Tavern on the Meta

Dan Grossman

7:01 AM

Brrrr. Cold. I'm not hungry but I want to go out and buy something warm to eat.

Michael Mrozek

Ooc, does SO have any sort of automated tests that get run before a deploy?

Yi Jiang

@waffles Is it a known bug that voting sometimes results in the 'An error has occurred message even though the vote registered just fine?

0

Q: Rotate text with CSS/Javascript/Jquery

I have tried this to rotate text to 270 Degree -webkit-transform: rotate(-90deg); -moz-transform: rotate(-90deg); filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(rotation=3);

Hehehe, shakes head

Tim Stone

@YiJiang That happened to me the other day, but I was in the process of leaving the page, so I didn't get a chance to try and figure out what happened.

Dan Grossman

One more upvote...

Michael Mrozek

@DanGrossman You realize you have like 18 hours till the day ends

Reno

7:15 AM

@DanGrossman you want it on your SO account ?

Dan Grossman

There we go, past the rep cap again =p

Michael Mrozek

Close one; you almost didn't make it

Dan Grossman

I got +275 yesterday

have some over +300 days too

Yi Jiang

@waffles How accurate is the close vote information on SEDE?

Dan Grossman

27

Q: Top bad practices in PHP

I've learned from Stack Overflow that some of the code I've been writing so far is considered "bad practice". Like using tons of global variables, create_function() etc. I'm curious to know more about this. Post examples of bad practices in PHP and why. Please only post one bad practice per answ...

php coding-style programming-practices

Less entertaining than hoped

Michael Mrozek

7:24 AM

Er. I assumed that was two years old, not 10 hours old. How did that stay open?

Dan Grossman

Ahh, stop it, you're killing it!

Some of SO's most popular questions are the same kind

Michael Mrozek

@DanGrossman I'm well aware -- they should die too

Dan Grossman

You're anti-SOIS

Michael Mrozek

SO's "most popular" posts are almost universally bad

I'm pretty sure SOIS hates them too

Dan Grossman

I am going to ask the board of directors to ban you from their servers for trying to kill their page views and ad revenue

Jeff will be overruled by his investors

A heated argument will ensue, and phones will be smashed

Kragen

7:27 AM

@MichaelMrozek They are also usually a pretty good read though - I get why we would want to close them, but deleting them seems a tad harsh

Dan Grossman

It will all be caught on tape and posted to YouTube by an intern

Kragen

Im just glad I can see deleted questions

Michael Mrozek

@Kragen They're a pretty good read on reddit, too, or PSE. I don't know why we can't make the distinction between "interesting" and "belongs on SO"; they're not the same

Dan Grossman

"Attracts new, experienced programmers to SO unlike anything else" = encouraged

Michael Mrozek

"Let's all whine about PHP" is absolutely not the way to attract experienced programmers to SO. It's completely the opposite

Dan Grossman

7:30 AM

It's the way to attract experienced PHP coders to SO that wouldn't otherwise know about the site... and it's SO's 3rd top tag

Michael Mrozek

Besides the fact that SO sucks at list posts, and always has, you really thing a post listing all of PHP's flaws is a way to attract experienced PHP coders?

Dan Grossman

Yes, though it's not a list of language flaws, it's a list of bad practices

Michael Mrozek

...you're wrong

Reno

but hey alexandra is pretty cute

Michael Mrozek

It's the opposite of Jeff's policy, which is "ask expert questions, get expert users"

This is "ask a question anyone can answer even if they're never used PHP before"

Kragen

7:32 AM

@MichaelMrozek I'm not saying that they belong on SO or that new questions shouldn't be promptly closed and locked, but the answers that are already around do belong to the community - There are now lots of questions with plenty of votes and quality answers that were just blanket deleted by a moderator with no input from the community.

Dan Grossman

Good answers to a "bad programming practices" are going to come from the same people that write to TheDailyWTF and other blogs for professional programmers... programmers that have enough experience to recognize bad practices...

