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Tinkeringbell

17:00

'curators'? (Sorry, don't hang out on SO much other than looking up answers)

What does a curator do?

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Tinkeringbell Categorize questions, upvote good ones, downvote/close vote bad ones, etc...

Tinkeringbell

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog So basically just a user with enough rep to have privileges?

(And using them :P)

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Tinkeringbell One who actively engages in those privileges, yes.

Somewhat Memorable Name

Doing Triage and H/I review queue...

Martin James

@Tinkeringbell I used to call them 'user-moderators', but some meta said 'curators', and it's less typing:)

John Dvorak

17:03

I like the new term

Tinkeringbell

@MartinJames sounds great. If you find a load of sensible curators lying around, please share? :P

John Dvorak

o/

πάντα ῥεῖ

o/

Martin James

@Tinkeringbell They're all in SOCVR or on suspensions:)

Somewhat Memorable Name

>-|O

John Dvorak

17:06

Or perhaps call them "shibaris" because once the new zero snark tolerance policy goes into effect, they're inevitably going to get suspended :P

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Tinkeringbell What do you think about this?

48

Q: Experiment request: Temporarily stop showing characteristics about a user in the question preview to certain users

Judging from my overall experience on Stack Overflow and what I've seen happening with others, it might be that users' votes are confounded based on the reputation of the post author, or based on whether or not they are a new user. However, this is unproven. To help (dis)prove this, I have a pro...

Tinkeringbell

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog Looks like a lot of work... and also, isn't that exactly what reputation is for, to show people how good and trustworthy you are?

rene

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog this is handled, right?

Martin James

@Tinkeringbell Depends.... if a new account has 1 rep, it means 'we don't know how good and trustworthy you are. You may be Skeet II or a useless troll, we just don't know yet'.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

17:21

@rene Yes, Tim Post reopened it

Tinkeringbell

@MartinJames Yeah but that's... not a reason to let other people not see how great I am?

Martin James

@Tinkeringbell Yeah... it's balance between getting data and annoying users. I'm not convinced that the experiment, as proposed, is worth it:( A skilled statistician, (which I am surely not), may have another view, and I would defer to them. It would not bother me personally, but in general....?

I mean, I suspect that a very large data set would be needed to draw a significant correlation:(

Tinkeringbell

@MartinJames And I'm not too sure higher rep people get more votes just because they posted something and they are high rep... There's people that have a very high reputation, just because they post loads of answers. Then there's people that post a lot less answers, but their general upvotes-per-post ratio is much higher than that of some of the highest rep users...

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Tinkeringbell @TravisJ once thought that the latter meant that they contributed more

Martin James

@Tinkeringbell Yes hence my worry that a very large data set would be required and that analysis of it my be umm... 'challenging'.

Tinkeringbell

17:34

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog Their contributions are surely better appreciated. The rest depends on the metrics you use for measuring contribution.

Martin James

Then, if some correlation is found, what priority should it be given compared with other issues that need to be considered, and what could you do about it even if was found to be a significant problem?

I would prefer it if effort was directed towards the 'Ask Question' wizard.

Tinkeringbell

@MartinJames That wizard sure does sound useful :)

Feeds

I mean, it wasn't exactly MY thesis. When the FAA came to shut down our observatory for using the telescope mirror to shine light at airplanes, I took a thesis and a bunch of doctorates from the supply cabinet on my way out.

canon

17:51

all this talk of feelings... meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/370658/… gross.

Catija

Oooh, site redesigns are out.

canon

more cryptic icons, I hope

Somewhat Memorable Name

@Catija what? where? why? who?

Anne Daunted

@Catija So exciting!

Catija

3

Q: Rollout of new network site themes

As promised (albeit delayed), we are posting site themes for our first group of network sites for comment. The goal here is to allow the community in general and users of these sites specifically to see how the new theming will be applied to these sites. Again, we acknowledge that this is a pai...

discussion featured design navigation

The photography one actually looks really nice. They all feel really clean.

But, I don't use any of the sites, so I don't really know what's missing, so to speak.

Somewhat Memorable Name

17:55

SuperUser is the new MSE?

Anne Daunted

@Catija You can still compare it to the old (i. e. current) design, e. g. mi yodeya.

canon

MSE is the awkward purgatory of site governance

Somewhat Memorable Name

and AskUbuntu has to remove that toolbar...

canon

are the linux sites allowed to use a GUI? I feel like they should be terminal emulators.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@JoeFriend If I may ask, what's to happen with MathOverflow and the additional top bar on AU?

rene

17:59

@Catija hmmm, I actually went aawww they had to move the photo to the right bar

Somewhat Memorable Name

@rene to reduce the aawww, make the photo sticky

rene

@SomewhatMemorableName the blue colors seem to match perfectly indeed ...

