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6:12 AM
@JourneymanGeek does it though? Sounds like there'd be a couple dozen mods active on chat at any given time?
 
@Magisch oh hardly
 
Maybe further give ROs the opportunity to delete messages, remove 10k flagging, and have chat flags go into an actual review queue on main
 
hmm
We'd actually need to completely revise the RO system for that to work
 
Moving something to a trash can is a rather curious workaround
 
So... right now, RO appointments is... kind of arbitrary
 
6:13 AM
@JourneymanGeek as in? revise the selection of RO's?
 
might be worth doing anyways
right now it's more or less just what current ROs feel like
 
You could have two people talking in a room, and a RO kicking over something to a more active room, where its flagged and closed.
Someone did that
 
System selects RO if someone is active around. Similarly, it should remove if they haven't visit in a while.
 
@NogShine hence 3 ways
1) You create a room
2) a current RO is removed for inactivity, and it tops up the ROs with the most active non RO
that is how I became an RO
3) they're appointed
 
6:15 AM
2) is very rare
 
Hi! ;p
Happened to me
 
I became RO in the awkward silence because I said I wanted to and the mods decided
 
Anyway, with 1 and 2, there's no real oversight over who's an RO, especially on a non main room
 
Me as well. ;p
 
somewhat arbitrarily either
 
6:16 AM
@Magisch not really arbitratily
 
Rob
I'm not too concerned with giving ROs more power to moderate their own rooms. So long as we had a way to easily investigate actions taken, and flags raised when it looks like ROs are abusing their tools
 
on RA we appointed ROs to cover as wide a timezone as possible
admittedly
There's this odd tendancy for things to go horribly wrong with no mods around, and only then.
 
Because the presence of people who can do something keeps people calm
Nobody likes to eat chat suspensions
 
@Magisch and we can often solve issues before it gets to that peacefully
 
Rob
Flags by 10k users being able to suspend a user seems like a bad idea in general to be honest
 
6:18 AM
@Magisch True
 
@JourneymanGeek This is what I call "soft power"
 
@Rob well, kinda
 
You guys can exercise hard power, but because you can and people know it, you don't have to
or even threaten it. The threat is implied. That's why people listen when you just caution something
 
@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog The user wants to do something but there's nothing left. :D
 
6:19 AM
but there's also the problem of there being no real oversight of flags, and or actual common ground on chat moderation
 
politicians use it all the time. When you have the power where you could actually make a threat but don't, people tend to listen more
chat moderation is really inconsistent yea
 
Personally I consider my ability to act on other chatrooms a backup
and sometimes its just good enough to go "hey, is everything fine here?"
 
@JourneymanGeek Why do they mostly use US keyboards in India?
 
@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog no idea
 
Is it true, though?
 
6:20 AM
Does Aussie uses UK keyboard?
 
I'd expect them to use the US layout, because their currency symbol is the same as Americans'.
 
Rob
@JourneymanGeek I didn't have to go very far back in the chat flags to find a user who was suspended for asking a question in chat
 
@Rob ehh, so... that's a bit of a thing
Was there a history? Who flagged? why?
 
like, "what is the purpose of this room?" ?
 
Rob
Nope, just a question about whatsapp
 
6:23 AM
imo mods need to come down like a ton of bricks on actual flag abuse
 
here?
@Magisch I don't think there's any visibility as far as I know over who flagged something
 
wow, office's internet is more laggy than my personal mobile data...
 
Rob
Not here, on chat.so
@Magisch Unless I'm missing something (very rarely mod in chat).. we can't see flaggers or flag text of completed flags
 
thats a huge system deficiency
 
6:26 AM
@Magisch something that gets asked a lot, along with being able to see who starred something
 
Perhaps we can implement that on SO and Meta SE, but it's getting messier on Chat.SE...
Who see what, and also "Parent Site"
 
Rob
All mods can see that information for chat.se for active flags. Just not past flags
 
Btw about the new blog post
round 2: electric boogaloo?
 
round 6-8: left nav
 
I'm not seeing the controversy this time
sounds sensible
 
6:32 AM
Well, as you can tell by my username, I'm inclusivity-leaning.
 
here's hoping we don't get Meta Wars 2: revenge of the downvote
One aspect of inclusivity that is overlooked is exclusion due to too much moderation. When someone gets chat banned for asking a question like has happened before, some rooms with enough 10k'ers would be able to just kick out everyone they don't particularly like
Which is bad optics for public Q/A imo. And the lack of accountability for chat flags only makes that problem harder to tackle
 
I've had several inclusivity-related concerns (not just the meta voting thing I keep mentioning) relating to SE. And if I hadn't been too busy battling Dr. Eggman, keeping away from Amy's unwanted advances, and accepting Shadow's challenges, I would have probably published a blog post on the same topic.
 