Michael Mrozek

@Kragen Then I think you're having a different argument

@DanGrossman Except the real expert programmers we're trying to attract were sick of those posts before SO even existed, and don't want to keep running into them here

Just because they know the answer doesn't mean they're interested in the post

Dan Grossman

ok

Michael Mrozek

I'd say it should be moved to PSE, but in a true fit of irony, I think they would probably close it

Benjol

I vote for the 4th place: polls.stackoverflow.com :)

aka runoff.stackoverflow.com :)

Michael Mrozek

7:38 AM

@Benjol I was happier when that's what PSE was supposed to be :)

Benjol

@MichaelMrozek, I'm actually quite serious, because all of the SE sites run into the polls/list problem. People WANT to ask these questions, that's why they (the questions) keep coming. The problem isn't that SO isn't the right place, the problem is that Q&A isn't the right format

Think Canute. Move the throne ;)

Michael Mrozek

@Benjol I am too; PSE started off as exactly what you describe, a place to let people go wild with their poll questions so they could leave us alone. Then SOIS decided they didn't like the free-for-all and locked it down during the beta

Dan Grossman

I'm going to invest in SOIS's next financing round just for a board seat so I can change the rules as I please.

Benjol

@MichaelMrozek, yes, but as I say, the problem isn't just a question of where, it's a question of format. Q&A just doesn't cut it.

Kragen

I don't see what's so bad about poll / subjective questions - people clearly enjoy both asking and participating in them and they are easy enough to avoid if you don't like them.

Michael Mrozek

7:41 AM

@Benjol I think most people agree that the SO engine isn't a good fit for poll questions, we just got tired of arguing and said "you know what, fine, if you insist, here's a special SE site where you can go nuts"

@Kragen They're bad because the whole SO engine is designed around "ask a question, get answers, upvote the best ones, accept the one that solved your problem". Half of those steps don't make sense for subjective/poll questions

Kragen

Obviously you don't want the site to be overrun with them for exactly the same reason that I have no interest in PSE, but I do think that the occasional popular question that many people gets involved in is good for the community overall.

Michael Mrozek

(This is ignoring the way they destroy metrics like post quality)

Benjol

@Kragen It's a question of rep too. In fact I think it's entirely a question of rep. Getting thousands of rep for cracking jokes works against the quality of the site

Michael Mrozek

@Benjol Well, CW gets around that, even though it's not supposed to

It doesn't get around all the posts with 500 upvotes being subjective though

Benjol

@MichaelMrozek, it gets around it too late though

Kragen

7:44 AM

That's what CW is for - provide the means to have these questions without the rep issue sneaking in.

Michael Mrozek

@Kragen It's completely not what CW is for. It is what it gets used for

Benjol

Anyway, I stand by my suggestion. These questions keep coming, and no one will stop them. Closing them generates bad blood. PSE wasn't a solution because Q&A isn't the right format. Solution: polls.x.com Though I guess it's not gonna be very high on the priorities :)

Kragen

Besides, many poll questions genuinely are really useful - for example its handy to know (for example) what peoples favourite text editor is, or what their favourite javascript debugger is as a rough metric of quality.

Michael Mrozek

@Kragen And if we could seriously say "ok, once a month we'll let somebody go for it", I'd be fine with it, but that's not what happens. People see "Top bad practices in PHP" and think "wow, look how popular that was. I'll go post 'Top bad practices in Java'", and if you try to close that one they flip out and point to the PHP one as evidence that those questions are ok. This is what happened with the "hidden features" posts

Kragen

Case in point:

1421

Q: What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?

If you could go back in time and tell yourself to read a specific book at the beginning of your career as a developer, which book would it be? I expect this list to be varied and to cover a wide range of things. EDIT: Before adding a another book/answer, please search for it first and upvote ...

books resources reading

Michael Mrozek

7:46 AM

@Kragen We're looping around to something we already said -- "useful" and "belongs on SO" are not the same

Kragen

True, but "useful" should definitely be an influencing factor in "belongs on SO"

Benjol

@MichaelMrozek, more precisely: "useful" and "belongs on Q&A"

Dan Grossman

Subjective questions are questions. We ask them. Their answers should be searchable. I want book recommendations from programmers!

