long discussion (warning: some curse words) about this (with houses with larger yards). Short version: 311?, let neighbors call 911. If the other side of the house is quieter let them sleep on the couch.

user1306322

internal one for work has pretty good user culture and the gaming one also doesn't have anyone mods can't deal with in under a minute

I'm not going to do public sites for a long while, maybe in 2 years, we'll see, but nothing at the scale of SO

πάντα ῥεῖ

All sites already encourage to leave comments about downvotes up to a certain rep.

user1306322

I don't think comments are the answer

πάντα ῥεῖ

Not really.

user1306322

I feel like reactions are close though

I've been experimenting with them privately on a small user base but so far I don't have enough info to say if either of my approaches are good, because people are not used to this concept, but it's definitely showing as better feedback than just downvotes, and it gets used more often than comments, so that's something for me to be hopeful for

it's just kinda sad that nobody out there is testing something like this and I can't look at a bigger site's stats

I kinda just wanna relax and just enjoy high quality user experiences and not have to try to design them myself, knowing not much about it lol

if I manage to finish work on all my other projects, and nothing like what I expect exists by that point in time, I just might take it on though

so far we only got the basic copypaste SO/SE experience goin and it's fine for now but it could definitely better

> How To Use Evianne Skin Cream?
asked 26 mins ago eviannskincram 1

dat skin cram

πάντα ῥεῖ

5:25 AM

That's spam. Just flag it as such.

user1306322

yea it's gone

That's not a valid FR. — πάντα ῥεῖ 1 min ago

what constitutes a valid FR?

πάντα ῥεῖ

27

Q: How do I write a good feature request?

I have a feature that I am interested in proposing. How do I draft a good feature request? What things do I need to include? What should I not do? How do I know if the feature will be implemented? Return to FAQ index

support faq-proposed feature-request-process

user1306322

well good != valid, these are different qualitative categories :p

πάντα ῥεῖ

At least there should be a proposal for detailed implementation.

user1306322

I feel like this is such a simple question/request that I can just as validly, to the "why?" respond with "why not?"

I never thought concurrent bounties shouldn't be a thing

and I also think it should be possible to immediately grant the bounty to the answer you have in mind

there are cases where it makes no sense to have you come back in a day again to do it manually

like you find an old question and it has an answer which cannot be topped because it's going to be true forever for that situation, so reasons like "someone might come and post a better answer" don't fit

anyway I'm not going to try to convince users here to change things anymore as much as I tried in the past because now that I got my own sites I can just do it for myself and my two communities, both of which had no objections to instant bounties when we discussed this

it really feels like people here are using Windows XP and we're on 10 preview :p

Catija

5:42 AM

@user1306322 There's reactions in Teams, actually.

user1306322

I saw the post about the 4 pretty useless ones, I hope there are much more useful options now

Catija

@Rob Yeah. They finally wrapped up at 11... I'm thinking about leaving a note in their mailbox.

@user1306322 I don't think they've changed. I... was kinda surprised that "This answered my question" and "I have the same question"/"me too!" weren't two of the options...

Rob

Don't get caught, if someone else phones you'll be blamed.

Journeyman Geek

That was ain... interesting actipattern

user1306322

oh yea I was meaning to respond to that too

maybe call non-emergency police line and make sure they leave a record of your complaint in case you have to prove your innocence later and the fact that you called multiple times will have more weight than their 1 call

if you have a HOA that takes action, maybe contact them too, but probably after the police

@JourneymanGeek action pattern?

Journeyman Geek

5:46 AM

I tried to renew a subscription for a matchmaking site. They 1) rejected my payment 2) Called me to "try to fix it" - which involved "Sir, we have a special offer for" ... "is that why you rejected my payment? To try to upsell me?"

I got a discount :D

user1306322

matchmaking in what sense

Catija

@Rob I'm not too worried... I mean... they're nice... I'm just... really shy about saying anything.

user1306322

making ignitable wooden sticks with phosphorous heads?

Catija

@JourneymanGeek Go you!

user1306322

@Catija oh then I feel like if you bring up having a child especially they might take your complaint seriously

Rob

5:49 AM

@JourneymanGeek How about her?

