Tavern on the Meta - 2018-07-05 (page 2 of 3)

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12:00 PM

imo no, it's explicitly inviting feedback from people who are not mse regulars

That was my thought too, but I haven't been around here that long ;)

@ShadowWizard ^^^ Looks like you have enough rep to earn the protect/unprotect privilege? meta.stackexchange.com/q/312038/369802 is protected and that seems like that's not a good thing?

@Tinkeringbell no. Protection removed.

:)

Thank you :D

Better deal with bad answers one by one.

In the past protection was also auto protected whenever the question had more than 30 answers, so the sandbox got auto protected over and over...lol

Journeyman Geek

Yuo

Yup even

12:06 PM

Yeah. I guess I missed all the drama and deleted posts. It's kinda fun starting over, and really having to work for the rep :)

For anyone who thinks that a single vote can't change the outcome of an election...

@Mithrandir Hahaha. Guess it's not that people disbelieve a single vote can change the outcome, but that their single vote changes it. At least, every time I try, it doesn't :P

Yvette won by a couple dozen votes too

in the SO election

@Tinkeringbell like Lottery! :D

o/

12:12 PM

@Tinkeringbell starting over? On MSE? You had account in the past with more rep?

a g3

o/

Let's see if Smokey can greet again...

boo

looks like an old version/fork??

@ShadowWizard Nah, more like I started on IPS about almost a year ago, and got a lot of privileges very quickly. I like the challenge of MSE :)

The idea of achieving something :)

@Tinkeringbell ohh... yeah. So your first site was IPS? How did you reach it?

Ask not whom the bell tolls for ... it tolls for thee

12:15 PM

And for free

Technically, my first account was made on SO when I started learning to program. I wanted to upvote stuff, and give people points... only to realise that people wouldn't be getting rep from my votes ;)

I saw IPS in HNQ, and had a question I thought I could ask there.

30 more answers in discussion on mso and I'll have the gold badge

@Tinkeringbell and the rest is history.... nice.

@ShadowWizard Sorta :P

That's a great example why HNQ is a good concept, in its core.

Many people oppose it...

12:18 PM

Yep, I used a lot to kill time during lunch breaks :)

Or when the automatic tests were running

Not only that, it draw people to small sites that needs them.

I'm pretty sure that without HNQ, IPS would have been a very small and very empty site now.

The downside, as I see it, is people posting just for the sake of having Hot question, even to the point of making up stories.

@ShadowWizard It would have had a lot more time to grow, and a lot less growing pains.

And on IPS it's pretty easy, nobody can really tell if what you tell is true or not.

@Tinkeringbell but not enough users base, IMO.

@ShadowWizard Sadly, yes. But the same goes for sites like Workplace or Parenting I guess...

@ShadowWizard To be honest the user base actually moderating stuff is quite small still.

@Tinkeringbell true, but less. Drama on IPS has huge impact. From what I see, Parenting and Workplace are less drama and more... professional.

12:23 PM

@Tinkeringbell *long sigh*

"My mother beats me, what can I do?" can be asked, in theory, both on Parenting or IPS, but on IPS it will get x100 votes.

makes it kinda discouraging for that small group TBH

@ShadowWizard nope. on IPS it'll get closed.

> Unfortunately, this question appears to be asking “What should I do?”, which the community has determined to not be a good fit for Interpersonal Skills Stack Exchange. We can’t decide for you what to do; after you determine what you want to do, we can help you with your goal, but we can’t make these decisions for you. Sorry.

@Tinkeringbell looks like you and @Catija can hold the site just fine... ;)

@ShadowWizard Hahaha :) True. But it says a lot that a site with less than 5 questions per day needs 4 mods ;)

@Mithrandir huh, well, that's just a quick raw example. But question along those lines, involving parents and domestic violence.

12:25 PM

"close as off topic > needs professional advice"

@Mithrandir Ideally... but I'm sure in the meantime it will get tons of votes.

@Mithrandir nope, it will get an accepted answer with suggestions to use personal threats.

@Derpy We're working on that ;)

@Derpy oh, you got reply to your contact form?

I guess no judging by your mood.

@Derpy We have a meta discussion open about that

12:27 PM

not yet, but I am willing to wait a little more before switching to "I told them, I've done my part" open.