@Magisch our chat moderation system needs... a lot of work
 
I don't know if I'm inclusive or not then... I mean, I don't even know on what position I'm now.
 
I'm a cactus
 
6:36 AM
It however is something I don't really see changing
 
@Magisch Magisch the Inclusive Cactus
 
Watashi wa pen desu (I am a pen)
 
In a sense chat's a 'nice thing' but not a 'core product'
even if SE chat gets a ton of things right
 
The cactus community is actually very exclusive
 
I mean, there's a problem on main? lets fix it.
 
6:37 AM
quite prickly, indeed
 
The reaction of folks when things go bad on chat's often "do we need chat?"
 
Rob
@JourneymanGeek And that's why I'm all for ROs having better tools. If they don't moderate their room properly, then it's easy to just shut it down. They can't say it's a few bad apples
If they're using their tools more than average, raise a flag. If they're abusing it, remove them as an RO.
 
@Rob I think rethinking the RO system is actually a start
But that also means having ROs created less arbitrarily
 
I'm glad at least someone's kickstarted the movement. I'm all for joining it.
 
Well, I am surprised that RO cannot delete other's messages... only move, or with flag-assistance
 
Rob
6:38 AM
Well, as long as their moderation tools are confined just to that room, I don't see why we need to make it strict
 
@Rob well in theory, some tools by nature arn't
like moving stuff
 
Maybe we should get rid of moving stuff and allow deleting stuff
leave moving to the mods
 
Imagine if someone created a new room, filled it with gabage, then moved it all in at once.
 
Rob
Yeah. Moving messages always seemed weird to me. Never seen a chatroom that does that. And it's always super confusing to figure out what happened
 
@Magisch oh we can delete
 
6:39 AM
or only to rooms where you're RO in both
 
Rob
I'd be happy with removing moving messages completely
 
RO's can't delete
 
I've always wanted to become an RO so I could see deleted SmokeDetector messages here
 
I'd actually rather move than delete
It leaves an audit trail
 
Just because main site can migrate, chat also can migrate (???)
 
6:40 AM
Especially after my proposal to stop deleting those messages failed.
 
@SomewhatMemorableName I don't think that's the rationale
@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog shrug its all on metasmoke anyway right?
 
How can I tell which deleted Smokey message corresponds to which Metasmoke report filed at the same minute?
 
Rob
@JourneymanGeek So does deletion. The people who need to investigate it can still see them. But anyway, I'd much prefer an 'archive' rather than 'move' functionality. At least for me, it's super confusing to reconstruct what happened when messages are moved to a general trash bin
 
@Rob in general, looking at all the conversations we have had on chat - I suspect one of the issues we have in general is... chat moderation dosen't have the same sold basis site moderation does.
 
Rob
Where an 'archive' is basically moving messages into an empty room
 
6:42 AM
@Rob ah, as opposed to shoving it all in a single or more specific rooms
 
The point is, in order to improve anything, SE needs to start pouring dev work into chat again.
 
I wonder if bookmarks survive moving
@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog which leads us to why?
 
@JourneymanGeek Easy to test
 
So... fact is, since I was a newbie, there's been a marked de-emphasis of chat
 
@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog the dev that did most of that was laid off
iirc
 
6:44 AM
@Magisch actually, the dev who did much of the recent chat work got moved
but it isn't even just about development
 
chat's been moved from the top bar, to the bottom
 
Well..... serious question: what's the purpose of chat on SE? :)
Aside of "This comment has been moved to chat",..
 
Rob
The biggest benefit I can see, is that it creates a community between users. Especially those interested in moderation
 
Rob
6:45 AM
Charcoal wouldn't be a thing without chat, most likely
Nor SOCVR
 
> But I think a web-based real time chat system like Campfire could offer that informal public gathering third place — a space for people who love the topic to meet, discuss, and collaborate in a different way. It would foster community, and be complementary to both strict Q&A;, and meta-discussion.
and that's what chat is, still
 
charcoal is probably the most valueable thing to come out of chat for SE as a company
 
@SomewhatMemorableName and I'd ask, complimentarily...
what would be lose without realtime chat?
SU uses it as a adjunct (I love that word) moderation tool where flags are too terse.
 
Aside of Tavern, Charcoal, and SOCVR, I only use chat to request for mod/community assistance on main site moderation for things that don't need a meta post, or flag, yes.
 