Kragen

So there are around 2000 new questions every day on StackOverflow

Reno

did you mean programmers SE ;)

Tim Post

7:54 AM

@DanGrossman Book recommendations (if unique) are typically welcome on programmers SE

Kragen

Programmers.SE has around 20 new questions per day according to the same query

Reno

►

Dan Grossman

Why do I have a pending edits count on a site where I don't have the rep to see the linked page?

Michael Mrozek

Sounds like a bug. META REP!

Dan Grossman

meta is scary and incestuous, I only (ab)use its chat room

I also lost my ability to approve a pending edit on SO apparently... I approved one and it still shows as pending edit(1)

pending-edit stuff is all buggy

Michael Mrozek

8:01 AM

@DanGrossman It was changed earlier today so it takes two approvals (on SO only)

Yi Jiang

@DanGrossman 2 approvers are needed now

Dan Grossman

even over 2k rep? reverted to the old behavior?

Michael Mrozek

Well, you can't approve at all if you're under 2k rep

Dan Grossman

it was that 2k+ could singlehandedly approve pending edits, since we can edit without approval in the first place, but there was a limit to how much rep this would award any single user per day

Michael Mrozek

They changed SO because edits were getting approved pretty much instantly, even if they should've been rejected. They also changed it so the indicator in the top bar only shows up if there's 5+ posts waiting

Dan Grossman

8:03 AM

now we're back to the situation where i'm blocked from fixing a question even though if there was no pending edit i'd be able to fix it myself

Benjol

I can see my own suggested edits in the top bar too :) -> Page not found...

Michael Mrozek

In theory; in practice I don't think they last very long on SO. I just watched one get two approval votes in less than 20 seconds

Tim Post

I've got mixed feelings about opening edits like that. The majority of the edits that I see are good quality, but there are a considerable amount of "edited just cuz I could" edits

Michael Mrozek

@TimPost There are a bunch that fix "wrong" answers to be "right", which is not generally a good idea

Benjol

I've found a <cough>comments</cough> work around for the character limit :)

Dan Grossman

8:04 AM

I liked the "everyone without rep can suggest edits ONLY if the question is old" idea

let drive-bys suggest fixes to old stuff nobody else is tending to, don't let them randomly edit new stuff without rep to prove they know what they're doing

Tim Post

@MichaelMrozek I haven't seen any like that, but I'm usually working on flags instead.

Michael Mrozek

I stopped following flags closely when they added comment flags; I need to change my script to filter them out

Yi Jiang

@Benjol Only now? Geesh, which one is it?

Benjol

@YiJiang, you won't be able to see it. it was a one-character typo on atheism that was bugging me, so I 

Michael Mrozek

@Benjol Aww, don't do that. Although that's not as bad as the guy that just added "xxxxxxxx" to the bottom of a post

Benjol

8:09 AM

@MichaelMrozek, there's nothing more frustrating than a link saying "come on, edit me", then a "Na!, your edits too short, come back when you've grown up"

Michael Mrozek

I know, I hate those character limits

Benjol

I don't want to see edit links if I can't edit, sorry.

Dan Grossman

Hrm, wish I could see deleted questions. One just got posted that I'm sure was already asked earlier tonight, but I can't find it now.

Reno

Same here

Michael Mrozek

You can't search deleted questions anyway, sadly

Reno

8:11 AM

how much SO money does it take to see them :P

Tim Post

10k rep can see deleted questions / answers

Michael Mrozek

@Reno stackoverflow.com/privileges/moderator-tools

Tim Post

Oh my, I'll be spending my vacation inside of an angry fruit salad: puertoprincesahotel.com

Reno

The weather and flora/fauna there just looks like my home-town

I am impressed

Tim Post

There are lot of places here where you can have a great time and good lodging really cheap

Chocolate Hills

The Chocolate Hills are an unusual geological formation in Bohol, Philippines. According to the latest accurate survey done, there are 1,776 hills spread over an area of more than . They are covered in green grass that turns brown during the dry season, hence the name. The Chocolate Hills are a famous tourist attraction of Bohol. They are featured in the provincial flag and seal to symbolize the abundance of natural attractions in the province. They are in the Philippine Tourism Authority's list of tourist destinations in the Philippines; Description The Chocolate Hills is a rollin...