Joe Friend

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog Obviously not all sites are designed yet. Mathoverflow will come later.

Catija

@AnneDaunted Yeah :) It's still somewhat different... when you know the site and the layout, it's easier to feel like someone moved your cheese. As an external viewer, I'd likely miss a lot of that.

Joe Friend

The current plan is to remove the top bar from AU since it's application/contents are inconsistent across the Ubuntu sites.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

18:01

@JoeFriend Did you figure out the terms of the special agreement for MO? What changes are you prohibited from making as a result of that? Will it adopt a new design with changes, or a special form of the old design?

Joe Friend

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog There don't seem to be any terms related to site design, but that said, I want to reach out to the community direct. Also, I'm working on posting directly in the site metas for each of the 9 sites in the first batch. Doing that now.

Catija

Oh, Joe! Will the "stock" become the beta theme? So moving to the darker blue from the speckled white/blue?

Martin James

@canon S'OK - the Linux users also use Windows sometimes, eg. when they want to deliver stuff that customers can use :)

Joe Friend

@Catija That's the plan

Catija

@JoeFriend Cool. It was a bit unclear. Maybe worth mentioning in the post that it's for all non-custom sites (beta & graduated sites without custom themes)?

Joe Friend

18:08

@Catija Feel free to edit the post to make that more clear. I'm working on the site meta posts.

Catija

Will do.

Somewhat Memorable Name

"graduated sites without custom themes"... yay! at last Anime.SE will get a new design... /(;_;)\

Tim Post

18:20

Photography (to me) looks a lot better with the image of the month in the sidebar. The nav on that site never felt right to me.

Catija

I'm a sucker for dark grey themes.

I love all of the camera bodies on the dark grey. Looks really fun.

Tim Post

Reminds me of high school, my wardrobe was so #444 #ccc and #666.

canon

@MartinJames heh

@TimPost what, no alpha channel?

Joe Friend

18:36

Okay, each impacted site now has a meta post notifying them about their coming soon theme.

Tim Post

In related news, Joe is out of band-aids and is furiously googling bee sting remedies.

Joe Friend

Well, not the sites using the generic theme (I'm not a total masochist) , but the sites with custom designs.

Catija

@Joe Who did the photo drawings? Tell them that they're really awesome.

Joe Friend

@Catija Aaron and a couple other folks in design did this first round. Once we've done this round I think we will be doing the rest of the sites in code. No more drawings. But we thought we needed the extra round of reviews this time.

This round was done in Sketch.

Catija

Do you know if M&TV will get to keep the film strip at all?

Joe Friend

18:49

@Catija Hopefully. I'd hate to lose that.

Catija

@JoeFriend I'll keep my fingers crossed. I'd hate for my M&TV shirt to become a misrepresentation of the site. ;) I suppose, at the least, the strip would still be in chat... but I know Napoleon would be very disappointed to lose it.

bjb568

docs.google.com/document/d/…

> If you’re here to help others, be patient and welcoming.

How is this a good thing?

Creating a burden to hand-hold users actively opposes the purpose of the site to provide long-lasting information that's relevant to multiple people.

Looking at some major tags, almost all of the new questions are useless and would fall under this close reason.

Magisch

Hey

Catija

There's no requirement for hand-holding users in that... The statement is supposed to imply "If you're going to interact with and help people, do so in a way that is actually helpful - by being patient and welcoming".

Magisch

A friend is here!

I will never get tired of joe friend and tim post puns

Catija

19:03

Only until he ditches us to go on vacation.

bjb568

I don't get why SO would bend over backwards to support the fat tail of questions that will benefit few people other than for ad money.

"If you’re here to help others", the best thing to do is reducing the amount of crap cluttering the site.

Catija

So vote to close and vote to delete? That hasn't changed.

bjb568

At least if SO wants to be a welcoming free debugging service, it should be transparent about that and not market itself as being for "professional and enthusiasts" when 99.9% of the site is irrelevant to them.

Closing and voting to delete doesn't work because it's not harsh enough. For it to work, you need FGITW moderation that's faster than FGITW answers.

Catija

Most of all of the sites is largely irrelevant to everyone, until it's not. If you don't use Pearl, questions about it are useless to you... just like if you don't watch Marvel movies, all of the questions about MCU are pointless to you on M&TV...

bjb568

You need to actively disincentivize answering crap questions or the cycle will continue.

Catija

19:09

So, because users answer bad questions, the people who ask them need to be treated unkindly? Seems kinda backwards.

bjb568

Irrelevant not because the technology is different, but because it's a question that a professional or enthusiast programmer would not ask.

