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00:00 - 16:0016:00 - 00:00

4:00 PM
Peasants ? Of course, I live on a PHP farm !
true, if only it could be approved by someone who had enough rep on the other site, as a mod tool or something
that's getting overly complicated though
@Lance I have received the "You have 1 nerve left for today popup". Now it's leave no prisoners.
@diago - they implemented kick for moderators today, on the chat. Just FYI
hides
4:01 PM
I wonder.....
@Gnoupi why are you kicking moderators? :)
Eany Meany Miny Mo.
I for one vote we test this. On HoLyVieR
Look at him, trying to hide
Cowardice
Who can take a joke
Nevermind
4:02 PM
Well, I deserved that :(
@Michael - that's for creating the woot room.
Did it say I was kicked here? I didn't get anything, I just showed up in the index page again
@devinb, don't forget to go cleanup that last comment on the Archive post
@Gnoupi Aww, don't hate on the Woot room. I didn't know commercial stuff was disallowed here
@lance thanks.
4:02 PM
@MichaelMrozek It does it, It doesn't announce it.
@MichaelMrozek - no message, but I caught your gravatar leaving the list
Ok, now we know who can't take a joke
It should probably at least say something to the kicked user, or they're going to think their browser is crazy
@MichaelMrozek: that's probably one for the Chat Feedback room :-P
@HoLyVieR Welcome Back :)
And on that happy note. I am going to enjoy my evening away from the computer. And this nuthouse.
4:04 PM
@Diago Thanks, was doing some stuff meanwhile
@Diago Adios! Have fun in the "real world"
It's not because I don't talk, that I don't listen :p
FFS
He's back
LINK! I'm excited!
0
Q: Under what circumstances do questions and answers allow me to comment?

user150199I'm looking at several questions. Sometimes I can comment because there is a clear mechanism to do so, a big edit field similar to the one offered for an answer. Other times, even on very recent issues, I cannot find how to submit a comment. The topic doesn't look closed in any way I can see and...

but is it him ?
4:05 PM
This seems entirely too rational to be him
I am trying to find that out right now
Well he refers to forum, I have a strong feeling it's him
Ok. It's not him. Unless he has a rational side.
I think that's the usernum of the user who got merged into vgv8 earlier today.
And created a brand new account on SO
4:06 PM
Did you check IP?
I'm waiting for him to slip and say something about "arbitrary EXPs"
different
@devinb Checking the logs it looks right
No, completely different person it seems.
It's too familiar.
4:07 PM
@mmyers Agreed, might just need a watchful eye
Not every newbie is a troll, people. :)
5
Well the troll asked a very similar question ...
it's like a deja vu
A "Russ Bateman" - from the associated SO account
Here's the similar questions :
Troll
0
Q: How can I see the list of my comments?

vgv8In compliance with massive requests I passed to write comments only I cannot find anywhere the list of my comments made. How can I see the list of my comments and order them by time?

Legit
0
Q: Under what circumstances do questions and answers allow me to comment?

user150199I'm looking at several questions. Sometimes I can comment because there is a clear mechanism to do so, a big edit field similar to the one offered for an answer. Other times, even on very recent issues, I cannot find how to submit a comment. The topic doesn't look closed in any way I can see and...

I think there are way too many people closing as 'noise or pointless' because they don't agree with the poster. Not a good trend.
4:12 PM
@mmyers - thanks for bringing this one back: stackoverflow.com/questions/385367/…
@NickCraver I'm still not sure how to get rid of the "migrated to superuser.com", though. I don't want to end up with another meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/58176/i-killed-a-question.
@mmyers Just try it; we'll all say it was Gnoupi if something goes wrong
I wonder what protecting it does, seems it should be once it's properly "unmigrated"
@MichaelMrozek But I've already used that one.
I like the revision history chronicling your efforts: stackoverflow.com/posts/385367/revisions
4:17 PM
The delete/undelete was because it's easier than undeleting all the answers individually.
Oh, clever
And the lock was because I didn't want people messing with it before I figured out what to do. I pinged Jeff but he hasn't been around for a while.
@NickCraver "protecting" just prevents answers from no-rep users
doesn't prevent it from being migrated?
didn't read that full blog post when it came about
@NickCraver not so far as I'm aware. You can still vote to close...
4:21 PM
ah, k, nevermind in that case
it's more about reducing spam / "me too" / "please help" answers on some of the very popular questions that bring in Google hits.
should it prevent migrations and closing then? if a mod has deemed this as a good resource that shouldn't be cluttered up
It seems like mods confuse protected and locked a lot; or I don't understand the difference
Oh, never mind, he did lock it. I thought he protected it
I know what they mean. :P
@mmyers - I call shenanigans, we've seen you break questions :)
4:26 PM
@NickCraver well, that's conflating functionality that doesn't necessarily belong together. Which did happen with locking (now also closes when applied to questions), but I'm not sure is justified with protections.
My gut feeling is that a question controversial enough to even be in danger of closing should probably also be locked: these tend to be the massive CW discussion-fests, and it'd be nice to encourage editing over answering once they hit that point.
4:43 PM
I really like the ketchup feature. (A gold star for you if you get the reference.)
 
