Tavern on the Meta

Thank you!

3

Thanks everyone for putting up with this for three long months. This concludes the 6 sessions I arbitrarily decided on for the run; there'll be a hiatus of some sort before we resume these chats.

@Shog9 one more question about the voting question

Are you going to run it on the smaller sites first or SO first?

Rest assured, the future schedule, topics, and times will be every bit as arbitrary and capricious as these.

7:01 PM

I mean, you already did AU

At the very least, it's nice to have somewhere to interact with staff where they can be silly... If the only place we ever see you is on meta posts, you can seem a bit scary.

@jcolebrand right. So strictly-speaking, it's SO second

hairboat

Town Hall Chat #8 - 27 September 2017

31 mins ago, 31 minutes total – 151 messages, 19 users, 32 stars

Bookmarked just now by hairboat

3

heh

@Catija that's only because we're so very, very angry at y'all. All the time.

7:02 PM

Thanks for the heads up tho @Shog9 @hairboat

And I look forward to a blueroom post

if I ever go in there

@Catija Meta is a scary place. So dark and foreboding.

@Shog9 You really need to let go of your anger. Anger leads to hate.

Lamak

@JonEricson well, I'm scared now too

7 mins ago, by Shog9

(note to self: investigate the heck out of Lamak)

Hate leads to fear. Fear leads to hunger. Hunger leads to nachos.

@JonEricson Are you sure that's not just a dark theme you have installed?

@Shog9 I think it branches at that point because if you just ate, I'm pretty sure fear doesn't lead to hunger.

7:06 PM

@Shog9 One comment on the voting thing. If you could limit a user downvoting the same user for, say 5 mins it would solve a problem I've been seeing personally

@Lamak The innocent have nothing to fear. Right?

Andy

@Shog9 When you ran the voting process on AU did you do all of AU history or only the last X period of time?

@Machavity ...by ensuring the targeted votes come in exactly 5 minutes apart?

@Andy I think I went back about a year

@Catija Meta SE with its blue theme is fine. Meta Sci Fi is truly frightening to land on. 8-/

@Catija fear burns a lot of calories

7:08 PM

@Shog9 Wow, that's a blue market in the diet category...

@Machavity on a smaller site, when a new user posts a lot of "comment in the answer", it would probably annoys legitimate downvoters...

Does that mean you burn more calories on a zombie 5K than a normal one?

@Elias I'm talking targeted votes. Like downvoting a user's questions, but not often enough to trigger mod notices or reversals

@Catija lose weight by having Rabid Dentist Clowns chase you through the woods?

@Catija Fast zombies or slow?

7:10 PM

@JonEricson Technically, they're just people dressed as zombies.

@Machavity ...or instead of limiting, assign a weightage to the warning inversely proportional to the timespan between them?

@Shog9 I think that was one of the early plot options for the sequel to Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

also a plot from the last season of Bojack Horseman

@Shog9 I'm not sure. But when you get 2 downvotes on 2 separate questions less than 60 secs apart, it looks suspicious

like 2 DV's 10 seconds apart are more serious than 3 DV's 2 hours apart?

7:11 PM

@NisargShah not necessarily

I mean... If you downvote me once every day... That's gonna get old after a while

@Shog9 yup, and also in case of some new users posting spam

Andy

@Shog9 Sorry. I'm almost through all your posts though.

There's nothing to stop you from downvoting someone once a day. I'm not sure that's easily solved. But two votes back-to-back might be a bit more fixable

@Machavity yes, I'm talking about a new user posting many NAA in a row. I can read them in under 1 minute and judge that it's DV-worthy.

@Machavity But two votes back to back (or five) is something the system can look for?

7:14 PM

@Machavity The more posts you have the more likely this will happen randomly.

@Catija How about looking among the top voted questions and most recent questions?

@Elias And hopefully you're also flagging... which might work to annul the "too many downvotes to one person" issue.

@Elias baah flag and move on ;)

@Catija They already look for 5. That's well known. Lately I've been getting 2 back-to-back. and I'm not the only one

@Machavity Definitely not the only one here. I have had that once.

7:15 PM

Surely I also flag NAA on all of them... because, who doesn't love helpful flag stats? :p

But if the NAA is validated, the votes aren't really "counted" as the post gets deleted.

I think it should check for relation/interaction (comments, answer, cv etc) between users and vote, that way you would find votes for users and not vote's for content. But I guess we can come up with some algo too.

@JonEricson I have 8 questions on SO. These are always on questions and always a minute or so apart. Never happened on answers AFAIK, probably due to the -1

@Machavity going to give you a once in a lifetime experience

let me join in...

7:17 PM

count me in too...

@Catija Yeah but I got crazy with -1,-1,-1, +1,+1 every day and since I often comment it's better that user don't get upset (unlike), the post will be deleted anyway

@PetterFriberg But a "new user" can't downvote you - right? I don't use SO but I'm pretty sure you still need more than 1 rep to DV.

