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@Feeds Chatting with balpha at Town Hall: onebox in Blog and the new oneboxOS

Big Joe

5:28 AM

Was there a blacklash of third party apps with SE and if so how did they deal with the backlash of not using them anymore?

I'm a founder of a sub on reddit and we are going dark on the 12-14th for support and a strike

5:45 AM

@BigJoe no? Third-party apps are still free to use the API, if that's what you meant.

6:24 AM

@BigJoe not sure what you mean. SE never used third party apps for itself, they did have their own app for a short while, until they realized there's no profit in it and shut it down.

No big backlash, it was fair decision.

Big Joe

6:40 AM

@MetaAndrewT. Got it thanks

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack Didn't know that. learning new stuff everyday. Thanks

@BigJoe didn't know SE had its own app... fair, lol. Well, the iOS version was really good, the android version... less so, to say the least. Its only developer had serious IRL issues so couldn't work on it, hence it was full of bugs and overall lacking many features the iOS version did have.

6:57 AM

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack it was also a sloooooow death

@JourneymanGeek yeah, but totally expected.

huh. TIL we have Why isn't providing feedback mandatory on downvotes, and why are ideas suggesting such negatively received? on MSE as well as MSO. I had only ever seen the MSO copy before.

@starball opposite for me lol

And couldn't find it on MSO with quick search, so probably only few can. :D

@starball Yeah, it's copied for duplicate target

(probably using different words)

7:03 AM

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack it's quite similar actually. meta.stackoverflow.com/q/357436/11107541

@starball missing "mandatory" which is what caused my search to fail.

That's quite the key word. Or should be.

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack ah

Also locking FAQ answer is terrible.

The whole point is letting the users edit.

Well, that's MSO, no surprise.

If you don't want edits in FAQ, make it help center page, simple as that.

Well, not really related to anything, but I just ordered a car rental for the August vacation. 7 days in Italy, rented a Jeep. ;)

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack noice

but why though?

7:19 AM

@starball oh, not alone. With wife and kids, during the summer holiday from school. One week vacation in Italy, wife ordered flight and hotel, leaving car rental for me. We'll be in Milan, and travel in the area. :)

We were in Germany before covid, and London last year.

Jul 2, 2022 at 0:03, by Shadow Wizard Says No More War

I plan going to London in August with the whole family, but with COVID rising again, and overall insanity in airports, can't be certain.

;)

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack system dosen't know the difference

@JourneymanGeek difference between what?

Mod manually locked the answer.

Ahh

Spam?

@JourneymanGeek no, probably due to too many comment and edit wars.

Ahh no too many OT rant answers

7:26 AM

Sensitive subject, sure, but still. Can't handle it, so ask SE to add to some help center page and link there where needed.

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack ohhhhh. sorry sorry. I hate leaving the house so sometimes when I hear people say "vacation", I project myself onto them and imagine that they are actually meaning "staycation".

@starball rofl

I'm also into my routine, and not fully enjoying family vacations, doing it more for the kids than for myself. ;)

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack hope you all have a good time together :)

Thanks!

Kids will most likely enjoy, we parents... probably less... :D

@ShadowWizardStrikesBack being a parent sounds tough

ein supports Moderator Strike

7:31 AM

@starball it is! But it's like a long term investment. ;)

Now to see how I can have international driving license...

Found it! Luckily there's a place nearby my home so should be simple.

9:49 AM

So, how goes the strike? If I were in a city where SE Inc. has offices, I would think of organizing a protest vigil, and maybe even pasting some pamphlets to their front doors.

Mithical

The strike is... striking. :) We're selecting people to negotiate with SE, although I don't expect much "negotiation" to happen, since our representatives are hopefully going to stick to the demands that we've outlined several times.

Rocket Nikita

There are so many lost souls here on the meta

0

A: /help/whats-meta should link to meta.site[.stackexchange].com/search, not to site[.stackexchange].com/search

Como encontrar uma pessoa nome Franco.893

"How to find a person named Franco.893"

Is this some kind of spam?

10:06 AM

@Mithical so, despite the slow down in Meta activity something is going on behind the curtain?

Mithical

correct, we're in the bureaucracy stage now

10:40 AM

@Mithical that said that's where we generally are these days

@Mithical @JourneymanGeek I like the fact that something is still moving but it still feels bad that from your average Joe passerby point of view it looks like the "issue" is gone.

and coincidentally, the last post that the same average Joe could see as "the company solving the problem" is the one with the "data" that somehow managed to produce enough smoke to even get a positive overall score despite all the serious issues it has (see starball answer for example, the presented data seems not correlated at all)

@SPArcheon well on this issue anyway

And considering we're virtual and volunteers it's not like we can picket SE hq.