Catija

Where does SO say that it's for professionals or enthusiasts only? As far as I'm aware, SO is and always has been for users of all levels of experience.

bjb568

@Catija The point isn't to be mean to people, it's to enforce quality standards. If you want the site to be targeted towards creating a useful knowledge base, people who are not professional and enthusiast programmers just shouldn't be here and posts that are not relevant to profressional and enthusiast programmers should be deleted.

@Catija stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic

Catija

Nothing about being welcoming means that you can't uphold quality. You're specifically confusing the two.

bjb568

You can't welcome posts that don't meat quality standards and expect to uphold quality.

Catija

19:13

@bjb568 Nothing on that page, as far as I can see says anything about skill level. People who are new to something can still be "enthusiasts".

bjb568

Of course.

Catija

Um... sure you can... by just not being rude when they ask the question.

Shog9

something to be watchful for in these discussions...

Your mosquito nets link got me thinking about the dangers of paternalism in these discussions; there's a nasty tendency for otherwise well-intentioned folks to look at the problems faced by [Africans|new users] and... start treating them like children, incapable of handling responsibility or making decisions for themselves. Something to watch out for! — Shog9 ♦ Jul 2 at 21:58

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@JoeFriend Have a nice vacation!

bjb568

@Catija The problem isn't easy questions, it's no-effort, localized, debugging questions.

It's the thought process of "my code doesn't work, so I'll post it on SO", whereas an enthusiast would think "my code doesn't work, so I'll fix it".

Catija

19:14

@bjb568 ... and that's why they have the question template prototype.

Shog9

I see a lot of folks assuming that, when talking about treating new users well, being welcoming, inclusive, accessible... We must necessarily be talking about people who cannot possibly post anything useful: the sort of "new user" who is generating frustration, being q-banned, etc. today.

That's... Not a good assumption. There are tons of smart, thoughtful, caring people who don't feel like this is the site for them right now and aren't looking for a place to dump their crap questions.

πάντα ῥεῖ

@Catija I am quite enthusiastic about every thing I learn as new :)

Catija

People who write questions that are bad can still be good question askers if we give them the help they need to write good questions... and that's a failing that we have to work on... and are.

Shog9

I mean... It ain't like the folks with crap questions are really struggling to ask them right now either, so...

but the paternalistic thing - the equivalent of Europeans getting all misty-eyed over African while singing "Don't They Know it's Christmas" - that's not an attitude that's going to be helpful for anyone.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

True.

Shog9

19:17

We want to help folks be better programmers. Not pat them on the head & tell them it's OK that they're bad at programming.

bjb568

@Shog9 I think it's understandable that an enthusiast would feel that the site isn't for them since almost everything you see within certain tags is bad questions and (ineffective) negative feedback to them.

Shog9

@bjb568 I think there are LOTS of reasons for folks to think that. Let's not put people into one bucket & write 'em off.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

As I've said before, it's all about tone, not the process of curation. You can (and should) close an off-topic question, but you shouldn't get mad at them or make them feel bad for posting a question.

17 hours ago, by Journeyman Geek

If we're seeing new users only as a problem, then we're basically building communities that will eventually die of attrition

Shog9

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog careful. "make them feel bad" is that paternalistic thing leaking through again. We shouldn't be unkind to people even if they don't care

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

That's exactly what I said.

bjb568

19:20

@Shog9 Right, there's multiple factors, but things would be a lot better if the site was set up to work well with either enthusiast questions or debugging help. As it is, it's more of the latter, but disgusted at itself about it with some wanting the former casting a nasty light on it all.

SNAFU

Heads up: We have maintenance scheduled for July 14th. More details can be found at https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/312374/planned-maintenance-scheduled-for-july-14-2018-at-1300-utc-9am-us-eastern

Tweeted by StackStatus on July 9, 2018 at 7:14 PM

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@bjb568 Which is why I posted that proposal for that question on the Developer Survey. @Shog9 What's your opinion on it?

Tinkeringbell

@SNAFU Ugh. Why right in the middle of lunch break?!

Shog9

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog I don't have an opinion on it. Did you answer that question you used as a dup-source yet?

Catija

@bjb568 I'm not a programmer by any stretch, but I've upvoted a few answers on SO that I've used for silly things like knowing how to convert a floating point number to a mixed fraction.

Magisch

19:22

Hmm

Travis J

There are, in my opinion, two main avenues of questions that users find troublesome. One of which is legitimately troublesome, the other I wish we were more lenient on. The first, where someone has no experience in the technology they are attempting and just asks before doing any work; this one is problematic, and also the source of a lot of snark response.

The second, where someone has some experience in the technology but not enough to know the difference between including too little or too much; this one is not problematic, as it can be improved through edits as well as generally worked out from domain experts who have been there. This tends to also generate snark from users, but in my opinion it shouldn't.

Catija

... and those are pretty basic questions, I would think... but not things that people necessarily memorize... because they may not be used often.

