Tavern on the Meta

Shog9

00:00

@jmac keep in mind, some of that is just part & parcel of being a relatively small site yet. Not that TWP is all that small anymore, but still - there's a much greater chance of something like that overwhelming the community than on, say, Ask Ubuntu.

jmac

Of course, but because we're small it is that much more important that we grow naturally and that we hold standards and develop our scope ourselves

Cole Johnson

On the topic of moderators, is the moderator diamond a BLACK DIAMOND (U+25C6) (◆), or a BLACK DIAMOND SUIT (U+2666) (♦) (which is HTML escapable with &diams;)?

jmac

If you look at the list of most viewed questions on TWP, only a few are good natural questions not boosted through the Hot Questions list. And that's bad.

Manishearth

Peter Mortensen joins Quora

5

Cole Johnson

@Manishearth lmgtfy.com/?q=%22stackoverflow%22+site%3Aquora.com

Shog9

00:03

@jmac sure. I'm just saying, a lot can happen in 8 hours but... if it gets cleaned up eventually, it's only 8 hours.

Cole Johnson

Oh, so LMGTFY isn't banned in chat, but it is on the main site.

jmac

@Shog9 I understand your perspective. "As long as it gets handled, it's okay". On the community-moderating side though, it doesn't feel good.

Manishearth

it does. lmgtfy is used on main to harass users

on chat...not so much

Shog9

@jmac of course not

Blog - Stack Exchange: New Question / Answer Rate Limits

Jeff Atwood on February 21, 2009

Stack Overflow is somewhat unique in that we encourage participation of essentially anonymous, random programmers. Our idea is to radically reduce the bar for participation, and take one giant leap of faith:

Well, most of them, anyway. We have the typical hurdles in place to prevent bots from gaming our system: JavaScript and “too fast to be human” triggered CAPTCHA. This works in conjunction with community use of the offensive flag, which auto-deletes any post after 5 users tag it “offensive”, and traditional downvoting. This system has been fairly effective to date. We …

jmac

I mean, I had to come in here to get someone to protect the post before it really overran us all...

Cole Johnson

00:05

@Manisheart lmgtfy.com/?q=cache:lmgtfy.com

Shog9

@jmac uh...

Cole Johnson

@Shog9 What did those questions even say? (I'm not 10k)

Shog9

@jmac you should have that privilege on TWP...

Cole Johnson

But then again, I could get around that using Tor to an extent

jmac

@Shog9 We had a question with 10k views in the first 24 hours. I cannot protect until that grace period is up. I can't do it when it's needed most.

Shog9

00:06

@jmac ah, gotcha

Cole Johnson

@jmac Questions can't be protected in the first 24 hours?

jmac

Not by trusted users.

Here is the question in...errr...question?

Shog9

@jmac There. Now it's 0 days on TWP. If y'all over-use it, it'll be 1 again, so... Use wisely.

jmac

Thank you!

Cole Johnson

If your managed can't figure that out himself, you shouldn't be working there.

jmac

00:09

managed?

Cole Johnson

If you deserve a raise and he says no, quit

jmac

@ColeJohnson That isn't exactly what the question is about, and just quit answers are strongly discouraged

(and if you quit every time you had a bad manager, you would never stay in a job for more than a couple years. I say this tongue-in-cheek since that's the trend anyhow)

Shog9

@jmac I do want to note that the system did do some self-protection there by flipping the whole mess into CW-mode. So no one's posting an answer and rep-capping after that.

Cole Johnson

On another topic

Shog9

Again, I know it's frustrating to see stuff like this and not be able to get instant relief, but... Patience goes a long way.

Cole Johnson

00:13

does this question belong on SeverFault?

Shog9

SAME TOPIC!

Cole Johnson

21

Q: What are "_vti_cnf", "_vti_pvt", "_vti_script" and "_vti_txt" folders?

This folder appear in my dotnet Web project. Why? Does are usefull?

Shog9

No.

That is not a good question for SF.

