Tavern on the Meta

I don't think it's an end-of-the-world problem either, fwiw.

@JasonC proper tagging should help

@AnnaLear brb, I have a lot of Meta.SE posts to edit

Proper tagging is a good suggestion too. So then, part of what I propose is a review of existing information, with proper tagging and duplicates to tie it all together.

[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive body detected: Phalcon simple REST API tutorial issue by justRadojko on stackoverflow.com

6:02 PM

@SmokeDetector I don't understand why people feel the need to include things like This shit works in their code samples.

y'all are still fixated on edge cases. The common problem isn't that the documentation doesn't exist, or is out of date, or even that it's hard to find - the common problem is that folks don't read it.

Regarding the reputation accounting system... Y'know what the most common question we get about it is? Nothing to do with obscure rules regarding undownvotes and the cap...

@JasonC Well, when I update (or write) a meta post, I try to test things out to make sure I'm right. (And sometime, I even am.)

@Shog9 feature-request Make people leave comments to explain their downvotes. :)

Another point I missed in the summary of my premise above, which is important, is that SE employees are simply better equipped to update documentation than the users are, but of course don't have the time to do that. But that's a bigger problem. If, for example, there was exactly one FAQ entry describing how, say, the LQP queue worked, and if all related questions about it were summarily closed as duplicates, then it becomes trivial to keep that up to date.

@AlexisKing no, although that's up there too

6:04 PM

(^ This makes it easier for both SE devs and users to keep it up to date efficiently.)

@Shog9 "Did the guy who just wrote -1 in a comment serially downvote me?"

nope

nothing about downvotes

@JasonC stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/edit

@Shog9 Great. But that's not user editable. So either remove that article, or remove meta.stackexchange.com/questions/21788/how-does-editing-work and all other posts containing information about the edit system. That is a great example of my point.

Thanks for giving me a good case study.

@JasonC notice anything about that article?

specifically, notice why it hasn't been updated recently?

Because something changed and nobody remembered to update it?

read it more closely

don't need to read it a LOT more closely

keyword search even

6:09 PM

Make your point, don't waste my time.

yeah... you kinda burned that bridge already this morning

Q. What do you call a nun in a wheelchair?
A. Virgin Mobile.

4

It's true that most of the conversation so far has consisted of wasted time. Feel free to make your point, or not.

You've badgered me for a couple of days now about not updating a certain bit of information in the meta FAQ and you can't even tell that there's no mention of it in the help center?

That.

That's my point.

No one cares.

Not even you.

Huh?

6:12 PM

@Frank Stappit

When I first wrote the editing FAQ, I didn't even mention the grace period. There was no mention of it in that FAQ for years, in spite of the fact that it's existed almost since day 1.

At some point, someone added it.

More power to 'em, I guess.

All true so far. So...

But we dropped it from the help center because getting people to read even the little bit of text that's there is hard enough without cluttering it with obscure rules for revision creation that don't matter 99.9% of the time.

As a side bonus, we don't have to update it when those rules change.

6 mins ago, by Shog9

specifically, notice why it hasn't been updated recently?

And you couldn't even tell.

Because no one cares.

Incorrect.

6:15 PM

The folks who want to know how this stuff works do the same thing I do when I want to know: they read meta, and they test it.

I couldn't tell because I don't trust that the documentation is up to date; I had no reason to confidently say "This information is accurate", because experience has shown that it is often not the case here.

The folks who don't, don't - because it doesn't matter.

Not because I didn't care.

Hey dudes... this is sooo worth fighting over

xkcd.com/386

@Frank Is it bad that I knew what that XKCD was going to be before I clicked the link?

6:16 PM

@AlexisKing uh, no. Is why I no post onebox :)

When I go to the Help Center I look at it as a rough overview of how the system may have worked at some point in time. I have zero confidence in the correctness of the documentation in the Help Center. This lack of confidence is inspired by all sorts of things.

For example, every time I see an obsolete link to /faq that goes to the tour, a part of me dies.

@JasonC so now you're mostly zombie.

gross.

@JasonC We try to keep that high level so that it isn't often out of date. It's missing a lot of detail for just that reason.