Shog9

@bjb568 here's my take on that: this is a much bigger problem for folks trying to answer, say, general language questions in the bigger language tags than it is for folks trying to build up knowledge for some niche tech / support their open source library / etc. Those have their own set of issues.

Travis J

Finding the exact bins to say what is problematic or not has been really hard here, close reasons, flags, WSOIN, what have you tried, acceptance rate, etc. Clearly those approaches have made some headway, but it is impossible to define the two categories enough in order to prevent someone talking down to others due to a lack of understanding.

bjb568

@Catija There definitely are good, useful simple questions like that, but they are only so many of those that can be asked. Over time, the average quality of simple questions within a tag goes down because the good ones have already been asked.

Travis J

19:24

I think asking users to at least consider the point of view of the askers when they at least have put some work in, and be polite about pointing out questions that clearly have issues, is only progress.

Shog9

@TravisJ Part of the problem here is that first category is a LOT easier to identify / feel like you've done something about than the second.

Travis J

@Shog9 Fully agree.

Shog9

Dropping a link to WSOIN / MCVE / idownvotedbecau.se is dead easy. You can do it entirely from muscle memory.

Even if that's not helpful, you get to feel like you've Done Something

bjb568

@Shog9 That's true, quality issues are very different at different scales of tags.

Magisch

I find idownvotedbecau.se inherently condescending

Shog9

19:26

Identifying which bits of information are missing from an otherwise-reasonable question requires you to know something about the topic, read the question, potentially engage with the author.

Travis J

I am in the second category often, and I normally just don't ask about anything anymore because of the negative response. For example, right now I am building a responsive BI dashboard with AnyChart.js. I wouldn't dare ask a question that didn't essentially have a built in answer because asking for an answer is seen as derogatory by so many users nowadays.

Magisch

No matter how hard the makers tried to avoid it. It's still a canned reason. People want to feel like someone at least took the time to look at their individual case and weren't like "yeah, no effort. 2s autocomment and moving on"

Travis J

"People want to feel like someone at least took the time to look at their individual case" so much this

Shog9

@Magisch almost any canned comment is condescending if misused. The question then becomes: is there any context in which a given comment isn't condescending?

bjb568

@TravisJ But that doesn't scale as long as there are so many questions due to them getting answers.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

19:27

What would be the purpose of posing such a question? To judge the strength of the insurgent movement trying to hijack SO to turn it into just some other help site? To identify candidates for reprogramming? (On which side?) More generally, is it imagined that the responses to the question would in any way influence StackOverflow's corporate behavior? — John Bollinger 2 mins ago

Travis J

I don't think canned comments are helpful because using one inherently comes with an assumption based on the type of question without addressing the nuance.

bjb568

People think close reasons are condescending too.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@bjb568 In that case, they should be reworded, not not used.

Magisch

@Shog9 I would posit that any auto comment is inevitably condescending. If I was an asker right now, I'd value personalized advice (even if its criticism, snarky, condescending itself, etc) over everything else. It shows people at least cared to break out of their 10 seconds a post destruction rhythm for me. It usually gives me something concrete to hang onto and improve

Shog9

This is why, in spite of the fact that it's a damn useful tool, we never built Benjol's script into the system: it's entirely too easy to spin up a big pile of comments that are irrelevant outside of a few narrow scenarios and then spam the site with them. You feel productive, your recipients feel condescended.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

19:28

Automatic canned comments?

Magisch

I stopped using autocomments userscripts for that exact reason

Travis J

@bjb568 I disagree with your statement. Individual attention does clearly scale. Answering questions has nothing to do with the quality of following questions.

Magisch

If I can't be bothered to adress my comment to the question at hand, I don't comment

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch I use mine to keep a set of meta links to general problems handy. Just insert and add to it. Works like a charm :)

Magisch

It does make a massive difference in how it feels to OP. Personalized advice feels like you're treated like a human, not like bad asker #129999123 today

bjb568

19:29

@TravisJ The attention of janitors who get burned out doesn't scale.

Travis J

Janitors often focus on too much negativity.

Shog9

...25.5K more questions now have a vba tag on 'em

bjb568

You can't have it take an extra minute to cast a close vote on a question because people wouldn't close questions.

πάντα ῥεῖ

@Magisch The only one I still have in use is @rene's famous Welcome to Meta SE ...

Travis J

An army of janitors will not create content.

@bjb568 I think drive by users who cast close votes but don't ask or answer should probably re-evaluate their use of the site.

Catija

19:31

I'm a big proponent of having the auto comments script but editing the comment 90% of the time to be more specific to the post I'm commenting on.

Travis J

There should be a sliding scale for reputation privileges.

rene

@πάνταῥεῖ Welcome to Meta Chat!

