Tavern on the Meta

Shadow Wizard

20:01

@TravisJ not all downvoted questions are closed

canon

well, telling someone that 5 people voted to close your question for reason X... when that wasn't the case is pretty unfortunate if you're hoping that the close reason provides all the information they'll need

@ShadowWizard and that... so very few

Shadow Wizard

Also, we can't close answers. (yet)

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Shog9 Considering you modified the "specific site" reason here, can you please look into meta.stackexchange.com/questions/311803/…?

Travis J

@ShadowWizard True, not all, but many are. Moreover, most downvoted questions do not have attentive askers.

Shadow Wizard

@TravisJ usually when explaining a downvote, you tell the person they did something wrong, hard to avoid that. And for many people, being told they did something wrong is offensive, rude, and makes them feel bad, so they'll flag.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

20:04

Not for me, in general.

Shadow Wizard

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog you're not the common user. Almost none of the people here is... :)

canon

@ShadowWizard it's interesting when they can't figure out the core functionality of the site but they'll manage to flag a comment.

Shadow Wizard

@canon when someone wants something, they'll find it.

Travis J

@ShadowWizard Meh, that is the result of poor guidance, and in many ways also the result of a culture of brashness. A vast majority of the time you don't have to explain what they did wrong, so much as explain why we expect something to be there which isn't included.

Mgetz

@ShadowWizard funny we were just having a conversation in the c++lounge about if you can sue the companies that inject unwanted ads into your site (it is technically copyright infringement)

canon

20:06

@Mgetz you mean like ISP's injecting crap into http responses?

Travis J

@Mgetz If they hack you then perhaps there is a violation, but it isn't copyright. Especially not if you are being paid by the ad companies.

Shadow Wizard

@TravisJ well, the explanation is also useful for other people reading the question/answer, not only the author.

Mgetz

@canon yep, it's technically willful infringement

canon

so dirty :/

Mgetz

@TravisJ no this is when you're not being paid when the ISP does it illegally

Travis J

20:07

@ShadowWizard Which is why it is so important to explain the background of what went wrong with the post instead of just saying "nope, don't do that, nuh uh, people here don't like that sort of thing".

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

A single downvote will make it unlikely that someone else will fully read the post and decide it's worthy of an upvote. People tend to follow on what others do, rather than lead for themselves.

Travis J

@Mgetz Oh, well that isn't copyright violation, that is unauthorized access, which counts as being hacked and is a criminal act.

Arguably, it is worse than copyright violation.

Shadow Wizard

@TravisJ more like "foo is wrong to use in this context, you should use bar instead" in a comment explaining answer downvote.

Mgetz

@TravisJ no it's not, because they are allowed to make copies and it is in plain text. They didn't hack you

It's creating an unauthorized modification

Travis J

@ShadowWizard Wait, okay, let me make an important distinction. I am solely talking about question downvotes. Answer downvotes are a different ballpack, and I agree with you in that context for explanations and pointing out what was wrong technically.

Shadow Wizard

20:09

@canon just use https, they can't inject anything into it. No?

canon

encrypt all the things :)

Shadow Wizard

yup

all dem tingz

Travis J

@Mgetz Nah, they gained unauthorized access to your source code. View source shows the modified version from the ISP versus the stream you wrote to the response.

It is a hack. Any decent court would uphold it.

canon

it's a pretty clear mitm attack

Mgetz

@TravisJ You'd have a hard time proving that, statutory copyright infringement is much easier

@canon you'd have to convince a jury of that... and you won't

canon

20:12

just equate it to mail tampering

federal offense

Travis J

It is literally the easiest thing to prove.

Here is the response we give: A. Here is the response the ISP modified: B.

canon

that's relatable even to non-technical people

Mgetz

@canon yeah but get a prosecutor to take that case... I'll wait

canon

mmmm class action

Mgetz

@canon mmm forced arbitration

with no opt out

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

20:17

@Catija Re your comments: In all honesty, I'd prefer that questions about outdated features (that have no useful discussion for posterity) be closed with custom reasons, not the "can no longer be reproduced" reason. I've seen that most of the time when I vote that way, others VTC with the canned reason, so my comment gets overruled.

Catija

I don't really see why they need to be closed at all.

Shadow Wizard

@TravisJ well on questions I tend to agree, yes.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Catija If the question has useful discussion for the future, I usually don't VTC it.

Catija

3 mins ago, by Catija

I don't really see why they need to be closed at all.

Shadow Wizard

@Catija take for example all the non completed or rejected bug reports and feature requests about accept rate. Since there's no accept rate any more, no valid answer can be given. It became off topic since it's about something that does not exist in SE any more.

