Tavern on the Meta

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ solution- E collar!

@SonicWizard That's not really the right way to deal with downvotes

I have a few unpopular posts and well, meh.

Individual meta posts arn't popularity contests. They're an attempt to expose a viewpoint

I actually treat my MSE posts like regular meta posts and works for me?

I'm ideologically opposed to the idea of losing rep just for expressing an unpopular viewpoint. It's really not a personal thing.

Even though that setback is just a little.

It's like how Community downvotes posts that are automatically identified as low quality and then edited

12:42 AM

Where was the post where someone gave a bunch of example questions to a bunch of people unfamiliar with SE and asked them where they would post them, and a lot of people would make off-topic posts?

cv-pls no longer relevant: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66099/…

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Repeating words in answer: Pyroclastic flow protection by jeff smith on earthscience.SE

@SmokeDetector tpu-

@ShadowWizard chaos-emerald-pls meta.stackexchange.com/questions/69495/…

user315433

1:16 AM

Management page needs an update, here's a draft.

user315433

@TelKitty How about "Democratic People's Republic of"

Jon Ericson

1:45 AM

@SFTP Are we ok with black in this context? Maybe pink would be better. (Though I guess this is all black humor . . .)

user202362

@SFTP so the moral of the story is not to tilt your face when taking profile picture?

@SFTP :(

And then the management page goes away....

user315433

It's black because I could not figure out how to pick a color in GIMP other than from the image

user202362

good choice of words, 'could not' indicates lack of intelligence, while as 'did not bother' just implies being lazy ...

(well, I guess they were talking about some C level changes but... most of them 0_0)

user315433

2:10 AM

errorsolutions.tech spammer uses female names exclusively. Discrimination?

probably just the random name generator they use

user315433

The site isn't obviously selling anything, I guess someone just paid for SEO boost...

user202362

they thank you for increasing their network traffic

Anonymous

2:31 AM

@ShadowWizard sea-level people usually don't get "surprised layoff"ed.

@JeremyBanks they did mention that a few were leaving around the surprise layoff period

@JeremyBanks they get deep sixed?

Anonymous

yikes

also, I probably need to update my linkedin once I start work

;p

user202362

I deleted my linkedin profile

Anonymous

LinkedIn is the new Facebook

2:39 AM

I primarily have it cause its semi effective in finding stuff to apply for

user315433

I have it because a LinkedIn profile is required to ~~stalk~~ view other people's profiles.

user202362

I am lazy, I generally just ask potential tenants to supply employer details and previous agent/landlords/landladies details

@TelKitty eh, you're a professional land-lady ;p

You're like the bougious decadent landowning class ;p

user202362

I also own a tiny company that generates not much profit at all

user202362

currently doing company tax return by myself

user202362

2:44 AM

it should have collapsed long time ago, but I am a hoarder

user202362

seriously though, I don't know why people do not use my trip plan/iifind app

user202362

I use it and it helped myself with my own trip planning

user202362

maybe people don't know how to use it?

user315433

You obviously need a Chief Marketing Officer.

user315433

Possibly CFO and COO, too.

user202362

2:50 AM

yeah, keep on laughing at me more

ha ha ha

ha-choo!

3:11 AM

@TelKitty that's why you need marketing ;p

._.

user202362

I think the next trend would be A.I. machines, but to get into that would require a lot of capital

user202362

@JourneymanGeek to properly market any item nowadays, you need at least 200k budget

user315433

The new behavior of Google search re: stackoverflow results is annoying. I spent like 30 seconds looking for "invert a permutation in JavaScript" and ended up writing it myself like a savage.

user315433

The behavior is understandable: Google wants more diversity in search results, promoting pages from underrepresented forums.

user202362

Subject:  	Important: Ad suggestions may be added to your AdWords account
From:  	"Google AdWords" <adwords-noreply@google.com>
Date:  	Mon, March 26, 2018 9:12 pm

3:22 AM

Google wants YOU(r data) so they can create an AI to replace YOU

user202362

not in the next 100 years

user202362

I have faith in human stupidity

user202362

human can easily create a weapon to kill an intelligent and creative person, but it will take at least a century or a few to replace one

user202362

if it ever

user315433

3:47 AM

Looking at SO pageviews (quantcast): Dec 17 < Dec 16; Jan 18 < Jan 17; Feb 18 < Feb 17.

what's so special about that period?

dunno, full moon?

user202362

choose data to fit his own theory, maybe other data range did not work

user315433

This is how traffic is compared to eliminate seasonal trends: to the same month of the previous year.

user315433

For the last three months, SO has less monthly traffic than it did a year ago.