πάντα ῥεῖ

@Shog9 Ye moar scripting, ye moar half baked knowledge about serious programming (ducks) :3

Travis J

If you haven't contributed any content in the past year, I don't see why you should be moderating content.

Magisch

SE has room for either. And you don't get CV privileges by never answering. But I do think we need to remind ourselves from time to time that these are humans we're dealing with. In spite of the low response rate. In spite of the personal attacks. They're still humans and if we were in their shoes we'd appreciate being treated the part. It sucks if you're drowning in bad questions but still

rene

19:33

What? Is this not the garden?

Catija

@Magisch You don't? I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of 500 rep users on IPS that have not answered a question. ;)

Magisch

Sentient flowers do count, too....

bjb568

I think an interesting solution that some subreddits use (when they want the sub content to be professional/enthusiast level while they know that noobs will be driving by at 10x the frequency with content that isn't) is moving the noob questions into an aggregate "here are a bunch of noob questions" thread (which noobs are also encouraged to post directly to in the first place) to isolate them from the rest of the sub.
This keeps the quality of top-level posts high while also giving noobs a place to grow into the sub and its norms.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

The auto comment script simply prefills the form, it doesn't submit. You can edit before submitting.

πάντα ῥεῖ

@TravisJ Regarding general IT tech knowledge and google fu? Yup!

Magisch

19:34

@Catija s/answering/contributing at all

also IPS is kinda a special place. You don't usually get 200+ votes on a question by sheer accident

Martin James

@TravisJ You need 3000 rep to buy a car and a street-sweeper, else you cannot drive-by close-vote.

Travis J

@bjb568 reddit is toxic. The "let's just separate the noobs from the good users" is an offensive idea to be honest.

Shog9

@πάνταῥεῖ another 23K Excel questions on the way... ETA ~30 minutes

Magisch

Are you doing that VBA thing to finally shut up the 5 year ongoing debate featuring hundreds of edit wars?

bjb568

Similarly, for answers, some subs have insanely high thresholds like requiring links to peer-reviewed research, but then an subthread made by automod for general commentary and ideas.

Catija

19:36

@Magisch The top answer seems to prefer the status quo.

Travis J

@MartinJames Yeah, ish. I would be more in the camp of having earned 3k rep in the past 2 years in order to get the car/street-sweeper. At least.

bjb568

@TravisJ It's absolutely successful.

Shog9

@Magisch part of it. The rest will have to wait until we get saved tag searches

πάντα ῥεῖ

I hate Excel! Too dumb to plot me a diagram for more than 255 data rows. I just @$§!&&****! when noticing that! ;-)

Travis J

@bjb568 Reddit is a terrible source to cite. The only success there is trolling.

πάντα ῥεῖ

19:37

^Kudos!

bjb568

Most importantly tho, it's segregation based on the content of the post, not the level of the user.

πάντα ῥεῖ

^Karma!

bjb568

@TravisJ It's not productive to completely dismiss a competitor platform because you don't like part of it.

Reddit is really good at some things, one being a sliding scale of moderation based on the community. There are well-moderated high-volume subs, as well as free-for-alls.

Martin James

@Shog9 S'OK - all those who speak up for individualized comments etc. are gong to handle all those tens of thousands of questions who need them. The rest of us can just down and close vote a few.

bjb568

SE, on the other hand, has moderation generally fall apart the larger a site is.

Shog9

19:39

what

Travis J

@bjb568 Oh man, if I had been drinking something when I read that it would have been everywhere. Reddit as an example of community moderation?

Wow.

Shog9

to be clear, these are existing questions; they're just misstagged

Travis J

You are out of your mind.

Shog9

@TravisJ The problem with Reddit isn't that it can't be moderated; it's that there's no baseline standard for what that means.

bjb568

@TravisJ ok, good to see you're exemplifying your own ideal of not being toxic and offensive.

Martin James

19:40

@TravisJ Careful, else someone will flag that as r/a

Shog9

...

Magisch

@TravisJ Depends on the sub tbh

Some subs are great, some are less great. It's a site with almost no basline standards and everything else depends on the sub's volunteers

Travis J

@bjb568 It's true, you goaded it out of me. Using the example of separating out users based on your interpretation of their content as well as allowing an environment where users can do and say what they please to others is rather offensive in general.

πάντα ῥεῖ

@ShadowWizard Spongebob! I wasn't drunk. Let's sweep it.

Magisch

I prefer stackexchange, overall

Shog9

19:43

Reddit is like if we had a site for programmers where folks were expected to research their questions, a site for programmers where folks were expected to post pics with their questions, and a site for programmers where folks mostly just posted racist memes.

And were like... "Hey... that first one is OK... this is fine..."

bjb568

@TravisJ That's… not what reddit is.

Martin James

@TravisJ 'you goaded it out of me'... you mean, like snarky comments to the Sunday homework dumps?