1 hour later…
5:45 PM
Gah...my cigar doesn't like me this morning. I keep ashing all over the place, but in the ashtray. Is it Monday?
close enough. I'm sitting on my porch - so the ashes just need to stay off my keyboard.
The ashtray is off to the right, so it's mostly on the desk, the carpet and maybe some on the mouse. It's more about misjudging the ash. I keep forgetting that I ignored the cigar for too long due to typing, so of course it'll likely fall off.
@Shog9 You smoke cigars?
boy, I sure get tired of the CW question.
0
A: What are the "official" (or community-endorsed) criteria by which a question should be designated Community Wiki or not?

Lance RobertsOfficially, CW posts are those that should be open to community editing. It is not the official position of SO that CW should be used for subjective or non-technical questions, though a lot of users treat them that way. This is different than the official policy for the new SE 2.0 sites.

6:00 PM
Get rid of CW
2
@devinb Interesting position there.
+1 for Get rid of CW
woops, IsAdmin security bypasses aren't good if you use the method later, say for seeing who gets which emails
admin triggers the event = spam
Even though I would hate it, it would make things easier if the Team would just officially adopt the position of the SE 2.0 sites, that CW is for subjective questions (roughly).
If the question sounds like it belongs on "Ask Slashdot", don't post it on Stack Overflow.
Easy.
6:15 PM
@GeorgeStocker That ought to go into the FAQ under "what sort of questions can I ask here"
Then we could get rid of CW as is and have a new Wiki mode with the question and one single answer that everyone adds their thoughts to (for list of X questions).
Since I never get on Slashdot, I wouldn't know how to apply it, but I have no problem with getting rid of non-technical subjective questions.
We need to open this and move all the subjective question :
But I think the 'Best Practices' and 'Hidden Features' posts have a lot of good technical information.
If your question doesn't have a discrete, "This is the answer to this question for all time" then it's probably a subjective question looking for opinions.
6:16 PM
Also a lot of programming questions have more than one answer.
@Lance Sure they do, they're "List of X" questions and should be handled as I mentioned above.
Maybe you haven't done much VBA programming :)
Also the answer might change over time - especially if a new version of the language or framework comes out
I haven't done VBA programming in about 4 years, and I have no desire to go back.
@ChrisF That's why we allow people to edit other people's answers.
the last thing I did in VBA was a pacman game, in Excel
that was a couple years ago
6:17 PM
interesting.
@George, just read your comment fully. I would have no problem with that Wiki mode, though it might cut participation down without the incentive. I would like to reward those who give those good technical answers.
I'm not sure why so many people are hung up on giving rep to those who post good technical answers to list questions.
@Lance if It's a 'technical question' why is it CW? If it's CW Because it's asking for opinions, then it doesn't really deserve reputation.
@LanceRoberts Heh, that wasn't for me. Here's that edge-case. :)
A lot of people pressure the List question makers to go CW, even if the topic is completely technical, like 'Best Practices' and 'Hidden Features'.
whoops
Ironically, there was a need to get my attention in another room.
6:21 PM
I don't want to give Programmer Jokes rep either, but I think 'Best Practices' for a programming language will elicit technical rep-deserving answers.
Nope.
Well does the answer about regular expression deserve 3k vote worth of reputation ?
@lance Best practices are inherently subjective. Best to whom? I don't know about you, but I follow the Robert C. Martin school of OOP -- there are those that think that's evil.
So to me, clean code is a best practice.
To others, it's an obstacle.
@Lance first of all, even if they are best practices, how do you structure an "answer"
@Holy, Absolutely, that was a classic, that both technically answered the question and was humorous.
6:22 PM
This is THE best practice. using statements in C#
SO makes me want to learn C#; I've been meaning to forever
@devinb Using Statements rock; and I wish people used them more, but some would argue they could do the same thing with try{} finally { this.Dispose();}
Unfortunately in my current code base the architects decided they should add the references to the objects to an array and then when the entire dataservice is torn down they should remove those objects from the array and dispose of them then.
@GeorgeStocker Those people are jerks.
This is one of my favorites, since I have to deal with DST issues all the time.
133
Q: Daylight saving time and Timezone best practices

OdedI am hoping to make this question and the answers to it the definitive guide to dealing with daylight saving time, in particular for dealing with the actual change overs. If you have anything to add, please do Many systems are dependent on keeping accurate time, the problem is with changes to t...