That's another natural wonder

Nobody is quite sure why they formed that way. It's like giant ants inhabited the world long ago.

Reno

8:21 AM

Four legends explain the formation of the Chocolate Hills. The first tells the story of two feuding giants who hurled rocks, boulders, and sand at each other. The fighting lasted for days, and exhausted the two giants. In their exhaustion, they forgot about their feud and became friends, but when they left they forgot to clean up the mess they had made during their battle, hence the Chocolate Hills

totally explains it

it was just a result of a epic giant battle

The last legend is about a gluttonous giant named Miguel that eats everything in his path. One day he came to a plain. He saw a beautiful young woman named Adrianna. To win her affection, he needed to lose weight. So he excreted everything he ate. In the end, his fecal matter covered the land and he won Eng's affection.

this is quite good too .. giant poop

Yi Jiang

Two hours after receiving the BBC World Service's schedule for this week, I recieved another email telling me that half the programs will be cancelled and replaced with live coverage of the unrest in Egypt

-1

A: How to improve this wallpaper gallery?

1. Create file download.php and paste this code: <?php $d = $_GET['d']; header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="$d"'); ?> And paste this code as download link: <a href="download.php?d=filename.jpeg">Download</a>

Benjol

@YiJiang Things not looking good for Egypt :(

oracle certified professional

If I click the 1 (edits for approval) the link's broken

Michael Mrozek

@oraclecertifiedprofessional It's a bug; it's only supposed to show up for 10k users

Did Dan ever file that?

Oh, somebody else did just now

oracle certified professional

but: the link is "http://meta.stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits"

if i change it to "http://meta.stackoverflow.com/review/suggestededits" (remove the hyphen) it works

Reno

8:32 AM

its visible to me too , but i not bothered about it

Michael Mrozek

@oraclecertifiedprofessional It doesn't work, it just goes to the base review page. You'd get the same if you went to meta.stackoverflow.com/review/asdf or meta.stackoverflow.com/review

The tab you're trying to get to is only accessible to 10k users

oracle certified professional

ok, just making sure

i didn't want to have access to things I don't deserve

Michael Mrozek

I'm surprised it took this long to get a bug report, honestly

Benjol

Argghga, another one-letter typo that I'm itching to correct but I won't be allowed to :(

@MichaelMrozek, I'm refraining just for you, in case you wondered :)

Reno

Dont the japanese and koreans have any questions ? Ive rarely spotted them asking questions on SO. But they do churn out mind blowing stuff

I reckon they are bad at english, but then how do they read specs and documentation ... ? Its like they never mess up or they have a secret japanese internet or something

Benjol

8:44 AM

Users in Korea : 262. Max rep 1561, user Eonil

Michael Mrozek

How would you even know that they're not asking questions?

Reno

just stalking SO is guess , its my hobby

Benjol

Users in Japan: 414. Max rep 14974, user Robert Gould

Reno

@Benjol thanks for that, pretty cool stat

Benjol

select Id as [User Link], Reputation, CreationDate, WebsiteUrl, AboutMe, Location
from users
where Location like '%Japan%' or WebsiteUrl like '%.jp'
order by Reputation desc

select Id as [User Link], Reputation, CreationDate, WebsiteUrl, AboutMe, Location
from users
where Location like '%Korean%' or WebsiteUrl like '%.kr'
order by Reputation desc

Roll your own here: data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/new

@All, re: discussion on polls, just rediscovered this question:

17

Q: The fourth place: Polling, Recommendations and subjective-ish stuff

edit5 In case you still like Jeffs answer: This is not about SO but about SE-2.0 sites in general! Stuff like polls, recommendations based on subjective constraints, puzzles, webcomics etc. do not belong on the serious main SE sites, where professionals should be considered at work and having ju...