Travis J

@bjb568 Of course not, reddit is such a warm and fuzzy place, right? Nope. It is 10% copied content, and 90% hate.

Magisch

@Shog9 And then you had two sites where people had a massively sexist echochamber and three more where people coordinated personal attacks on random others and four more where decency wasn't just not enforced, but expressly forbidden

And then you had the various incel communities which actually defy any explaination I could come up with that would be safe for work

Travis J

@MartinJames At least I know homework dump users are trying to improve something. Reddit is one of the most hateful sites on the internet.

bjb568

19:45

@TravisJ It depends on the community.

Martin James

@Magisch s/incel/excel

Travis J

Not really.

bjb568

Reddit isn't monolithic.

Magisch

some subs on reddit are excellent places I visit regularly for fun well curated content

Some of the community mods are on their toes and don't give in to the standardless abyss

Travis J

If you believe that, then perhaps you spent too much time looking with indifference at terrible points of view.

bjb568

19:46

Maybe you're basing your opinion on subs that allow politics and memes?

Magisch

reddit itself isn't inherently toxic. It just gives all the moderation power to users with no real screening process. This results in some truly awful dynamics, but it also can work out

HDE 226868

@bjb568 If I'm reading you right, are you saying that they move those questions away from the main section (subreddit? I'm not familiar with the terminology) so those who don't want to see them don't have to? Do those questions get the same attention and moderation as normal posts do?

Magisch

reddit is like if the CMs opened a SE site with no clear topic and just gave dictator mod powers to the first couple of people that came up with the idea. And then left them with no further guidance.

Recipe for disaster but can also work

bjb568

@HDE226868 They become second-level posts under a "beginner questions of the week" thread instead of being top-level posts.

Magisch

I would think that won't work for SO

Travis J

19:48

@bjb568 It gets into everything. You can find terrible content spread even in something as simple as a post asking about video game mechanics to something as complex as how to properly use inheritance in type script. It is literally everywhere.

Magisch

People would get upset their questions got moved there

bjb568

SE should not become reddit. I was just suggesting looking at what works with reddit moderation.

Magisch

SE is a very unique beat on the 'web

bjb568

@TravisJ It's most places, not everywhere.

@Magisch Of course, but they get upset at current moderation features.

Catija

@HDE226868 Kinda sounds like what happened in the ELU/ELL split, though I wasn't around when it happened, I'm going based on what I've picked up from metas.

Travis J

19:50

Okay, there is 0.0001% of posts which may not have that content... yet.

Shog9

@Magisch we tried that, briefly. It didn't work.

HDE 226868

@Catija It also reminds me of Math/Math Overflow, although those have completely separate histories, IIRC.

Magisch

figures

bjb568

I think it would really depend on implementation details.

Catija

Considering that I'm guessing A51 gets at least one "beginners' SO" proposal every month or so... I don't think that it's an idea that will fly.

bjb568

19:51

Perhaps an "advanced SO" would make more sense. :p

Tinkeringbell

@Catija I've always found those... a little strange. I mean, the beginner info is already on SO.

Shog9

There are lots of good subreddits centered around very specific, usually niche topics. They tend to suffer from the problems of all forums though; they either die out from lack of interest, or become increasingly self-referential (like if we did dup-closing but without the links and didn't particularly care if the new question referenced a new version of the software).

Travis J

Taking users who post questions that are ignorant about the tech they are using and dumping them offsite instead of creating content that deals with solving problems an ignorant user may have is completely backwards.

Shog9

@bjb568 Software Engineering

Catija

There's no reason to split them... ELL vs ELU actually makes a lot of sense because how you explain an answer/concept to a native/fluent speaker can be quite different than to a learner... but I don't know that beginners to programming necessarily need that as much.

Shog9

19:53

@Catija there's the thing... They do, but I doubt we could ever create a site for it.

Magisch

Would I still classify as an english learner under this scheme?

Shog9

What a new programmer thinks they need: a tutorial or reference for the programming language / platform they're using.
What a new programmer actually needs: 100 hours spent reading code written by someone who knew what they were doing + 100 hours spent fixing code written by someone who just thought they knew what they were doing.

Magisch

I'm not a native speaker but my english isn't terrible either

@Shog9 I can attest to the latter burning into my mind the desire to avoid bad practices in coding

Travis J

@Magisch Yes, although you are clearly very advanced.

Magisch

You don't learn to appreciate encapsulation until you've maintained / fixed a 1500 line behemoth function written by a complete beginner in ms access 2003 vba

Catija

19:56

@Magisch I'd not generally realize you weren't a native speaker from your written English, at the least... and, considering some of the mods on ELU aren't native speakers, you could probably pick either site to ask a question on.