So those can be closed with such close reason.

Catija

20:23

That's fine... but half the ones I see in the close queue are also tagged as status completed... which is a waste of everyone's time.

Shadow Wizard

@Catija that's true, I vote to leave open those.

Of course a fixed bug can't be reproduced anymore, it's.. trivial.

Catija

Having such a close reason begs for every solved bug report to be closed... and that's silly.

Shadow Wizard

True, but still valid use for other cases.

heh, at some point I got pissed off enough to think it's indeed better to just remove it.

Feb 5 at 10:29, by Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 hey, any chance to remove the close reason "The problem described here can no longer be reproduced"? It's being often misused to close bug reports that have been fixed, or feature requests that have been implemented. So of course those can't be "reproduced" anymore, but they should NOT be closed, in my opinion.

It was after seeing such abuse of the close reason.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer: What does spill resistant keyboard mean exactly? by user918397 on superuser.com

Catija

I think that's pretty uncommon, in general... but the main problem I have is with the "this question is about something that doesn't exist on the network at all because it's changed over the last n years." If we have that, we'd have some absurd number of questions closed just because a site feature was depreciated... I don't see the value in that.

It reminds me of people who really want every question to have an accepted answer because it somehow marks the question as "complete".

Shadow Wizard

20:29

@Catija number alone should not be a reason not to do it.

Catija

No... but consistency is.

The more there are, the more impossible it is to be consistent.

Shadow Wizard

What's the point of leaving them open? What answer can they get?

canon

@ShadowWizard I wish you had, btw.

Catija

We don't leave questions open because they're looking for answers. If we did, we'd prevent answers to all questions with accepted answers. That's never been how the site works.

Shadow Wizard

Maybe instead of close, mark them with a special tag or something.

Kevin B

20:30

or...

just let them be inactive?

Catija

Exactly. Why change things?

Shadow Wizard

Well that's the current situation.

And I'm fine with it.

Catija

What does the question being open hurt?

canon

@Catija My soul.

Shadow Wizard

@Catija false hope

Catija

20:32

Huh? Let's say there's a question about A51 and they completely removed A51 from the network... closing every question about A51... doesn't make sense.

Shadow Wizard

Those who don't know it's no longer relevant might spend time posting answer or edit with more details or new approach to same idea.

If closed, well, they'll know right away not to spend time on it.

Catija

I don't really see that as being a problem that comes up frequently enough to solve.

Shog9

57 questions in 90 days

Catija

How many people suggest new ideas for SE 1.0 sites?

Shadow Wizard

I'm tempted to post feature request asking to auto close all android app and iOS app bugs and feature requests...

@Catija hehe, that's extreme. Talking about things like the apps.

Catija

20:34

Why? To make it so that every single one has to be reopened once they do start developing on it again?

Shadow Wizard

@Catija but they won't.

Catija

Having them open doesn't hurt anything.

@ShadowWizard You don't know that.

Shadow Wizard

@Catija let's see in 6 years. Will this be enough time to prove I'm right? (Or wrong... :))

Shog9

Most recent closure:

4

Q: Button overlaping text in the tour pages

I was browsing the tour page of Puzzling Stack Exchange and I encountered this problem in the arrangements of objects, the "Visit the Help Center" button is overlapping some text (I apologize if I am using the wrong terms). They instead should have been like this: This error occurs on Crypt...

Seems reasonable.

Second-most recent closure:

26

Q: Etiquette for closing your own questions

For all of my questions I have received great answers. I have implemented the answers in code and they work. I now feel compelled to close the questions because I don't believe there are more or better answers out there. Should you close your questions that you feel have been answered sufficient...

support faq vote-to-close etiquette

Whose bright idea was it to close a FAQ post?

Whose bright idea was it to close a FAQ post with a reason clearly intended for bugs?

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 Sonic, and others just blindly followed.

Catija

20:37

> put on hold as off-topic by Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog, curiousdannii, PolyGeo, Robert Longson, Glorfindel yesterday

Shog9

Well, that was dumb

Shadow Wizard

Surprised about @Glorfindel falling into this.

Catija

And it'd been migrated from SO?

Seriously, we need to stop rejecting migrations that happened more than n days ago.

If it's been here for nine years, closing it shouldn't kick it back to SO.

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 can't you throw a quick change into the code, not allowing faq questions to be closed?

Shog9

Moving on... Third-most recent closure:

2

Q: Since when is the rep cap 179?

Thanks to my browser history, I was able to retrieve and bookmark my /recent page, which as of today is tucked away somewhere. Ok, I'll cut whining about the envelope. I've hit the rep cap once again, but this time it's only 179 (!) on the Today page. I'm not the kind of person that downvotes 21...

support daily-reputation-limit

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

20:39

If you had noticed (before Shog cleared the history), I was not one of the users who selected the "can no longer be reproduced" close reason; I typed a custom reason instead.