feature-request area51 poll

Aiden Bell

8:54 AM

29

Q: Top bad practices in PHP

I've learned from Stack Overflow that some of the code I've been writing so far is considered "bad practice". Like using tons of global variables, create_function() etc. I'm curious to know more about this. Post examples of bad practices in PHP and why. Please only post one bad practice per answ...

php coding-style programming-practices

drumroll it is all bad practice ... thank you, i'm here all night

Michael Mrozek

@AidenBell We already argued about that post for about a half hour :)

Aiden Bell

@MichaelMrozek - Yea, well, you smell :P Thought I would get in on the action

Aiden Bell

9:11 AM

stackoverflow.com/questions/4892488/closed

highly uncool

no I don't want to install a bengali font

Michael Mrozek

@AidenBell It was a mistake, he thought SO accepted non-english questions. And it was closed 10 hours ago

Reno

gotta love that answer

Aiden Bell

@MichaelMrozek - you climb out of bed on the wrong side? I was just noting it, not demanding closure or arguing its case :S

Michael Mrozek

You said "highly uncool", I assumed that meant you wanted it dealt with, which already happened

Aiden Bell

No, the fact it had even been posted

Michael Mrozek

9:20 AM

Well, I would say "it was a mistake, he thought SO accepted non-english questions", but I might get accused of climbing out of bed on the wrong side

Aiden Bell

k, this is going to get recursive. I had little sleep, so probably me lol

Benjol

@MichaelMrozek, I think the confusion was genuine and understandable

Aiden Bell

relax

Michael Mrozek

I've had no sleep, so I should probably go deal with that before I talk to people anymore

Benjol

GO TO BED BOTH OF YOU!!

:)

Aiden Bell

9:21 AM

Then we both should probably not converse lol

Anyway, I bid you all farewell as I have to code.

Reno

@AidenBell before you leave are you from london proper?

Aiden Bell

@Reno - no Manchester

Reno

ah :)

Aiden Bell

@Reno - so I better go before the spontaneous urge to kick off and chuck a can of stella at you takes hold hehe

(I hope you are from the UK to get the joke :S )

Reno

:D yeah im not , british humour is complicated i reckon

Aiden Bell

9:29 AM

self humour fail

Reno

no its not you, my puny brain cannot comprehend british humour thats all :P

Benjol

@Reno, there's not much to understand, just lots of things to know :)

Yi Jiang

2

Q: Suggestion: Maybe add "trolling" to the list of reasons a comment can be flagged?

Possible Duplicate: Should we rephrase or clarify “subjective and argumentative”? I've seen some discussions here on meta-SO where moderators have said that the appropriate action for a user who appears to be trolling in comments is to click the "Flag this comment as offensiv...

feature-request comments trolling

Aiden Bell

@YiJiang trolled

Yi Jiang

This is so weird - it's clearly not a duplicate, yet somehow both Jeff and Marc think so, hrm...

Benjol

9:34 AM

@YiJiang, well I guess part of it is duplicate: whether argumentative is a duplicate of trolling?

Reno

Benjol

Ooh, 3500 on meta and 6499 on SO, there's not much I can do to gain one rep though, I guess :(

Reno

well what can i say

Aiden Bell

►

@Reno - you reminded me of that vid

He is what people regard a typical person from Manchester, UK

Yi Jiang

@Benjol Not really, since you can only flag a comment for 'offensive', while closing a question for being 'argumentative', those are two different things

Aiden Bell

9:36 AM

Stereotyping of course

Benjol

Well I guess neither of them are around to point that out.

very old though...

Yi Jiang

@Benjol Yeah, I noticed

Dan Grossman

-_-

stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits = all tag wikis i cant approve/reject, yet the site toolbar is screaming at me that there are edits waiting!

Benjol

@Dan, I don't see anything in the site toolbar, just in the tab

Dan Grossman

Benjol

9:42 AM

I'm sorry, but I just can't parse the edits, whats with the first one, there wasn't any text? (stackoverflow.com/edit-suggestions/2014)

Dan Grossman

That's how I interpreted it. It was a tag wiki with no description, he wrote one.