Travis J

ELU is different though. ELL is more aimed at approaches for learning the langauge, ELU is more aimed at minutia about proper ways to compose the language.

@Shog9 So the top two answers of their broad question would give both of those things to them then :P

Catija

Um... not the last time I checked, it isn't... I've not been super active on ELL recently but "how to learn English" doesn't make up a lot of the site.

Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're saying...

Martin James

@Magisch Sounds like you were encapsulated in a correctional facility. Did you try asking for waterboarding instead?

Magisch

@MartinJames bonus points: one letter variable names

Triple bonus points: multiple scope layer overloarding of variables and sub functions depending on the context used

Shog9

Imagine if we taught languages the way we teach programming...
- Your first 90 days involve reading a bunch of simple sentences while the instructor strongly implies that these are mostly what you'll need for the rest of your life.
- Your next 90 days involve writing simple paragraphs that do not correspond to anything you would ever need to actually communicate.
- Finally, your masterwork involves writing a three-page letter to your grandmother in which you describe the history of central-american agriculture using a grammar of 80 words.

Martin James

20:00

@Magisch OK, I want to cry now. That and find a room with duvet walls to run into.

Travis J

@Catija It looks that way to me.

Catija

@Shog9 Hmmm... yeah. Considering I've complained about even tutorial sites not being "basic" enough for someone with zero knowledge... I probably could have figured that out... but by the same token, I've found useful answers on SO for basic questions, so splitting it up seems like it just makes more work for people looking for help.

Magisch

@MartinJames quadruple bonus points: relys on windows apis that were marked as deprecated but still somehow functional when xp came out

Martin James

@Magisch OK.. Vodka bottle now!

Magisch

my journey in programming was like step 1 here's your project there's no training tell us when you're done

Catija

20:03

@TravisJ I don't think I've ever answered a general "how do I learn English" question there and I've written over 300 answers on the site. But, as I said, I may just not be classifying those questions the same way you do.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

This guy summarizes it perfectly:

This question isn't about this at all. I think there is a difference between "being welcoming" and "doing people's work for them". That you seem to bring this up, makes it sound like you think those two things are time same, which is not the case. I agree that Stack Overflow has some work to do to be a bit more welcoming at times (and I have flagged unwelcome-but-not-quite-rude behaviour since the post, which has all been accepted by mods the last time I checked), but being welcoming doesn't doesn't mean people have to start doing work for random strangers on the internet. — Martin Tournoij 3 mins ago

Magisch

i'm actually reasonably sure in a business context my english would be seen as terribad. I have a lot of weird habits from learning from a mix of british and american english that are hard to undo

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

(too many Martins commented on my question)

Martin James

@Catija Much as I would like to see all the h/w dumpers, FGITW cucumbers etc. all ring-fenced in some ghetto, I can't see it working at all.

Magisch

that and my formal grammar training is nonexistant. I do most of my grammar by pure feeling alone. I couldn't tell you how to conjugate a plusquamperfect if you asked me and gave me 5 minutes to research it.

Shog9

20:05

@Catija a lot of the problems we have with Stack Overflow arise from how poorly we describe it to folks.

2

It's a reference site. That's how almost everyone uses it, and how it is primarily useful. You don't go to Stack Overflow to learn anything, you decide to learn something and sooner or later end up on Stack Overflow to fill in the gaps in your knowledge. I'd guess somewhere north of 90% of everyone who has used Stack Overflow uses it that way.

But we describe it as a place to ask questions... As though that's anything but a means to an end.

Catija

@Magisch I couldn't, either... doesn't really mean much. When I write ELL answers, I usually have to search for the terms I need.

Travis J

@Catija There is a lot of explanation of why things are used and how to interpret things, which gets to helping people learn the language. That is what forms my opinion that it is aimed towards learning the language.

Magisch

stack overflow is there site where you breathe a sigh of relief when a good answer comes up in a search result

And you avert your fate of spending half an hour trudging through forums of dubious relevance and more dubious quality to get exactly nowhere with yur question

Catija

@Shog9 Sure. And that's how people like my husband use it for years without ever creating an account... "I don't know how to write X in Y language but I can find it on SO, so it doesn't matter"... it's the equivalent of a dictionary for spelling before spell check was a thing.

Travis J

As opposed to ELU, which centers more on how to properly incorporate an approach in a desired situation, which would be more on the usage end.

Catija

20:08

I'm pretty sure that ELU is just SWRs. :P

Shog9

@Catija yup. Or... A recipe book, or pattern library, or more specifically the sorts of programming books that we all stocked our shelves with before the Internet: the dense sort full of short chapters describing how to write a routine or data structure for some specific purpose.

Mithrandir

I literally went "I can't find how to do this on SO, I guess it's not possible" the other day with a regex problem I was having...

