Tavern on the Meta

12:34 AM

Gettin' real annoyed at folks leaving multiple comments on the same post, almost always to say something that shouldn't be said in comments or at all.

Wondering if worth proposing a feature that'd warn on the second comment, "This isn't Twitter - we allow you to post full-length answers if you have that much to say."

Journeyman Geek

hah

user315433

The most annoying part about comment is notifications. Hiding the top nav solved the problem for me. No more inbox.

Shog9

I get mobile notifications, so... No relief.

Journeyman Geek

12:49 AM

@Shog9 nuke em all? ;p

Shog9

sounds like work

Journeyman Geek

Well in theory that's what you have mods for.

Unless its meta. in which case eh. ;p

Shog9

wait, did you mean comments, users, or posts?

Journeyman Geek

Yes

I did primarily mean comments.

Shog9

yeah, that's definitely too much work

Journeyman Geek

12:51 AM

I might have considered suggesting comment suspensions at one point

There are situations where an extended comment thread is temporarily useful tho

and its pretty hard to tell sometimes

Shog9

currently staring at a thread where someone thought it a good idea to critique an answer with six back-to-back comments, with no intervening replies. Needless to say, this did not provoke a thoughtful response from the author.

Journeyman Geek

ah!

Jon Ericson

@JourneymanGeek You'd get a lot of sympathy from Workplace mods on that.

Journeyman Geek

With back to back comments it may make sense

@JonEricson I have a user whose heart is in the right place, but needs a bit of encouraging to comment less and answer more. Its a tool for very special cases though.

Shog9

The other day, someone decided a bug analysis of mine was the perfect place to critique the underpinnings of the editing system on Stack Exchange. A single comment would've been kinda too much there, but posting 2 at a time certainly didn't improve anything.

Journeyman Geek

12:57 AM

erf

Jason C

@Shog9 Are they my comments? I'm pretty sure I did that to somebody recently.

Shog9

@JasonC no.

Jason C

Also, it could be worse, they could've decided it was the perfect place to critique gender-specific pronouns.

Shog9

Not to take anything away from you though; I'm sure you're just as adept at jackassery as the guy I'm looking at.

Jason C

Because apparently every place is the perfect place.

Shog9

1:00 AM

but, not you this time

Jason C

Lol

Shog9

Here we go. Feature-request:

Jon Ericson

@Shog9 Disappointing. The pro move is to edit in the critique. Plenty of room that way.

Journeyman Geek

lol. Seen that much too often.

Shog9

heh. What was that edit Mysticial found earlier?

Jason C

1:06 AM

it's stacky

He's here to help you explain your downvotes

Jon Ericson

Great. Now I'll never unsee that.

Jason C

It is weirdly horrific, isn't it. I didn't expect that.

user315433

es.SO users are picking a place for their meetup, I think there are enough of us here to send them to a place of our choice...

Journeyman Geek

lol

that's trolly

Shog9

I'll be disappointed if they don't at least get a group photo in front of an ESSO station

2

Jason C

1:11 AM

YES

Journeyman Geek

0_0

What's so special about ESSO stations?

Unless you did the reverse of what we did and made them all caltex...

Jason C

@JourneymanGeek Just give it a second then you'll have a Fouad moment

Journeyman Geek

....

OH

Jason C

Lol

The crappy bodega across the street from me closed for a month for remodeling and reopened today. It's super posh now.

My neighborhood leveled up. I don't know how I feel about it.

Shog9

so I gotta ask, what's the difference between a "bodega" and the convenience stores you find everywhere else in the country?

Journeyman Geek

1:17 AM

You will miss it :(

I miss our crappy oldschool convenience store.

Jason C

Also I saw a white guy in tight jeans, a flannel shirt, and square glasses whining about "hipsters" today. That was disturbing.

Shog9

Like, how crappy does a bodega have to be before you stop calling it a "bodega" and start calling it "7/11"

Journeyman Geek

The second iteration was a bit posher (and had no rats). The current one never seems to have anything we need, so we go to the cheers instead.