@GeorgeStocker Those people are... curious. That's how I'll diplomatically put it.
6:25 PM
Ew. There should be an answer that is marked CW; and all the 'answers' put in there. I'm not a fan of the 'answer in the question'. It makes it harder to navigate.
But I think the programming language specific ones are even better technically.
@devinb: I've been cursing their existence.
Yes, but it lets you vote, in case a crappy answer is put in there.
I took a few days and ripped out that code and replaced them all with using statements.
Some 'undesired' side-effects occured.
That way the real 'Best Practices' can float to the top.
6:26 PM
So I need to dig deeper and figure out what I missed.
@Lance You can still vote, but the 'accepted' answer should be a compilation of all other answers.
And voting on Stack Overflow as a measure of popularity only works if people don't try to downvote random posts.
That's why you should never vote for popularity or 'opinion' related items.
Speaking of CW, I just posted a lame answer to a question about cd vs chdir (that really should belong on superuser) and marked my answer CW. Then added to it to make it more serious and it got accepted...
... was it something I said?
@devinb, this isn't a bad answer:
1
A: Shall SO policy (and the FAQ) be changed to allow questions that are likely to solicit expert opinions?

devinbI have three items. Provided Example Question Has the lack of Flash support on the iPad impacted your technology decision in a recent Rich Internet Application project? If so, how? Who is an expert? Consider these SO users. Which of them are experts, for the purposes of this question? I...

This is representative of the comments in the code:
#region Shrimp Base Class
/// <summary>
/// The console is made up of little applications, each called a "Shrimp".
///
/// Shrimps can be stateful, the Console creates Shrimps on loads and keeps
/// them in memory.
///
/// It was hard to mix the words "Console" and "-let" to make something
/// akin to "applet", so I chose the word "Shrimp", which means little, to
/// stand for my "Console-lets".
/// </summary>
@Shog9 Mine?
@Shog9 Much longer than it should be. I couldn't stop.
@devinb at least, we know who wrote it before we see your name
6:33 PM
@GeorgeStocker I dealt with a situation where the user control relied on the what stylesheet was applied to an individual (hardcoded string) id of a particular div on a different user control which might be on the page.
I used the style on a different item (unknowningly) and the entire app blew up.
@HoLyVieR You mean because of the excellent quality and razor-sharp wit, right?
@devinb You could have probably cut a paragraph out of each section, but you hit all the points.
@Shog9 Edit it! PLEASE! I'm too much in love with my own writing. In my head, ALL the points are needed, I don't have the objectivity to tell which points are too nuanced to be distinct.
Ultimately, I can make any question subjective. Stats/data and all that. ;)
@GeorgeStocker So all the answers would be there and could be voted on, but there would be one compiled accepted answer with the sum total?
Does it bother you at all when people who are not having a problem post a question?... stackoverflow.com/questions/3515425/…
@devinb +1 for you on the subjective question item
6:49 PM
I hate subjective questions, they're the only thing I'm good at. Hence my Meta reputation.
@lance Voting is irrelevant with 'list of x', and almost useless.
If a post is a duplicate but it's closed for some other reason, is it considered ok to edit in the "possible duplicate" box at the top?
It should have the possible duplicate in a comment
Somebody already mentioned it (in a comment)
I'd leave it in the comment. It doesn't seem worth the effort
I've read the respective meta answers but still don't quite get what 'too localized' means.
I mean, other than 'localized' as in the geographical term.
I think I've closed as too localized maybe twice ever
I would probably call that post off-topic
Yeah, me too.
@GeorgeStocker Aren't there still quality of answers. Some best practices answers are great, and some suck. Don't you think that the community should rate these technical list answers, just like they rate other technical answers.
@Lance Roberts: I think they're bikeshed questions and get far more traffic and far more reputation than they're worth. I'd prefer something much closer to the wiki model for them - as a way to document 'best' practices. (although the term is very subjective and there really aren't any objective criteria to determine if something is a 'best practice').
7:08 PM
Too Localized is when something is no longer relevant, like an account closure or request for a specific question (like reopening).
For instance: Even though Datasets are ubiquitous, I wouldn't call them a best practice.
So, just because something is popular doesn't make it 'best'. Just makes it popular.
@GeorgeStocker Yes, it is subjective, but that doesn't mean that there aren't good best practices. That's what voting is good for, to weed out the crappy ones, and elevate the good ones.
@GeorgeStocker Then you would downvote the answer that says that Datasets are a best practice.
Relative rep value is another issue. I wouldn't have a problem lowering rep on 'List' questions.
Would it be bad to point out that voting is ultimately subjective? :)
The decision to create Stack Overflow was also subjective.
This sentence is subjective.
7:13 PM
This, however, is not.
@Bolt It is.
just to disagree
:p
Everything is relative.
"Everything" is absolute, though.
It's funny how the discussion moved from CW & Subjective question to philosophical discussion
More ale!
7:15 PM
3:30 pm :/
3:15 am, Thursday.
The phrase 'best practice' makes my blood boil... using it around me is definitely not best practice.
Then what is the best pratice to ask best pratice question ? :p
12:16 PM here...it is, afterall, after noon.
@Hol
@HoLyVieR >:-<
7:19 PM
@HoLyVieR There are some upsides to unemployment. :)
So I was reading the conversation around what mmyers said about trolls. Reminded me of davit-datuashvili (god I can't believe I can spell his name without copying or referring now). What directly led to his suspension?
I mean, he isn't a troll. But it just reminded me of him because of his crappy questions.
And the suspension.
Evan like ?
I really feel like I need to test this kicking thing again :)
Not sure who Evan/vgv8/whoever is.
evan != vgv8
7:31 PM
Please.
OK, then I'm not sure who they are.
I repeat
Evan Carroll : www.evancarroll.com
@Diago: was it something I said? :(
I am still on my last nerve for the day
I really don't need to read more about Evan or vgv8 :)
7:32 PM
Is there a "kick everyone" command?
Oh man, I'm so sorry.
I think there's a kick everyone but [someone] option
Let's see
I feel like I'm going to be the rat in the experiment, an other time ...
Nope
Has to be done one by one
@HoLyVieR If you insist :)
7:34 PM
I don't
Ok. On that note. I am out again.
I am a sitting zombie tonight
I'm semi-out, I have some work to do
Good discussion
84
Q: A function that returns only true

