Tavern on the Meta - 2014-11-18 (page 4 of 4)

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user259867

9:00 PM

I'd say that for most sites, the value of unreg posts outweighs the hassle. But on those with the big city problems it's the other way around (for questions at least). I'd keep it on site-by-site basis, i.e., as it is now.

sees as Shog can't decide which tag remove so he can append the status-declined tag

@Rafflesiaarnoldii the proposal is to disable all unregistered posting

user259867

Yes, I think that goes much too far.

Did you know there was a guy on Math who had over a dozen unregistered accounts by the time he went to ask for a merge?

All with fairly plentiful rep

just didn't care, I guess

user259867

Gained from posting answers, I suppose? Don't know the guy.

9:02 PM

yeah

yeah, that seems a hassle for the team to merge them all

a real character, as I recall

Anyway, the thought of spending even more time working through bizarre login and merge issues isn't exactly appealing

beyond that, we're fixin' to start work here on a total revamp of how global login works

maybe more aggressive campaign to register unregistered accounts, like every 2 posts

reject-pls: meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/32564

user image

that ain't aggressive enough? What do you want, <blink>?

9:05 PM

@Shog9 well.... that is area 51... nothing is normal in area 51, you know

@Braiam no, that's discuss.a51 - that's pretty normal

user259867

Some unregs lose a cookie, or switch computers, after their first and only question. They just assume that since this message board allows anonymous posting, they'll be able to post more messages to the thread as needed. </speculation>

sure. And, they should be able to regardless, if they used a real email address.

If they didn't, there's no way they're getting access to it again

Which is another reason I wouldn't be looking forward to suddenly asking a whole bunch of them to register

What's the rationale behind letting unregistered accounts do anything at all?

@JasonC open participation

I think

dunno

ask Jeff

Shog doesn't know D:

user259867

9:08 PM

All arguments presented here in favor of a change in registration policy are perfectly rational and well-founded. However, were such a policy to have existed about a year ago, I personally would not have joined this wonderful site in the first place. These are my two cents. — Lucian yesterday

sees Braiam's confidence in his reply slide downhill fast

> If you get this right, it is an enormous competitive advantage. The value of some guy (or gal) somewhere happening across your page and knowing exactly the right bit of information -- and having zero friction to typing it in -- is something that I believe deeply in.

user259867

^ 20K user now.

@Shog9 yeah, that doesn't scale for big sites

I actually like it, but sometimes I want not to

in fact, most people that want to participate in a site, will try to follow the registration procedure first

user259867

Many (most?) people don't know that they want to participate until they participate.

9:11 PM

We're at the point that it makes sense to userscript-block sub-500 users since question quality is so bad (not that I do that). SO doesn't need to accept posts from the lowest quality tier in hopes of gold that will be buried in the thousands of crap posts that are overwhelming the mod system.

user259867

@bjb568 SO already disallows unreg questions, and did so for a long time.

@Rafflesiaarnoldii Whatever, same thing applies to answers.

(less so)

@bjb568 dreams

user image

@Braiam Some recent posts by unregistered users on Stack Overflow:

3

A: FullCalendar.js - "there was an error while fetching events"

Here's the fix everyone: https://github.com/jonnyhweiss/fullcalendar/commit/520022a4da81ded61f3a1cc7020df4df54726fbc?diff=split It requires editing of gcal.js and gcal.html to get the demo's working; from those demos you should be able to fix your own broken calendars, hopefully ; ) Please not...

2

A: FullCalendar.js - "there was an error while fetching events"

I believe I have the solution. After a little digging I found a this page, but written as is, the code failed to work correctly. BUT after a little modification, see below, I now have things in working order again. To use the new piece of code one needs to change the source URL for ones calenda...

3

A: A theorem prover / proof assistant supporting (multiple) subtyping / subclassing

You include the 'isabelle' tag, and it happens to be that according to "Wiki Subtyping", Isabelle provides one form of subtyping, "coercive subtyping", though as explained by Andreas Lochbihler, Isabelle doesn't really have subtyping like what you're wanting (and others want, too). However, yo...

2

A: Example using Androids lrucache

I've found a really easy way that work perfectly for me... This is the Cache.java class. In this class, the static getInstance() method enables us to create only one cache instance in the whole application. getLru() method is used to retrieve the cached object, it will be shown later how to use ...