Cole Johnson

It deals with server administration

jmac

@Shog9 At least to my knowledge, none of the team doing most of the community moderation on TWP cares about whether or not users get rep (though new users may care), for us it's more about handling the massive volume of posts that come up, especially when the US is asleep and it's hard to get together enough downvotes/delete votes for really poor answers, or close votes for poor questions that come up

Shog9

00:14

@jmac sure. I'm just saying, the actual long-term damage is limited.

jmac

@Shog9 I think that where we disagree there is that the motivation of the people doing the work is very important. And if the community moderators get tired of moderating during these peaks and burn out or become less motivated to continue, that does do long-term damage.

Shog9

Lemme give you a more extreme example: a group of new users descended on SO the other day, posted a whole bunch of plagiarized questions and answers, and started up-voting each other. They racked up a fair bit of reputation and ranking in just a few hours. Folks were flagging them, but there's a limit you can do when faced with something large enough and organized enough.

Mod catches it, whole mess gets destroyed.

Problem solved.

yeah, it sucks the stuff was visible on the site for several hours - but long-term, it's as though it never existed.

jmac

On SO the burden is spread out amongst far more people -- on small communities like TWP there is a handful of users doing 99% of the community moderation. I should probably back that up with stats, but...

And long-term the site will be fine, sure, but that doesn't help if users feel strain from the community moderation during these hiccups.

(we do want to build a good community, right?)

Cole Johnson

@jmac no

hichris123

^ Duh, why would we want a good community?

Shog9

00:24

@jmac data.stackexchange.com/the%20workplace%20stack%20exchange/query/…

Gotta remember, while SO has a lot of active users, it has an insane amount of traffic. Every day.

hichris123

@Shog9 created by anonymous

Shog9

I don't like logging in when I don't have to

jmac

That's just # of people who have made edits in the past 30 days, right?

hichris123

Says the CM who is on SE practically 24/7. :P

jmac

@hichris123 data.se has funky login compared to the rest of SE and constantly logs people out. So even if you're logged in to the other sites, that one is finnicky

Shog9

00:27

@jmac no. That's the avg # of posts per day and the # of people who've showed up on the site during the past 30 who have the ability to edit without approval.

jmac

@Shog9 Then you want this (1000 is the edit privilege on beta sites)

Shog9

I could look up stats on folks who flag or vote to delete or something, but figured this was probably more generous and makes the same point

@jmac ah right

animuson

Holy crap I can see Tim Stone's face! world falls apart

2

jmac

@Shog9 I will take a look at the stats if I can figure out this SQL thing, but my gut feeling is that we have fewer editors on TWP than other more tech-oriented sites because of our subject matter. There are a lot of regulars who don't moderate so much and focus more on answering.

Shog9

@jmac could be

Anyway, to get back to your original question

If something is breaking badly, don't hesitate to just drop a note in this room; there are usually people here even when the rest of the site is a ghost town.

jmac

00:31

(and I know this is something we have to work on, but not everyone is necessarily interested in community moderation, and that's fine too)

I suppose I'll compile all this stuff together and toss it in a community meta post on TWP to let people know what to do when the brown hits the fan.

Shog9

Otherwise, be patient - there are enough high-rep users on TWP to handle this stuff on their own, and if they aren't the mods will show up eventually.

Just be glad you haven't graduated yet - lot fewer privileges at full-site rep levels ;-)

jmac

Once all the stats come out from the data explorer, I may toss together a feature-request to ask CMs to somehow get a notification and drop by a site's chat when there is an unusual rush of traffic.

Shog9

@jmac Sure, but keep in mind, we aren't all active 24/7 either.

And when we are, we see the same hot questions lists as everyone else.

As well as a nice list of all flags on the entire network by site.

If something is getting hammered, we can know.

jmac

I do appreciate that, of course, and you are all more than generous enough to help out when asked which is great

I just feel like our community would be grateful for someone popping in and saying, "How are you guys doing with all the traffic? Anything we can do to help?" rather than seeking it out on our own.

(perhaps that's the salesman in me talking based on what makes my customers happy)

(and once we graduate, I think we have a good core of 10k plus users around most of the time, in the US at least, and plenty of 3k users to close questions even from Europe)

GnomeSlice

00:48

@Shog9 ಠ_ಠ

animuson

Just sayin'...

jmac

Hey, 19-132-297 is my locker combination!