Catija

CUUUUTE!

Journeyman Geek

@Catija Apparently me getting angry... is a sight

Catija

Angry dogs are scary!

Journeyman Geek

@Rob that looks like my nephew Ralph :D

Rob

LOL

user1306322

5:53 AM

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog I just wanted to point out that the post you linked has last activity dated 9 years 4 months ago and refers to a blog post by Jeff Atwood from about the same time.

I don't know how useful it is for getting an "answer" for a feature request almost a decade later.

this is definitely one of those cases where automatically added "Does this answer your question?" comments are nonsensical when it's not a question but a feature request

it's interesting background information, for sure, but given the date, it's more like an excursion into the history museum of the site to check out the first version of the Constitution of US before all the amendments

Not entirely. I'm editing my question for better clarity, but there's no indication as to why this feature won't be implemented. — Jakob Lovern 5 mins ago

I mean blessed is the soul of Jakob who is too pure to see why this feature won't be implemented :D

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

6:10 AM

@user1306322 Meta sites tend to be ignored when developers code certain functionalities. The text makes sense on main sites.

(e.g. there have been several bugs, both old and new, where developers didn't consider the case of unanswered duplicates, which aren't permitted on main sites but are on meta sites)

user1306322

yea, I don't like the part where the place where users gather to talk about changes gets ignored when making changes :p

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

Also, the consensus regarding cases where a recent feature request duplicates one from several years ago appears to be to still close it as a duplicate. The proper way to have it implemented is to raise attention for it.

@Shadow9 can share more info about it

user1306322

I also see it as a problem that someone would have to share this information, and it is not immediately available to users via close plaque text

I definitely read somewhere before that we can have a basically duplicate discussion if it is posted many years later

Tinkeringbell

7:25 AM

Yaaaawn. Morning.

Glorfindel

@Catija nope, you can blame the timezone (UTC+1).

Morning!

minus.273

Morning.

Journeyman Geek

Afternoon

Yaakov Ellis

7:50 AM

@Shadow9 I beat your deadline

Gimby

8:02 AM

g'day, mates

Tinkeringbell

It's not talk like a pirate day yet, is it?

Shadow9

looking

lacking

!!/lick

SmokeDetector

@Shadow9 licks ice cream cone

Shadow9

You deserve six hearts: ♥♥♥♥♥♥ — Shadow9 21 secs ago

:D

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog any idea why Tim Post put a review status on that? Did he say anything?

Anyway yes, if a feature request asks for a feature that was already asked for in the past, and has no status completed or declined tag, that's dupe.

If you mean this question then yes, it's dupe indeed.

Gimby

@Tinkeringbell I said g'day mates, not g'day mateys. Arrr.

Although I do like the idea that all Australians are pirates.

Rob

8:18 AM

@YaakovEllis, meta.stackexchange.com/q/343055/282094 is a duplicate of meta.stackexchange.com/q/342998/282094 it's been reported a few times.

Tinkeringbell

@Gimby Criminals, at least ;)

Yaakov Ellis

@Rob yeah, I see that now. The original was posted on a day when I wasn't working, and I never saw it. The dupe was duped fast enough that I didn't see it either. So this is the first one that I am seeing of this series.

✔️

morning

@Magisch hey

8:28 AM

@YaakovEllis grumbles about overenthusiastic duping :D

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell sup?

BlueSoul

8:43 AM

@PM2Ring Oh, lately I've became a supporter of that, with the only difference that I wouldn't post the answer. A comment, maybe.

BlueSoul

9:01 AM

......

Sweet Celestia, they are bringing VR to.... SharePoint???

SharePoint Spaces... with Hololens??

Magisch

Sharepoint sounds so aggressively boring I'm not sure why that

isn't it like this CRM/ERP system template kind of thing?

djsmiley2k TMW

@BlueSoul should of gone with Sweet Cortana

rene

@Magisch started as an "intranet" solution. That was a thing in the early 2000

Rob

@JourneymanGeek It's downvoted on MSO, they like it like this.