9:15 PM

Would they have registered if the system asked them to?

^ ?

Note the first two are answers to the same question - fresh bugs tend to bring a lot of folks out of the woodwork who are doing either original work or have unique knowledge.

@JanDvorak I'll get back to you on that when my crystal ball comes back from the shop

oh btw, naa stackoverflow.com/a/26981441/792066

@Shog9 A/B trials.

@Shog9 All those questions would have been sufficiently answered without those users' input, though. That also doesn't show that those answers wouldn't have been posted had those users had to register. That's not really a strong argument.

9:16 PM

A/B

Though note that, as I mentioned above, the system does nag you about registering... And those folks are all still unregistered.

Whenever I see a bunch of answers arriving quickly at the same questions, it's usually a sign of a terrible (too easy = unresearched) question

@JanDvorak funny thing there... When we were doing research for the auto-Protect changes a few months back, we had the same notion. Of course, if you're looking at Programmers or The Workplace, there's plenty of data to back that up. But SO was a real mixed bag...

Yeah, there are always a handful of questions that get a half-dozen "here's your selector!" answers in the first few minutes.

But there are also a respectable number of questions that are, for lack of a better term, "current events" - things like that calendar bug.

@Shog9 those post have several days in between, maybe you should look with another angle: how many of the recent unregistered posts have been deleted or <0 vs does that have been upvoted vs those that are sitting at 0?

And the crazy thing is... The former attract multiple, fast answers from site regulars - folks who've been around, folks who are watching for easy questions. The latter are the ones that attract answers from outsiders.

In a sense, this is more important on a site like SO than it is on a site like Programmers

@Braiam tons. It's Stack Overflow. The answer is always "tons".

9:21 PM

I'm still curious to see examples of questions that would have remained unanswered had it not been for an unregistered user, on one of the larger sites. Otherwise there doesn't seem to be much benefit on those sites.

user259867

I don't think unreg answers are a serious problem on any site at all. What's the worst that an answer can do? Get deleted by spam//offensive flags. It's just a community-building exercise for others, like raking leaves together.

@Rafflesiaarnoldii not get deleted by spam/offensive flags? Prevent deletion of a low-attention recommendation question while being borderline spam?

Prevent deletion of a really bad "debug mah codez" question by actually debugging their codez?

@JasonC I gave you one - that calendar bug question. The only complete answer from a registered user was based on the ones from unregistered users.

FWIW, spammers have absolutely no problem registering as many accounts as they want.

true...

We tried requiring registration to slow down spammers early on; it didn't make much difference.

Better than nothing, but... not a lot better.

9:25 PM

nah, spam is not a problem... moderating legitimate but clueless users is the issue

in fact, a NAA creates more friction for the moderation system than spam

user259867

@JanDvorak Over at Meta.So, someone proposed automatic deletion of downvoted questions without upvoted answers. That would help get rid of those.

@Braiam Why?

@Shog9 But you also gave a bunch of other weak examples. I don't think you could cobble enough together to make a strong case. You haven't shown that that question would have remained unanswered, nor have you shown that those users wouldn't have registered to answer.

Even if, for the sake of argument, we gave benefit of the doubt and assumed those were true, avoiding one question here and there that would go unanswered, on a site with hundreds of thousands, doesn't seem like a strong motivation.

@Rafflesiaarnoldii not of all of them. Some people are really trigger-happy when it comes to upvoting

@JasonC These things are really hard to prove

@Shog9 1 flagger + 6 reviewers at the best for NAA's vs 6 users for spam

9:28 PM

cough A/B cough

@JasonC meh. I pulled the first few results off of a simple query. You can sort through the pile if you want.

@JanDvorak I know that. None of those can really be proven in a couple lines of chat. So, what I was going to say next is, I'm not even sure why this conversation is happening here. @Shog9 Go do some A/B testing, then continue the chat in 6 months. Or post the results of the actual research that's already been done. Otherwise, this is all weak, silly talk.

I've also noticed that spam flags bear auto-deletion, but they don't land in any review queue. Is that an issue?

Do A/B tests, make maths, see if the result is positive.

+1 on A/B testing

9:31 PM

@JasonC hell no. You're asking me to do more work to prove that I don't need to do more work.

