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1:00 AM
cool, thanks for the feedback
@DanGrossman ok I agree that's a little better
it's an in-between.. the bar is a little smaller plus has text in the top left
which I made another signup link
@DanGrossman "over 40,000" is kinda lame; from a counter site with live stats I'd expect something updating "live" :)
Also @JeffAtwood next time you shouldn't have that whole pesky work thing in the middle of the day ... dragging all the mods out of chat makes for a dull chat :p ... for the days when I'm not working ;)
@radp I believe the word is placeholder
@radp Heh, it can update live, but it's not going to be changing much while someone is sitting on the page
I can do a "15,823,532 visitors tracked today" live thing maybe
1:02 AM
ok well, we need more eyes on stackoverflow.com/review still -- put suggestions on meta to make it even more bettererrererrrerrr
@drachenstern Well then you could put a placeholder number like "40,491 (and counting!)"
@DanGrossman that'd freak the actual visitors out maybe.
@JeffAtwood omg you guys are already making it betterererererer, faster than I can come up with reasonable additions that make sense
@radp really? heh
even more bettererrerererrerer!!!
lol
Hey Jeff do you use the userscripts by chance?
1:03 AM
So it can be the bettererereererererererestest it can be?
there used to be a "You are the 512,823,435th visitor. Hello from Pennsylvania." message in the footer of the page... I took it off at some point when load was high
also please to be visiting latest Silicon Valley sensation website, cwora.com
@JeffAtwood Again -- let users somehow mark items as reviewed (say if 5 people mark one as such, stop serving it), although that's probably going to need to be linked with a rep requirement
although I have to say @shog9 's suggestions from this thread were prescient
@JeffAtwood apparently that's old hat....
1:04 AM
34
Q: What can we learn from Quora?

Jeff AtwoodWhen we were doing the VC rounds, the company (rightly or not) that was on every VC's radar in the Q&A field was Quora. Link to sign up: http://quora.com/hackernews Quora is a question and answer site focused on getting really high quality, authoritative content on any topic that p...