Like I keep saying, it's a systemic problem, possibly a result of the general documentation philosophy you had mentioned earlier.

tchrist

@JasonC Some flowers are more sensitive than others.

6:20 PM

@JasonC now I have to disagree...

Q. What does a pirate say when he turns 80?
A. Aye Matey!

@Frank Ugh, that was much, much worse than the last one.

One of the things we are looking at doing is document the moderator tool UI. But we also want to fix the moderator tool UI. So we kinda have a Catch-22. In the long run, fixing the UI will be much more valuable than documenting it.

@JonEricson I don't criticize that desire at all. In cases where the Help Center article does accurately cover high level stuff, when details are needed they are scattered. I assert that details are important as evidenced by levels of involvement and/or discussion in various places across meta.

fixing the UI and including more documentation within it kills two birds with one stone

since, again, no one reads the documentation.

6:22 PM

s/stone/Stone/

37 mins ago, by Jason C

...only SE devs can keep it up to date, but this presents a problem, because you guys have other things to worry about that take priority.

want to know how to review? Start by reading the on-screen UI. If that's not cutting it, then you can find more information on meta... The popularity of which indicates when we should probably improve the UI.

Anonymous

@Shog9 I think this month's data dump is 30% corrupt. Nobody seems to have been able to download more than 70% of the torrent -- the Internet Archive's seeds keep sending incorrect data for the rest of it.

@JeremyBanks hmm... @Jon, you were looking into this the other day?

Anonymous

I haven't had a chance to extensively test this. I will if I have time later.

6:23 PM

@JonEricson Meaning that, once the moderator tool UI is updated (which is a priority), the best people for the documentation job will be the devs, not the users.

@AlexisKing I know. I'm just tryin to bug y'all :D

But, if it is left to the users, the best way to empower the users to do that is to keep the documentation accessible and organized, which I believe is currently not the case.

@JasonC Not necessarily. The devs know how it works, but they might not be the best people to explain it.

Anonymous

@Shog9 Actually... let me double-check this. It's possible that I've downloaded the wrong file, and shared the wrong link, and this is all my stupidity and a false alarm. Sorry.

Ok, yeah, granted sometimes developers are better at talking to machines than people. Expand "devs" to "employees" or whatnot.

6:25 PM

@Shog9 Yeah. There's a comment on archive.org/details/stackexchange about it.

I don't have the latest dump because I ran out of disk space; gotta delete some older ones first.

Look, I have to go. I'm confident in my points. I'll try to organize what I see when I see it but I think you guys should keep this in the back of your mind and strive for some more consistency, organization, and centralization. Lack of confidence in documentation being the biggest issue - even if it is not explicitly complained about, it is evident in other ways. I believe it would help many things all around (including helping users to keep the docs up to date on their own).

@JasonC I flatter myself to think that I can explain how a feature is supposed to work. But I'm not the right person to track down all the annoying edge cases.

Have a good day.

For the record, I'm wholly in favor of both having good documentation and keeping it updated. But I'm painfully aware of the practical limitations of both. Clear documentation and comprehensive documentation are often conflicting goals, as is comprehensive and up-to-date.

Anna Lear

6:32 PM

Clear, comprehensive, up-to-date. Pick two.

My first priority is always to make sure the information is accurate somewhere, preferably somewhere public. That's hard all on its own, but from there propagating it through the system is at least possible if not necessarily likely without a large amount of additional effort.

Anonymous

@Shog9 @Jon Double-checked, I think I was correct. The torrent metadata seems to say it was created in January, even though it's supposed to be for March, but that doesn't look like the issue. Rather, it kind-of looks like the data dump was re-exported, clobbering the data the torrent generator was reading when it was ~70% complete. Maybe. Dunno.

Q. Why does Thor have insomnia?
A. He's up all night to get Loki.

@Frank aaargh

[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive body detected: Can't find a video game that meets requirement specs of my laptop :( by Jody O'Shea on superuser.com

6:37 PM

@SmokeDetector that's a terrible question

Lil bit of snow here

Ok, how's this

A blind man walked into a bar. And a table. And a chair.

@Frank ... offensive?