Many of the older sites have fairly healthy communities
 
6:49 AM
But I actually never see chat as... social platform here (except Tavern)
 
maaan
A lot of chat's like that
RA is
and we're kinda odd in that we actually have both on site and off site chats at once.
Cooking's chat is as well as is the litter box, each in different ways
 
And as always, Anime's chat room image board
 
In a sense, well moderated (internally) the purpose of chat is... to be what we need it to be
 
On Stack Overflow, C++ enthusiasts were forced to create a new room after their main room ended up becoming R-rated.
 
@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog These things happen
and not overnight
So.. as a new RO here, I figured "eh, there's Mods CMs here, they can handle things".
On the other hand, yanno...
It isn't about one person, or one event
its more about the community as a while.
 
6:59 AM
yeah, but when the community made that happen instead...
 
I mean, sure, there's sometimes a few bad eggs, but its a lot easier when people go "hey, this isn't acceptable"
and things get handled "in situ"
 
was me
 
Let me guess...!!/all
 
No, did 5 by hand
guy had 2 undisclosed self promotions, and 3 known spam advertisings
 
 
2 hours later…
9:20 AM
So, this is currently on HNQ now...
27
Q: Travelling soon and lost UK passport. What can I do?

ConfusedUPDATE: Praise your choice of deity, I found it! UPDATE AGAIN: Due to a number of people wanting to know where it was found - I sold my car a couple of months ago and had a bag of stuff I'd removed from the car before it was collected, the bag contained my passport among other things (and a pair...

Personally..... I'd suggest an edit and remove the 2 UPDATEs, but I have lost faith in Travel.SE moderation ...
 
 
1 hour later…
10:38 AM
lol
@SomewhatMemorableName sadly thats a bad habit I sometimes have too
 
@SomewhatMemorableName considering their one announcement post, I'm still surprised CMs allowed that to fly
blatantly and flagrantly telling people to not enforce network policy
 
Meanwhile, Election on Travel.SE, end in less than 4 days!
I seriously wish Rory wins, just for fun and also serious :)
 
I think until the moderators with the attitude of that meta post are gone, Travel.SE is helpless
 
11:09 AM
well, okay, I also wish cnst to win then
 
11:19 AM
@SomewhatMemorableName :/
 
11:34 AM
sigh
I donno.
 
@JourneymanGeek I picture a disappointed looking ash :p
 
"I don't like how things work" should be a reason to hope the best person wins
not the most who's... er...
 
I don't particularly care who wins on travel.SE. The site needs more then new mods to get anywhere near back on track
 
at that point though, its probably going to need CMs to take a look and work out what's wrong
but sometimes new mods can make a difference?
 
maybe
not holding my breath though
not like I'm active there anyways so w/e
 
11:40 AM
and that's a thing
what would be a good process for a site that's mature but has big issues?
At a user level, you're going to have to bring them up, and... tactfully
someone is going to have to take a look, work out how to fix it... and as an older site, you don't know how deep it goes.
 
@JourneymanGeek right now, I'd think that users can't adress these. The site would need to be closed or heavy cm intervention
 
I certainly don't care enough about it to try and work out a plan to change things over there. I'm not even a member there beyond occasional spam flagging
 
There's a relatively small number of mods
 
@JourneymanGeek A post like this would either be destroyed as r/a (due to some of the bullet points) or downvoted to hell on a healthy site. The fact that it's a) not and b) upvoted means there are greater systemic incompabilities with the SE model on travel
that I'm not sure any one or even group of users can address
 
11:45 AM
ehh
 
@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog I don't feel that specific question is adequately answered in the FAQ but I've left a comment with a link to it.
 
That actually feels inspired a bit by the inclusiveness thing
> If you close vote a question from a newbie without a comment, shame on you. Welcome them, thank them, and explain what's wrong.
I try to do this
> Don't downvote a new user. Upvote them even if voting to close (unless spam etc) for trying to ask a valid question.
erm.. upvoting goes a bit far, but unless its absolutely horribad and all caps, I wouldn't dv
 
@JourneymanGeek That's actually offensive and insulting to everyone who cares about quality on that stack
A mod telling users not to use the tools they're given for moderation because the poster is new? That's in direct contradiction to network wide policy saying we should only ever consider the post, not who posted, when voting.
 
@Magisch - I post a ton of comments telling folks why something is being closed if I can
@Magisch I think a CV does enough
 
> Don't dare downvote a post without a comment. Please!
 
11:47 AM
I usually DV the very worst.
 
