@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog meta.SE probably isn't an API key
@thesecretmaster nah, just crazier roads/drivers than normal around July 4
I have nothing against California (mostly), but it does seem like the more Californians move to our state the crazier roads get. I've personally observed way more silly accidents in the last few years, and it correlates really well with Californian immigration.
also kinda makes sense - you have to drive crazy in some parts of CA, then you move here and it doesn't mix well with the people who aren't used to it.
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...
spam is unique in that sense because it's just spam and there's nothing to be salvaged. Editing out links from something which is fundamentally spam is thus pointless
> I believe it will make the rest of the community more open and beginners more willing to participate if questions that boil down to syntax errors that OP's lack the experience to identify aren't panned or down-voted.
@SomewhatMemorableName Me neither. I think this'll ultimately cause experts to quit (because then maybe 1 in 10 unclosed questions will have a mild chance of being possibly not a complete waste of their expertise) and that'll result in fewer good answers for the new users this claims to serve
@peterh How would you distinguish a user that cares enough to learn and become productive on the network from one who couldn't care less if he was being paid to do so?
And how do you justify the vastly increased volunteer effort to attempt to teach everyone with the latter outnumbering the former like 30:1?
This is the asymmetry of effort that just can't scale on a network like this. If we expect volunteers to put in more effort per user in an attempt to teach them, then the amount of new users has to be reduced drastically in relation to volunteers or the volunteers will just ... y'know ... stop
@Magisch It's like most these schemes - 'someone else will do extra work'. Extra time spent on reviewing comments for 'niceness', extra effort teaching 'Computers 101' without a teachers' salary or training. Not a problem - 'someone else' will do the work for free:(
If you have 900 new questions by people who need to be made to understand in some fashion that they need to spend more effort to make it answerable ... and 800 of those won't care for suggestions because they're 10 minutes before homework handin and have no time or care left, then asking volunteers to even spend an extra comment or two explaining things better already doesn't scale.
the curt and short comments (or no comments and just votes) are borne of pure necessity
nope, I was referencing other types of changes. Like YAYToS!, IlluminatiStaffMemberResignments, BeNice$ells and so on. Lately the network feels odd and unhappy.
@Magisch I would probably done the same, not wanting to spend more time on dupe-searching than the OP did on writing the question, (never mind trying to write software to implement the requirement).
I'm pretty sure you could hammer this out in 20 minutes or so
maybe less if you didn't care too much about edge cases
Genuine question though, is this close reason too harsh? If so, which generic close reason would be appropriate?
> I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because in order for us to help you with your issue, you need to provide some indication of what you have tried to solve the issue, and where you're struggling. Stack Overflow is not a code writing service.
@Magisch You can't. So, we should give all possible support to them in the beginning. Not closing their questions, not voting down, and so on.
@Magisch I think the best would be if the first 3 posts of users would get some "extra protection", i.e. they wouldn't be allowed to be deleted or downvoted, and exclusively positive toned comments were allowed below them. Even if they are crap. Simply the site loses more with the hostility expelling newbies.
Any nonstandard handling of posts would soak up more expert time, that doesn't scale.
@peterh That would turn the site into a yahoo answers style wasteland in a few weeks, if not days.
Imo we need more downvotes, more closevotes and more delete votes. And some way to make more new users read and follow guidance before posting. The issue of snark is in my opinion in large part due to the uneceasing avalanche of crap that volunteers are subject to, which only grows.
iirc the feelings and actual disposition of the question author themselves is just a distant third or fourth on the priority list when determining what to do with a post, with the first being "Is this/can this be made into good Q/A" and the second "Is this likely helpful to future visitors" and then maybe "Is this interesting and/or likely to encourage our experts to answer"
oh, joy, when someone chooses to use autofixture to create mock data for their tests cases... and almost every entity they use contains a circular reference
Put another way, how could new users that get discouraged by mild snark and correct application of the existing documented rules become productive contributors when we expect contributors to both tolerate snark and insults from new users and to fulfill the syssiphean task of correcting question quality? It seems to me like you'd just be setting up the new users for delayed disappointment in this case. Their first 3 posts getting new user protection wouldn't prevent their 4th through 10th post
2
from getting slammed until they run into a post ban, either. If the expectations are poorly communicated no amount of sugarcoating can prevent the oncoming expectation vs reality clash.
@Magisch Well, with burner accounts, what happens after the first post is irrelevant:(
'Special' help cannot be given to new users, because it is not reliably possible to identify new users. PHP will turn into the best language ever before I am obliged to give any special treatment to a set of users dominated by spammers, trolls, deadbeats, vampires, h/w dumpers, ring-voters, puppets, 'teach me basic syntax' etc.
even better, we know we can't determine newness by ip address, since many users share these legitimately. Now, what stops a person who is determined to not adhere to quality standards from making a new account every 3 questions?