3:51 AM

> to the same month of the previous year.
> previous year.
> year.

user315433

Meanwhile, some r/a flags here could be useful.

I'm an idiot.

user315433

I know, I should have written 02017 and 02018. longnow.org

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly dots in body: I'm not sure about this? by Queso on christianity.SE

@SmokeDetector tp-

4:00 AM

OP is unregistered though, so they can't delete their own question

user202362

@SFTP so how does Feb 2018 compared to Dec 2017 ... maybe a lot of page views were from formal staff

ah ok

5:18 AM

@HTTPS fpu-

@JourneymanGeek no. Since most visitors of programming sites are males, and most males like females, choosing female names and avatars for spammers makes perfect sense. Chance of click increase.

@SFTP FHBL, nice.

@ShadowWizard that's slightly sexist. What of most males start assuming anyone female is a bot?

user315433

5:39 AM

Fine, walk away. I'm gonna go cry into a pint of Ben&Jerry's Brownie Batter(tm) ice cream [link], then take out my frustration on a variety of great flash games from PopCap Games(r) [link].

6:25 AM

Could delete-voting an answer put the answer into the VLQ review?

Or alternatively, I don't have VLQ option on this answer, but I have del-voted it, and I don't see any review queue available for me

@HTTPS maybe because it got a mod notice?

hmm, that's also a possibility...

I never heard or saw that mentioned before though but I'm not too familiar with these specific notices.

@HTTPS It's not because you delete-voted it. I don't have that option either.

@Shog9 What are the criteria for allowing users to flag a post as VLQ?

We have this unanswered question: Explain missing VLQ flag in the UI

oh wait, that's a feature request

6:49 AM

@JourneymanGeek no, those are facts.

@ShadowWizard I mean the spammers

And spammers just use facts to earn more money, that's all.

@ShadowWizard assuming its even effective but I suspect they don't care

So, the real question is: which approach can improve the spam efficiency on SE?
1. use ladies' name & picture (Jane Smith)
2. spam on their username instead (Car Insurance XOXO)
3. use someone's popular-in-tech person's relative (John Skeet)
4. provide a fresh, non-plagiarized, high quality answer with spam link

I invoke XKCD 810

If the answer is fresh, and unique, and links to and explains the use of $product...

people might not even notice

6:57 AM

@HTTPS Good question, where will you add the link to freephonerepair.com?

There's no good tools for dealing with 2 for now

Shockingly enough, no one does 3 cause that actually means its a user familiar with the culture of the site, and they'd know spam dosen't last long.

Q: We need to improve the quality of our spam!

113

Recently, I've noticed a downhill effect in the quality of spam posted on Stack Exchange websites. Take this as an example (found on Space.SE): There are a great many things wrong with this artifact: There is not one capitalized letter in the entire post. (-1 grammar point.) The only pun...

7:39 AM

@SonicWizard oh wait... that's @Journeyman without a hat! So confusing....

@Journeyman don't you mind @Undo is using your dog? ;)

@ShadowWizard no, that's @Undo

This network's going to the dogs ;)

(The ears are different ;p)

That's classic poodle

@ShadowWizard He had a Z as his avatar, but the dog ate it.

need some cats to balance it out

My avadog has a classic snauzer/unmodified westie pointy front flop

summoning telbjb

7:43 AM

(westie puppies have cardboard ear splints to keep them from having floppy ears, or one floppy/one straight ears)

@JourneymanGeek lol I know, but... :D

8:23 AM

> P.S.: I've been choosen as a breeder by the flu. Maybe that's why I did describe some parts twice. I'll edt it as soon as the job is done. -- retrocomputing.stackexchange.com/a/6088

8:36 AM

@SonicWizard no, it's not a dupe.

@ShadowWizard Retracted the RC flag a while ago, but it was too late to delete the chat message.

@Magisch Chickens, maybe? (cc @YvetteColomb @TelKitty )

@SonicWizard you should also delete the auto comment then.

looks around

@ShadowWizard No context for Nathan Tuggy's comment; I left it there for future context in case someone else decides to CV or RC flag

finish-it cv-plz impendingdoom meta.stackexchange.com/questions/308397/…

8:39 AM

@JourneymanGeek RC flags

status-already-voted-to-close

RC?