Um... the SO privileges page is giving me a guy in a horse head mask... stackoverflow.com/error?aspxerrorpath=/help/privileges

I believe you mean, more than 125 rep

@Catija ooh I'm not afraid of dv, I can answer something and get my points back, I'm more lets try to get new user to understand and comply ;) (hence try to make'em delete, avoid review queue ecc) and if no dv they are still in good mod...

Andy

@Catija Me too

7:23 PM

all privileges are temporarily banned on SO :/

hence the dv serve no purpose it only make'em defensive. I'm only referring to NAA that will be deleted.

@Elias Shog has launched the voting script... there went all our rep...

@Machavity Hmmm... I do see what you are talking about. I'm curious if @Shog9's script will see it too.

@JonEricson Yeah... so the help center on SO is dead, which apparently means that all hell will begin breaking loose because no one will know what's on topic.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer: Why is Chinese chess (xiangqi) harder for computers than international chess? by John Goverts on chess.SE

... and... um... is it normal on SO to remove periods on the end of titles?

7:36 PM

@Catija I think the devs are looking at it now. Let me double check.

@Catija we're devs, not language purists ....

@rene ... That doesn't explain why the system removes them.

Oh ...

I blame a pr0blam regex

@Catija The system was built by devs.

@JonEricson So if I want to end my title with a period I now have to add some other decoration... perhaps a frowny emoticon?

7:49 PM

I'm trying to find my rant about this. Probably got deleted.

@JonEricson Figures.

@Catija related on MSE: Why can't I end a question with “…”?

I really wish the alert noise in here was the alert noise everywhere... all of the other chat servers have such annoying sounds but the one in here is like the Star Trek TNG door chirp.

ooh while dev are at it, why not stop all these NAA that the site is flooded with

Not Found

HTTP Error 404. The requested resource is not found.

7:56 PM

@Catija yeah, that happens a lot more often lately, reloading fixes it. Not sure if it bugs at the CDN provider or at the loadbalancer within the SE network

Tim Stone

@JonEricson You did have a rant about the title filter, I don't think the removal of periods was ever discussed though

Q: Why can't I end a question with "..."?

4

Recently, I've posted a question with ... (three dots in a row) at the end of the question title. To my surprise, it was removed. I tried re-editing it into it, but it just got removed again. Trying to edit in ... Result: No ... in question title What and why exactly is preventing me from ...

Tim Stone

You even got to slip in a "When are we getting MSE?" comment at the time ;)

@rene But why? There's nothing wrong with the question.

~~There's another Jon's rant on MSE~~ oops, Jon suggested that "a rant" is the one with !!! on the title

7:58 PM

@Catija could be an error at Fastly. I will write a bug report if I get some solid data

Funny, the link works now.

We've got some problems on startup right now... so when we're rolling a build out, you can run into that

I assume a web server is taken out of rotation first when it gets a new build?

@AdamLear Which part? The link failing and then working or the help center pages being AWOL?

... That's what I should have titled the question.

@Catija the link failing. help center being AWOL is my bad

8:04 PM

Can I blame you for the period being removed from my question title, too?

sure, why not

:D

well, help center stuff is partly my bad and partly some other failure we couldn't exactly identify where removing a redis key didn't propagate correctly to all web servers

Blame Adam day ....

@JonEricson did say it was the devs.

8:06 PM

That is what managers do, assign blame down the line ...

Hey now, Jon's not the boss of me

I'm barely a boss of myself.

@AdamLear Isn't that all of us? #MockPoliticians #TheSenateServesRome #WhyAreYouSuddenlySenators

Jon is that poor boss without any staff ....?

@jcolebrand All I know is that I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.

8:11 PM

@TimStone That comes of as really snarky to me now. :-(

@AdamLear But being a "manager" is part of his title... so I'm pretty sure that means he manages everyone.

@rene I'm a Community Manager. So you all ~~work for me~~ . . . that's not right.

:D

@Catija you think Subway restaurants are museums because they employ sandwich artists, eh?

all I really wanna know is am I too fond of pinning things?

8:13 PM

@AdamLear That title is one of my biggest pet peeves in corporate culture.

@jcolebrand meh

@Catija Yeah. I'm a Community Artist.

Also... it's a bit annoying to be on a different server when you're used to having phenomenal cosmic power on one.

That said... I don't think I want to see chat flags on the SO server, so I'll get over it.

Plus, I suppose that when the other servers are down, this one can work separately?

All eggs in one basket, otherwise it would be, I guess.

Or at least when the chat search function is down on one, it's not down on all... but I think that's just a side effect. Pretty sure the division wasn't necessarily intentional, just how the site grew.

Q: Are examples strictly necessary on meta?