If you expect bad and unfixable questions to get anything but the most expedient treatment in any special circumstance then people are going to abuse the absolute hell out of that. They already do without any extra incentives just to get around the negative quality blocks.
Also, if I'm a new user, and my first three posts all get really nice and helpful treatment, upvotes etc and people make heroic efforts to fix them, then i'll expect that going forward
And going to be even more sorely disappointed when "Normal" treatment kicks in. "But I was doing so well! surely the downvoters are at fault, my first three questions were just like this and everyone was so helpful"
at the cost of be a little too direct, I fear this clip from Gumball is somehow summarizing how a lot of users have interpreted this "be nice" thing (and... probably not just the users).
It sounds good to allow lenient treatment to new ACCOUNTS, stop downvoting and only allow 'extra nice' comments but...... who is going to do the commenting? It won't be me, and I doubt if Magisch etc. will bother either. It will fall to the exisitng newer users who have some skills and time to volunteer - the 'good' new users. After a month of answering the same 'Computer 101' questions, they will just give up too, and then only the garbage will be left:(
By the way, since comment civility still seems to be the topic du jour here, my 4-comment mini-rant at meta.stackexchange.com/questions/311737/… might be interesting reading for some of the pro-welcoming folks here who think my take about "diametrically opposite standards of what polite criticism looks like" is nonsense or is just apologia for rudeness.
@Magisch I would object to this not on the basis of tone but because I think it's not a valid reason for closure. IMO showing "what you've tried" is basically never what a question really needs; the only case where it helps to narrow a question is when "what you've tried" turns out to be a nearly-working solution with one small issue to fix... in which case the question should've been an MCVE illustrating that one small issue in the first place
@Magisch But, instead using AI to kill posts, the AI should be used to 1) fix posts 2) focus the few reviewer resources to the cases, where it might most profit to the SE.
If the OP got stuck somewhere due to some error or unexpected behaviour, constructed a minimal example showing that error or behaviour, and asked how to fix it, that would be valid
But simply throwing a broken attempt on top of a requirements dump doesn't improve it, and will probably make it worse
since then there are implicitly two questions: 1) write me a solution to this requirements dump and/or 2) fix all my broken code
I can't help but wonder why YouTube added a dedicated video upload button. It's almost as if they wanted more videos from one-off uploaders that don't even stand a chance to reach the point they'll get an ad slapped onto their video and YouTube gains the ability to grab money off of it.
i mean... if they make it easy, sure, they'll get more sand, but, they just may also get more pearls. If the cost of sand is low enough (space/bandwidth) it becomes more than worth it even if the majority of the uploads it causes never make YT any $$
Trusted on meta.stackexchange.com
+1000 rep on meta.stackexhange.com
Users who have 30k+ reputation on a particular site surely know enough about the stackoverflow system to fully participate on meta.stackexhange.com, why not carry over some of their rep, say, 1k over to meta.stackexchange.com?...
@KevinB Association bonus feels weird too. Curious why meta.SE doesn't just pool your rep, network-wide (sans association bonuses) or use your highest site-specific rep, and lock it, ala site-specific meta...
@canon I don't believe it's actually a good idea to let anyone post at MSE regardless of rep gaining or loosing. Any user already can post here without any restriction, and gaining or loosing privileges is a completely different kettle of fish. I already discussed that stuff with a person I am ignoring now.
so, if all your rep is in SO, and the discussion affecting SO is on MSE, you can't downvote anything... or you have an extremely limited pool from which to express dissent.
And it's silly that established users on sub-sites can't participate in meta-voting which affects their sub-site because they haven't built up the meta-rep to be able to vote, "I disagree."
As of right now, this is done: the "vote down" privilege is awarded at 100 reputation here on Meta Stack Exchange.
This should allow folks with the association bonus - or those who earn 100 reputation by participation here - to downvote questions as much as they wish (particularly important for...
To gain privilege at Meta SE to participate more, you have to contribute as anywhere else in 1st place. Otherwise you're not really trusted to leave DVs or CVs.
Anyhow...both me and the kickstarter of the inclusion project happen to hail from the same city, so I hope we can meet together. We have a lot of things to talk about and a lot of ideas to come up with. Someday, we can go public, and talk about our concerns publicly, and people will listen to us without shooting us down. But that last part's just a fantasy.
Lemme try on my own: Meta German Language is different from Meta Stack Overflow. There are different site policies applied. Meta Stack Exchange is for network wide concerns, and also has different policies.
@shog9 the core of the argument is this: I say it feels bad (#jhanlon) when you don't have the power to downvote (with impunity) discussion points or feature requests on MSE when they directly impact a site upon which you're already trusted.
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...