(I have a really really big lock)

jmac

01:39

Is it a holiday in the US or something? This place is usually busier.

animuson

@jmac Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

jmac

Oh, that would explain my Facebook feed.

Thanks!

(google.co.jp doesn't show special headings for US holidays, and going to google.com auto-redirects me. This makes me sad.)

animuson

I didn't know that until a few hours ago when I realized there was no mail in my box.

jmac

I didn't realize the holiday was for his birthday. You learn something new every day!

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (officially Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.) is an American federal holiday marking the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. It is observed on the third Monday of January each year, which is around the time of King's birthday, January 15. The floating holiday is similar to holidays set under the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. King was the chief spokesman for nonviolent activism in the civil rights movement, which successfully protested racial discrimination in federal and state law. The campaign for a federal holiday in King's honor began soon after his ass...

LessPop_MoreFizz

03:00

@Shog9 IS THAT ENOUGH LINKS FOR YOU?

Shog9

@LessPop_MoreFizz barely. There's a good inch with no blue in it.

LessPop_MoreFizz

@Shog9 Blame the stupid character limit.

It is far too tight.

Shog9

What is San Dimas? IS IT THAT MOONBASE IN DOOM?

LessPop_MoreFizz

@Shog9 oh no. Don't tell me you don't know what this is either.

It was bad enough that Ashley didn't know.

►

hichris123

> Just change your name to @GnomeSlice and nominate on Aqade.

@Shog9 ^ Shouldn't that be Arqade?

GnomeSlice

03:06

Yes.

hichris123

Or did Shog just change the name or Arqade to Aqade?

He probably would... :P

@Gnome Y u no mod nominate?

GnomeSlice

Because I would not make a very good mod.

Also I definitely wouldn't win.

Shog9

@LessPop_MoreFizz ahhh... been a long, long time since I've seen that.

hichris123

@Gnome Eh, you could just decline all flags with a link to Today's Listening. :P

LessPop_MoreFizz

@Shog9 It's been years and years since I've actually seen the whole movie. But that 30 second clip has always stuck in my mind.

hichris123

03:09

Heh:

> Can we really trust a person who can't use the site effectively from his mobile phone? At 3AM when your flag goes into the queue, who do YOU want handling it? (seriously though, Less is a solid member of the community and would make a great mod. If you're reading this and don't vote for him, it means you hate Arqade and probably also hate America.)

Oh, hiya @LessPop_MoreFizz.

Shog9

See? I spelled Arqaalude right that time.

hichris123

And your point is?

I would have thought you would fix it already with your supreme mod powers.

Apparently not.

Shog9

That this isn't part of a subtle campaign to make you all forget what the actual name is so that I could change it.

LessPop_MoreFizz

@Shog9 Oh man. If we could produce some ArQualudes as swag...

Shog9

heh

hichris123

03:12

@Shog9 Isn't it Gaming?

Shog9

Board & Card Games

That site?

Game Development

Or that one?

hichris123

No, Role-playing Games is the right one.

Shog9

There we go. Knew there was some site about gaming with no q in the name.

hichris123

You forgot the u...

jmac

03:53

> I used to know a man named Henry. He spelled his name H-E-N-3-R-Y. The three was silent you see. Henry was financially independent, having inherited his father's tar-and-feather business, and was therefore able to devote his time to such intellectual pursuits as writing.

hichris123

@jmac Um....?

jmac

@hichris123 We were talking about spelling.

hichris123

Oh, I get it now. :P

jmac

Tom Lehrer was a brilliant man. Harvard educated mathematician turned singer/song writer. What more could a boy ask for?

LessPop_MoreFizz

04:19

@jmac Other way around really. Singer/Songwriter turned math professor.

jmac

@LessPop_MoreFizz Excellent point. I believe that would be an even greater challenge.

LessPop_MoreFizz

@jmac He basically just gave up on making silly music one day and went back to academia and spent 40 years teaching math and poli sci at UCSC

jmac

Yes, he did, but that doesn't make him any less interesting.

He has performed in front of the queen!

