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Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

6:41 AM

@rene needs 1 moar now... why don't you ping ppl?

Sometimes you do ping, what's the criteria?

rene

If I'm the first to vote then no ping

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

@rene oh, only when it needs one more? Smart... ;)

The script does it on its own?

(the check if there's existing delete vote)

rene

No, I use my own brain power

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

🧠

Queenie Goldstein

7:13 AM

longest running cookie account i have seen---stats.stackexchange.com/users/271607/do-not-reinstate-monica

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

Surely there are those who run for years... though no way to know for sure.

Νеvеrꭑoꭇе

7:46 AM

@Feeds why isn't "everypony" an option in the first question?

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

8:12 AM

@JNat cross site spammer to start your day. Thanks! :)

rene

9:25 AM

→ 36 messages moved to Chimney

→ 1 message moved to Chimney

Queenie Goldstein

If messages from trashcan are pushed back here...will they appear right below my message or take their original places?

rene

they return to their original chronological order

Queenie Goldstein

I assume it's due to the numbers they are assigned :9837982

rene

9:55 AM

@QueenieGoldstein yeah, those numbers are per chat server and increase for each new message.

Journeyman Geek

and if you think about it - "simply" "select * where room is "foo" order by message_id is a simple way to do it :D

Νеvеrꭑoꭇе

@Rob If Magica De Spell can pretend that Ratface is a raven despite the yellow beak, then I am totally entitled to call a raven "crow".

And I totally didn't mistype. Was done on purpose. yep... totally on purpose... who you think I am.... mistaken a raven for a crow....

(hope they felt for this)

Mithical

@Νеvеrꭑoꭇе then again the yellow beak may be Magica's fault

Νеvеrꭑoꭇе

10:13 AM

@Mithical To be fair, originally there were two birds.

Poe, originally Magica's brother, turned into a raven by some spell in an unexplained incident and Ratface, an actual raven.

Poe had a yellow beak, Ratface a normal black one.

Later, Poe almost disappeared.

And now Ratface is sometime drawn with a yellow beak (and even given Poe's original hat)

Queenie Goldstein

10:28 AM

Rene, I am in your team :))

7

Q: Evading question ban by triggering the automatic merger of accounts

While trying to ask a question, one could get: We are no longer accepting questions from this account. See the Help Center to learn more. This is of course something counterproductive towards a single user, but for the best of the community. Seeing as individual users are barred from asking fur...

@JourneymanGeek aah yes, but what if the target room already occupies #7853298 ....does it get a new identifier? or a conflict?

Ryan M

@QueenieGoldstein The message IDs are unique across rooms

rene

@QueenieGoldstein thanks, I needed that. It is not often that I'm the voice of the unpopular opinion ....

The group pressure is unbearable ;)

Queenie Goldstein

lolol might be even at work

I have not even graduated and I stay tensed about it LOL

@RyanM so, Chat SE allocates memory to store which message was from where...*AND* the unique identifier....wow

that's inticate

Tinkeringbell

@rene What's the unpopular opinion?

That people should be able to circumvent system restrictions this way?

rene

@QueenieGoldstein I guess the sql server database for chat has 3 tables: users(id, name); rooms(id, name); Messages(id, roomId, userId, content). That is it, basically.

@Tinkeringbell that the outcome of the circumvention is beneficial to the system, at least as stated in the question at hand.

Queenie Goldstein

10:37 AM

@Tinkeringbell first thing, if you are concerned about spam/VLQ, matured sites are already dealing with 100s of them. second, this method protects the user if they think they have faced targetted voting

Tinkeringbell

@rene Hmm. I want a SEDE query or some data that proves this is actually a viable and often used option that outweighs all the second accounts that are already made every day to bypass system restrictions...

@QueenieGoldstein Targetted voting is something you escalate to moderators and CMs, not something you create a second account for to escape.

Queenie Goldstein

SEDE doesnt store account merges I suppose...