@Magisch that meta discussion has no reason to exist IMHO. That phrase isn't just bad, it is borderline criminal solicitation.

Somewhat Memorable Name

less than 5 questions/day but over 50+ comments/day...

@Derpy dont have to tell me that, I'm all for removing it

> then that she will have a complicated life if the dogs happen to look at my children. And by complicated I mean hell complicated. Like afraid to leave her apartment complicated.

@SomewhatMemorableName I estimate closer to 65 chat.stackexchange.com/users/331423/ips-comment-bot

Could be taken as instructing OP to make direct criminal threats against his neighbour

for feeding dogs, no less.

@Derpy Problem is that in an earlier discussion, 'mace him' (in an answer to my first question on IPS) was suggested and discussed... and the consensus seemed to be to not remove it because it was a violent solution.

12:30 PM

@Magisch already contacted the staff about that. Not to remove that - that will still come later, to act on the "why didn't the site mod act on it" part of the issue.

@Derpy One of the site mods of IPS is in here right now

@Magisch Yet IPS has another meta where consensus seemd to be that if advice may be illegal, we leave a comment warning that this might end you up in jail (see the links I provided)

Why don't you ask them?

@Derpy Hi, nice to meet you :)

I'm an IPS mod, and I hope my latest messages in here shed some light on why I'm hesitant to outright delete the answer.

@Magisch two, Catija also in the room.

12:32 PM

@ShadowWizard she might not be awake based on the timezone

I'm not making it a secret that I asked the staff to look into that post and why the community had the idea to even upvote it

I know tink is because she's active right now

@Derpy I meant that you could ask tink why not you might get a faster response then the contact us will give you

@Derpy Well, if the staff have clear opinions on this, I'd love to hear it too, since it might help me too :)

@Magisch she joined few minutes ago, probably following my ping... though maybe only from mobile and got back to sleep. ;)

As for the upvoting, I think that question may have hit HNQ at some point.

It has 16 downvotes, which is A Lot for IPS standards...

12:34 PM

@Magisch but @Tink isn't SE staff, think @Derpy is looking for some official policy that will also bind moderators.

the answer was edited to remove at least the direct suggestion to use a personal threat - which again, is probably even illegal in many countries and then rolled back by the original poster.

@ShadowWizard Which would be very welcome :) I tried searching MSE and found nothing .

@ShadowWizard preciselly.

@Tinkeringbell because there is none.

Somewhat Memorable Name

@Tinkeringbell based on Google result, yes, it hit HNQ. (it returns sites other than IPS)

12:35 PM

Maybe it can be part of the new CoC? @Derpy

Somewhat Memorable Name

:7078072 I chose "anxiety", then "mark this question with alarm"...

To be clear, I am not saying that it is the site mod fault. I say that that thing has no place here, and if the site mod really have their hand tied and can't remove it without opening a can of worms, flames and rant, it is time for Mr. shog9 to come and use the old "You will do it like I say because I say so"

@Derpy but even Shog can't decide on a policy with big impact on his own.

i.stack.imgur.com/JlOfl.png + i.stack.imgur.com/anpTu.png this

was also on IPS until a meta thread removed it. At +60 too with only a few downvoted

@Derpy Honestly, I wish he did that and then stuck with it.

12:40 PM

So the power of HNQ to upvote some truly ludicrous trash is unbroken

I think communities should be able to decide what contents fit, even if those contents are not fitting in other places, to some extent. e.g. there was Sexaulity.SE site (reached beta) where people wrote things and words that couldn't ever be written on any other SE site.

I think the extent stops at making illegal threats, though

@ShadowWizard I used his name only because in the popular imagination he is the one with the geostationary burination death-laser satellite remote control

So in the very least, such contents deserve to be discussed, not removed on sight.

one thing is discussing controversial content. One is advocating illegal acts.

I think that there was a fuss about slavery related answers on some religion-related site some time ago. But at least those where question that asked if "insert religion doctrine here" really didn't consider slavery as a bad thing. That I can tolerate.