Rough Closure?

@JourneymanGeek Recommend closure flag

Royal Cola?

8:40 AM

That's Royal Crown Cola

huh lol

Which sadly killed off planet cola here.

I did like RC Cola while it was here....

@JourneymanGeek status-finally-closed

but not yet deleted ;)

8:41 AM

@Magisch at least two of the close voters are too nice, didn't even downvote. :/

Luckily it's at -3 so we can delete.

@ShadowWizard it's gonna be deleted soon anyways, I didn't waste the 0.7s

RC Cola... wow

But without -3 or lower we can't delete.

it was at -3 when I saw it

but fiiiiine

Plus, message is much more clear when it's at -8 than -3. :D

8:43 AM

I'm happy to mob-downvoting OT questions on MSE...

naw, I can only DL once

@ShadowWizard t'was already at -3 when I vtc'd

I can CV and DelVote...

32 secs ago, by Shadow Wizard

Plus, message is much more clear when it's at -8 than -3. :D

:)

Also, the signature is not the same as the username.... it's sockzpuppetus!

8:44 AM

@JeremyBanks so it's weird why he didn't update the LinkedIn profile, if it was planned leaving.

@ShadowWizard not everyone bothers

;p

Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to meh-ness

the one human universal is boundless lazyness

One human universal? There is only 1 human in the universe?

He was too lazy to say constant.

He accidentally.

@JourneymanGeek never attribute to malice or incompetence what can be easily explained by sheer lazyness

8:47 AM

@Magisch that's a lot of typing. Meh/

9:29 AM

@PeterMortensen you commented " Active reading [<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface>] " in the edit to my question, but what does that mean?

Out of 10 recent revisions by him, all but 2 started with "Active reading". The exceptions started with "Copyediting", so...

I am beyond making any assumptions after 8 years of using this site

I'm just curious because I've rarely encountered this phrase in the wild

English isn't my native language

Me neither

@Shog9 I'm gonna ask here again coz you ignored me in the lounge, and I bet it's coz of my default name. Can't blame you for it, but I still want to know. Have you considered the rate of "please continue this discussion in chat" comments over the years? And also forcibly moved to chat rooms comments by mods. Or are these stats only for the rooms not automatically created from moved comments?

talkin about the chat usage stats

like do these automatically moved comments counts as "active chat users" because techniacally they have posted in chat, even though they didn't

9:45 AM

@user1306322 some background blog.superuser.com/2011/04/27/peter-mortensen-editor-in-chief I think it means he found a common spelling mistake.

~~Jan~~ John's acquintance?

Yup

He does a ridiculous amount of copy-edits

tool supported ...

Even then

I'm sure he reads a lot of them cause I sometimes get comments for clarification when my english is just too terrible

well, I also edit posts when I see obvious mistakes in them, but I'm not actively seeking them out

I'm just curious about the phrase "active reading"

10:07 AM

@Shadowclaw what's this?

~~based on the activity, it seems an account specific for chatting...~~ or not

@Shadowclaw welcome to the Tavern, where stars are given freely :)

Isn't that the account from yesterday?

dunno, I didn't see it yesterday

The one on the main site, there was a question about sock puppets that got hammered

@Shadowclaw is communicating to us through their chat profile because of chat rep requirement not fulfilled...

10:15 AM

Why is that still enabled exactly?

how novel :3

idk if you are allowed to exploit things

I mean people are gonna tell you no

but you know

Doesn't look like an exploit because it's their "about me" after all...

True

Why exactly is there an "about me" section in chat?

It seems kinda meaningless

... because you're bored :/

//shrug

user359686

10:22 AM

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

coz you can use it to briefly explain who you are and what you are about

There's the main site for that though

I know it's not very obvious from the phrase "about me" :p

I know, right! Who would have thought?

it's like saying "there's the entire history of one's life and all of their actions" for that

10:25 AM

Because that's the only place CMs can have fun with their "about me" :p

lol

poor community-facing employees everywhere

Most sites don't have them, except as faceless drones.

Here, they're mostly faces, and sometimes they drone

do-the-needful-plz meta.stackexchange.com/questions/308402/…

10:40 AM

@JourneymanGeek we did it as soon as possible

@PrincessLuna he's not suspended, just have less than 20 rep.

I agree people should not be able to change anything while suspended, but if low rep? Think they should be able to.