(cheers - local 7-11 clone)

Jason C

@Shog9 There isn't, it's just... what they're called here I guess. It tends to refer to the non-chain ones, though.

Like I'll still call a 7/11 a 7/11.

And the gas station is still the gas station.

Journeyman Geek

Unless its a garage (which is what people in the UK call em ._.)

Jason C

1:20 AM

I think it's more of an urban colloquialism though, they're just convenience stores.

Shog9

Confused me for years, 'cause in my hometown "The Bodega" was the name of a tavern.

Jason C

Well google says it's spanish for cellar/warehouse/grocery store. I'm sure it's got spanish roots.

Shog9

so I'd hear folks say things like, "gonna stop off at a bodega & grab a drink" and think... Well, not bottled water.

user315433

At a local convenience store, I tend to stand out as that rare customer who's not buying either 6-packs or kegs.

user315433

Today it was mostly kegs, students are prepping for our traditional DrinkFest (last Friday of the academic year).

Shog9

1:22 AM

strictly 12-packs, eh?

Journeyman Geek

@JasonC and probably local to... new york?

Jason C

I don't know any bodegas that sell kegs here. Mostly it's 6 packs and you can almost always mix and match.

Journeyman Geek

(beats me, never been to the US)

Jason C

@JourneymanGeek Maybe I dunno. I think I've heard the term in san diego before at least.

Journeyman Geek

UK, you'd get bulk booze at a "off licence"

Jason C

1:24 AM

Is sort of the quintessential "bodega" as I know it

Journeyman Geek

... that looks almost indiaish

also I keep reading the 806 as dog.

Dyslexia, yay

Jason C

Well I do too now that you said that, lol

Shog9

Meanwhile, on Anime & Manga...

1

Q: The Anime and Manga "Unofficial" Design! [WIP]

In the chat room a while back we discussed possibly of jump starting the whole design thing ourselves by creating a userscript, one which we can then alter to have different themes so that way those of us who wanted a Naruto or Dragoball Z can still get it without people getting upset. well i had...

Jason C

Heh

Journeyman Geek

zat font

ah, makes sense in context actually

Jason C

1:33 AM

I'm surprised it hasn't gone in this direction yet:

Journeyman Geek

+++ fanservice?

Jason C

Lol, here's my proposal.

Journeyman Geek

oh my

Jason C

I triple dog dare you

Journeyman Geek

I think I'll pass. My web design skills are non existent. Least that's my excuse

Jason C

1:37 AM

My excuse is my attention span is non existent

user202362

baby attacked by dog that I understand, but by chickens?

Jason C

That's like 4 MB

Journeyman Geek

Chicken Steals Mouse From Cat

►

Jason C

Holy crap

Journeyman Geek

1:40 AM

Chickens are fowl beasts.

Jason C

I didn't know they were predators

Journeyman Geek

Neither did I

Jason C

Also lol that one is like 1000x better at killing mice than any cat I've ever seen

user202362

chickens are omnivore, they eat whatever they can catch when free range

Jason C

No BS

Journeyman Geek

1:41 AM

apparently they kill mice to protect their eggs

So yeah. Basically raptors.

Jason C

And merciless, damn:

The Chickens Find A Mouse!

►

That's some like, old school gangbanger stuff

Aw they let it go. Just taught it a lesson.

Elephant

The Anime & Manga unofficial site design reminded me of this that I decided to do long time ago...

3

A: Update chat rooms to Material design

While we're waiting for official response from SE designers team, I decided to create a userstyle for main chat room. It looks like this You need to install Stylish extension on your browser: Firefox Chrome Safari Opera Here's the CSS rules .button { background: #FF3D00; bord...