@Tinkeringbell I faced it and evaded it myself. My content was good, moderators did not want to intervene.

But from that stage I have dissociated the account

rene

@Tinkeringbell I would love to write that query. Can you arrange that I get credentials for the internal SEDE? There is not enough data in the public schema to query that ;)

Tinkeringbell

@rene I know ;)

rene

I can try some of my social engineering tactics ....

Tinkeringbell

10:40 AM

@QueenieGoldstein Honestly, you don't get a six month ban out of nowhere... I would be very surprised if you get there with targetted voting and nothing shows up on the mod tools.

Queenie Goldstein

Six month ban preceeds a warning

I used the warning

Tinkeringbell

Meh. I'm still not impressed. I mostly am not if people game the sites like that.

And I'm less impressed if they go around actively encouraging people to circumvent system restrictions.

Queenie Goldstein

@Tinkeringbell What is it that trips you? specifically

Tinkeringbell

@QueenieGoldstein Using socks while the policy is that you don't use socks to get to do anything you can't do with your master. And yes, using a sock is using a sock, even if you merge it after.

But even if it did work for you, you're probably a statistical outlier.

Queenie Goldstein

@Tinkeringbell In this circumvent-system, the user could legally ask the question

Tinkeringbell

10:44 AM

@QueenieGoldstein Yes, and they could also ask it with their master account. Yet you're claiming that by using a sock, you got to do something which you couldn't with your master.

Queenie Goldstein

@Tinkeringbell merging an account with a banned account will keep the ban...(or atleast notify moderators for quality bans)

Tinkeringbell

@QueenieGoldstein And you don't create an account to circumvent the ban. If you're banned, you don't ask then merge.

Queenie Goldstein

@Tinkeringbell The question is about question quality,...are we(the people) reserving votes by giving away the 'master ID'?

@Tinkeringbell Of course that is illegal, and not in question.

Tinkeringbell

I don't think this is about question quality at all. You're saying you either created a sock to do something you couldn't do with the master and had them merged, or you're still a sock and your master is languishing somewhere.

Either way, you're circumventing the system and strutting around encouraging others to do the same.

Queenie Goldstein

:/ ...Did you circumvent what I just wrote...I was a perfectly legal candidate to ask the question from my own account

there is nothing like created a sock to do something you couldn't do

Meta Andrew T.

10:47 AM

I'm confused

Queenie Goldstein

status-confused

Tinkeringbell

@QueenieGoldstein You are claiming that you created a sock to get an upvoted question merged into your master, and you're either encouraging others to do the same to avoid questions bans entirely (just use a new account each time, only trigger the merge when it's positively received) or get out of existing restrictions.

Queenie Goldstein

The first one does sound like an abuse to my method, get out of existing restrictions. doesnt sound possible entirely.

Tinkeringbell

Oh, there's been people like that. I'm possibly talking to one right now!

Queenie Goldstein

I have not seen one though

If a user has a background of asking bad questions, even if they create 10IDs, they wont get something good out of it

Tinkeringbell

10:51 AM

Of course not, I have never seen anyone admit they're actively evading questions bans either.

Queenie Goldstein

That does sound hostile...but I assume you could check if someone has quality bans on their account... you're a moderator

Tinkeringbell

If I could, I wouldn't be allowed to tell. And if it's a sock used to circumvent things, the ban would be on the master.

Queenie Goldstein

I know

Tinkeringbell

So, what makes you think it's a.) a good idea to let the world know you successfully gamed the system, and b.) encourage every other quality banned user out there to do the same?

Queenie Goldstein

a) The idea that the @NAME was voted instead of the question quality
b) I never encouraged a quality banned user to do the same, only if they suspect such patterns.(and have not fallen into the pit of ban)

Tinkeringbell

10:58 AM

So, I addressed your a already: If you think you're the victim of targetted voting you escalate to the mods, not make a sock. If they do nothing, there's either no evidence, or no evidence yet, neither case is solved with a sock.