@PrincessLuna because sometimes people want to have a chat profile which is different from their "main" profile.

e.g. "I love waffles" fits for chat profile more than main profile for someone who want to appear professional. ;)

And as with any feature/privilege, if abused, it's reason for mod warning and suspension, which will hopefully make them stop, even though they'll still be able, technically, to change it while suspended.

also I thnk chat was slightly bolted on ;p

@JourneymanGeek time-for-this-now meta.stackexchange.com/questions/308401/… /cc @rene

(enough the two of you, I voted already)

one of the only things I wish they fixed is inviting people into chat who have never posted there in the first place

Also, whose sock is that @Shadowclaw user?

10:52 AM

socket?

pocket

lol fixed

I work with sockets too much, I guess

pock sucket

must be someone here

web socket?

10:53 AM

though they keep trying to fix some of my more folksy spelling, some of which is intentional

kinda sorta is spelled kinda sorta, not kind of sort of.

can't argue with that

@user1306322 I almost replied "rocket p****" but... better not... not in Tavern at least.... :D

pup socket blast off at the speed of light

wait... who are you, Mr. @user? checking

who am I?

who do you think you are?

who do you think I am? :p

10:56 AM

oh, thought you're one of the regulars, changing name again, e.g. @Sag

lol

I'm a regular in another room

another domain, yeah

that's my other problem with chat

this weird domain differentiation

can't find anyone from chat.SE on chat.SO

not all people are on multiple sites though

and some use different names on different sites

do you think this is an issue on chat.SE?

10:58 AM

@PrincessLuna like dear @user as well. :D

@PrincessLuna you Won't find Will here ...

@user1306322 unlike on SO/MSE chat, we can't go to user's chat profile on the main SE chat, we can only find them by searching.

@rene hm?

discussion feature-request support status-completed stackoverflow tags flags

Won't, United States

37.7k 18 106 235

Will, United States

107k 43 268 357

c# .net wpf asp.net mvvm asp.net-mvc xaml

So those are impossible to find on chat.SE since we don't know their parent site.

oh

11:02 AM

heh

@M.A.R. so, did you scratch? Or are you really strong minded and you didn't? ;)

(that's also your daily ping so that you won't feel neglected, in case you won't get more today ;))

@M.A.R. daily ping ಠ_ಠ

11:18 AM

@user1306322 oh dear, memory loss can be a pain

@JourneymanGeek or a gain

Benjaman Kyle

"Benjaman Kyle" was the alias chosen by an American man who has severe dissociative amnesia after he was found without clothing or identification and with injuries next to a dumpster behind a fast food restaurant in Georgia in 2004. As a result of his lack of personal memories, between 2004 and 2015, neither he nor the authorities were sure of his real identity or background, despite searches that used widespread television show-based publicity and various other methods. In late 2015, genetic detective work which had gone on for years finally led to the discovery of his real name, William Burgess...

I mean.... he became a celebrity due to that. :D

I guess I should say that I'm not anyone you know from this room

I only know 3 people here and they're all mods

or admins or cms

smoke detector needs a better logo

the white lines are too thin and the difference between dark red and dark blue is bleh on the eyes

and some food for thought: there is neither smoke nor a detector of any sort depicted

@user1306322 well, it used to be a unicorn, so... ;)

@user1306322 so feel free to suggest new avatar! ;)

@user1306322 yeah, figured that out, looked on your chat history. :)

unfortunately I'm no an artist in a graphical sense

</pings-for-@user-for-now>

11:32 AM

do you guys know when chat api is gonna change?

I only heard from someone that it's gonna, but not when exactly

and I can't find any posts about it on my own

@user1306322 question undefined, since chat as no API.

So nothing to change....

chat login process

Maybe you meant to ask "when will chat have official API?" ;)

which is gonna break the current chat bot api libraries

@user1306322 that's the downside of not having real API, we're all in the dark, depending on things that can change any moment without any notice.

11:34 AM

(the circle shrinks, as it is now known that I am one of the few active chat bot maintainers)

Leaving alone the total lack of documentation.

it's not that complicated if you look into the code, actually

the code written by someone who has done the hard work of figuring it out >.>

@user1306322 I answered that question earlier: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/308327/…

so you don't know when approximately it might happen

June/July I expect as July, 1st is mentioned as end-of-support

11:39 AM

I mean I guess I'll know when it breaks coz my chat bot will stop working

but yea I'd rather be ready to check up on it more frequently during that time

anyway, thanks for the info

@rene well, I think we can ask @Adam about changes in the Login system of Stack Exchange and how they might affect chat bots. No?