> There is no tag wiki for this tag. stackoverflow.com/tags/google-apps/info

Benjol

@Dan, ok, I see. Funnily, I don't see that counter in chrome, but I do in firefox. weird

Yi Jiang

@Benjol What the heck, who approved that!?

Dan Grossman

I hope nobody

Benjol

ah, it's because it's moving all the time!

Dan Grossman

9:44 AM

> Edit was approved 40 secs ago by Péter Török, paxdiablo

Yi Jiang

That's just advertising, pure and simple

Dan Grossman

yeah, it looks like he copied the feature list from a google page

Yi Jiang

Somebody just approved it >_>

Two, in fact

Dan Grossman

I'll propose a new edit!

Benjol

I just don't get how 2x1k = 2k :)

Dan Grossman

9:46 AM

stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits

Yi Jiang

@DanGrossman Hopefully that would get approved - mine deleting the [google-chrome] tag wiki did: stackoverflow.com/posts/4701060/revisions

Benjol

Doubt this will fly:

0

Q: Differentiate between employees and moderators

My understanding of who has diamonds: All moderators have diamonds on the sites they moderate Trilogy moderators also have diamonds on MSO SOIS employees have diamonds everywhere they're needed ⋯⋯⋯ Right now, there are a lot of new diamond moderators across the network, with more being added...

feature-request stackexchange-2.0 so-family moderators

Yi Jiang

@Benjol SE 1.0 sites had diamonds and double diamonds

Tim Post

10:24 AM

Oh yes, don't forget to vote for the new seven wonders of the world: new7wonders.com :)

Benjol

@TimPost, if they don't watch out they could end up with all vocanoes/mountains :)

waffles

@YiJiang I need to update SEDE ... will do so next week

Kragen

@waffles Think I'm nearly done with the query plan thing too btw

waffles

@Kragen wow ! can not wait to add your patch to trunk

Kragen

It doesn't work in IE7 though :-(

Benjol

10:35 AM

@waffles, I'd quite like to try implementing 'click on column header to sort', do you think that would be complicated?

Kragen

@Benjol I've done that too

(Sorry :-p)

waffles

@Benjol the grid actually supports that ... it should be fairly simple to patch

Benjol

@Kragen, ok :(

waffles

@Kragen :)

Kragen

It wasn't too tricky - I've not tested it with any large data sets yet though.

Benjol

10:36 AM

@Kragen, well the datasets can't get that large anyway, can they?

waffles

max data set is 2000 rows anyway so it is not a big deal

Benjol

Currently it's quite difficult to select text from the results too, the table seems to think I'm trying to do something else, but that something else isn't possible (dragging rows?)

Kragen

Yeah, not sure how to fix that one

Benjol

I guess there's always results to text

Kragen

I guess, kinda feels like a cop-out though :-p

waffles

10:45 AM

have a look at the SlickGrid samples ... they may have some ideas of how to do that

Benjol

As an aside, I wonder if these questions ought to be just nuked: data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/s/857/… (perhaps adding a 'no favourites' check too)

Yi Jiang

1

Q: m2eclipse: Eclipse is running in a JRE, but a JDK is required

Hello, I have a problem with m2eclipse (0.10.0) together with eclipse galileo (Build id: 20090920-1017). I always get the error message:"Eclipse is running in a JRE, but a JDK is required". I have tried several things, but nothing works. The error message is still there. Here are the things I ha...

eclipse maven-2 jdk jre m2eclipse

14 answers, none of them seems to be good, some are dupes, not many were voted on, yet this question continue to receive Google visitors

Yi Jiang

11:12 AM

0

Q: passive heatsink simulation

I want to simulate a heat source (eg a cpu) connected to a heatsink without any cooling fans. The simulation will run indefinitely using small time steps. What i want to measure at each time step is the temperature of the heat source and the temperature of the heatsink at each tick (of time). ...

simulation

Better suited to physics.se?

Kragen

@YiJiang Maybe, I'd say its 50/50.

Yi Jiang

@Kragen The problem is there there's no actual Math in there, so it's mostly about physics

Tim Post

11:34 AM

-4

Q: Thinking from a technical perspective, is it practical/ideal to introduce messaging into a spam system?