BlueSoul

@rene to be fair, SharePoint was the evolution of the even older FrontPage and Office Server Extensions

Gimby

9:18 AM

FrontPage. Eek. That brings back some bad memories.

FrontPage and Dreamweaver, that was it. Those marked the start of my adventures in Webland when I was still in school.

"My Ancestral Coven has a broad range of love Spells that work to help you with affairs of your relationship"

wut? That is spam for an actual Witch's coven!?

rene

@BlueSoul Oh, yes, frontpage, awesome!

Magisch

@Gimby happens more then you think

Gimby

awesome

BlueSoul

...... must be my fault. I mentioned baba yesterday.

but that also means..... what I've been suspicious about for a long time....

Magisch

human creativity to scam people knows no limits

BlueSoul

9:27 AM

one of the parrots must be baba familiar..... there is no other explanation.

@Shadow9 we need a detect magic spell. Check which parrot register with a magical aura.

Magisch

@BlueSoul my name only coincidentally means "magical" in german. You have no proof!

Shadow9

@BlueSoul and I mentioned Irene. They follow us!

:D

Hi baba!

!!/coffee baba

SmokeDetector

@Shadow9 brews a cup of Ristretto for @baba

Shadow9

Please don't spam SE. OK?

Go spam, eh, Yahoo! Answers

Deal? I'll give you daily coffee in return.

If you agree then.... ugh... nod.

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch A day full of meetings. Not much else ;) over there?

rene

9:38 AM

@Shadow9 nods

Shadow9

@Tink think this is offensive name? Or does it have some meaning I don't get?

Tinkeringbell

Butt?

Meh...

BlueSoul

@Shadow9 he is a black magic expert. He will make something more impressive, like knocking down a book or make a thunder outside....

not just nod.

Shadow9

@rene you can't be baba, you're not dark enough

@BlueSoul time range?

djsmiley2k TMW

9:59 AM

/me wibbles, restoring sanity to the universe

Tinkeringbell

10:09 AM

@djsmiley2kTMW Thanks. Its effects are noticed even here ;)

djsmiley2k TMW

:D

BlueSoul

11:09 AM

Secure, Contain, Protect? You mean... that SCP?

Magisch

11:39 AM

@BlueSoul I went down that rabbit hole again a while ago

Yaakov Ellis

12:05 PM

@JourneymanGeek The duping is fine. Just that MSE is a less than ideal bug reporting system in that it is easy to miss things

Magisch

In the end it's not meta that is the lynch point of most people's concerns. It's a direct communication channel to y'all

A lot of us know what happens when you sufficiently abstract the communication channels. At some point the message and feedback gets lost, or gets distorted. Couple that with the low amount of trust and everything seems like the end of the world

Yaakov Ellis

@Magisch I realize. You are preaching to the choir.

Magisch

apologies

Yaakov Ellis

@Magisch no need. Just so you should know, I get all this. And others do as well. Trying to include this message in all of the relevant internal conversations.

Magisch

thanks for your effort, it does mean a lot

djsmiley2k TMW

12:14 PM

@YaakovEllis just don't..... get yourself into trouble ok?

terdon

12:25 PM

Yes. The last thing we need is to lose another of the good ones!

And I can't imagine it would be any fun for Yaakov either!

Tinkeringbell

1:12 PM

There's an abandoned @Bart here..

Catija

@Glorfindel Does your pronouns app cache pronouns? I adjusted the formatting on mine and I didn’t see a change.

Glorfindel

@Catija github.com/Glorfindel83/SE-Userscripts/blob/master/…

24 hours, it seems. I think Art developed that part.

Not sure what you changed, but it looks right to me:

Mgetz

@Glorfindel I'm seeing a metaphor for how society takes time to adjust to new pronouns....

Glorfindel

hehe

Catija

@Glorfindel yep! Thanks!

Glorfindel

1:21 PM

yw

Magisch

@Catija iirc it was implemented to cache it because people were getting auto-rate-limited

at least it happened to me on two occasions, because the app sends a API request for every user present on a page you load otherwise (iirc) which gets you rate limited when browsing bigger question-answer threads.

Shadow9

@Tinkeringbell who put @Bart upside down?!