Shadow Wizard

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog same thing.

Don't close faq.

Catija

You still voted to close a FAQ.

Shog9

that legit concerns a feature that not only hasn't existed in many years, but which folks probably don't even remember beyond the "Eeeeek" meme.

if that

Catija

@Shog9 That's a dupe of something...

Shog9

baleeted

@Catija it's... a problem that probably still occurs in a superficial sense, but the entire rep system was rewritten twixt then and now, so different explanation

Catija

20:41

Ah.

Shog9

FOURTH closure!

9

Q: "Delete this answered question?" when the only answer is deleted

Looks like there's a small bug in the UI: I posted a question here on meta.SE which ended up being just something dumb I was doing and no use to anyone in the future. At first I posted an answer saying what the dumb thing was, but then I realized that the whole thing had no value, so I deleted th...

bug questions vote-to-delete

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Shog9 Can you please post a quote of the custom reason I typed (and which you deleted)?

@Shog9 I just followed on there.

Shog9

that almost certainly was fixed

at some point

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

Unfortunately, as I was the final voter, I could not have retracted my vote.

Shog9

we can probably test

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

20:44

@Shog9 Can you please review all the questions in [faq] closed:1?

Shog9

hold on, testing, I'll bet this can still be reproduced...

Shadow Wizard

So, still happens.

Can you please reopen?

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@ShadowWizard Can you please become "Shadow the Hedgehog Wizard" again?

Catija

@ShadowWizard It's amusing that it's still a bug when the answer is your own question... I think I've seen someone complain about the popup appearing on self-answered questions, too.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

cv-pls specific site: meta.stackexchange.com/review/close/58436

Catija

20:54

Oh, weird... that's actually the same as the one in the question... TJ asked and answered... I wonder if that's part of the error.

Shadow Wizard

@Catija not sure I follow?

Yes, it's self answer.

Catija

You wrote an answer to your question, deleted it, then got the error message...

Shadow Wizard

Yup.

Catija

So... my question is, does it being a self-answer actually matter in the case of the bug report.

Mgetz

lol, I just had to inform a ton of people at my work they can't use any code from SO because the license isn't approved because the whole MIT switch-over never happened

Shadow Wizard

20:55

oh... it's caching! Now it doesn't show the popup. /cc @Shog

It shows only if I try to delete the question soon after the answer is deleted.

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog hmm? Why?

Catija

Well, in that case it could have always been caching... the answer was posted only a minute before the screenshot was taken.

... so there may never have been anything to fix.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@ShadowWizard Because you're always Shadow the Hedgehog in my eyes :)

Catija

Seems worthy of an answer, maybe?

Shog9

@ShadowWizard Yep, just wrote an answer to that effect.

It took me, what, about 10 minutes to test & diagnose that? Not trivial, but certainly do-able.

Ok! So, that's what... Two out of four so far?

NUMBER #5!

-1

Q: Page moves when leaving comments

When commenting on a post, the page will move drastically when a someone creates a new post. Then I have to search for the post that I was commenting on, hoping that I do not have to start over, especially if it was a long comment.

discussion comments

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Shog9 So is it status-bydesign or status-deferred?

Shog9

20:59

I have no idea what he's talking about there, and since the author is deleted I doubt he's ever coming back to clarify.

DELETE!

SIX!

meta.stackexchange.com/questions/226561/…

...is already deleted.

sounds like it would've been an HTTPS issue though, and we didn't support HTTPS back then. So probably valid.

SEVEN! (also deleted)

that concerns the old 10K flag queue, which has been gone for many years now. Valid!

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Shog9 So the close reason is validly used on questions relating to old, deprecated features? (cc @Catija)

Shog9

EIGHT! Deleted by its author after closure

πάντα ῥεῖ

Hi @shog ;)

Shog9

hmm

> Using Stack Overflow to invite people to take part in a challenge on refactormycode.com, acceptable?

> If I have a body of code which I want to improve, I could post it to Refactor :my => 'code'.

Now is it acceptable to post a question simply inviting SO users to the challenge?

Isn't such practice frowned at?

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Shog9 Jeff Atwood posted the code for SO's HTML sanitizer back when that site existed, and another user found and reported a security flaw in it

Shog9

21:03

I'm struggling to see why that was closed as "can no longer be reproduced"

πάντα ῥεῖ

Left a ton of german things in my recent twittr timeline.

Catija

Yeah, that close reason use is weird.

πάντα ῥεῖ

Football is off ...