@JeffAtwood social graph vs information graph, isn't their whole thing of following topics an interest graph rather than a social graph?
it's really hard to learn from them because their model is so radically different from ours. It's a bit like kryptonite to me, honestly.
it's similar to following tags
like, I don't give a fuck about the social graph.
not even a little
@DanGrossman It's like assuming that programmers only friend programmers.
It's... just not true.
1:06 AM
@JeffAtwood I do like my twitter curation of feeds tho ...
Isn't that what @LeoLaporte calls it? social curation? private curation?
@DanGrossman Oh, you can follow topics in addition to people, that's true.
I didn't know there was a social graph going on there
the idea that you can have a selective newsfeed (I obviously +1 CNN and Headline) so you get the news that matters to you moreso than "look what brittney did"
Geoff Dalgas forced Jarrod to follow the topics "Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll" on quora.. true story
I tried following @Jin and I had a post in my homepage about a bacon recipe from him in my homepage (what else?)
1:07 AM
@DanGrossman on Quora? Of course
@drachenstern OCD
if you recommend a topic to a friend it automatically goes on their follow list
@radp Aye. I see that from the questions Facebook shows me. I don't give a crap what some of them are asking.
@Shog9 lol
@JeffAtwood WHAT? That's bogus
yeah, totally repro-ed, 100% fact
1:08 AM
@RebeccaChernoff you know you can hide those :p
if it's on Facebook
I don't need friends, I have all you people
One thing that is kind of nice about Quora is how it all autoupdates
1:09 AM
who needs friends with us around huh? :p
@JeffAtwood aww, group hug!
With enemies like you, who needs friends?
"who didn't put on deodorant?"
@Shog9 I'm sorry, "group stab" is taken already by Gaming and its mass murderers
auto-updating pages are pretty awesome (stats.awio.com/stats/pulse/1) :p
1:10 AM
I spent christmas with Evan Carroll and Rich B.. sitting around the fire drinking delicious hot cocoa and reminiscing about the good times.. sigh.. the good times
I prefer to think of y'all as my frienemies.
@RebeccaChernoff now I hate you the most
GET A ROOM
@RebeccaChernoff and I love you the least
@Shog9 Meh, join the crowd and add a chapter to the book.
1:11 AM
@RebeccaChernoff bahahahahahahaha
@RebeccaChernoff That's merely one line.
@radp oh no...
I don't know, a lot of the "auto updating page" stuff is just information porn IMHO
@RebeccaChernoff like this one ewwww :p
It's a novelty. The wow factor.
1:12 AM
@radp this is an area I'd like to see SO borrow more from. Carefully. With thick rubber gloves.
Information porn turns me on
@JeffAtwood Dunno, how many people simulate it by refreshing the homepage frequently enough?
@JeffAtwood I presume you mean twitter and facebook?
@radp on SO? MEEEEE
yeah, but you're also encouraging rapid-fire chat with auto-updates. and you do NOT want chat in your Q&A system. Exhibit A: look around you
context-sensitive updates can be helpful: think of the "someone else edited this post" or "two new answers were posted" notifications on SO
1:13 AM
haha @jeff
@JeffAtwood I wasn't talking about comments, rather about new questions.
@JeffAtwood no, we don't want common rapid fire chat in our Q&A, we want it in addition to
The "new answers were posted" thing makes me stop writing a thoughtful post and hit submit immediately
Although that could be more or less easily simulated with the API.
and I've used the comments on questions as rapid fire chat plenty of times
1:13 AM
it's getting notified of someone's comment in Chat while I'm writing an answer that just ruins my life
Then I finish typing as an edit :x
Quora has no idea what they're doing and I find it hilarious quora.com/Lucretia-M-Pruitt/…
<sarcasm>I still like my scenario. PersonA starts writing an answer. Jon Skeet starts writing an answer a minute later and PersonA gets a notification: Jon Skeet has started writing an answer. Go! Type faster! Hurrrrrrrry! </sarcam>
3
@Shog9 but that's not auto-updating
could you guys imagine a feed of every question as it was posted on the site in realtime?
10
Q: Auto Loading of New Questions

Maxim ZaslavskyNOTE: This has probably been asked already, but I am unable to find it. If such is the case, please post a link to that question in the comments. Here, I will try to explain how I think this problem should be combated. A very useful feature that I think we need for Stack Overflow is automatic lo...