This is directly against network policy too
 
THat's a bit silly
agreed
> Do NOT engage in chats in comments. Invite users - new and old, to join you in the Travel Chat Room for discussion.
Almost makes sense
 
The fact that this was posted by a mod and is not downvoted speaks volume about the voting culture on meta there
 
> If you can fix a question easily from a new user - do that instead of close-voting. Eg if they've asked 5 questions in one, remove the last 4 to keep it at 1 q per post, and add a comment explaining. Also fix spelling/grammar/CAPS - not everyone is a native speaker / grammar guru.
seems pedagogically sound
so...
 
That is bound to fail
 
11:49 AM
of 5 points, there's 2 I vaguely disagree with
and well
in the context of welcoming new users...
 
if someone asks 5 questions in one, there is almost never a surefire way to know which one they actually mean. That's something for OP to do while their question is closed as too broad
 
Well or close as too broad, and comment so they know
 
@Magisch the one in the title?
 
@JohnDvorak Most of the time in these circumstances, the one in the title is an aggregation of 2-5 of those in the Q
In such cases editors simply don't have enough information to properly distill the question down - You're either editing it into what you want (not what edits are for) or into a very imprecise approximation of what op might have wanted (if you guessed right)
If I wrote such a meta reply to a similar question on MSO I'd expect the meta reply to be destroyed as r/a, and rightly so
 
R/A might be excessive
 
11:56 AM
naw
it might get DVed
might
 
@JohnDvorak meh, i've seen less offensive stuff deleted on meta
what's more important then the post itself is the culture it indicates. The fact that it's endorsed (eh: created) by one of the mods makes it impossible to maintain any trust in the moderation there
 
@Magisch shrug
as a mod, or even a high rep user - In theory I'm primarily focused on the health of my own site
 
Yeah and if that's your idea of a healthy site that site has no place on SE, imo
 
That's a bit extreme
 
But I'm not a CM so take this as my personal opinion & with a mountain of salt
 
12:01 PM
unhealthy means... well
its fully of spam and garbage
 
I'm just an HNQ surfer and I haven't noticed any moderation issues there. Or hadn't before this discussion.
 
or no one knows the site scope
and from experience, what's the right thing, and moderation styles vary wildly and still work
 
unlike Physics' surprising amount of suspended high-reps
 
Would you consider tons of off topic bad questions from beginners that don't get duly downvoted and closed because of niceness requirements as garbage?
 
@Magisch If so, we'd have to close SO.
 
12:02 PM
Assuming that actually happens
 
I might not mind that, but it would certainly cut off a large part of SE's income
 
People already don't sufficiently use their votes, telling them explicitly not to is a disaster
 
but they people who don't use their votes wouldn't anyway
and the ones who will dv will dv anyway
 
even if we had reminders plastered on every page reminding people to downvote bad content and flag and close we'd still have more people who just upvote stuff they like and ignore the rest
 
"The comment isn't harmful because people won't let their opinions be influenced by it"
 
12:04 PM
@Magisch hah.
I hardly if ever downvote.
 
Yeah. DOwnvotes and closing and deleting is what makes SE function
 
@JourneymanGeek I consider this a red flag :P
 
Upvotes are hit & miss honestly, but if downvoting stops or is reduced quality suffers and suffers hard
discouraging that is a recipe to make your site into the vast wasteland SE usually prevents it from turning into
 
@JohnDvorak well as a mod, I have more fun tools
 
true
 
12:14 PM
Sometimes the problem is: bad questions by new users are not downvoted by regular users (for the sake of welcoming?), but then get upvoted by another new users...
 
Can't be too new. You need a minimum rep to vote
 
tbh the one thing I believe makes SE unwelcoming is not enough quality control
regulars get frustrated and snarky because they drown in garbage and irrelevance
 
@Magisch there's a bit of a balance - there's also such a thing as overzealous quality control
If you're spending more time looking for things to close than to answer ... ;p
IMO
 
@JourneymanGeek Or on the flipside. If average question quality is so bad that in the process of looking for things to answer you only find closeable stuff
SE seems to recognize this with their efforts being focused on improving question quality
 
12:32 PM
Well ya
 
the #1 way to make people who have gotten bitter and cynical less bitter and cynical is to remove or lessen the source of their frustration, imo
all the other stuff is just hoping to treat symptoms with social pressure. Which works, I guess, but it has other negative side effects.
 
SE's all about the social pressures ;p
 
Side effects such as me being called overzealous for being unable to find something worth answering?
 
one of the reasons for its success are that it's really antisocial
 
@SomewhatMemorableName you're now officially the heir of @Norm! ;-)
 
12:36 PM
*having given up trying to
 
@JohnDvorak define "worth"
As in rep?
Gratitude?
 