Journeyman Geek

lol. I can't really say I know anything about design ;p

Jason C

I cannot wait until material-esque stuff is out of style

Journeyman Geek

Its kinda funny that that MS or Google have an easier time doing massive changes and getting away with it than SE tweaking stuff... ;p

Jason C

1:51 AM

I really miss that late 90's like, Designers Republic look, lol. We need more buttons with one angled corner, and random isometric graphics.

Elephant

Certainly we need that

243

Q: Column 80 - Plain Text optimised Stack Exchange

Screenshot / Code Snippet About Browsing the existing Stack Exchange family of websites was OK in a text-based browser, but when you're stuck in a Linux shell with no way out and no other computers around and you just know you saw the answer on Server Fault last week, this is how you can fi...

app

Journeyman Geek

0_0

Jason C

@JourneymanGeek It's because SE actually communicates with the users and so we notice. Look at the google forums after any given gmail tweak. It's hordes of angry mobs, but they're completely ignored, and so nobody cares.

user202362

I have been thinking - what if there are creatives on Mars and other planets that we plan to colonize, who would resist us colonize there? Are we going to bully them like the early settlers bully the aboriginals?

Journeyman Geek

@JasonC true

@Telkitty we'd probably more likely steal their style

Jason C

1:54 AM

@Telkitty You mean native martians?

That whole era, oh man, now I'm getting nostalgic: google.com/search?q=designers+republic&tbm=isch, or basically anything from thenextweb.com/video/2011/11/10/…, old PrayStation

And everything was in helvetica

Journeyman Geek

@JasonC not sure if most of those changed anything ;p

Elephant

> During that time adverts will still display, listings will still work, questions and answers will still display.

Curious why adverts is the first thing that's mentioned, not Q&A

Journeyman Geek

lol

Jason C

2:10 AM

@JourneymanGeek Some of them were more subtly influential than you think

A close friend of mine was (and still is) a pretty intense graphic design guy at the time and used to introduce me to all this cool stuff

And I remember watching e.g. designer's republic, warp records designs, old chris cunningham stuff and other styles at the time be this sort of underground thing then make their way into mainstream and slowly morph into e.g. the flat material design stuff now

It was the same with music

If you look at the experimental stuff in the 80's / 90's (or any era) you can trace its influence to more widely known styles a decade or two later.

But yeah that article does give too much credit to those sites. It's more those sites and the other ones that were also popping up like them.

I just got a weird urge to play gta 2

Shog9

2:55 AM

@JasonC I can. It is a lot, lot better than many of the fads that've blown threw over the years

user315433

@Elephant commitstrip.com/en/2016/07/04/pre-roll-video

Jason C

That's weird:

For some reason "views" isn't in english for me for that one video

Journeyman Geek

HAX

Jason C

What language is that...

Journeyman Geek

looks portugese

Jason C

3:01 AM

portuguese confirmed

Jason C

3:12 AM

What

The Portuguese is increasing

Now about 50% of the sidebar videos have it

Oh

OH!

I'm retarded

That's the person's channel name, lol

Journeyman Geek

lol

I thought that was the case...

Trolled?

Jason C

Lol

walks away sadly

user202362

I am going make a new channel with the name '23,854,723 views' just to trick people :p

Journeyman Geek

@Telkitty in a foreign language for extra trollage

user202362

3:33 AM

Journeyman Geek

those grates are not great :(

user202362

user315433

3:54 AM

And... this is still open, 7 years and 37K views later?

user315433

6

Q: facebook like chat with php ajax

how can i create a facebook like footerbar chat with php jquery/ajax in which user can see who is and how many of his friends are online just like facebook

facebook

Journeyman Geek

lol

Feeds

4:10 AM

Most people don't realize it, but they actually launch a new space station every few weeks because this keeps happening.

user202362

S/ISS/ISIS

Journeyman Geek

4:28 AM

No one would mind that. ;p

I guess Randall got a telescope? ;p

Elephant

4:40 AM

darn, I read it left-right the first time

Derpy

7:56 AM

@Telkitty Kid Link?