And that also wipes out b, because b isn't a viable solution to dealing with a.

Queenie Goldstein

@Tinkeringbell I consider upvoted question an evidence

Tinkeringbell

@QueenieGoldstein I don't.

Because I've dealt with problematic users that wrote over 50 low quality posts and still managed to write some that hit HNQ and avoid the question ban for eternity.

Queenie Goldstein

And how do you prevent users from GaMinG the SyStEM and getting others quality banned?

that sounds made-up...but I will believe you

Tinkeringbell

2 mins ago, by Tinkeringbell

So, I addressed your a already: If you think you're the victim of targetted voting you escalate to the mods, not make a sock. If they do nothing, there's either no evidence, or no evidence yet, neither case is solved with a sock.

Queenie Goldstein

@Tinkeringbell Gaming the system

to get others banned

has not been addressed in the tagged message

Tinkeringbell

11:01 AM

@QueenieGoldstein Has, it tells you how to deal with people targetting votes to get others quality banned.

Queenie Goldstein

Uhmm...I meant users gaming the system to evade the targetting voter DEtect-inator

Mithical

Huh?

Tinkeringbell

@QueenieGoldstein There's no such thing, we investigate once things are flagged.

Queenie Goldstein

So you wait for a flag LOL

Tinkeringbell

Unless you mean the serial voting reversal script, but then again: if that doesn't pick up, you flag.

Mithical

11:04 AM

There are plenty of systems in place to detect suspicious voting and to help investigate it. Just most of them are secret.

Tinkeringbell

And none of them result in the advice to use a sock.

Queenie Goldstein

Therefore my method outweighs the complexity of the SOP adopted to avoid good questions posters from entering the nullvoid (or univoid due to rep 1).

Journeyman Geek

@QueenieGoldstein problem. If you get caught, we throw the book at you ;D

and a lot of serial voting is caught "manually"

Queenie Goldstein

you can get caught only if you do something wrong ~The wise man

John Dvorak

@QueenieGoldstein false

Tinkeringbell

11:07 AM

@QueenieGoldstein Luckily, people slip up a lot. Like when they start bragging about the times they got away with something, or encouraging others to do it too because they got away with it.

Ryan M

@JourneymanGeek I greatly enjoyed going back to my old voting fraud flags after the CM ticket burndown and seeing what happened to them :-)

Journeyman Geek

@RyanM I'm told some of the ~~ticket~~ flag responses are amusing :D

Queenie Goldstein

@Tinkeringbell slip as in?

Ryan M

@JourneymanGeek Sadly I never got any interesting flag responses directly, though a mod told me in chat that I'd rediscovered a voting-fraud case they'd escalated months back ^^;

Queenie Goldstein

Journeyman Geek

11:21 AM

@RyanM Oh, on SO?

Ryan M

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, I've never spotted any elsewhere, for better or worse

Journeyman Geek

@RyanM I'm a bit crap at spotting them, but sometimes I get lucky and someone does the work for me :D

Ryan M

@JourneymanGeek Do you get them on MSE much?

Journeyman Geek

@RyanM not much

there's no real "point" to MSE reputation I guess :D

Ryan M

Legend has it that the first person to get 1 million MSE reputation will become Shog10

7

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

12:04 PM

Trivia time! What does the below image advertise? No points if using reverse image search! :D

John Dvorak

Renewable power? Insurance?

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

@JohnDvorak nope and nope.

John Dvorak

Brightly colored food?

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

Getting closer, but no cigar.

Mithical

milk?

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

12:06 PM

@Mithical also close, but no cigar either.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Tea or cannabis.

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

(and it's not manually reportred)

Rob

Jesus coming, to see their bucket full of bags of sticks.

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

@Tinkeringbell getting very close with one of those...

@Rob someone ever more famous than Jesus might visit them, true. (it's sort of a hint. ;))

How you measure famousness?

Rob

I care not for their bag of sticks.

and Juan Carlos agrees.