LessPop_MoreFizz

@jmac Oh, I'd argue it makes him moreso! I'm just clarifying the story for those too dense to know it already. :P

jmac

I think knowing about Tom Lehrer is more uncommon than not knowing.

michaelb958

04:36

@ColeJohnson It's a U+2666 (tested by copy+paste from Stack Apps front page).

LessPop_MoreFizz

04:52

2

Q: LessPopMoreFizzPedia Brown and the Mystery of the Missing Mentions

There's a new Response to my Declaration! I should go see what it is so I can respond to the concerns of my would be constituents! Except, the newest response I see is my own. From over an hour ago, not a mere 6 minutes ago. Going to the "Responses" tab on my profile reveals not just one, ...

bug comments election

Shit's broken yo.

Laszlo Papp

05:04

whoa, 482 comments under an answer!

Duncan

13:28

Quiet in here today... surely we're not all working?

Shadow Wizard

What is work? :D

3ventic

I'm a student.

Bart

14:08

Nah @Duncan. I'm procrastinating so much that I'm not even chatting.

SPArchaeologist

Hi - currently admiring SharePoint progress indicator, though it would be a good time to check the tavern

Laszlo Papp

14:29

hmm, I accidentally retracted my close vote the way I did not want it to be. Please help with the closure here: stackoverflow.com/questions/21208979/…

Duncan

@LaszloPapp I added a close vote for opinion-based. But as you pointed out, there are many valid reasons that the question should be closed!

Laszlo Papp

14:53

@Duncan: yeah, thanks. I would actually even push the delete button tomorrow for such questions. Perhaps, that is a bit excessive.

(5 delete votes per day is not much :/)

Shadow Wizard

user2808697, Sofia, Bulgaria

41

java sql mysql sql-server algorithm android c#

Another victim of rep worm

Duncan

That's gotta suck.

Is it just a rep display issue or do such users find their privileges revoked?

Bart

Strange stuff

jmac

@Duncan They not only have their privileges revoked, but all help vampires are handed their personal e-mail and home address provided to them "if they need any extra one-on-one help".

That is what they get for messing with the system.

Laszlo Papp

@Duncan: at least the badges seem OK.

3ventic

15:01

The rep worm will devour us all unless we stop him.

2

Shadow Wizard

@Duncan as far as I can tell all privileges revoked, it's an actual rep loss.

Usually the rep is restored within few hours though

I know Nick is on top of this, emailed the team about this recently

jadarnel27

15:23

Does anyone who has been around for awhile remember a really high-rep SO user (in the JavaScript / jQuery tags) named "patrick_dw"?

Tim Stone

Perchance.

jadarnel27

Do you, perchance, recall him intentionally changing his display name to the autogen'd one?

reikyoushin

hello, is this a valid SO question? stackoverflow.com/questions/21261875/…

Bart

user113716

124k 21 187 254

jquery javascript html jquery-selectors css dom ajax

@jadarnel27

jadarnel27

Oh great @TimStone, bearer of the true and powerful meta-historical-Stack-Exchange-trivia-knowledge.

Hmmm.

/s/TimStone/Bart

Bart

15:36

Same thing really

jadarnel27

@Bart I actually found that =) I was curious if it was an instance of the issue ShadowWizard was talking about.

So I guess I was more wondering if someone recalled him defaulting his display name back when he was still active.

How did you find that, by the way? Data.SE?

Bart

Google. Many of the comments still have a reference to his actual username.

SPArchaeologist

speaking of numbered users

If I understand correctly, the bug affects display names and rep counters right?

Shadow Wizard

@SPArchaeologist yep and it also removed all badges from user card

rep restore itself, display name doesn't

SPArchaeologist

@ShadowWizard - I had notice many new users on sharepoint are displayed as user#

could be related

Shadow Wizard

15:44

@SPArchaeologist that's normal, not many users change their display name

Mods can see name history though, so if mod can confirm name was changed then reset back to the default it might be related

SPArchaeologist

@ShadowWizard - it may be, but actually this trend started recently.

Shadow Wizard

any link, @SPArchaeologist?

SPArchaeologist

user22116

6 1

web-services

Duncan

@reikyoushin Looks OK to me at first glance.