still needed!
1:14 AM
you'ld never jump in to answer
@RebeccaChernoff you LIKE that scenario? I hate it. (agree with @drachenstern). And @balpha is also intensely opposed
@JeffAtwood lmao, why not? :p
@RebeccaChernoff it is impossible to type faster than jon skeet.
@drachenstern again, borrow very, very carefully
@JeffAtwood FIFY.
you need to DDOS google to distract him
Woot! @JeffAtwood agrees with @drachenstern ... my day is DONE :D
@drachenstern on SO however it's more than a screenful of one boxes per minute :(
Compete is all screwed up though -- their stats are wrong.. like really wrong, like totally wrong
1:15 AM
as for auto-loading: we don't need auto-refreshing, we should have something like what twitter does (see the meta question i linked to above)
@radp yes I know
look at quantcast
@MaximZaslavsky no no no. We don't need autoloading at all on SO (one man's opinion)
the "new answers posted" thing bugs me now because I'll check to see if anyone else got it right, see that they didn't, post, and then find that they edited in the good answer within the 5min window
@drachenstern can you explain why not?
1:16 AM
@Shog9 that pisses me off
quantcast.com/stackoverflow.com -- note that december is brutal for our work-related sites tho
@MaximZaslavsky because there are 600k daily visitors, and something on the order of 10k new messages every day. More than 1 per second. It would load WAY too fast
so usually when I see that someone else has answered, I'll just go do something else for a bit, and if they haven't fixed problems in the next 10-15 min go back to correcting them
@JeffAtwood Quantcast can be off however: quantcast.com/…
1:18 AM
@drachenstern that's true. but wouldn't having a box that says, "X more questions since you started browsing, click here to see them" or "Y more questions since you started searching, click here to see them" avoid that problem?
not in our case, since we feed them a tracking cookie / image
@Shog9 @JeffAtwood fix that and you'll cool more jets than people notice ... and you'll likely cut down on some of the meta "bugs"
@MaximZaslavsky I don't know what you're talking about, but if Twitter does it then it's automatically wrong
@MaximZaslavsky nope.
@shog9 well if you have other ideas, post them on meta. I'm all ears. Well, I'm not actually all ears because that would be kind of disgusting.
1:18 AM
@Shog9 that's what he's suggesting
he doesn't get the VOLUME of traffic
@MaximZaslavsky do this. Go create a new twitter account. Go subscribe 600k follows on your new twitter account. Watch the feed.
Hell, just subscribe 10k follows
That's what the SO frontpage would look like
@MaximZaslavsky no, I'm serious.
You want to know why it's a bad idea. Go prove it to yourself
don't ask.
you can't follow more than 2000 people without followers
Okay, global people and visit/day are diff numbers.
@DanGrossman whatever. Most of them will followyou back auto
1:19 AM
@JeffAtwood will-do
@radp yes, and how many new questions?
after 2000 it starts enforcing a hard almost 1:1 ratio
@DanGrossman 2k active twitterers for you to follow is a crazy feed.
@drachenstern too many identify-this-game's
1:20 AM
yeah you'd have to follow enough so you had 2,100+ new messages per day -- thats the rough volume of all new questions on Stack Overflow
so what are you suggesting? just not address the problem at all?
I have about 150 and I get over 400 messages in a day on average
did you guys notice on /review HOW MANY of those are NEW users?
@MaximZaslavsky I'm only suggesting no auto-update
in the last 24 hour period 543 posts by new users
1:21 AM
@JeffAtwood I noticed when I was playing with the new routes ... it's a LOT
894 questions are by new users
@JeffAtwood is that all?
so if we get ~2,100 per day.. that means.. gosh around 40% of all questions EVERY DAY are from NEW USERS
43% of all questions every day, are from new users
man, and I go hunting for tweets from multiple days ago
actually, i see what you're saying now. if the "box" thing were to check very often, you'd load the page and then in a few seconds it would appear and tell you to click on it to reload the page. so it wouldn't work.
1:22 AM
@JeffAtwood ok, but how many of them are repeats?
@MaximZaslavsky yes
@JeffAtwood what's your conversion rate, roughly speaking?
@MaximZaslavsky you could do this on lower-volume sites (anything but SO/SU/SF) and perhaps on a per-tagset basis on SO
I know that I saw where one of the diamonds had some graphs on user reps, with this nice spike at 1, and 101.
@JeffAtwood only on the off-tags, not on C#/JAVA/JS
stackexchange.com tagsets will estimate how many new questions you'll get per day on a given tagset
@JeffAtwood per-tagset is actually a good idea! and like with searching... but not for the home page, except maybe like a reminder that pops up after 5 minutes to tell you to refresh for new content
speaking of which -- how do you make a 2nd tagset?
1:23 AM
I'm also considering question revisiting based on bumps
c# across all sites in the network is 213 questions per day average
Stats