No

Q: Community bulletin on MSE begs for background color

ok, did I scare everyone off, or will I have to try harder?

-1

Community bulletin seems to have lost the background color since the redesign, and doesn't look great now: I'd suggest adding a light grey background: or light blue, like the one it seems to have had earlier:

wow, +9 -10

6:48 PM

@Frank Hi! Can you help me with a badge question?

@Sue sure

What's the 646?

You're doomed

@bjb568 Your web server being weird?

There's a 0 at the end of all the HTML too.

6:51 PM

In today's meta-study session, I went on a voting spree! I'm at 35-shouldn't I have gotten a Suffrage?

It looks sort of like an octal Unix file permissions number, actually.

@bjb568 your first chunk?

@AlexisKing No, it seems fine. Http thing?

@rene yea

Oh yeah, it's the chunk size in hex.

Oh

Kewl

6:54 PM

HTTP is weird, though, so the chunk size is encoded in ASCII.

@bjb568 The size of each chunk is sent right before the chunk itself so that the receiver can tell when it has finished receiving data for that chunk. The data transfer is terminated by a final chunk of length zero.

Yay

user259867

@Sue You should; those badges can take a little while to arrive.

@Woodface Thanks! I'm being told I only have 5 votes left. Does that mean I'd get that and vox populi, or do they have to be two different days? I have both on GL, but can't remember!

user259867

@Sue You can get both on the same day.

user259867

7:00 PM

It's an odd twist of fate that both badges exist, as is the fact that both limits exist. A byproduct of the system being changed over time.

@Woodface Cool. I like badges (when obtained resposibly of course!)

@Woodface That makes sense.

@Woodface or somebody-can you direct me to the most current discussion about wording for the duplicate message? I found a question here that links to a dup with no answer. We don't really account for those, as I think each iteration of the dup message says "already has an answer."

ah. Gets back

looks like everything's settled :)

@Frank Yup, thanks. Woodface helped me!

@Sue I think it's mine...

user259867

@Sue This looks relevant: “Marked as duplicate” text doesn't make sense for questions that have no answer

7:05 PM

not really a discussion though

@Woodface yeah, that's a good one

@Woodface On my way to read it...

my keyboard is so bad...

user259867

Also this: Meta duplicates don't require an answer. Don't suggest there is one when that's not true

user259867

Neither of the two posts above have an answer. Let's close one of them as a duplicate of the other. >:-)

>:]

7:19 PM

@Woodface Good idea, but the one I was referring to was meta.stackexchange.com/questions/251862/…...

The dup has no answers and the newer one looks better anyway.

Hey, I got my badge!

When I went back to find that question, I searched in Google by accident. Look what came up.

@sue, I don't think it should have been closed as a dupe anyway, because the newer one is a feature-request, the older one a bug report. The new one requests "grey out" tags.

I'm all for clean up and duping things, but sometimes it seems like anything that is even remotely similar is a duped. How is a feature request ever a dupe of a bug report? Especially when the FR has a "request" which is not present in the bug report?

Maybe it's just me...

@James I agree-that was going to be my next point.

[ SmokeDetector ] Offensive body detected: Accelerate OpenGL 2D on Python3 by user2286564 on codereview.stackexchange.com

@James It's not just you. I'm one of many who've spent hours following dup threads, here and my beta sites, and find a large number of inconsistencies.

Am I missing something from my answer based on the comments?

7:40 PM

@Frank Linky?

@Woodface If someone doesn't have vote to re-open privileges, is posting a request in here the thing to do?

@SmokeDetector fp

@hichris123 Registered question as false positive and added title to Bayesian doctype 'good'.

Pham

Low Quality A (60.8%): ✩★ ✩★✩ ★✩★ ✩★✩★✩ ★✩★ ✩★✩★ ✩★✩ ★✩★✩ ★✩ ★✩★✩ ★✩★✩ ★✩★ ✩★✩★ ✩★✩★, by □ ✩★✩★, on gaming.stackexchange.com.

^ Offensive.

@rene I feel bad because every time I come in here someone helps me, and I don't have enough expertise to help you.