SPArchaeologist

I am wondering if new users just started not changing their username

or if this is a variation of the bug

rep effect would be less notable since they have 1-5 points

Shadow Wizard

15:47

@SPArchaeologist only 7 out of 36 with default name as can be see here‌, don't think it's a lot

Duncan

My sarcasm meter is confused by this:

stackoverflow.com/questions/21261875/…

Shadow Wizard

Worth to keep an eye of course @SPArchaeologist but I don't think it affects any non-SO site

SPArchaeologist

@ShadowWizard yep... but it makes me wonder. I will drop a line there to see if anyone noticed anything similar

searching for names starting with user gives 47 pages of results

and that would be for a search done on all user since site creation

Bart

@Duncan haha, that's just awesome

SPArchaeologist

restrict it to the new users (that should be last month right?) and we have 7 pages of resuts

basically 1/7 of the total users with such names have been created last month (2 month maybe, don't know actual filter range)

Shadow Wizard

15:53

Coincidence in my opinion, but of course can't be sure

You can start meta discussion there asking other regular users for opinions :)

Duncan

@Bart So you think it's dripping in sarcasm?

Bart

I would be surprised if it's not @Duncan.

SPArchaeologist

@ShadowWizard just doing that

jadarnel27

@Shadow That guy asking you to remove the screenshot of his user profile is...ridiculous.

Shadow Wizard

@jadarnel27 maybe, but I prefer to do as he wish... screenshot indeed doesn't really help to troubleshoot.

It's just to prove the bug happended

Bart

16:06

I guess I've been around for too long. His request makes me suspicious

Shadow Wizard

@Bart nah... nothing suspicious here.

Undo

@Bart What request where?

is waking up

jadarnel27

I agree, you were better off just removing it like you did (rather than continuing to argue).

You have more self-control than I, @Shadow =)

Shadow Wizard

He saw this only because I left a comment on one of his SO posts like "Please don't freak out, it's reported here" etc

Please remove the screenshot of my personal info from here. I don't see how it helps you troubleshoot. I am user2808697. — sedefcho 11 mins ago

Undo

Huh. Odd...

Bart

16:08

@ShadowWizard like I said, I've been around for too long. ;)

Shadow Wizard

Privacy is a weak spot for many

Undo

More a strong point :P

Bart

Then don't post stuff on the intarwebz that you might not want to hang around. Ah well, well done anyway. ;)

Shadow Wizard

"But if I remove it later, it will still stay here" - that's a fair point. Still absurd, but fair. :)

Undo

Does anyone have any idea what this gizmo is? And more importantly, how to make it quit showing up?

jadarnel27

16:15

@Shadow Especially since the screenshot will still show up on the revision history, and a number of other places =)

Bart

No and no @Undo

Undo

sigh

Tim Stone

@Undo Err you installed my Town Hall parser userscript? O_o

Undo

I've been living with it for like 6 months :P

@TimStone Huh wha?

looks in chrome://extensions

Rebecca Chernoff

hahaha

Shadow Wizard

16:17

@jadarnel27 yeah, and so is Google Cache and wayback machine... but still, it shouldn't be trivial to see that info :)

jadarnel27

@Undo Gizmo is a small furry monster.

Undo

@TimStone Hey! You were right! No idea why or how I managed to install that :P

rchern even showed up to laugh at me :P

Shadow Wizard

@Undo duck! Rebecca is coming with a pointy stick!

Undo

Nooo!

Not a pointy stick!

Rebecca Chernoff

@Undo yup, that's what I'm good for.

Shadow Wizard

16:19

The funny part is the button with your name ;)

Undo

I must become an employee so that I will never be poked with sharp sticks!

22 hours ago, by jadarnel27

Questions on Stack Overflow should start out closed. Then we can reopen them if they don't suck.

starts mSO feature-request

Shadow Wizard

@Undo you sure it helps? :D

Undo

careers.stackoverflow.com/company/…

jadarnel27

"RSRC_NME" makes perfect sense for a database field that contains the resource's name, right? Right?!?! No. Not right.

It's not like we only get a certain number of characters per day to use in database column names.

Pops

@Undo To be fair, that means poked by the company directly. My cat still pokes me with the little sharp sticks at the end of its legs, and the company does nothing to protect me.