213 questions per day (avg)
13 total views
4 users following
0 email subscribers
you can follow tags?
oh! right
I would average one per 6 minutes
@radp the new tagset button (:
Ah, that was some decent pizza and wings.
1:25 AM
@RebeccaChernoff It wasn't visible until I typed by hand "stackexchange.com/tagsets/new" as a complete guess
I have to go to page 7 of /questions/tagged/c%23 to get to "yesterday" -- at 50 per page
Now I get a tagset selector
@TimStone oooo
sorry, one every three minutes
at the earliest
that is 7 * 50 = ~300 questions per day tagged c#
1:26 AM
@TimStone nom nom, did you have beer too?
and also name the place so i can go there too
@radp, It's on the right towards the top just under your existing tagsets: stackexchange.com
@JeffAtwood my "minimal" tagset would net me ~483 questions a day. I don't want my screen autorefreshing on that, I want to see the trends on all of SO
@RebeccaChernoff It is now; it wasn't.
> Show me a computer programmer who would rather give up Stack Overflow than Quora, and we'll officially start to worry. Until then, I think Quora is awesome at what it does, which is about 99% different than what Stack Overflow does. - Joel Spolsky on Quora
1:26 AM
@drachenstern I did not, unfortunately.
@RebeccaChernoff you should ping david so he improves that UI, if radp can't figure it out...
@Zypher It wasn't that good, plus it's a bit far for you :P
@TimStone damn
@drachenstern Next time, next time.
oh well i assumed it was amazing since played it down :-D
1:27 AM
Bah, I want wings. Was supposed to go to BWW tonight, but apparently my friend thinks having the flu is a good excuse to cancel on me. >_<
@JeffAtwood It's fine now that I can see the tagset selector. For some reason I couldn't previously.
you guys play with stackexchange.com/tagsets/popular and stackoverflow.com/review -- they are the futarr
@RebeccaChernoff pffft
@Zypher Nah, but if I find anything really great closer to Philly I'll clue you in :P
you have 3 months and then it'll only matter when my mom drags me back home
1:29 AM
@Zypher seriously ):
@RebeccaChernoff I am sympathetic with the sick friend's lack of desire to leave the house :P
...or I could've gone popular tag sets → about tag sets → create your own tag set
You mods might get a kick out of this.
1
Q: Is Oracle not suited as the database behind websites like Stackoverflow?

LazerI see from the thread Which tools and technologies build the Stack Exchange Network? that the database specifications are: Database SQL Server 2008 R2 running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition x64 While this does not necessarily mean that Oracle wont do this job, it does indi...

@RebeccaChernoff err sorry "pfftt that a bad excuse"
Hmm, I thought of a feature-request for tagsets this morning and forgot to make a note. Dammit.
1:29 AM
anyway. 0230. Nite.
@JeffAtwood I thought Panau was the future
@Zypher Ah, there's a move planned in your future then.
1
A: How can I be sure that I know everything about my moderator powers?

Michael MrozekWe generally make a habit of starring posts in the chat room when a dev announces a new feature, and I try to mention new things I've noticed specifically so other mods who might not have noticed are aware. In this case, this post of waffles' is starred: I am adding convert to comment to the ...

@radp night
@Zypher That's what I figured you meant. (:
1:30 AM
@RebeccaChernoff the community wants you to keep a list of all significant feature changes
4
I would file that under "Technical Evangelism"
We demand it be a verbose list, with information and lolcats.
@TimStone yep
Jin
Jin
@radp did you see my answer was the "Accepted Answer" on Quora???
@Jin the ramen one? Wow!
1:31 AM
Ah, nice.
Jin
Jin
yeah.
Except it isn't. It's just your title :P
@JeffAtwood hopefully in combination with the current community-made list?
Alright, I need to kill the server that keeps sending me these notifications about stuff being overdue..
1:31 AM
@Jin did you have to take the test to be able to post there?
@JeffAtwood Trust me, we don't want Mrozek to know everything. q:
Jin
Jin
@radp shhh
I haven't actually asked one question on Quora so I don't know how that'd go.
Oh wait, he answered, not his question.
1:32 AM
@RebeccaChernoff i bet i can convince him we ARE REALLY running Oracle and not MS SQL Server
@RebeccaChernoff I'm not sure that that lessens the cause for concern.
@RebeccaChernoff well take your laptop to BWW near you, I'll take my phone to BWW near me, @Zypher can take his direct fiber helicopter system (idk) and we can laugh at @TimStone for not having BWW :p
We scared Jeff away.
@Jin link?
Buffalo Wild Wings?
I have like three of those.
57
A: Recent feature changes to Stack Exchange

devinb Jan/Feb/Mar 2011 2011-01-07: Chat "whitelists" no longer allow specified users to talk regardless of their rep. Users with less than 20 rep now get only four hours of chat time before being locked out. 2011-01-07: Moderators can now convert answers into comments. 2011-01-07: The vote-to-close...

wow that's a huge amount of new and cool stuff. thanks!
err @drachenstern umm i don't have it either
the man comes and goes like a regal ... what's up with that?
2
he is JEFF ATWOOD
3
Did someone mention IRC?
1:34 AM
what's this IRC?
@TimStone but you didn't tonight
18
A: What about the IRC channel?