Journeyman Geek

@Derpy message before that

user202362

8:14 AM

I always get this warm & fluffy feeling looking at hen & baby chicks like this:

user202362

Broody Mother Hen and Her Sweet Chicks

►

Derpy

@JourneymanGeek yes, I know, but I meant that the kid may either be a young Link or a young Dovahkiin. Both seems to have some issues with chickens...

Journeyman Geek

8:34 AM

@Derpy ohhhhhhhh.

Derpy

9:07 AM

..... just challenged a friend to finish Great Gurianos on the ZX Spectrum. How long will it take for him to realize?

Journeyman Geek

9:18 AM

realise what? >_>

Elephant

Just asked a question on japanese.SE. I feel so worried now...

(not used to ask question on SE)

Journeyman Geek

lol

You'd be ok. Else you will be doomed to eternal d000m

Derpy

9:52 AM

> The game I hated most that I made was Great Gurianos. It was an Arcade Port and I did the graphics. It was nasty and I ran out of memory to actually finish the game, so I made the last boss impossible to kill. (There is no ending to the game! - I still use it as an example today of how NOT to make games.)

Journeyman Geek

ah

lol

Shadow Wizard

10:13 AM

@Magisch I don't think it's trolling, more likely the kind of people who actually do those things, and like to brag, etc. So much worse than trolling.

user315433

11:23 AM

0

A: Fix bootup on vodafone webbook ON9 or install from usb?

there are a small witch behind the battery watch you need to clip with papper clip very small switch , that will change to boot mode and ctrl + esc boot menu Tjis arm cpu

user315433

This can explain most computer problems: there's a small witch hidden in there.

user202362

potential small witch bullying sensed

user202362

@Gerry witches can be innocent!

user202362

not click bait, totally not click bait

Elephant

Ooo

user315433

11:41 AM

-2

Q: Why cannot call musician for help at 2a.m.? Violin for Dummies

I am new to music world and learning violin using Violin for Dummies. I don't understand why cannot call musician at 2 a.m., on page 31 Violin for Dummies: Is that musicians practice at this time? Any help would be appreciated.

practice violin

user315433

Yes, it's polite to wait until they finish practicing at 3am.

user315433

OTOH it's a plus that the book found its audience.

user202362

12:30 PM

@Gerry practicing what @3am? are you having dirty thoughts again?

Journeyman Geek

The violin of course. Also dodging gunfire.

Elephant

1:03 PM

@Telkitty were you having dirty thought again?

user315433

1:18 PM

@Shog9 Now that I think of it, La Bodega was a place I frequented back in my Texas days. Same thing with a more authentic article.

user315433

And by frequented I mean went there more than twice; that counts as frequent bar going for me.

user202362

didn't see that, but how much alcohol does an elephant need to get drunk?

user202362

also I fixed my lawn mower

user315433

> Try to update your browser to a newer version. Use google chrome if you don't use it. -- stackoverflow.com/a/43681141

user202362

which is totally expected of course

user315433

1:27 PM

Does this count as NAA if the question was about web development?

user315433

"Use another browser" doesn't seem like a solution for a developer.

user202362

@Gerry I don't really read any personal info you give, because I caught you giving out misleading info multiple times. Are you made of >20% but <50% of Jeff the troll?

Stijn

@Gerry no, but it does quality as a really bad answer

so it deserves downvotes

Raghav Sood

1:44 PM

o/

Any mods around?

Stijn

Sometimes.

Raghav Sood

Oh well, perhaps another time

We just had a Starocalypse in the Android room on chat.SO, were wondering if a mod could look into who did it

They went and starred like every single message they could find

Journeyman Geek

lol

Mods can't see who starred things

only undo stars

Stijn

@RaghavSood maybe @JeremyBanks can help out

Journeyman Geek

and sorry, no godlike powers on chat.*so* for me

ugh. I want that italicised.