There's plenty of rep lying around, thank you
 
Never enough
Like gold
 
rep is only a tertiary motivation
 
I mean something that my conscience wouldn't shout at me for for days.
 
12:38 PM
that may be a bit dramatic
the site wont end because you enjoyed the easy +45 from a homework question. But you're not really helping either, are you
:p
 
... 5 minutes before I erase my memory of the answer existing?
 
You mean questions that are not utter crap, showing research efforts, and have value for other people except OP?
 
that
I could even do without research effort if the question is clear
 
I do admit sometimes I just want to answer because figuring it out is kind of fun
Sometimes I like trawling through docs for 5 minutes, satisfied at having solved the problem later.
 
Those are nice, too. Rarity on SO though.
 
12:41 PM
@Magisch those are the best
 
like semi-simple sql syntax debugging
 
I should spend some more time on PPCG
 
I really like making the query work and then finding the blurb explaining why
It feels good on a personal level
 
@JohnDvorak yeah, if I only had another 24 hours in a day ...
 
Would you like to borrow some of mine?
Insomnia has its benefits, y'kn....
 
12:47 PM
The solution is obviously to remove 1 and 4. Then only love is left. — Jules Apr 26 '14 at 9:39
 
@JohnDvorak If I can swap the boring hours, sure
 
@ShadowWizard still not up to his level, but thanks :)
 
..ow.
 
@Magisch some questions I answered on anime.se wasted took 2 hours or more for researching from scratch something I didn't know...
 
12:53 PM
@JohnDvorak still better than TV Tropes ;)
 
@SomewhatMemorableName with enough practice...
 
 
1 hour later…
2:04 PM
Meanwhile....
OH NO, STEAM SUMMER SALE!
 
2:16 PM
27 messages moved to Chimney
 
 
2 hours later…
4:25 PM
 
4:41 PM
@SomewhatMemorableName hot!
 
that's like, at least 100C hot
 
In fact steam can get a lot hotter. Next stage of aggregate is plasma then.
 
hmmm.. .plasma :)
I think that's a phase I have great problem understanding / thinking about
possibly because I don't generally interact with plasma...
 
Well, it's easy to understand. The nuclei will be divorced from their electrons, and everything is in heavy floating and motion.
 
5:01 PM
Tag Search on SO proper is borked: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/369980/…
 
A spammer par excelence
 
7 messages moved to Chimney
 
@rene What's dutch for unten (below)?
 
@πάνταῥεῖ onder or beneden, prefer the first
 
What a bummer, this pun won't work well with dutch ;)
 
5:10 PM
If you would have something like Komm nach unten you would say Kom naar beneden
 
I was referring to the utensils typo. Seems to work only in German :3
 
@πάνταῥεῖ yeah.
 
I believe your German is good enough to understand it though ;-)
 
Not sure what SE devs rolled out but they broke all Chrome browsers when using search ...
 
@rene Just for fun, summer holidays and the football WCS:
;)
 
5:19 PM
lol
 
I don't know if your team attends this time ...
 
Translation, please?
 
@πάνταῥεῖ nope, we support the Belgians ...
 
I'm looking like a traitor maybe, but I'd love to see our team loose vs Sweden. I'd appreciate the silence all around :3
@John Is your google translate broken or what?
 
I don't trust robots with that... :P
 
5:24 PM
It's a longer story than simple translation anyways ;)
 
Oh, OK
 
Our mutual love between the countries is at play
 
@rene I'd suspect they've got choclit and (french) fries for training :3
I left my heart at Amsterdam at my 1st visit ;)
 
@πάνταῥεῖ Ha, I wouldn't be surprised
 
That's something what came to my mind:
Not a belgian "athlete" tho
 
5:36 PM
that's disturbing ...
 
As I'm always :3
LOL:
Karma is only a bitch if you are.
 
 
1 hour later…
7:11 PM
@Catija Where? I'm always willing to learn new swearwords. :-)
 
It's been deleted.
 
That bad?
One of the 7 words never to be uttered on TV?
 
... well, broadcast, but yes.
 
Well, when it's just the word with valid context looks like it's acceptable, though maybe things changed by now. But just posting a curse word without context, especially as image, is bad idea.
 
It was in a status tag, not an image. It was an expression of annoyance. It was unnecessary.
 
7:21 PM
well..... 99% at least of the messages here are "unnecessary".
Including this one.
So...
(aka "unnecessary" isn't reason to remove something IMO)
 
Unnecessary and clean is one thing. Unnecessary and vulgar... not so great.
 
waffles!
 

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