Undo

16:26

Oh

You could take the cat to work, and have it poke others with the sharp sticks instead of you.

Pops

@jadarnel27 Maybe you don't. Not all of us have that luxury.

ThiefMaster

@Undo that site just flashed some ugly unstyled content in my face ;o

Shadow Wizard

@Undo no idea how I missed that!

@ThiefMaster refresh. Refresh. Refresh! :D

Undo

Oooh new beta site just got mods!

Time for some flags!

ThiefMaster

@ShadowWizard: not necessary, happened while it was loading. but i wonder why - shouldn't page rendering be deferred by the browser until all css is available?

Shadow Wizard

16:29

@ThiefMaster guess it's browser dependant

For me it happens a lot that CSS fails to load, just like that out of the blue

I blame the distance and amount of hops

Undo

@ShadowWizard The case of the 500-mile-limit email

jadarnel27

@Pops The person that created that field here has no such excuse! And even if they did, they could at least be more consistent in what letters they're leaving out.

If you're gonna leave out vowels, commit to it!

Don't lose steam and leave an "e" on the end.

Duncan

Also, don't use an "_" when a "." will do. After all, it's important the screen width is minimised too... right?

jadarnel27

Of course, @Duncan. That's only logical.

Duncan

Fewer monitors needed. Cost savings.

Shadow Wizard

16:33

yay!

Dhipin Das, Kochi, India

1 9

ios facebook ios7 objective-c uitableview storyboard iphone

burninated!

jadarnel27

I should probably relegate my database complaints to the Whining Room.

Duncan

I love how this guy is confused by my down-vote:

-1

A: Is this a PHP associative array?

Yes.

Maybe I'm too harsh, but in my book that's a smart-ass useless answer.

Shadow Wizard

@Duncan true, I'm the proud owner of the other (and first) downvote.

Sarcasm isn't good for Stack Overflow

Duncan

I thought my down-vote was first, some time ago... ?-|

jadarnel27

There is a minimum character limit for a reason.

Undo

16:36

134

Earth Science

Proposed Q&A site for those interested in the geology, meteorology, oceanography, and environmental sciences.

Currently in commitment.

^ Anyone interested?

Shadow Wizard

@jadarnel27 good point, but he could also write "Yes, this is [this and that here]" and still be useless answer

jadarnel27

If you have to circumvent that, you're probably, as the experts say, "doing it wrong."

Shadow Wizard

@Undo I prefer Beer or Relationships, thank you :D

Undo

rofl

Shadow Wizard

Beer reached 100% you know? Hooray!

(Actually I didn't commit, saw it only after it reached 100%)

jadarnel27

16:38

@Shadow Sure, crappy answer is a crappy answer. I was just saying that having to sneak around the validation rules is an indicator that there are problems =)

Shadow Wizard

@jadarnel27 yep, and he even didn't use the common HTML comment trick but some fancy unicode spaces.

Duncan

I find it odd a 30k user decided to edit that answer, only to include a "better" workaround.

And presumably didn't down-vote either.

Shadow Wizard

oops.. true, the author used DOTS

jadarnel27

I think it's incredibly condescending to answer a question asked in good faith with a sarcastic "yes" or "no", simply because it contains a yes or no question.

Duncan

(since @ShadowWizard and I are apparently the only ones to have done so)

Shadow Wizard

16:40

@Duncan nope, third downvote added while we were chatting here

WHO IS IT? :D

Duncan

Damn this caching - just shows this stuff isn't real-time.

jadarnel27

Twas I, said the Josh.

Duncan

I'm still seeing -2.

Shadow Wizard

it's +1/-3

Duncan

Oh, that's because there's an up-vote.

jadarnel27

16:41

I know I posted an answer about this on Meta.

Shadow Wizard

got to go! :)

Duncan

I'm trying to resist the sarcastic "Confused by the up vote. It was a crap answer."

Undo

We're not really going to let this go through, are we?

146

Software Recommendations

Proposed Q&A site for people seeking advice and help finding software to get a particular task done. Desktop/mobile/web/libraries.

Currently in commitment.

jadarnel27

Ah, here it is.