Raghav Sood

1:49 PM

Ahh damn. Room owners already unstarred them all, but we can't see who did the starring

Thought mods could

Journeyman Geek

nope

Raghav Sood

In any case, appreciate the replies!

Journeyman Geek

(source. Someone did that in our room, and I wanted to whack him with a rolled up newspaper)

76

Q: I'm seeing stars! (I can see who starred a message and so can you)

So I was making a chatbot in Ruby for SE chat, and I discovered that I could find out the starrer of a message. I'm pretty sure stars, like votes, are supposed to be anonymous. Although this knowledge would help for cases of star trolls like this. Here's the specific slice of code that do...

support bug chat chat-stars

Relevant meta post

Raghav Sood

Ahh, makes sense

We had a script ages ago that could tell, guess that was before this was fixed

Anonymous

I don't think there's even a dev UI for seeing who starred something; one would need to query the database directly.

Raghav Sood

1:53 PM

Guess that's that, then

Thanks for all the tips, cya all around!

user202362

2:26 PM

@Elephant yes, I saw a baby bandicoot, I wanted to pat it a little

Journeyman Geek

user202362

yes, something like that

user202362

cute little fur ball

Derpy

2:43 PM

@JourneymanGeek Pika pika chuuuu?

Journeyman Geek

That's a pika

Derpy

Yep, I knew about that asian rat/rabbit/rodent/something

Journeyman Geek

apparently that's american ._.

Pika

A pika (/ˈpaɪkə/ PY-kə; archaically spelled pica) is a small mammal, with short limbs, very round body, rounded ears, and no external tail. Pikas look like a combination of a rabbit, Guinea Pig or vole. They live in mountainous countries in Asia, with two species also in North America. Most pikas prefer rocky slopes. The large-eared pika of the Himalayas and nearby mountains is one of the highest living mammals, found at heights of more than 6000 m. Pikas graze on a range of plants, mostly grasses, flowers and young stems. In the autumn, they pull hay, soft twigs and other stores of food into their...

30 species.

Derpy

2:56 PM

more accurate:

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowWizard .... dude, your bot ;p

Does he kiss his maker with that mouth?

user202362

3:13 PM

I spent half a day trying to fix the mower starter assembly, although I ended up buying a new one and fixed the mower, I learned a lot about the starter :p

user202362

gain more knowledge, so I can depend on less people - that's my philosophy in life

user202362

totally not team oriented

Elephant

Somehow I feel pity for this post. Not sure how many of those will be implemented by SE, but just let the idea flows...

3

Q: Redesigning Biology Stack Exchange

Recently I (and some others in chat) realised that there is some scope for improvement in the site's structure, graphics, fidgets, etc. So we have decided to give it a shot. But since Stack Exchange is run by you, we'll first gather some opinions about how this site can be improved. Go ahead and ...

discussion feature-request

user315433

Greeting bot is not the worst idea. I used to run one.

Elephant

I remember that.

user315433

3:29 PM

Sitecore Stack Exchange - Theme Video

►

user315433

That's something I don't see often... from Sitecore Stack Exchange - The First 6 Months

user202362

3:53 PM

so @shog, on a scale of 1 - 1000, how many points do you think tavern has been used to trap trolls?

user202362

Travis J

6:11 PM

@Telkitty - That's not a troll it is an elephant.

Travis J

6:33 PM

lol

Came for the spam, stayed for the chicken.

user315433

7:00 PM

Great post. I do violently object to this "fix the failed mission" narrative. Google anything programming related and you'll see that Stack Overflow succeeded wildly. The problem faced is not "what do you do after you fail?" which is really quite easy, but "what do you do after you succeed" which is a soul-crushing, vantablack abyss of infinite difficulty. As for my take on docs, it is here and my mind is unchanged. — Jeff Atwood ♦ 12 hours ago

user315433

Diamond became red after Nougat upgrade...