12:43 PM

@Derpy 'illegal acts' is a slippery slope though for a world-wide web network

That is also true

criticising the communist party is illegal in china.

as is any material or facts that display it in a less then stellar light

uhhh

I flagged this r/a: meta.stackexchange.com/a/312152

@Tinkeringbell we don't allow discussion about piracy or where to download a cracked copy of a software, right? You think that suggestion someone to use violence threats to "solve" problems is any different? What next, a suggestion to steal stuff from your office on Workplace.SE to get revenge for something?

I'm not sure if we should actually destroy it, but still, eughhh...

@Derpy There was an answer like that "Keep their laptop until they pay you in full"

@Derpy There is a line, IMO. "I suggest you go kill your neighbour" is indeed crossing any possible line. But "I suggest you to be aggressive with your neighbour" might just be on that line. Won't suggest it myself of course, but also not sure it's as extreme as you think.

it is not "aggressive". It is plain and simple "tell her that she should be scared to leave her house". That sound plain and simple like a "death" threat

12:49 PM

@Derpy not it's not.

It's intimidation using aggressive language.

@Derpy It doesn't have to be death threat. There's loads of stuff that can make people hesitant to leave their house (source, been on the receiving end of that together with my parents).

It does sound like the kind of thing police would grab you for saying though

At least to verify that you're not actually planning anything

@Magisch And that's not true either, police over here could do nothing. Lack of evidence

So it's fundamentally bad advice imo

@Magisch Which gets downvotes, but not necessarily deletion, on SE?

12:50 PM

@Magisch Or something Don Vito Corleone would say....

@Tinkeringbell idk. Imo it should be deleted but I'm not sure enough to vtd it (if I even could)

@Magisch Same problem here :)

if I had a mod hammer I would hold it for now and await a meta / staff consensus, which seems to be what you're doing, so we're in agreement for now

I did downvote it though because I believe threatening your neighbours looks bad on you and doesn't solve anything

As I said, I am not trying to convince anyone. I will be clear though. The idea that thing is accepted here disturbs me. A lot. Because of this I asked the staff to have a look at it and take some action. Will accept either outcome, but obviously I shall add that said outcome will probably influence my future level of contribution here.

@Derpy well.... you try to convince SE staff.

12:54 PM

@ShadowWizard I reported them something they may be unaware of.

It's totally your right to think this way and to back off only because others think in a different way, but I find it sad.

@ShadowWizard If I have some expectation about the "be nice" culture of a community, shall I discover that expectation were wrong I think it is pretty reasonable to "drop the towel" in any attempt to help moderating with standards that apparently are "too high" for the rest of the community, right?

I think the recent push is more about a different kind of niceness though

It is not any different form what multiple users here already did when they claimed to have stopped flagging NAA posts because of repeated declined flags

Somewhat Memorable Name

> tell her that she should be scared to leave her house

reminded me of

> What caused this insect fear? If this continues you will never go out of doors, you do know this yes?

1:08 PM

I not sure how those are similar but... yea, I guess.

Somewhat Memorable Name

context: a Gardening & Landscaping HNQ bombarded by a single high-rep user's emotional comments (and an answer)

out of curiosity, @ShadowWizard... have you noticed that the "scared to leave her house" line is followed by a "the fist will remind her there is more than her and her dog"?

1:28 PM

@SomewhatMemorableName I do somewhat agree though

People are really irrationally afraid of insects. A lot of them are very beneficial

Somewhat Memorable Name

I agree on that aspect, but the wordings.... yeah, this is subjective though...

for instance people hate silverfish, but they prevent mold formation

@Magisch Can cobblestone even go moldy in the first place?

@Derpy Maybe not cobblestone, but the rest of your stuff

baseboards, floor, etc

plastic linings

near your shower in particular

they eat a lot of the stuff (polysaccharides) that mold needs to grow

you... didn't get the joke, did you?

user image

^ does this help ^_^?

1:37 PM

I totally didn't

but now I do

I actually like silverfish though

they're nice

although my plant spider preys on them

Journeyman Geek

2:11 PM

engadget.com/2018/07/05/…

\o/

@JourneymanGeek Meh. EU is overrated.

Even if they had put it through, they probably wouldn't have had the power/resources to enforce it.