@JourneymanGeek yep, my worries is that I don't know if the moderators can do this alone. And engagement/awareness seems to be dropping. I wouldn't want the company to be able to just wait and sit this out.

Mithical

11:01 AM

It's also Friday, activity always plummets on the weekends.

Feeds

1:04 PM

stackoverflow.blog/2023/06/09/…

@Feeds no...

Spevacus

1:37 PM

@Feeds AIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAI

M.A.R.

3:07 PM

@Spevacus I'm reading that in that bee guy's voice in the Simpsons

"¡AI, AI, AI, no me gusta!"

A: June 2023 Data Dump is missing

3:22 PM

86

DISCLAIMER: I was recently impacted by the Company's layoff. I am going to carefully respond in a way that ensures I don't reveal anything the Company may feel is confidential--particularly with regard to strategy, or future plans. Any knowledge I have on strategy or future plans is both dated a...

GcL

3:35 PM

@SPArcheon lacking moderation they can't sit on their hands. They'll either have to find a substitute or accept the drop in quality... which will eventually lead to further drops in engagement and traffic.

3:54 PM

@GcL That's sadly what I don't agree about.

They aren't fully lacking moderation even now because:
- some users continue to curate content
- some mod continue to handle moderation either because a) they don't want to fully leave the site unmoderated or b) they don't support or want to join the strike.

I believe that even if every mod resigned out there are enough users ready to take their place

And if I am correct on that, that is the market advantage the company may be pursuing. ChatGPT only produces an initial answer. Stack produces that answer and then has free volunters curate, rewrite, improve it.

GcL

I suspect moderation is sufficiently difficult to do well that the users ready to take their place aren't ready nor equipped for what the responsibility entails. Understaffed moderation I expect will burn out remaining mods in short order.

@SPArcheon Maybe. I find refactoring ai generated solutions to general problems to be like filling in boiler plate. I find refactoring ai generated solution to specific problems to be a huge pain in the ass. Lots of what? and why? that is difficult to wrap your head around.

eh, it's more a case of, just as our existing mods learned over time, so too will new ones. however, if we're on a downward trend, and have been for nearly 10 years, a new crop of mods won't fix that. AI generated titles won't fix that. letting more people upvote kinda gets at the root of some of the problems, but I think it's too little too late.

Certainly deciding to do nothing about the flood of AI answers will only make things worse over time.

we already have answerers deciding to just not try anymore because why bother when people are accepting/upvoting ai answers.

@KevinB my point is that I am trying to see what the company plan is, can't really find one.

The only possible scheme I see is quite lame
Premises:
- site numbers dropping (number of users, posts etc)
- ChatGPT usage going up
- ChatGPT partially shares the same user-space as the site (people looking for quick answers)
Wrong conclusions:
- ChatGPT is a direct competitor
- to beat ChatGPT we have to stead their userbase and the simplest way to do so is to provide the same thing.
- we also need an advantage to stay on top - that advantage is curation by a set of trained monk... I meant users.

4:12 PM

sell data dumps (or data in general). that's the plan, and now that traffic is plummeting they gotta do something about it to be able to rely on selling data dumps far into the future

why they didn't come to the community?

:shrug:

@KevinB I don't think that is the only thing.

just a quick comparison, have you ever seen those users that post a fast, placeholder answer just to be the first ones and then edit it to be an actual answer afterwards?

rarely

but yes

it used to be a lot more prevalent

I think the target is doing the same, with the "placeholder" being the GPT answer so that Stack will be able to say that you get an answer in less than an hour, then wait for the community to post alternatives or curate it.

You will look like having the best of both worlds.

Fast answers and Useful answers

i do think that's somewhere they might go, but i doubt it's what they were planning as of a month ago

but if things keep going the way they are...

would ad revenue pay for such a feature?

such a feature would effectively be the same as inlining "LMGTFY"

(the acronym still fits)

4:34 PM

@KevinB because what are we gonna do? Strike?

GcL

@SPArcheon I don't think the ChatGPT answers that aren't correct or are subtly wrong will get curated nearly as well nor as often as human generated ones. The posters likely won't understand the solution, they're not great to debug, and I suspect some people that would otherwise want to help a person will recognize an ai generated answer and not want to touch it.

I think a likely bad outcome in the near term is that the number of actual subject experts or people with experience will decline and you'll end up with a blind leading the blind kind of forum. Like walking into a conference room of grad students coming up with "solutions". Great for a learning experience, terrible for getting actual production ready solutions.