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell I should buy glasses like these

mine are old and look bad

Mgetz

@Magisch seems like a metaphor for people getting sick and tired of people asking the same question again and again 😜

Shadow9

1:37 PM

@Magisch how you know it looks bad? Like clothing, only those who look are entitled to give honest opinion. ;)

@Catija any plans to implement that userscript on SE itself? I gather it will draw some objections.

I'm neutral on this, and don't use userscripts so not really relevant for me, just giving neutral opinion. :)

(Likely the most common objection is "but it will make SE appear more like a social forum than professional Q&A")

Talking about social...

!!/coffee rene

SmokeDetector

@Shadow9 brews a cup of Mocha for @rene

rene

I needed that ...

Shadow9

yw

points towards the Tips Cup

Mgetz

Shadow9

Not that cup

:D

Catija

1:50 PM

@Shadow9 There are legal concerns about it. It's why we don't have a field on the profile for it, either... We try to collect as little data as we can about users, particularly since our data is so easy to export/search and their gender is something we don't want people being able to... profit off/abuse/etc... so anything that even tacitly encourages people to state their gender in a searchable way is... problematic.

Shadow9

@Catija oh... I didn't see it from that angle. So yeah, it kind of seal it.

So you use that script for... personal use?

Catija

I do. Because I like it and I think it's useful. I accept the argument I posted but I still wish we could find a better solution. But, that is why the FAQ we wrote doesn't really encourage people adding it to their profile... even that goes too far. I think it says something about it passively... but that's it.

Shadow9

:/

!!/cheer Catija

SmokeDetector

@Shadow9 No such command 'cheer'.

Shadow9

:(

ugh... stumbled upon this:

30

A: SO Blog Censorship and Mild Criticism

(answer to first question tagged with censor)

Tinkeringbell

2:08 PM

@Shadow9 Guess he learned to roll over ;)

Shadow9

:P

John Dvorak

2009

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell if this was at work your coworkers may think "why is she taking pictures of random discarded glasses?"

:D

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch I checked, there was no one watching :P

Shadow9

@JohnDvorak people ranted about censorship even back then, yeah.

Magisch

2:21 PM

@Tinkeringbell Thats just what they want you to think

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch hahaha maybe.

Rob

2:33 PM

@Tinkeringbell The Thatcher Effect is still prevalent despite their invisibility.

Journeyman Geek

3:10 PM

@Mgetz I have a cup like that..

It would hold a lot of...liquid

Feeds

Micro-interactions with react-spring: Part 3

Emma Bostian on January 30, 2020

In the first post in this series, we examined the basics of micro-interactions: what are they, why should you use them, how you build them. In the second post, we built two animated menus.

In this tutorial, we’ll build two fun animations: a modal and an image gallery.

Modal:

Image Gallery:

We’ll use react-spring’s useTransition to illustrate how you can mount and unmount a component, in our case a modal, from the DOM and mount photos to and from a photo gallery.

Embed Code Sandbox:

In the previous blog, we looked at the pieces of a micro-interaction. Let’s define the interaction trigger, state definition, and animation definition for our modal component. …

Cindy Meister

@Catija No, I didn't "hear" your answer as flippant - we haven't interacted enough that I would try to guess any intimations there might be in a conversation between us. No apology necessary :-) I took the question very seriously and answered in kind. Just as some grasp at straws/hold on to hope, there's also a tendency to consider how bad things could get. I feel influence from both sides (as I'm sure many do)... So with all the darkness, a ray of light is up-lifting.

Just as it was nice to have bright sunshine for a few hours today in a week full of wind, rain, snow and ice... :-)

BlueSoul

3:28 PM

> The price between subscription varies depending on the platform purchased, but is shared between it if players log into the same Nintendo Account on each device.

..... oooooooook.

I foresee that everyone will buy the version that cost more, right? RIGHT?