FireAphisDuring a code review I performed today for my colleague, I noticed a function that was defined as returning a boolean value, but in practice it returned only true. In a case of failure, this function threw an exception. I pointed it out and advised to change the return value to void (the code is ...

7:49 PM
yeah... I'm with the YAGNI approach on that one.
Seems like much ado about nothing
Not sure in that case, but I've never been totally in the YAGNI camp, I like to write a little bit of flexibility into my functions.
2
He should read "How to Win Friends and Influence People"
2
The problem is callers need to check both now; they essentially need to write try {if(!fn) {fail();}} catch(some_exception&) {fail();}, which is silly
They're probably not going to do the if, which means changing the function to return false instead of throwing an exception will break code
@MichaelMrozek: They probably don't do unit tests either
7:57 PM
@Changeling Unit testing is for sissies! ;)
@George: Used to think that too :) I have been reading Art of Unit Testing lately on Safari Online. I am being converted
Heh, that was a joke. Even when I don't write formal unit tests, I always unit test.
@George: Oh sure.. we all test to some degree I hope.
@Changeling I agree, but you'd be surprised.
So, normally at this time of day I make myself some bacon and eggs...but with the recently egg recall, I'm scurd...
It hit your State?
8:11 PM
I don't think so, I looked up the info.
But, that's the thing...who knows. The eggs are one of the brands in the recall.
Not to mention that I had a hell of a time trying to find the same info that I saw in a tweet, but forgot to bookmark.
@George: what I don't understand is wouldn't salmonella burn off when you cook it?
Well, that depends on how well you cook it.
So yah, seeing as I tend to not trust store bought eggs and cook 'em well, I should be safe. :)
I forget the temp necessary, but I believe that's why you're supposed to cook chicken to an internal temp of 160 F.
When they reach the color black, it can be considered safe :p
@HoLyVieR Well, safe from salmonella anyway. :)
@George ya, I haven't say good to eat.
8:19 PM
lol
 
3 hours later…
11:30 PM
Hey @shog you are you around?
00:00 - 16:0016:00 - 00:00

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