Hi All - Idea is simple. A spam system that tries with its extreme to send emails as many as possible(possibly with enough MTAs behind with smtp strategy). Using a task queue for email recipients, multiple distributed APP servers(with MTA properly configured to send emails) will read email recip...

queue messaging spam celery

See? Even spammers get help on Stack Overflow!

Octavian Damiean

hello

badp

\o/

@Benjol I hate that proposal

It makes sense, but it's IMHO a feature that they aren't differentiated

The last thing SEs need is more of the "we site vs you owners" stuff

Yi Jiang

3

A: Continuity of Moderation

One approach I was considering is to officially designate the 4th place winner as an alternate. That would cover two cases: a moderator no longer able to serve, and having someone who can fill in for a temporary absence due to work or family obligations. The entire nomination-campaign-primary-ele...

Look at the comment thread. Why do I get a here we go again feeling?

badp

I think Jeff really wanted a mod that isn't from MO

I'm glad it has happened

Tim Post

11:56 AM

Has there actually been a case where a moderator was elected and did nothing?

I find that very difficult to conceive.

badp

@TimPost apparently that's what's happening on Maths

Marc Gravell

sometimes a moderator becomes unavailables (example: TheTXI), but that is very different

Dan Grossman

:Submits an interesting SO question to Hacker News, awaits badges for views on a question to come rolling in:

badp

The Math elections ended on Dec 17th

Robin Chapman was last seen on Math on Jan 10th

and last active on Dec 20th

profile link

on Meta he was last seen Dec 17th and last active Dec 9th

Marc Gravell

random aside: when I went to uni I studied under him...

badp

12:03 PM

I thought he lived in the US.

Marc Gravell

Robin Chapman? No; ex.ac.uk

Tim Post

I hope nothing happened to him :/

Dan Grossman

badge #1 stackoverflow.com/badges/261/booster?userid=280598

badp

bah, I hoped it was a real question :P

Marc Gravell

it probably would be [a real question] on prog.SE

@TimPost seen on mathoverflow 2 hours ago

Benjol

12:11 PM

@MarcGravell Wow! When?

Marc Gravell

"wow! when?" what?

Benjol

ex.ac.uk. looking at your profile, it was 5-6 years after me :)

Marc Gravell

I was at Exeter '96 thru '99 - gotta love the Laver building

Dan Grossman

Maybe he got confused and thinks math.stackexchange.com got its own domain at mathoverflow.net

Tim Post

I hope 'the right balance (TM)' can be found on that site.

Dan Grossman

12:12 PM

he's now dutifully moderating the wrong site

3

Benjol

@MarcGravell '91 - '95, me. MEng FWIW (i.e. not much to me now :)

badp

@MarcGravell To be fair he also hasn't been active at all after Dec 17th on MO

I wish MO's meta had a way to find all posts by a user

Marc Gravell

I started on MMath, but decided "to heck with that" and swapped to BSc

@badp indeed - the 2 hours ago could be a machine in his office.

I doubt I could even read my uni notes now - the course was fine etc, simply I haven't touched that type of stuff since leaving

badp

by the way, some were wondering what is MathOverflow going to do

I think this is an authoritative reply:

@Benjol code.google.com/p/mathoverflow/source/list and meta.mathoverflow.net/discussion/829/alphamathoverflownet/… (basically OSQA)

Benjol

@MarcGravell My notes hit the bottom of a wheelie years ago.

Kragen

12:20 PM

@MarcGravell I know what you mean - any time I try to do anything mathsy I just can't remember anything

I probably should have swapped to a BSc - I got my worst results in the final year

Marc Gravell

I'm fair if that "math" is "find the logic holes in this or prove there are none" - but if it is "given this polar-spherical differential field equation in descreet parts, identify the stable states in terms of phi eta and iota, in terms of the inverse hamiltonian conjugate" (I'm just throwing vaguely remembered terms around there)

Benjol

@badp Ouch; "Starting from scratch", one 'developer'. I'm not a mathematician, but I think I can work out the result..

badp

@MarcGravell You should totally drop that and use jQuery Math plugin.