Elephant

@Gerry congrats for joining red diamond club

user315433

7:26 PM

Stack Overflow is SO ready to heelp (42 hits), heeelp (30 hits), heeeelp (41 hits), heeeeelp (18 hits), heeeeeelp (9 hits),

Travis J

I wonder if he is aware that rep gains from documentation was nerfed

> Wouldn't you be upset, too, if you earned 10k rep through a series of great answers, and then were directly compared to a user who earned 10k rep exclusively through writing examples documentation?

He states, however, at one point when I had less reputation I often felt that way when looking at users who only asked questions and got as much reputation.

user315433

heeeeeeelp (10 hits), or even heeeeeeeelp (4 hits)

user315433

Interesting that the count is not a decreasing function of length.

user315433

One hit for heeeeeeeeelp, heeeeeeeeeelp, and heeeeeeeeeeelp each. None for heeeeeeeeeeeelp yet.

Travis J

It is ln of mod 2

user315433

7:29 PM

A hypothetical problem of now, since nobody has earned near that much rep from Docs.

user315433

Although the fact that Docs riches are imaginary doesn't mean that others' resentment of them isn't real.

user315433

Ugh, iterated negation.

user315433

Near-simultaneous edits: revision 4 cleaned up the text, and then was wiped out by another edit (rev 5) which put backticks everywhere (actually <code> </code>).

user315433

Are unanswered questions about using VS 2012 worth doing anything about?

Elephant

7:50 PM

I guess I just want Documentation to be rewrote completely, go back to close beta and follow user feedback more faithly.

Travis J

@Gerry - I think at first there were doc riches, many users were rep capping daily. That is no more though. Perhaps there are a few users rep capping from it, but then again that happened when SO first started as well from simple questions. I don't really see any resentment from docs rep anymore though, that has long passed. All I see is annoyance at the factual quality of contribution.

Shog9

45

Q: Should the weight of question upvotes be reduced?

After thinking about Should the weight of downvotes be increased? which I declined for the reasons specified in my answer, and Please charge rep for questions after threshold I have a proposal. How about if question upvotes were only worth +5 rep instead of +10? And this was applied retroact...

discussion status-completed reputation up-votes

a LOT of folks felt that way, hence the nerfing of question rep (which, like the Docs changes, was probably insufficient to fully address the concerns)

@Elephant thing about feedback is, there'll always be some sizable group of people whose complaints aren't addressed. Feedback is extremely useful, but design by committee doesn't magically start to work if the committee is expanded to include hundreds of people; there'll still be conflicting ideas, conflicting goals.

The important - heck, absolutely critical - bit when listening to feedback is, you gotta have a concrete goal, and you gotta use feedback to work toward that goal. If you hand-wave and go with "make something that people use somehow", you'll never know who to listen to.

Stack Overflow got by because the core goal - let folks ask, answer & edit programming questions in a way that leaves artifacts for others - stayed the same, even as huge gobs of folks wanted to build lists or discuss how sucky Oracle is, or talk about games.

So the feedback that was listened to was the feedback that pushed toward those goals, even if it ended up destroying functionality for folks who wanted to do something else.

The proverbial $64K question for Docs is, has been, and will remain... "What is the concrete goal?"

Everything else, every single last word of feedback, every change every push for more involvement... Hinges on that question.

Travis J

I remember seeing the phrase "How can me make the lives of Developers better" often. How has that phrase compared with "let folks ask, answer & edit programming questions"?

Shog9

8:06 PM

@TravisJ it's one of those fuzzy feel-good phrases that generates a good mission statement to adorn a wall or "about" page. Like, I donno, "Don't be evil". Perhaps useful as a mantra during one's morning meditation, but not directly actionable.

Travis J

I see.

Shog9

A concrete goal is something like, "help devs find jobs that don't border on indentured servitude" or "fix that thing where you search for an event-handling pattern and get someone's 8-year-old blog post full of broken links"

Travis J

With regards to Docs, in my opinion, the harshest barrier to entry it has is the rather steep learning curve to making edits. This is because of two facets: first, the edits are inline with the entire set of examples, and it makes the interaction very busy; second, it is impossible to see an example only edit history.