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

12:12 PM

@Rob those are no sticks

Rob

Stick

Stick or the stick may refer to: == Thin elongated objects == Twig The weapon used in stick fighting Walking stick, a device to facilitate balancing while walking Shepherd's crook Swagger stick Digging stick == Sports == Bandy stick, used in bandy Cue stick, used in pool, snooker and carom billiards Hockey stick, used in hockey Field hockey stick Ice hockey stick Lacrosse stick, used in lacrosse The rods, called "the sticks" used to measure distance by the chain crew in American football == Music == Drum stick, used to strike drums Part of a bow used to play a string instrument Chapman Stick,...

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

No joy

Queenie Goldstein

@ShadowWizardWearingMask reputation xD

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

@QueenieGoldstein hmm..... bit of a problem to Jesus, I'm afraid. ;)

George can still earn reputation.

He's still young, not even 60.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Amount of people that start Twittering if you as much as fart?

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

12:17 PM

@Tinkeringbell yes!!!

Now, how to measure tweets about a person...

Tinkeringbell

Count mentions ;)

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

Twitter doesn't show result count.

Rob

@ShadowWizardWearingMask 🃏

Spevacus

@ShadowWizardWearingMask SE's been having some trouble maintaining connections through websockets or... something like that (I'm really out of my element here) See: meta.stackexchange.com/q/355324/622284 This is intermittently preventing Smokey from monitoring a post's deleted/non-deleted status and sometimes wrongfully reports them to the delay-rooms.

Rob

@ShadowWizardWearingMask By the toot.

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

12:21 PM

@Rob joker? No fun either. :D

@Spevacus oh, bummer. Hope Nick can solve this...

@Rob tooth?

Spevacus

@ShadowWizardWearingMask He's been testing with rene in CHQ this morning. Seems he knows where to look now, which is a good start. Their goal is to kill the root cause of the issues so that Makyen doesn't have to report such a problem a 4th time :D

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

Well if it's a problem with the host, even Nick won't be able to fix the root.

Connecting to VPN that nukes internet connection, bbl!

Spevacus

Another case ^

Νеvеrꭑoꭇе

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Amateur.

What does THIS advertise?

(sorry for the poor quality but it is quite hard to find this old ads in the first place, finding an hd version is impossible)

Spevacus

12:37 PM

When in doubt... it's a car commercial.

Tinkeringbell

Pineapples?

Νеvеrꭑoꭇе

NOTE: the thing the farmer is holding... is a Japanese daikon.

Tinkeringbell

@Spevacus Seriously? Over here, it's perfume :P

Spevacus

@Tinkeringbell We americans like our cars I guess :P

Νеvеrꭑoꭇе

@Tinkeringbell not even close.

Tinkeringbell

12:38 PM

Hahaha over here, car commercials usually have a car in them. It's the perfume ones that get weird...

(and that might still also have a car in them)

@Νеvеrꭑoꭇе Some sort of cabbage then?

Spevacus

Once saw a commercial where this group of people were in the mall or a store or something, buying a bunch of stuff, laughing, cracking jokes (so far at least ~20 seconds long)... then they get out and get into the most aesthetically pleasing Jeep I've ever seen and drive away. The Jeep had less than 5 seconds of screen time, making up around 15% of the ad's runtime.

And don't get me started on our Superbowl commercials...

Tinkeringbell

I like the commercial from... I think it's Skoda. They show all these people having a brand new car and trying to keep it clean/new: A mom putting a bunch of dirty soccer kids on the bus instead of in her car, a husband claiming the store is out of potting soil...

But the car is there basically the entire time :D

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask

1:09 PM

@Tinkeringbell here the most confusing ad I've ever seen was for burger.

@Νеvеrꭑoꭇе some kind of bread?

Rubiksmoose

1:31 PM

@Νеvеrꭑoꭇе I must know.

Rob

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Don't you know your military references: Jester

Meta Andrew T.