@user1306322 Yeah, that is the strategy I follow as well

@user1306322 I kind of knowing you after checking the name on SO and seeing the rep on Anime.SE...

yea that's how I stalk people on SE/SO as well

Do I miss something here? @user has only one other name (Hakase) which wasn't changed....

11:42 AM

nothing seems amiss

@ShadowWizard regular on anime.se

oh

@ShadowWizard IIRC the charcoal team is in the loop for what is needed to keep Smokey running. Once they got a glimpse of what will change I'm sure we'll hear about it. I mean the bots are mentioned on the announcement post in both comments and answers

@rene hopefully that will be enough to get warnings before they break things.... :)

I do know SoBotics already released/works on a new lib. I didn't check Kenny yet ...

11:44 AM

technically though, my question proper, as posed, is about where the API page is, but not when it might change, just to clear it up

so I guess my other question isn't answered there

Sure, I always answer only half of the questions anyway

that's coz people probably ask double the questions

There's no official chat lib.

There were rumours of one

echo

and eh, about 3-4 major chatbot frameworks?

11:48 AM

@JourneymanGeek 6-8

@rene and maybe 2-3 bots on each ;p

Ours keeps falling over a lot anyway

@JourneymanGeek "ours"? You mean Smokey?

just like the hidden API v2.3 that's used on mobile app...

naw

Cavill

Cav who?

11:49 AM

@HTTPS the one they stopped developing? ;p

New New API

@ShadowWizard its a fork off rlemon's caprica bot we run on root access

rumor said that they will work on the API first before the mobile app...

@HTTPS though, if we're speculating pointlessly, most of the mobile team is still in place so...

@HTTPS yeah!

11:50 AM

is there source code for chat?

Only the master.js

I mean is the chat portion of SE made public

Nope

I bet if they made Area51 public it'd get fixed in a week

hah

Or people would be driven mad

11:52 AM

until SE made mobile app's source code also public

actually that might not be a terrible idea

But I suspect unlikely to happen

12:44 PM

@Shog9 Is there anything new on that thing you mentioned in the last townhall you wanted to do to address serial voting on SO better? Or has that been put on the backburner due to higher priority stuff creeping up?

1:33 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer: How can I see more Google autocomplete suggestions? by Alex on webapps.SE

Anonymous

1:51 PM

@JourneymanGeek probably not happening.

@JeremyBanks probably not

(but by rumours, might have been you mentioning it sooooo) :p

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer: Online Number Theory Video? by videobhaia on mathoverflow.net

has anyone read the expanse novel series?

Most of it

is it comparable to classic scifi?

2:11 PM

@AdamLear looks like an account might got stuck here.

Anonymous

billion laughs SVG body + authentication HTTP header = "sorry we won't let you access this page until you give your real credentials"

Anonymous

I wonder if you could get multiple auth dialogs in a single request, by redirecting between wildcard domains...

@user1306322 its semi-hard

pretty well written

Adam Lear

@rene thanks for the heads up. will look when i’m at my desk

OK ... no pressure, I'm not your boss ....

2:15 PM

@rene private beta and they already got a design??

Q: Sponsorship Pilot — Bringing resources BACK to Stack Exchange

yep, they are sponsored

Anonymous

30

As our devs continue to work on features like Talent and Channels (now called Teams), I've been anxiously looking for ways to increase engagement in our current Stack Exchange sites to help assure that development RETURNS to our Q&As… as soon as possible. As the biz-dev folks spread the word abo...

discussion announcements sponsored-sites

@JeremyBanks that seems... evil 0_0

Anonymous

@JourneymanGeek Oops --- billion laughs works in Chrome, the auth works in Firefox, but neither in the other. Maybe it would work on Edge, though.

@JeremyBanks I wonder if SE still works on the last version of opera... ;p

Anonymous

2:22 PM

if anybody wants to test it on themselves, click "show" in https://glitch.com/edit/#!/bad-hackerman?path=server.js

Anonymous

Billion laughs doesn't seem to work on edge, at least not severely.

Anonymous

I guess this isn't a good example, since the page has nothing in it. But in Chrome, the dev console breaks. In Edge it does not.

My laptop's fan starting to accelerating after I closed the auth dialog on Chrome...