Shog9

Revision history could definitely use some love

Travis J

I think the soft barrier to entry is the common misconception that you should add examples. The design from my point of view would work best where a single user created both the topic, and then supporting set of examples. However, the problem there (and also why I personally have not done this) is that requires a lot of contribution all at once, which can be hard to accomplish when many users are so busy and used to contributing puzzle pieces as opposed to entire puzzles.

Jason C

8:26 PM

@Shog9 The $64K meta follow up question is "Who cares?". The project can't succeed. It's fundamentally not possible due to its nature. It's weird that it was even started. I don't know why people waste time trying to discuss how to improve it or what should be done when they should be complaining about important things like close votes, down votes, and "thanks" lines instead.

Shog9

meh; for some vast majority of people, that's the follow-up question to every question here.

"You... spent the day arguing about the balance of points awarded to you for doing work for other people's benefit, whose only value is that a sufficient balance allows you to do more work?"

Jason C

There are legitimate reasons to care about certain things, though, under the assumption that one values improving the internet. There's a lot of stuff SE brings to the internet. Docs isn't one of those things.

Shog9

yeah, sure. And something north of 90% of folks who benefit frequently from SE still don't give a rat's ass about creating an account, much less discussing these questions.

If you're gonna play, you gotta accept the basic premise that even the most broadly-popular of these topics is exceedingly obscure.

Aaron Hall

puts on a happy face

Travis J

blue skies are gonna clear up ♫

Jason C

8:32 PM

@Shog9 They don't need to, though, I don't mind caring for them. Things like improving the quality of Q&A content, I care about that, because it's valuable for that 90% of people that just want help but don't want to participate. Docs, on the other hand...

I dunno maybe not as obscure as you think. More like, "behind the scenes".

Ok maybe obscure. But not inconsequential.

Shog9

I didn't say inconsequential.

Travis J

I just got a Stack Overflow in my dev environment from a recursive db call. #success

Shog9

Look... Dig through the top posts on MSE from, like, 2010, & think about how many folks were discussing features or policies or whatever and how many folks were using the site and would soon be directly affected by those discussions...

...and then think how many people since then have benefited / suffered from them...

...and then realize that even though you've been here forever it's the first time you're seeing that particular discussion

that's my Friday.

Jason C

Heh

Travis J

trick question. mse started april '14

:P

Jason C

8:36 PM

@Shog9 Even within the community data.stackexchange.com/superuser/query/651670/…

Lately I've been a big naysayer on meta posts asking for "policy" changes, especially those "stop closing questions so fast" ones. It never works, for that reason. Site mechanics ftw.

Welp I've rambled enough I'm going to go help a friend buy... snails, for some reason. Peace.

Shog9

@TravisJ ok, if you wanna be technical about it, MSE started in '09, ended in '10, and was reborn in '14 as a rebirth of MSO.

Travis J

Here is one from 2010. I don't think anyone talks about this stuff anymore.

0

Q: Should I "Vote To Close" In This Instance?

A [c++] question was posted recently that had been asked before. By the time I saw the question there were 2 votes to close and a link to a duplicate question. I looked at the dupe's accepted answer, and I disagree with it. I think there's a better answer. Should I vote to close? Answer the ...

discussion vote-to-close

;)

Aaron Hall

8:51 PM

Giving my 2 year old cygwin install an upgrade... seems stuck near the end though... can't tell if it's all the source I insisted on installing this time or Bill Gates's fault.

When in doubt, I blame Bill Gates.

Travis J

@Shog9 - Someone joked:

Screw it, let's close every question as soon as it's asked and wait for those that are worthy to get 5 reopen votes. That way we'll definitely get good content! :P — Clive 53 mins ago

To riff on it though, although radical, what if there was a new question status introduced called standby which only took 2 votes to open.