5

A: Why was my (admittedly terse) answer deleted?

Despite the fact that the OP asked a "yes or no" question, your reputation and history on SO demonstrate that you were probably perfectly aware of what the OP of that question was really asking (whether they could do X, and if so, how?). Thus your answer was not an answer to the real question at...

Bart

16:57

@Undo might not be bad to give that one a try, realize it attracts utter crap in Beta, and then shut it down. "You want such a site? We tried. See the horror here".

Johannes Kuhn

0

A: Laying some ground rules for Software Recommendations

This might be a little bit early for a site that has not even started yet. We have to take care of old questions. Software changes and so new software might meet the original requirements, a good example for this is syntax highlighting. Several years ago, syntax highlighting wasn't standard. Su...

Undo

17:24

I'm wondering how this will do:

0

Q: "Hello world!", repeating each character n times

In your language of choice, write a program that outputs exactly Hello world! Each character in your program must be repeated n times - you choose n. For example, you might choose 2 for n. This means that every character used in your program must be repeated that many times, or 0. If I were to c...

popularity-contest hello-world

That might be supercollider content.

alert("Hello world!")////aaaeerrttt(((""HHHoo   wwwddd!!!)))

Come on.

Am I allowed to change the rules?

3ventic

17:40

Comments are a very easy way to cheat that

ProgramFOX

@Undo I don't think so. But it's a popularity-contest, answers without comments would probably get more upvotes.

Pops

@Undo Yeah, you really should have seen that coming. I almost posted one myself.

Undo

I should have :P

My hope is that someone will come along with a... legit solution :P

ProgramFOX

@Undo I'm working on it!

Undo

Yay!

jadarnel27

18:02

Using GolfScript on Code Golf questions seems like it takes all the fun out of it.

Note that I don't actually do Code Golf. But it certainly makes it less impressive to see.

It's like a really complex Mini-Golf hole, with lots of obstacles. You're excited to see how people get around the obstacles with their normal putters, and then disappointed when everybody just walks up and starts six inches from the goal.

Shog9

18:28

Hey @Tim - last update for SEDE appears to have killed the quick-list links for all of our internal tables:

...which really sucks. Ideas?

Tim Stone

Checking

Undo

Solution: Make it public :D

Tim Stone

@Shog9 I see the problem. Rooting out the cause and will submit a PR.

Shog9

@TimStone thanks

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 hey, care you cheque something?

Weird login problem

2

Q: Not able to log in to my associated account

I have a SO account and have associated askubuntu account with it. I login through livejournal-id as open-id is no longer supported officially but after logging in SO, neither am i able to login askubuntu, nor it is logging automatically into my associated account as per the default behaviour. ...

bug login user-accounts openid linked-accounts

Undo

18:34

@ShadowWizard On mSO?

Shadow Wizard

Yeah, @Pops can probably also see the logs and figure this out :)

Undo

But that would be work!

Shadow Wizard

@Undo yup

Undo

Hmm... @TimStone does SEDE have an API?

I would like a SEDE API

I suppose it would be abuse-heaven, but... OAuth!

Tim Stone

No, there is this somewhat related feature request though:

8

Q: Running queries to StackExchange Data Explorer from anywhere

Now that we have an awesome tool StackExchange Data Explorer, won't its usefulness be multiplied manifolds if we could have a way of embedding queries onto a site that can fetch the results without the user having to actually go to the StackExchange website? Something like this: goes to ht...

discussion feature-request stackexchange data-explorer

Err, well, I mean, it does have OData endpoints, but urgh, OData.

Bart

18:53

Hmm, this is just the weirdest thing ever. Someone sent me a new mobile phone. Didn't order anything. Just got sent a package. No sender info at all. Just a description of content by the online store.

Tim Stone

@Shog9 I have no idea how that worked to begin with. My only guess is that there was a JSON.NET bug before.

Fixed now, pending a pull.

Undo

@TimStone Hah, that shouldn't have worked in the first place, yeah. rofl

@Bart Were you the lucky 10 millionth visitor?

Bart

Ha, could be @Undo. I have no freaking clue where this might come from.

Undo

I'd open it with a long stick if I were you.

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