Doing nothing and allowing the moderation system to work as it always has is easier.

Screw that. Prove it's necessary. I'll give you as much data as you need.

@Shog9 Then stop talking about it and post some animated gifs instead.

@TimStone Isn't that true of everything? Change == work.

Yes, but usually there's a concrete reason for introducing a change. "There's a lot of stuff to moderate" isn't exactly a reason, it's just a reality.

9:33 PM

I don't care about the registered / unregistered thing either way. I just think the whole conversation is silly unless you can back up either side.

user image

@TimStone True, but you can never have too much data on if a change is needed. ;P (I'm talking to an SQL guy. He'll agree with me. Right?)

@JanDvorak -1 Not animated.

@JasonC It's got two frames. What else do you need?

@Shog9 let me correct (and possibly prove that we need to) my statement: in a moderation cost differentiation: NAA costs 1 flagger with 15 rep and 6 reviewers with at least 2k rep at the best while it only require 6 users with 15 rep to flag a post for spam

9:34 PM

@JanDvorak e

@JanDvorak Christ, don't make me do this. Hold on.

@hichris123 The first step in gathering data to analyze a problem is to determine that there's actually a problem that needs analyzing, of course. :P

you have a larger pool of users to deal with all the spam you want, while dealing with NAA's is more restricted

you can trow more users to combat spam, you can't do it for NAA's

@TimStone Does a meta post suffice?

Only if it's a meta-meta post.

9:36 PM

@TimStone The first step in analyzing a problem is to determine if it's a problem based of the data.

@Braiam depends on the hour.

@TimStone too meta

Therefore, data is needed to analyze a problem, and a analyzing a problem is needed to get data.

@Braiam not really. We need to go deeper.

@hichris123 It's a lose-lose scenario!

9:38 PM

The devs win. They don't have to do anything, but they still get paid.

3

user image

2

@Braiam That's a more tangible problem that might merit looking at

@Braiam but there is a good reason of why that is. It's a lot clearer what spam is, than what NAA is. So you want more reviews of NAA to make sure you get it right.

Still, can we push it to 1.5k? 1k? 500?

@cVplZ exactly, but they get depressed at all the crap they have to deal with, that provokes that less users moderate, and obviously a smaller pool of uses willing to moderate, which can be adverted just adding more friction to the action of registration, also it helps post bans/rate limits

9:41 PM

@JanDvorak why? the LQRQ does just fine, it gets cleaned out all the time

Yet mods feel the need to help out, which sometimes causes confused meta discussions

@JanDvorak rage declines

^

@JanDvorak rage intensifies

@Braiam IMO, this is not a sane reaction to an impersonal content grading system. If someone feels "defeated" by the queue, they should probably...go do something else. :P

But anyway...

New controversial topic time!

0

Q: When will puzzling.SE be shut down - The site is a disgrace and is dangerous to our reputation

While Puzzling.SE is achieving an unprecedented level of site views and participation, it is under-performing in all other areas, with very low quality questions and answers. How long will it take for the SE moderators to realize this and close down the site? The site doesn't belong within the...

9:46 PM

@TimStone meh, I don't go there

it's interesting that a top user there is calling for it to be shut down

@TimStone so you were one of the instigators of the strike, uhh?

@TimStone I got an idea for one, how about "feature-request Ban users displaying constant victim mentality on site metas."

Hah

@Braiam I didn't do anything of the sort :o

user259867

Puzzling should be used for A/B testing: disallow posts by unreg users. And break the registration page.

9:47 PM

@TimStone /end dup-hammered by Shadow

@bjb568 You don't need a user script any longer. The recommended tab has the ability to filter by minimum rep

@Andy that's only on SO, everywhere else they have the crappy active tab :(

True, but he was referring to SO specifically.

Crappy? It helps hunt spam

@JanDvorak unix.stackexchange.com/home/recommended/…

vs unix.stackexchange.com

9:53 PM

@JanDvorak Not surprising, since Mew's position on the appropriate meta has been very strong support for the site. Mew, come on. Trolling like this only hurts your credibility. — Gilles 2 mins ago

Even more drama than expected. Nice find, Tim Stone.

status-needs-css

@JasonC hmm.. maybe he's taking the position of any advertising is good advertising

which is false

@cVplZ Only further reinforces my hate of puzzling.se. I was super pumped to see that question, too.