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell true but the EU kinda has passed a lot of common sense laws...

and this... wasn't

@JourneymanGeek \o/

I can cancel taking time off to yell at people in front of the building

Journeyman Geek

0_0

With a sign? And a beard?

no beard

but I was actually gonna make a holiday out of joining one of the announced protests

Journeyman Geek

2:22 PM

REPENT! YE (redacted) OF BABYLON! ENTERTAINMENT OWNS YOUR SOUL! YOUR SOULS ARE FORFIT AND YOU WILL BURN BEFORE STALLMAN'S RAGE!

o_O

in Discussion on answer by stormy: Is it possible to design a garden that is free from insects and pests? on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, Jun 28 at 14:28, by stormy

@whatsisname Animals have excellent immune systems. As long as animals, and humans are included, are not living in the stress of population overload those immune systems take care of us. Once the stress of over population reduces our immune system then we are in trouble. Then we see population increases, slow. Homosexuality is part of this population explosion negative feedback. We humans are in no Universe I know smart and wise enough to mess with changing anything. Learning to live with all other life is far more important to learn to do. We TRY ideas before those ideas are credible.

Journeyman Geek

0_0

@JourneymanGeek I guess my e-mail helped ...

Journeyman Geek

@rene they feared flower rage?

@Magisch That might deserve a chat flag...

Or I'm missing some sarcasm?

2:29 PM

@JourneymanGeek WHAT AN HORRIBLE NIGHT TO HAVE A CURSE

@JourneymanGeek I think so ... IIRC this was the first time I actually took action to reach out to those people that govern on my behalf the state of the european union.

Journeyman Geek

ah

nice ^^

Not sure if I will ever do it again

2:56 PM

Woohoo! First gold MSE badge :)

3:12 PM

→ 1 message moved to Chimney

was going to suggest the same.

3:27 PM

→ 65 messages moved to Chimney

@Magisch I wonder how mods are supposed to handle content like this (from someone who sadly seems to be a tad mentally ill) while complying with the proposed new Code of Conduct's requirement that we not discriminate on the basis of "neurodiversity".

3:54 PM

hmm, vandalism but I can't rollback there

4:36 PM

@Derpy no, I only read the quote posted here.

I say we blame this all on Monsanto/Bayer

Always

5:38 PM

FYI to anyone that I owe an email to: I'm just getting caught up in my inbox, not ignoring you, well, at least not yet.

You could say that your email software is ignoring those emails...

That's technically true, as my email software lacks consciousness, despite what Google might have you believe.

Wait, so if a tree gets ignored in the forrest, does anyone have to be awake?

A tree in a forest is never truly ignored. It always annoys the grass underneath.

@TimPost Will you keep us posted?

I could just not resist

(a tree in Forrest Gump is a pretty major health issue, BTW)

5:46 PM

I hope that reply wasn't punishable

Will you allow us to punch you in the face?

... too far?

@Magisch I'm way worse than you. One moment, I actually just found a use for Twitter's search feature

@randileeharper you kidding?! My puns are tear-able.

Tweeted by tinkertim on June 1, 2016 at 5:23 PM in reply to randileeharper

tear-able I say.

wow

thats a whole new level

I know.

That should be a pun-ishable offence

5:59 PM

You can't get to my level unless you strip down to super hero footed pajamas and code PHP in a dark bathroom in front of the mirror at midnight.

user image

I hope your job has become slightly less unpleasant in the past couple of days

user image

The "G" in Gmail stands for "Guilt"

@TimPost Because of the Code of Conduct?

code of timgettingspammedagain

6:08 PM

Code of Misconduct

It started backing up when I posted that thing about holding comments to the same standard as answers as far as snark goes. People feel so horribly threatened when they perceive you taking something away from them, even if it's a loophole in which they can get away with being an asshole just in case they need it.

Some people are very proud of their snark

Lightning literally struck approximately 15 meters from my window as soon as you typed that. You have powers.

stack wars 2: revenge of the snark

Someone re-caption Hans from die hard as KRAAAAANNNNSSSS (snark spelled backwards)

6:11 PM

On a more serious note, are you guys playing the CoC post with maximum permissiveness for answers (eg only delete in the worst of worst cases)?