7:53 PM

@Pham gone

Pham

Low Quality Q (TPA'd by Sam): 강남건마 ㈐ 부천오피｟ＢａＭＷａＲ.Ｃｏｍ｠【밤의전쟁】영등포오피 ん 강남오피, by □ catha bamwar, on superuser.com.

@Sue The point is.. you care enough to come here. (and learn)

^spam

@JanDvorak That was utterly disgusting! I love watching those get cleaned up!

@LynnCrumbling Thanks!

@Sue Just another day at SE.

7:57 PM

@Sam Maybe to you. People who haven't hung around in here have no idea how many things get taken care of. No need to tell you how many forums would let a lot of that stuff go.

@Sue True. I guess that just goes to show that The System Works™. :D

@Sue no need to feel sorry, I'll work it out ;)

@rene :)

Pham

Low Quality Q (TPA'd by Sam): fdsffdfdsfdsfdsdfdfdfd fdfdfdfd, by □ Raul, on mathematica.stackexchange.com.

^ needs rollback

8:04 PM

@rene I don't think so. I've added another answer

@LynnCrumbling an event just started in the Close Vote room... just to let you know...

@James I've been watching some recent interactions and want to thank you for being so patient and working so hard to help someone.

@James That is a nice answer.

@sue, always happy to help others. (Do I send you the invoice?)

2

@James Yup! Just put it in an envelope marked Sue and maybe somebody will get and pay it :)

8:13 PM

:)

Pixelated @Bart

foreyez

8.9k 26 89 162

c# iphone wpf javascript objective-c html xaml

@rene Thanks for the heads up... up to my ears in work at the moment, and embarrassed that I never completed yesterday's close event :-/

np

8:33 PM

@JasonC This has a part of Jabberwocky in it-one of my favorite poems!

Really? It didn't occur to you to maybe add some more explanation, what you tried, what the current results are, what debugging revealed? Instead you went ZZZZZZZZ? — rene 24 secs ago

nicael

I have no idea what your question is, I just upvoted because stuff is moving around in your question... Beats freehand circles hands down. — James 3 mins ago

8:54 PM

Not sure if I'm happy or embarrassed that I've just starred my own comment

9:07 PM

GitHub currently experiencing a DDoS github.com/blog/1981-large-scale-ddos-attack-on-github-com

2

@hichris123 Their solution is really really clever btw

They replaced the source code of the attacked repos with alert("Malicious code is being executed on your browser!") or something like that

When the script attacks the site, it uses something like

<script src='http://github.com/...'></script>

So this does two things:

1. Informs the infected user that their computer is being used in a DDoS

2. Freezes the webpage until OK is pressed, which actually stops the loop and prevents further requests to the page

See: github.com/greatfire

huh

cv-plz stackoverflow.com/questions/25178917/…

9:24 PM

(it works because the attack script does something like setInterval(function() { createElement('<script src="http://github.com/greatfire/"></script>').appendToHead() }, 2000) or something (a direct XMLHttpRequest would be violating cross-origin policy), which has the side effect of executing the alert, stopping the loop)

The main issue with DDoS is no content is served. The network is entirely down, or intermittent.

Their idea is interesting, but likely futile for any respectable DDoS.

They just need to ride it out or re-route.

cv-plz stackoverflow.com/questions/27631892/copying-name-of-the-file

@James Well yeah, now people can't access these two repos, but at least Github isn't down entirely.

Anonymous

@James This DDoS might be incompetent, but it seems like it was at least able to direct a respectable amount of traffic.

The DDoS is, as far as I'm aware, a political statement. (China doesn't like people getting around its Great Wall)

9:26 PM

@Doorknob Someone should write a stackoverflow (well, superuser) question: "HI, I'm browsing the web, but keep getting a box that says 'Malicious code is being executed on your browser!') .. What's going on?" Then - answer it.

heh

Anonymous

Let's hope they don't know enough jQuery to work around this trivial mitigation. Better hide Stack Overflow!

gotta run... see ya all.

@JeremyBanks You mean $.ajax?

That won't work because cross-origin policy.

Anonymous

@Doorknob The cross-origin policy check itself might be possible to use as a DDoS vector... but it's probably cached.