Actually, my fantasy was it would immediately get accepted, puzzling would be closed, and codegolf would soon follow. Alas.

There is no reason to close PCG

9:57 PM

@JanDvorak There is also no reason to find another way to "calculate" pi with brainfuck.

11

Q: Content on site slowly becoming more and more like Y! Answers

We're treading down a wrong path here, there needs to be some quality control in terms of answers. Just treating everything as "it's creative, don't hate" is such a bad way to regulate question and answer quality. For example, this question: A man pushes his car An answer like this: http://puz...

discussion answers answer-quality

Sure there is. It's fun.

But I hate fun.

Martijn Pieters

@JanDvorak If quality declines, community will decline to. No community, no site.

It was an experiment and it looks like the experiment is imploding on itself.

PCG? It seems to be running just fine even if the question rate is low.

10:02 PM

I'd like a site like PCG if it had some serious, not-SE-style, hard core quality control. Like, every day all but the highest voted 5% of challenges that day are automatically deleted.

umm... why?

And any users posting answers in GolfScript or questions about pi are automatically permabanned.

@JasonC hell no

well.... maybe the latter

@JanDvorak Because every once in a while there's an awesome, thought-provoking, great challenge on there. Like that one game with the wolves. But for the most part it's embarrassing crap like (picks random question from front page guaranteed to be embarrassing) codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/41193/its-spanish-time

@JasonC what's wrong with it? It's got a clear spec

10:05 PM

@JanDvorak It's totally lame.

... and it teaches us something

As for GolfScript, I hate GolfScript. There's no challenge whatsoever in code golf if the answer comes down to whoever uses the language that can express it in the shortest way possible. No thought in that.

@JasonC please clarify

ok... the spec isn't that great

@JanDvorak I can probably find at least 3 dozen other questions that are variants of the same "print something" challenge. This one just happens to be time in spanish.

What would be kind of cool is if the tradition in codegolf challenges was to post winners per submitted language.

If the asker bothers to maintain a leaderboard, they will usually keep a per-language board

10:11 PM

You are a developer and you don't have a Stack Overflow account with at least 15 rep? You have brought shame upon your family.

Tweeted by codinghorror on November 13, 2014 at 7:23 PM

twitter.com/librarythingtim/status/532979505150033920

That's SO awesome.

Yay! Young people!

@JasonC s/so/SO/

@cVplZ ha, I know what LibraryThing is, actually. :)

10:15 PM

@Braiam Done.

Young man, there's no need to feel down.
I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground.
I said, young man, 'cause you're in a new town
There's no need to be unhappy.

@JanDvorak Challenge accepted. Will give new guy a need to be unhappy.

LQ stackoverflow.com/q/26970571/2371861

@JasonC if a user doesn't know what it means to be unhappy on the site, then they'll never be able to enjoy the happiness

^ Exactly, it's a service.

@bjb568 That seems like a somewhat OK question, no? I mean it's not the greatest, but there is some attempt there.

10:19 PM

@JasonC Meh, code dump. Edit it if you think you can fix it.

Maybe I'm not familiar enough with the topic. does nothing, backs away slowly

2

Q: Set background color of SVG Material Design Icons

I make use of the Material Design Icons using the method described here: https://github.com/google/material-design-icons#using-svg-sprites However, the icons always end up in black. How am I supposed to change their color, say, into white? I am aware of the possibility that the SVG source code...

css svg sprite-sheet material-design

What's the question?

my nightstands are also not leveled by about 1/6 inch

cv-pls stackoverflow.com/q/27005288/1234256

[ SmokeDetector ] All-caps title: DDD DOMAIN REPOSITORY MVC 5 by Anderson on stackoverflow.com

10:35 PM

^^ cv-pls

leave-open-pls stackoverflow.com/review/close/6226083

@cVplZ first world problems

2

cv-pls off-site-res-req stackoverflow.com/q/26807304/656243

and another cv-pls off-site-res-req stackoverflow.com/q/26389784/656243

cv-pls stackoverflow.com/q/26389784/1234256

cv-administration stackoverflow.com/questions/2322599/…

@Mooseman That's the one lynn just posted.

cv-unclear stackoverflow.com/questions/1443199/convert-bytes-to-gb-in-php

10:46 PM

@JasonC Wasn't there when I hit return...