Jeff AtwoodWhile we're on the topic of IRC: #SOMafia on irc.slashnet.org is NOT associated with Stack Overflow! I've gotten several email complaints: Yesterday, just out of curiosity, I joined #SOMafia on irc.shashnet.org and there was a JeffAtwood op there. If it wasn't you, then I'm sorry, please ig...

@Zypher bah, I suppose
now, about those pesky phone calls
:p
irc is so passe
@drachenstern You all had the opportunity to teleport over here (wherever that may be) and invite me. I'm just sayin'
Jin
Jin
1:36 AM
is IRC vintage enough to like it ironically to be hipstery?
@TimStone lol, I can't tele-anywhere. I don't have a Rovio!
Oh, we're talking about IRC now? (:
@Jin yes, because just like hipsters, actual IRC users will snub you :p
@RebeccaChernoff NO ... down down woman, down!
Jin
Jin
meh, i liked irc back when you didn't talk about it (5mins ago)
@drachenstern Should take the SO team out to lunch...walk into the Applebees with a dozen Rovios in tow.
1:37 AM
@TimStone lol, I would too!
@Jin I liked IRC when you didn't know what it was
I think of all the people here that know what IRC is and have probably used a room more than once, that would be me and my boss. I imagine the senior DBA probably knows what it is and has never used it. The other devs are all "ehwut" ... I'm evangelizing them to SO as is ...
I like my text-based irc client.
I'm trying to decide if I should get them steadily on the chats, but that exposes me to them knowing how much work I actually do
@Jin nice
@GregHewgill, did you hear the irc siren going off? (:
Spend 4 hours preparing install diskettes... install Slackware Linux... dial up AOL with a PPPOE client... BitchX into a DALnet channel... some other IRC user roots me and wipes my hard drive while I chat. Welcome to IRC in the 90s!
Jin
Jin
1:39 AM
^ reposting for those who don't follow my spams on Twitter.
no, I'm just always here, I just popped into the gui to see how bolding in my irc client would work. :)
@Jin I should follow you on twitter. Why don't I?
Jin
Jin
@drachenstern because i spam random things... just ask @radp and @RebeccaChernoff
do you retweet a lot?
@Jin I resolved the problem
Jin
Jin
@drachenstern sometimes.
1:40 AM
ok, but it's not like all the time?
Jin
Jin
whoa maybe i should use Dribble more. my latest shot got viewed over 1k in couple days
You people and your Twitter...
(#greencircle)
I got something like 25 new followers this week. Apparently working for SOIS means I say interesting things. (;
Jin
Jin
@drachenstern i don't spam nearly as much as before since i started working for SO
1:41 AM
Boy are they gonna be fooled! MWUAHAHAHA
@TimStone > I was a twitter user when they had the failwhale
Sheep to the flock, sheep to the flock.
@RebeccaChernoff Don't make us pull out that animated gif.
@RebeccaChernoff nah, they realized you were a girl after the blogpost :p
@TimStone No. Please no. Just no.
1:42 AM
which one?
That's worse than the Book of Rchern. |:
@RebeccaChernoff Are you sure about that?
Did you read what they wrote?
Crap...something tells me I don't want to know lol
@TimStone I didn't even read what the hell they wrote
1:43 AM
I think that there needs to be a Book of Jin.
@RebeccaChernoff who would do the layout and design?
Hahah...yeah, yeaaah.
Jin
Jin
if there's a book of jin it'd be:
user image
2
@drachenstern y'all would. And it's such a top priority that you'll have to halt work on the Book of Rchern immediately.
@RebeccaChernoff apparently we have a disconnect :p ... we're good at bullshitting, not at design. That's @Jin's world. But he can't be involved in the book. It's an impasse.
1:46 AM
isn't involved in any way
next is something about only slightly more well known is this. don't get involved in a land war in east asia.
@drachenstern No. I understood perfectly. My implication was that you'd have to learn. Which would take awhile. Which is just more time you won't be working on the Book of rchern.
@RebeccaChernoff a) I didn't work on it, didn't read it, just saw the pretty colors of the revisions. b) I only pretend with design. c) is the horse dead yet?
Jin
Jin
@drachenstern design and bsing are not mutually exclusive. i'd argue there's an 80% overlap
2
@Jin lol, don't I know it, everyday it's what I do like 40% of the time.
1:48 AM
@drachenstern I sure as heck hope it is dead hehehe
So what do ya'll think? new iphone design or just without the sim slot?
reckon this was the holdup on the white iphone?
@RebeccaChernoff it's not that bad. Actually, you have become more of a side note in the whole thing :)
IEEIEEZ. WTH WwF
But then, you're supposed to be the evangelist, i.e. the person reporting
@RebeccaChernoff one acronym clarification in aisle 3 please!
speaking of, @TimStone is it my turn or yours?
1:50 AM
@RebeccaChernoff I think I got like every T in the damn game.
Yours
does it show me playing the word DOES?
I played that
:wishes water would boil faster:
ooooh, well that's not what it SAYS you played so I was confused
@DanGrossman watch the pot. It will
I'm gonna regret this @TimStone but there's you another TW
I don't know why, but every time I restart Ubuntu or Firefox or something, Gaming loses it's pixelatedness
1:53 AM
@RebeccaChernoff It's become more of the Book of Stack Overflow now anyway
@Pekka and is she the prophet/profit?
Well, technically yes, she is the evangelist
But she has her ghost-writers (us), so there isn't much actual work involved
@YiJiang Hm, weird.
I should go look at that, I didn't think that was my title. (;
If I force refresh, it comes back, but only 'till the next browser session
1:55 AM
@RebeccaChernoff It was only half your title :P
@RebeccaChernoff Lil' Blue Mod Girl Rebecca Chernoff :D
0
Q: How do I change difficulty in Gratuitous Space Battles?