Gimby

@BlueSoul Not everyone, but if it is the more visible version then likely a lot of people will buy the higher priced version yes. I otherwise have no clue where this is coming from so I'm just trying to chat along here :)

Cindy Meister

3:51 PM

@Catija Well... IMO there needs to be some kind of signal that the quality of a question is... questionable. When I'm reading a list of questions and see just the title plus a few lines it's often hard to judge whether the question needs to be looked at more closely. If it has one or two DV I'll open it to see. If it's bad I'll VTC; if it was bad but since been corrected I may upvote to balance things out. But there needs to be some way to see at a glance that a question needs attention.

user400654

4:08 PM

I tend to use the title of the question to determine its quality rather than the score, at least in the question list.

"Does ids must start with a letter in react?" for example... lol

Cindy Meister

4:46 PM

@user400654 May depend to a certain extent on the tags one reads in. In the [excel] tag there are a lot of reasonably sounding titles where the actual question is basically a request that someone write the code for the OP. Similar problem for Word, although fewer questions :-)

Likely, this has to do with the fact that these are basically end-user applications with a code interface. People who use it on-the-job would like to automate repetitive tasks (that's what VBA is for) and have no inkling how to do it.

user400654

right

Travis J

5:41 PM

@user400654 I think these types of spelling and grammatical errors are the result of more children entering the site.

Maybe we should fork a Stack Overflow for kids off of the main site.

And have an adults only Stack Overflow main.

rene

I have doubts ...

Travis J

Of the forking, adults only, or more kids entering the site?

πάντα ῥεῖ

Me too ...

Travis J

Feed me your doubts! :P

John Dvorak

Everyone has doubts ... or queries, depending on the exact dialect

Travis J

5:44 PM

Dilemmas? Maybe we can call them away missions ;)

rene

@TravisJ things with childs always seem to attract the wrong type of people. Same for Adult only sites ;)

Travis J

Well, okay. So the forking you don't like. Fair enough.

John Dvorak

Don't call it "for kids". Call it "age-inclusive". Problem solved.

3

user400654

i mean, i wasn't looking at the grammatical problems of the title

Travis J

It does seem like more and more kids are entering programming though, and in general are online, as a result of the ease of access to technology and the increasing prevalence of STEM.

user400654

5:46 PM

grammatical problems are easily fixed

it's rather the fundamental misunderstanding of the tools they're using

Travis J

With regards to "the tools they're using", did you mean the tool they are using the build the application, the library they are using, or Stack Overflow?

d) all of the above

user400654

the tools/libraries they're using to build the application

Travis J

was also an option :)

John Dvorak

Part of the issue is that they can't tell the difference between NetBeans, Java and jQuery

Travis J

Why would having a fundamental misunderstanding prevent someone from asking a question though?

user400654

5:49 PM

it obviously wouldn't

rene

@TravisJ see: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/129460/…

Travis J

@JohnDvorak Car is to carpet :D

user400654

hence the question existing

Travis J

I meant, it seemed like you were implying that it shouldn't be allowed.

user400654

no, i'm more commenting on the usefulness/quality of such questions

not whether or not they should be allowed in the system or answered

Travis J

5:51 PM

Ah, yeah, that is not really a "pearl".

John Dvorak

union worth{int16[1000] foo, hBitmapPng bar}

Travis J

But I think those types of questions, the ones so narrow and so based on a fundamental lack of knowledge, especially when the grammar is downright awful, almost as if a kid wrote it, are actually most likely from kids.

user400654

in this case it ended up closed as a duplicate. I wouldn't have closed it as such, because, who knows, maybe they found some edge case where react can't handle such an ID

but the user didn't actually provide any react code..

Travis J

If you look at a question and the writing is that of a middle schooler, in all likelihood that is where it did originate.

@rene Thanks for linking that. After review... that seems to be addressing the situation where it was suggested to allow users less than the age of 13. I am rather stating that people of age 13-18 are still rather childlike, often lack sophisticated writing skills, and not always, there are some bright kids out there, but often lack fundamental understanding of many of the technologies they are interacting with.

user400654

I think in this case you're likely correct, someone asking if it's possible/correct, without actually trying it to see if it works or referencing any docs. essentially using the ask a question button as if it's a google search

John Dvorak

5:58 PM

It is a Google search, just a crowdfunded one

Travis J

meh

rene

@TravisJ then call them young adults, not childs.

Travis J

Okay, I will start using that term

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