3

$("eq .stable").φηι()

> The toolchain I'm using, scala+maven+lift is a lot to digest. It's not impossible that me and Dave Penneys, a graduate student at Berkeley, are the only mathematicians who've programmed in scala. On the other hand, everyone can write python :-)

yay elitism.

Benjol

@badp "I have to admit I haven't looked at all at the OSQA codebase". I guess that's one way of starting from scratch :)

badp

sorry I made a typo

∮("eq .stable").φηι()

Kragen

12:30 PM

hah

badp

@Benjol I hope for MO they have a working solution by april :)

Benjol

@badp, yeah, that deadline does make things look a bit ... bad. I've been wondering about Moms4Mom too, they want to migrate, but I'm not sure they'll have the time (new baby in December...)

Kragen

@badp Why april?

badp

@Kragen wasn't April the 1 year deadline for successful SE 1.0s?

maybe I remember incorrectly

Tim Post

How many are actually left?

badp

12:33 PM

meta.moms4mom.com/questions/2/…

Benjol

@badp That's my recollection too, though I don't think that J&J/SOIS are monsters to the point of pulling the plug on the very first minute of 1 April (except as a joke, of course :)

@badp Yeah, I know, I was pulling in the other direction there...

Kragen

Oh - I hadn't realised that they were running on StackExchange 1.0 - it looks really different, hadn't realised how much it has changed.

Benjol

@Kragen, AFAIK, the only ones of note are Mathoverflow and Moms4Mom

Tim Post

The difference (behind the scenes) between the SE 1.0 system and the SE 2.0 system is night and day

badp

Now you just need to try an OSQA site and you'll have the full picture @TimPost :P

Tim Post

12:39 PM

I've been meaning to try it, but every time I find time to do so, I get lazy

Benjol

@TimPost, to be honest, if Anton, Scott & Tammy could be 'benevolent dictators for life', I'm pretty certain there'd be no problem with moving to SE2.0

Tim Post

I was thinking of setting one up just for virtualization, because it doesn't look like the area51 proposal will get traction

badp

@Benjol The MO admin wants full db access.

Robert was clear that it's not going to happen.

Benjol

@badp reasonable as an escape route

Tim Post

Eek, I thought it was just some differences regarding the latex implementation

Kragen

12:41 PM

@badp What would full db access gain them?

badp

Oh, and they want to keep ownership of the domain too

1 min ago, by Benjol

@badp reasonable as an escape route

Benjol

@badp reasonable as an escape route too

Tim Post

Presumably, if things went 'bad', he could open another site using a clone and keep the content / users / history

Benjol

@TimPost, but no votes?

And no url?

Tim Post

@Benjol i counted that as part of 'history'

Kragen

12:43 PM

Surely they could do that anyway from the data dumps

Benjol

@Kragen, you don't get who voted. It's true that you might not need that to recreate a new db, but I'm not sure

Just look at meta.math, those guys are paranoid about 'commercial forces beyond their control'

Kragen

Oh true

Benjol

And as I hinted in my not-very-appreciated question, SE1.0-2.0 hasn't done anything to reassure them

Kragen

Thats pretty understandable - its tough to go from having complete control to no control.

badp

@Benjol Once you migrate, lock voting on migrated posts

sure, it doesn't help that SOIS is having trouble producing data dumps

Benjol

12:46 PM

@badp, well, I guess you'd have the post votes as well, so you could allow voting to continue... though that would mean people could vote twice. dunno

The Renamed Exception

Good morning everyone

Octavian Damiean

morning

Benjol

@badp, anyway, that is why I asked my democracy question and why I think that the way things are presented is extremely sensitive and important. But I won't start again :)

Dan Grossman

►

Benjol

I need a YouTube to animated gif converter, it's blocked here :(

badp

12:52 PM

@Benjol I can see your point now, but you should've asked a few months ago :)

now those sites have already decided

Benjol

@badp Yeah, well I have a gift for thinking of the right answer once it's too late :)

@TheRenamedException Answered your comment.

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