indyK1ngI'm playing for the first time on my Mac and can't figure out how to change the difficulty. How do I do it? I haven't beaten the third mission yet (I read something that seemed to imply that difficulty needed to be unlocked).

hey, whose ear can I bend to get this month's data dump in progress? :)
1:58 AM
There's a game called Gratuitous Space Battles!? Must check it out. Must
@YiJiang I was thinking the same thing
> In GSB you put your ships together from modular components, arrange them into fleets, give your ships orders of engagement and then hope they emerge victorious from battle (or at least blow to bits in aesthetically pleasing ways).
Cool, they updated the flagged post interface for 10k tools! Yay! It now has colors OMG I THINK I'M GOING TO CRY!!!
2
Oh wow... we can see comment flags now
Oh wow... there are a lot of moronic comment flags...
2:17 AM
and I'm out for now, probably be back ... well see
2:33 AM
// found this on a side called thedailywtf.com always worked for me
5
^ Best comment ever
Wait, someone copied code from TDWTF? That's hilarious
@TimStone No, it was left by Ivo in his code for the code bowling post, but it's still hilarious
Hahah, still good. :D
quick question - i've flagged a question someone posted from a current programming competition, is there any way to get it deleted faster?
getting outside help is cheating
@marcog Which flag?
2:42 AM
@YiJiang mod attention
Should, though it's at the mod's discretion of course
2:54 AM
I need to refactor this sentence:
> undefined is just a type, but there's also the variable called undefined which defaults to the value undefined, but whose value can be changed. All variables that have not been assigned any value, default to the value undefined.
My problem is the part about 'variable whose value'
I can't really figure out which term to use here
@YiJiang s/whose/its
or "but can change value"
@marcog I'll give that a try
*but it

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