Because there's a post blatantly insulting shog that's been up for a day, i wonder if we should coordinate to nuke it

X Men 1 - Sabertooth is stricken by Storm's lightning

@Magisch The one saying shog has a reputation?

yea

We've always had a policy against just trash talking people in posts, right?

There was another even more unpleasant one earlier but apparently it's been successfully nuked

@Magisch I'm allowing anything that looks like a good-faith expression of feelings with some effort to temper them, within limits. Outright hyperbole isn't cool, but one can dig up more than a handful complaints about myself or shog on meta sites, so ...

At least the other one is gone, that was just full of vitriol

and also pretty unhinged

6:15 PM

Yeah, I deleted that one as soon as I saw it

Then there was the one which was just a screenshot of the other one that just got deleted

sigh

Probably deleted about 100 comments so far, but I'm trying to make room for anyone that seems to have at least the intent of bringing something constructive, even if it's a list of fears they can't quite explain, to the table.

I have a case of that

Raw emotional reactions are useful for Donna, it lets her know what the copy is provoking, and lets her set up more targeted interviews and stuff.

So as long as they are at least couched in good intentions, and at least not totally disrespectful, I'm tending to allow them to stay.

and I can practice my new being nice approach ...

6:19 PM

"Be nice." "You kidding? This hammer cost $225, you can't get any nicer."

I think one of the reasons people are so damn protective of the status quo is that there's nothing like stack exchange on the web. There is nowhere to run off to. Even on the high point of complaining, we're still looking down from a ivory tower compared to the likes of reddit et al.

Wait? There is more?

I'm going to write an intermediate post to remind folks of something pretty important, most people have little to nothing to worry about. There's also a misconception that since we're making a lot of headway on policy stuff we must be putting quality changes on the back burner - not the case, we're working on a ton of stuff around helping new users not create the perception that they need chiding.

I assume the policy team is not the software development team

at least mostly not

It is, actually.

Well, two different teams, but the same people on both, for the most part.

6:24 PM

interesting

Since y'all mentioned serial voting in the CoC maybe we might see some improvements on detection there

Kind of depressing to see how many people get away with no punishment with it, even in large quantities. Of course though that might be sampling bias

The policy team (welcoming team) is a small subset of DAG, with the addition of some data science folks and people from community, plus research interns, and even some third-party deep learning consultants and such.

@Magisch Planned. First stab at it is better just-in-time "You may not realize it, but you look kinda shady always voting for your friends and nothing else" -- 80% of it is just caused by bad UX.

Maybe 20% of it is offices attempting to get collaboratively written questions more visibility, and of that, maybe 10% is someone actively trying to bump rep for posterity or to get privileges.

But most of it is just people not understanding how much we care about it.

Looks really bad from the outside tbh

But considering the volume I kind of believe those percentages

We have a plan to automate 95% of it away, mods would just need to sign off on the system reversing a bunch of stuff if we didn't hit a specific level of certainty. That's coming. First priority is help people reach their full question-asking potential much sooner, which we're actively working on.

Honestly, if people could write better titles and tag appropriately, they wouldn't feel such a need to get something 'bumped' with bogus upvotes in hopes of getting an answer sooner.

Ahh okay

My flag operation is soon gonna be obsolete then :D

Most questions that get a bunch of suspicious upvotes are usually okay at least, just lacking a decent title, framework tag, or closing that more specifically tells people what's needed.

It's answers where suspicious votes tend to lead to shenanigans that we need to have robots better reversing.

6:32 PM

In my experience serial upvotes are mostly on answers, though

If I had to guess I'd say about a 75/25 split in favor of answers

With a bunch of really blatant voting ring going on

That is all without access to any back end tools, so grain of salt etc

Ah yeah, you can pretty much see what's suspicious without back-end tools, those just help give color to stuff that's actually probably benign. But the smoke shows pretty readily with just public data

I'm around 1500 serial voting flags in, it's usually really obvious, although again, grain of salt, Idk how much of my flagging results in mod action (only roughly)

Most people just do not care to hide themselves at all

Leading me to believe a lot of them don't know its bad

@Magisch They don't care that it's bad.