10:57 PM

@JasonC It's fascinating to look at that user's questions from '09 compared to now.

@LynnCrumbling Ha, it kind of is an interesting progression.

It's like, his life story.

cv-pls opinion stackoverflow.com/q/27005749/656243

@JasonC Yep :)

I really, really dislike this post: meta.stackoverflow.com/a/277164/616460

@JasonC They didn't ask any questions between 10/12 and 6/14.

I can't tell if his point is good or not because he just covered it all with weaselly bullshit. I hate that it drums up support because it looks passionate, not because it's a realistic concern.

It's more like, Occupy That Thread

11:04 PM

I'm out; I'll read it later.

Peace

Wow. cv-pls too-broad stackoverflow.com/q/27005939/1234256

11:19 PM

@Mooseman Lol what

@JasonC Quite possibly one of the worst-ever non-spam questions...

user259867

@Braiam I tried this recommended thing on Math... disappointed by the fact that it takes the SE definition of unanswered (i.e., questions with 0-score answers are included). Upvotes on technically difficult answers don't come quickly. Most of the recommended questions I tried had one of those answers already.

This burned my eyes

2

Do quoted comments remain in chat if the comment is deleted?

Because if so, for posterity:

...i want mix JS and PHP — Ufogufo13 6 mins ago

@Rafflesiaarnoldii meh, just upvote those that has answers so they get out of the way

11:25 PM

@JasonC How do you quote like that in chat? :o

user259867

@Braiam (a) I don't like upvoting answers without any serious reading. And reading a technically difficult answer takes time. (b) I use all my votes for DVs anyway.

@Mooseman Just paste a link to the comment. (You can get the link by clicking on the timestamp in the original comment)

> 1. You found a wallet on the ground. What will you do?
- Take it.
- Pick it up and check for any witnesses.
- Pick it up and run away.
- Pick it up, check for ID card, and try to find the owner.
- Take money and leave the wallet.

@Mooseman as long as you post the bare link to the comment without extras it will work

...i want mix JS and PHP — Ufogufo13 10 mins ago

@Braiam Crap question. Answers 2/3/4 imply answer 1. Most of the rest are not mutually exclusive. Whoever wrote that deserves to have their wallet stolen.

11:28 PM

Thanks

@JasonC yeah, that's what comes normally in the exam of "etics"

@Braiam My answer is: Take it, check for witnesses, run away. Once away, check for ID card, try to find owner. So... circle 1 through 4.

Or maybe I'll take the money, check for ID, try to find the owner, then notify them that I took their money. Point, laugh, then run away.

user259867

11:43 PM

@Mooseman More on oneboxing: chat.meta.stackexchange.com/faq#formatting

user259867

Yes, it's just a chat message with extra formatting, so it stays here.

@Rafflesiaarnoldii +1 thanks

user259867

I think oneboxing xkcd 1305 would be frowned upon...

xkcd:1305

aww, that doesn't work.

user259867

Needs to be a regular link, xkcd.com/1305 ... if you dare.

user259867

11:47 PM

Or maybe there is a max-height parameter for onebox. Only one way to know.

@Rafflesiaarnoldii but wiki:test works

try it.

user259867

Nice.

I know, right? :)

user259867

I remember discovering define:word oneboxing by an accident. Meant to simply post it.

ooh.

user259867

11:49 PM

Okay, I'll try science to see if there is max-height.

user259867

Well, that was disappointing.

Great comic

err.... wut!?

what correlations link users to each other other than ip and mac address?

everything!

And can websites even see a mac address?

11:58 PM

i think

$ipAddress=$_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];
$macAddr=false;

#run the external command, break output into lines
$arp=`arp -a $ipAddress`;
$lines=explode("\n", $arp);

#look for the output line describing our IP address
foreach($lines as $line)
{
   $cols=preg_split('/\s+/', trim($line));
   if ($cols[0]==$ipAddress)
   {
       $macAddr=$cols[1];
   }
}

42

Q: How can I get the MAC and the IP address of a connected client in PHP?

I need to know the MAC and the IP address of the connect clients, how can I do this in PHP?

php mac-address

through LAN

so... can we not know or something?

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