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Shog9 I believe I voted to close as specific site, and Shadow voted to close with a custom reason

Shog9

is that like a catch-all for folks who can't be bothered to click through to another menu or something?

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

21:03

Or I may have gone with Shadow's custom reason

Shog9

I'm gonna call that one invalid, although it's no great loss

So, that's 3 now right?

who's keeping score?

speak now, or it's 3

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad pattern in URL answer, potentially bad keyword in answer: libinput Trackpoint/Touchpad problems on T460p by user844514 on askubuntu.com

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

Custom reasons get overruled if just two users vote for a canned reason. Design flaw?

Catija

How is it easier to use the default over the one provided by another user but already included in the list?

Shog9

Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9...

meta.stackexchange.com/questions/189253/…

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

21:05

@Shog9 6

Shog9

m0sa couldn't reproduce it, turned out to be someone's extension

VALID

Catija

And should have been closed years ago.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Shog9 Don't believe so, a status-norepro would have been enough

Shog9

Switching to hexadecimal for brevity, we come finally to NUMBER #A:

8

Q: Moderator message template for plagiarism seems to have an error

The moderator message template for plagiarism is currently this (Emphasis added): Hello, I'm writing in reference to your Stack Overflow account: https://stackoverflow.com/users/237838/andrew-barber It has come to our attention that several of your answers consisted primarily...

bug moderator-tools moderation moderator-messages

lessee what that template looks like now:

Gilles just quoted it here:

17

Q: Link to /help/referencing in the moderator message template for plagiarism

The current “plagiarism” template for moderator messages (minus lead-in and fade-out) is: It has come to our attention that several of your answers consisted primarily or entirely of text copied from other answers or websites. We prefer not to simply copy content already available elsewhere i...

feature-request moderator-tools moderator-messages

It's completely different

So... That's valid.

DELETED!

So... For the last 10, we have 3 invalid

Catija

Did the last 10 include ones that were reopened after closure?

Shog9

21:12

There was only 1 reopened over the last 90 days

wait, 3

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 well, it became not relevant after the site in question died. I used custom close reason.

Shog9

3 reopened

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 oh, it's a game? What's the prize? ;)

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Shog9 If you wouldn't mind, could you please update 1drv.ms/x/s!AqtMgKjEFIvOgcoev9XrLkpOB1laug with all 57?

Catija

What kind of link is that?

Shadow Wizard

21:16

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog hmm.... will give it some thought. Might change soon. :)

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Catija Excel Online

OneDrive

Shog9

0

A: The "can no longer be reproduced" off-topic close reason on meta should be changed

It's not used that much; 57 times over the past 90 days. It probably should be used more, but I'm not too bothered by it. I did a quick check on the last 10 questions closed. Three were probably misuses of the reason, although 1 was pretty borderline (I certainly didn't reopen it). The most blat...

My conclusion.

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 +1

@Catija Microsoft version of Google Drive, probably

aka cloud hosting of documents.

Catija

22:41

So... um... should this be status completed now:

12

Q: "Private" Moderator Q&A site

This has apparently been discussed on the Teacher's Lounge before, but I can't find any official record of it (thus further leading me to believe my request is a good idea). I would like to propose a Q&A site strictly for the use of moderators of SE sites. That is, the exact same people who hav...

feature-request status-declined moderator-tools

Shog9

22:59

rats.

Sarcasm aside, @John makes a good point there - truth is, we (the employees / community team) would end up having to moderate a moderator Q&A site. I would hope it wouldn't be a large burden, but still... That's honestly not a task I'm particularly eager to sign up for. — Shog9 ♦ May 30 '12 at 22:43

To be fair, back then we only had 6 people on the team

Catija

Yes... because 11 is so many more... and I bet there were far fewer than 570 mods.

And there's really no moderation tools on Teams, so there's little to moderate.

Jon Ericson

23:24

The justification is that we don't want to take over your organization's HR function. I guess that makes CMs HR for moderators?

Catija

I heard, though, that flagging is actually an option but you have to have it turned on.

Some post on MSO said that, not sure if it was accurate.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad keyword in answer, blacklisted user: Is there a way to hide the Field List in an Excel PowerPivot table so that no users can see it? by DATA_ANALYST on superuser.com

Shog9

23:45

0

A: "Private" Moderator Q&A site

This is now effectively done: there's a private Team for moderators set up on Stack Overflow. New moderators are invited into the team, while those who step down have their access removed at the same time. So far, this seems to be working well. I was... Pretty solidly against this idea for many ...

Catija

Thanks :D

Shog9

and just for fun... Moderators over time (slightly inaccurate):

Catija

Huh, nice even increase, though.

Transcript for