Assuming good intent, they probably have no idea

Most of these users have very little total interaction with the site

to expect them to crawl into the help pages and meta to find out something which isn't exactly standard on other sites is probably a step too far

@Magisch Well, SO is sinking in good-intent quicksand:(

6:40 PM

Problem is, they wouldn't know to care. When SO started, voting and editing were the whole new rage, but we never did anything so folks would continue to know why they were novel, we just assumed folks would know.

We're like 6 1/2 years behind on our new user experience, it essentially sucks, and it's our fault for letting it get that way.

@TimPost This is true, but smoke isn't enough to convict

@Magisch I'd like to think people would be able to tell vote fraud wasn't ok without it being explicitly explained to them..

Sterling Archer

@Shog9 could I ask a favor -- you posted the room activities before, could I ask for an updated version?

In some cultural circles it might be seen as polite and deferent to upvote your colleagues or friends

Sterling Archer

/is there a way for me to generate that information?

@Magisch We've seen that in high power-distance countries.

In Asia, in particular.

6:53 PM

@ɥʇǝS I don't use online communities a lot... but the other sites I use don't have rules against not upvoting friends/colleagues. Facebook actually encourages liking everything your friends post...

I know because i've seen literally hundreds of such incidents, some of which were quite spelled out in their intent

not necessarily malice, but just cultural differences

It's important to not go straight for the pitchforks when seeing it

@Tinkeringbell Ohh, right. I was thinking socks, not voting for friends.

That's my bad.

Literally most serial voting is voting for friends and colleagues, I suspect

@ɥʇǝS Socks might get you into trouble almost anywhere, just like bots :)

But I think SE is actually one where there's the most/best control on that.

@Tinkeringbell I wouldn't say that tbh

Moderators don't have very good tools to suss them out without getting reports directly, and the community has absolutely none

6:57 PM

@Magisch But compared to other online communities, at least here's rules?

And sometimes something does get done

other communities have rules

Yet I've just been perusing the ToS of Imgur, and I can't find anything on bots or socks, or vote fraud... nor an option to report it if I did notice

And I've been playing an online game where people are absolutely not allowed to have more than 1 account. Yet when I complained about the guy I disliked a lot having 7!, nothing happened.

(And I basically send them a black-on-white written confirmation by the player that hose accounts where all his)

a lot of companies bend rules for paying customers

especially games

I think we scared tim off :p

7:10 PM

@Magisch I'm not that scary am I?

extremely scary parrot

Says the cactus with needles to scare everyone off :P

Plush cactus.

Okay, I'm out of retorts...

7:26 PM

🍰

7:40 PM

@Magisch Delurking. What I would like to know: Does serial voting rings do have a huge influence on the ranking of answers?

Not the right person to ask for this I'm afraid

Thing is: I have experienced that even when I got a bunch of downvotes, sooner or later the answer bumps up again when the answer itself is good.

Those which don't bump up: At the second view they are mostly...not so good.

So I have the experience that serial up/downvoting may be irritating, but sooner or later the voting works.

So while serial voting is clearly a problem for reputation farming: Are there indicators that this heavily skews ranking?

That's only the case in active tags

The questions i asked in coldfusion that were initially upvoted, are all negative now after years of revenge votes

From ? to ? (as example)?

as an example, was was +3, now it's -2

7:47 PM

Ok, this is approximately the same experience: If you are controversial, expect 2-6 downvotes.

This is normally counteracted by people who find the question/answer good. From -3 I climbed over the years to +5.

in other words, that theory only really works on questions that are "useful". Even though the question was good, if no one needs it, votes over time won't counteract malicious votes.

On my most popular answer for example, it's received 9 downvotes, but it'l never go in the negative

How many percent of all questions were going negative?

all 8 of them

er, 7

i managed to delete one

it was negative too tho

Hm....but you think they were high quality?

not all of them

7:52 PM

Only coldfusion or also other groups?

all but one of them was well received initially

all but one of them was coldfusion related

the javascript/html one became obsolete

Which group exactly? I don't see a coldfusion group?

?

group?

Group name

tag?

7:55 PM

Ah, its stackoverflow coldfusion tag

right?

yes

it's a very inactive tag

Your user page: "Yeah, I probably downvoted your post" :)

This may ruffle feathers.

indeed

But otherwise: 83k

So, serial downvoting seem not to be that problem apart from inactive tags gathering revenge votes.

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