Questions start on standby. Standby requires 2 reopen votes. Open requires 5 close votes. On hold requires 5 reopen votes.

user315433

I'd rather every new question be given 3 automatic close votes, set to expire in 24 hours

user315433

In small tags, a question is lucky to be seen by anyone at all, let alone by a 3K user wishing to open it.

Travis J

That is different though as it takes the more aggressive stance. I fear that there are many users who are very zealous about closure. A team of 2 could robo close many questions in your scenario. A team of 10 would seem somewhat random even, and be hard to detect as being organized. 400 questions closed by 10 people in one day. Is that excessive?

Allow an "open vote" privilege for users with 15 reputation which only applies to casting votes for open on a question in standby status. Retain the same setup for "reopen" voting as exists.

user315433

9:11 PM

If I'm a non-hardcore user coming up on a question that I want to answer but can't, my reaction is not "I should vote for reopening", it's more like "this is a bullshit site".

Travis J

Yeah, it is true that it would create a significant barrier to entry for asking. However, as an answerer you would then be able to simply only browse open questions as opposed to looking at those which were on standby.

Or, if you are a non-hardcore user, you should avoid "drinking from the fire hose" :P

Aaron Hall

I seem to have lost my old .bashrc... hm...

Travis J

@AaronHall - Why is your SO account not linked to your MSE account?

Aaron Hall

What are you talking about?

Travis J

Aaron Hall

9:19 PM

I presume because I hide my meta account?

I would rather highlight my participation on certain sites, so I hide others I'd like to deemphasize...

Travis J

It just seemed unusual was all.

Aaron Hall

9:38 PM

My thoughts on docs - yeah, a lot of answers on Python questions are sub-par, but I've been trying to improve that situation by adding better new answers. The official Python docs are actually pretty good, but they need more cross-references though (something I hope to work on at PyCon). The semi-official "moin" wiki, however, is kinda bad, in my opinion. It's opinionated, but the opinions seem poorly written and justified - so poorly maintained. Too many active stakeholders?

"Stack Overflow Documentation"... I wrote an article or two, I recall, and have done a couple of reviews. Immediately after I gave a recent rejection, I got a downvote on an answer. I found another section that just needed to be deleted. But it seems like that there's not a guiding vision for the Python section, low rep users are trying to add anything just to try to contribute, and they're going to get really mad when their contributions are rejected, and if they're not rejected...

It's going to be an unreadable mess.

When I compose an answer, I generally have a vision for it. Kindof a beginning, middle, and end, mapped out mentally. It logically flows, and even though I edit it a lot over time, I try to ensure it reads from the same voice. In a wiki-style doc, that's hard to do.

Multiple authors, multiple perspectives, some with strongly held opinions, some wanting to contradict... and it takes an editor with a lot of patience to combine it in a unified document.

Travis J

I think that gets into the problem of wanting to contribute an example.

Users should contribute topics of their own creation, with several examples to support the topic. At present, one user contributes a topic, and a collective of users fill in the examples. The contention comes from each different user writing an example having different visions of the topic.

Jon Ericson

9:53 PM

@AaronHall I've done a bit of editing of examples where I fill in this sort of structure. A chunk of code is far less useful than a chunk of code within a coherent context. It's a rewarding task for me (I sometimes do that same treatment to questions and (at times) answers.) But it certainly won't be for everyone.

Travis J

There just isn't enough focus on topic creation in my opinion. Maybe if there was a front page to Docs, that showed newest topics in a list just like newest questions (or home questions if you prefer). I would contend that the newest/home questions page is the largest hit page at SO.

Jon Ericson

@TravisJ I agree. We are pushing at ideas to restructure documentation and I think it would be helpful to be a bit more lenient when it comes to duplication. I don't think it hurts to have several approaches to the same topic and see which one is most useful. And maybe both are equally useful to different people and it's ok to have both.

Transcript for