I have a feeling that Chrome 86's "background tab throttling" also prevents SE's websocket from running in the background? Not seeing "N new activities" banner on the /questions page after switching the tab for a while, or is it only me?

Νеvеrꭑoꭇе

1:48 PM

@Rubiksmoose @Tinkeringbell @ShadowWizardWearingMask sorry, been caught in a call. Nope.... that was an ads for a fantasy game.

Lunar: Silver Star Story (Playstation) - TV Commercial

►

Rubiksmoose

heh that kinda explains why it looked like she was treating it as a sword I guess?

ugh typing with a sliced up index finger is hard

Spevacus

What have you done to your finger?

Rubiksmoose

The same thing I was trying to do to a lime which had a suprisingly hard skin I guess. Which is to say, slice it open.

Not hosiptal worthy yet at least. If it keeps bleeding like this, maybe though.

Spevacus

Slippery little things, especially after rinsing them. I've always found stabbing it at the stem then pulling the knife down to slice through completely helps to avoid unwanted injuries.

Ryan M

Also sharp knives help. if your knives are dull, cutting through anything will be fruitless (puns!) and it might slip off

Rubiksmoose

1:54 PM

Yeah I need to sharpen ours again apparently. This one was old enough where it was quite hard.

Spevacus

Sharp enough to make a mess of your finger though I suppose :O

Rubiksmoose

But the gin and tonic was made in the end and all was right, if not a bit painful and messy, in the end.

Tinkeringbell

@Rubiksmoose Aren't you supposed to be like, not trying to type with it if it's still bleeding? Put it up high!

Rubiksmoose

@Spevacus Alas!

Meta Andrew T.

Swipe! Voice typing!

Rubiksmoose

1:56 PM

@Tinkeringbell That would have been good advice for last night XD I think it is only bleeding a bit now and only because I upset it by changing the dressing.

Tinkeringbell

@Rubiksmoose Well fingers crossed it calms down soon enough again then :)

Rubiksmoose

Oh! I do have a mic on my desktop now. I wonder how voice typing is on it.

@Tinkeringbell heh gingers crossed

2

*fingers

Ryan M

but be careful with ginger too, just in case. it's not just limes that are slippery.

Rubiksmoose

XD

Tinkeringbell

@Rubiksmoose I guess that means the voice typing is open to improvements? :P

Rubiksmoose

2:00 PM

@Tinkeringbell Alas that one was all me.

Rob

@MetaAndrewT. Makyen posted a question on Meta about websockets ...

Rubiksmoose

Looks like it works just fine maybe or at least well so far neat.

Punctuation need some work LOL

Ryan M

Nick Craver's digging into the websocket issue at the moment

Meta Andrew T.

If I'm not mistaken, it's possible to dictate "dot" and "comma" to add punctuation.

I guess it's a coincidence that the websocket is problematic at that moment :)

Since browser games on the background are paused until I refocus the tab :/

Looks like the websocket issue has been fixed.

Tinkeringbell

2:20 PM

@RobertColumbia 's gone.

user400654

🚽

Rob

Not fixed, and requesting assistance:

Thanks for all the stats dumps here - our web sockets are spread across 9 servers, so with one being wonky we'd expect to see a ~11% bad behavior rate. Given the above dumps, that looks to be exactly the case. But, this is something very hard to repro, they've been running for weeks. So instead of a quick fix, we want to narrow it down and figure out what's wrong where so we can fix the root. Is anyone in chat we could run tests with today? We can try rotating out each node to find the culprit faster. We can do this without, but your test suite already going would be very useful and welcome. — Nick Craver ♦ 3 hours ago

3

Meta Andrew T.

Welp, looks like I got the good one, but since I have refreshed all SE pages, I may regret it later...

Meta Andrew T.

2:51 PM

regretting

rene

3:41 PM

@Rob yeah, I'm running the websocket tests atm and are providing feedback.

Rob

@rene ✔️

Meta Andrew T.