Anonymous

9:30 PM

But I was thinking just ~~new Image(github url)~~ $('<img />').src(github url).

@JeremyBanks Tried $('<img>').attr('src','http://stackoverflow.com/') in my JS console. No request made.

Wait, whoops, turns out there was, but load never got called -_-

very well written question , probably a dupe, but the others should be closed as dup of this one

James ponders over his using the phrase "Respectable DDoS"...

@Sue eh

Anonymous

@Doorknob The request might be cancelled in some cases if the element is garbage-collected too quickly, but I think it generally works.

9:56 PM

health has reached full commitment

inb4 sneaky answer muscle spam

@JanDvorak yeah, I see it already too...

link?

@Roombatron5000 not literally...

health.stackexchange.com/questions/1/2

10:08 PM

> The Q&A site health.stackexchange.com doesn't seem to exist…yet.

so do people think the Drupal spammers will switch over to Health?

o/

http://gardening.stackexchange.com/users/499/kevinsky
http://gardening.stackexchange.com/users/419/j-musser
Hey look, we're only 2 rep apart!

A: Does exercise make you healthier?

28

Besides, taking away your stress exercise is proven to increase concentrations of norepinephrine, a chemical that can moderate the brain’s response to stress. and boosting happy chemicals usually within five minutes after moderate exercise you get a mood-enhancement effect. and alleviating l...

> and having anti-ageing effects

That.... is one of the worst answers I've laid eyes on.

I wonder why it got so many upvotes?

10:15 PM

it... references its claims

shh... don't tell spammers

haha!

Look, the worst pun ever... is ALIVE!!!

irrelephant

101 1

3

:3

@Roombatron5000 That's just awful

So my sock on GL has 21 profile views... do that many people really go through and look at the 1 rep users on a site?

10:30 PM

regex101 down for anyone else?

Site is going down for a backup in a few minutes. I will also push a bunch of updates and changes live. Please report any bugs on github!

Tweeted by regex101 on March 27, 2015 at 10:22 PM

On spring break now. If somebody wants to add priority tags to DD's github bugs, do it.

@bjb568 feature-request stahp

stahp wat?

why is DD a thing?

:P

I don't get it, why not?

10:38 PM

Because it's a worse version of SE?

It's not just a SE clone.

Oh? What else does it have?

> DevDoodle is a developer network where you can learn languages, create and share your own programs, and ask and answer questions! We're a bit different from other sites - you can visit our about us page to learn more.

my god, it's like the site description answers your question exactly!

And it's conveniently on the home page where everybody can see it? :D

I dunno, I looked at the About Us page and it seemed like a pretty straightforward SE clone to me. But maybe I'm missing something.

tchrist

@hichris123 My brain is always up.

10:41 PM

> To facilitate our goal of creating content that is useful to the greater community, we have very strict quality standards. This is not a discussion forum: All posts should be on-topic and helpful to as many people as possible.

> Almost everything that is done on DevDoodle is a community process. The community casts votes on site policies and moderation of posts, community members help each other by solving their problems and collaborating on projects, and users can posts feature requests on meta to add site functionality for the benefit of the community.

The goals are sorta the same.

We just approach it from a different angle.

I mean, sure, maybe it isn't exactly like the existing sites in the network, but it seems like the software is more or less the same?

It's more about learning and community help, the target audience is also younger

@AlexisKing The Q&A section, sure.

And chat's all the same thing.

I guess I'm just saying I feel like it could sort of be a learningcode.SE or something.

Well, SE will never have a good login system or responsive design… so there!

We're also young, and starting anew can lead to a different path of specialization.

10:45 PM

"we"

Yeah we.

tchrist

New wheels for old! New wheels for old! BRING OUT YOUR WHEELS!

""

@hichris123 "we" get it, you turned off curlies.

no, my curlies are just fine, thank you very much "".

11:00 PM

@JasonC: So the conversation earlier today got me thinking:

1

A: SO's lack of documentation

How Stack Exchange is currently documented. Help Center As of June, 2013, all sites have high-level documentation created and maintained by Stack Exchange employees. The goal of this documentation is to be: Clear Up-to-date However it does not make any claims at completeness. Help pages mos...

/me takes over 2nd place