8:20 PM

by the by, I came looking for any previous meta like this: "Are examples strictly necessary on meta?"

2

It seems like most of my questions on this meta, regardless of the subject, receive comments asking for specific examples of the issue I'm trying to address. I understand that concrete examples can clarify some issues, but in many cases these comments feel more like: Links or it didn't happen...

discussion comments meta

@Catija I don't have a diamond on our internal instance. I does get a little tight in that particular lamp.

@NVZ I've been meaning to ask Shog for whether he has a post somewhere about case studies on Meta... I'm pretty sure there is one somewhere.

i sure hope so.

i'm not well-versed with the search box. and i couldn't find any relevant ones.

This is why I haven't answered that question, by the way.

and maybe this discussion was already had on other per site metas

i know. you think hard and take an hour to write a meta, and they're worth it.

i, otoh, just share my 2c and go home, lol

8:24 PM

I've been burned in the past with half-assed meta answers... you really have to consider multiple angles. No one is perfect, though. There are always concerns that you've not considered.

oh wait, is this the happy hour i was notified about?

or am i at the wrong place?

I didn't see a happy hour link after this chat... maybe Shog was lonely in the last one so they didn't have one this time.

i checked my notifications box, i think it's passed

Wait... what do you mean by "happy hour"? The Town Hall was an hour ago.

yeah, that. corrupted memory, i have, i guess

Tim Stone

8:27 PM

@JonEricson Meh, it was a heated topic at the time

user315433

@Catija Existing FR: Use Star-Trekky noise for chat notifications instead of the “fart” on chat.stackexchange.com

@Michelle OMG. That title is awesome.

i might've mixed up two different events.

@Michelle lol

Examples on meta are usually requested because AFAIK, community doesn't usually try to prevent "hypothetical issue" (an issue that hasn't happened).

fair enough

8:29 PM

At least that's based on my experience

mine as well

deal with issues case by case.

@Elias Sure. The problem in this case is the user is asking about something negative and doesn't want to draw attention to the action of otherwise good members of the community... I absolutely think they're necessary but I need a way to explain that it's not about the people, it's about the actions.

not outright preemptively decide things. lol

Q: Would it be possible for me to use SO's styles for all sites using Stylish?

8:45 PM

where may I ask this question instead? apparently it's not fit for MSO.

-4

I like to customize things I use frequently. I like the site design for SO more than any other. Is it possible for me to use the CSS styles for SO throughout the network of sites using an extension like Stylish for Chrome? So if that's possible, how can I do that? I'm already using it to cha...

support

or any tips to give?

Seems like a MSE question?

hmm.. makes sense. but is it too broad for MSE still?

I mean, I know how to enter the CSS into Stylish, but not how to get the SO style per se.

So, I'll need a how-to in that regards, not a mere code-review

I don't know anything about stylish, so I don't know how you'd do that, to be honest.

okay, no probs..

it's a browser extension by which you can change the styles on a site.

@NVZ If you're asking about how to do it on multiple random sites: Way way too broad.

8:51 PM

i for one use a custom font for all SE sites. Libre Baskerville.

@Makyen So that means there is no universal answer?

But the font styling works for all sites for me.

I use the same font for all sites.

just have to add all the se domains into stylish

which is a few special ones and the rest is just stackexchange.com

@NVZ Moved discussion to your question, as that's more appropriate. Basically it depends on what you're asking, which is not clear in your question.

this is how the custom font styling looks like across all stacks.

@Makyen are you the username alex as well?

@NVZ I'm well aware that you can apply styles across sites: Top-navigation choices: A script I wrote to change the new top-navigation on all SE sites where it's enabled.

ah, stackapps.

is this on-topic there then?

because honestly, I need a how-to import SO styles into Stylish.

@NVZ No. I only have one sock-puppet, for testing. The about me for my sock-puppet clearly states I control it and that it's for testing.

9:00 PM

@Makyen okay, I saw your message that you're moving the discussion to the question, but the comment that came there was from "alex". so my mistake.

@NVZ It really sounds like a general "how do I create a style for Stylish" question with SO being largely irrelevant

Not sure it belongs on Meta anywhere tbh

Does Stylish have any help pages/forum?

just grabbing all.css and pasting it in would probably get you most of the way. there are some layout differences, though

But you all unified the CSS to some degree back about a year or 18 months ago... so that should make it easier, at least.

@AdamLear thanks. so i was hoping there was a central css repository for this whereby i could import a particular site style to another site.

so where do i find this all.css? in the "inspect" somewhere? i'll look.

9:10 PM

@NVZ cdn.sstatic.net/sites/stackoverflow/all.css

@AdamLear thanks. i'll start by tinkering with that.

:)

good luck :)

i will need that. :)

9:28 PM

well; it worked; for the most part. except that it messed up this chat room. i'll deal with this later. :)

also, i went ahead and tried the styles of many other sites. fun :)