Travis J

You won all teh acronym. I didn't get the SWR reference

Martin James

I'm prtty sure I could write PHP by just consulting SO, without asking a single question, (well, until I got too drunk to read). Joking apart, it's really good resource for coughing up useful answers when Googling some issue.

Travis J

More and more, SO is becoming less relevant with new technology.

Anne Daunted

20:12

I also don't have an SO account but it's most useful to me.

Travis J

The inability to support questions which may be asked sub optimally removes a very large amount of content potential.

Martin James

@TravisJ inb4 'We should allow library recommendations' :(

Travis J

This paired with the reduction in SO's SEO footprint means I see a large amount of non SO results in Google, and because SO will not tolerate slightly broad questions the only place to go is off site for information.

@MartinJames Answers are limited at 30,000 characters. Yet, too broad seems to be defined as anything more than 300 today.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in body: Anyone wants to do Skype Chinese lessons with me? by Rachel Cheung on chinese.SE

Martin James

@TravisJ Hmm.. I've not counted the chars on my longer answers..

Travis J

20:17

@MartinJames 1807 characters on this one: stackoverflow.com/questions/8163617/…

My longest is somewhere in the 5000 range I think

Mithrandir

I've hit the 30k limit :|

Martin James

I found one of mine that's about 5k. 30k seems like a massive amount!

Travis J

@Mithrandir Nice. Was it about inheritance? :P

Or maybe it was a SQL script lol I think there is an answerer who posted to 30k answers to one question because of the SQL length

Martin James

@Mithrandir Nice:) I will have to spend some time in SFF.

Shog9

@TravisJ I think this is a really critical issue, and core - not tangential - to this welcoming thing. Forget lq askers... The danger is in losing new / small subgroups

Travis J

20:29

@Shog9 I agree, the welcoming aspect plays directly into this. Most importantly, increasing the availability of informed users (regardless of their SO status) to ask mediocre questions without being absolutely crushed is very important to onboarding new tech.

Shog9

@TravisJ ask -> get answered

Travis J

@Shog9 Yeah, that would be nice too lol Answering almost seems to invite more negativity sometimes, especially if the question gets an upvote.

Shog9

Yeah, but that's workable; we can handle that. It's the good question that drops out of sight and gets no response beyond someone nitpicking that hurts

Martin James

@TravisJ Not sure I understand. If a Q is about some new tech, there will be few available to do the absolute crushing?

Catija

What kind of new technology? Like all of the cryptocurrency stuff?

Travis J

20:33

@MartinJames Not really. Just because someone doesn't understand the tech doesn't mean they can't pass judgement on the question.

Shog9

I've only once asked a question on SO that I actually needed an answer to, and it went nowhere; that was in like '09. Soured me on the whole thing, if I'm to be honest; there just didnt seem to be a way to get a question in front of the right people.

Of course, now I'd ask it on an entirely different SE site, but that wasn't an option then and still isn't for many tangential topics.

Anne Daunted

3

Q: Processing messages is too slow, resulting in a jerky, unresponsive UI - how can I use multiple threads to alleviate this?

I'm having trouble keeping my app responsive to user actions. Therefore, I'd like to split message processing between multiple threads. Can I simply create several threads, reading from the same message queue in all of them, and letting which ever one is able process each message? If so, how ...

c++ windows multithreading winapi message-queue

?

Shog9

@Catija kittens.js

Martin James

@TravisJ Maybe. Some questions can be judged without any tech skills. In those cases where I just don't have any knowledge and the Q is not obviously bad for non-tech reasons, I just skip it.

Shog9

@AnneDaunted naw, that I asked for another user who rejected my edit and wasn't going to get a useful answer.

Travis J

20:37

@Catija Crypto, data visualization, new compiler stuff, language features, AI/ML, VR

@Shog9 I have asked 200 questions on SO, some of them took a long time, some really helped me understand language use when I was unfamiliar with it. I haven't asked for a long time though because of the hostility they seem to be met with. Even my canonical question got a knee jerk downvote from someone who thought it was posed too broadly even though I self answered it.

My first page of questions asked has 320151 views.

Martin James

@AnneDaunted Meh - 4 upvotes for 'you need to generate a windows message to wake up the UI thread and check for the results'. The results should be IN the Windows message!

Oh, hang on, I've missed something. Why am I reviewing a Shoggy Q. from 2009?

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in link text in answer, blacklisted website in answer: Afterstack - Productivity tool for the Stack Exchange Network sites by stuart on stackapps.com

Anne Daunted

@MartinJames It was not my intention to mislead you (or anyone else)

Martin James

@Shog9 LOL! I could have helped with that, but you suspended me!

@AnneDaunted I know that:)

Shog9

@MartinJames shit... I know I wasn't suspending anyone in '09

Martin James

20:48

@Shog9 OK - maybe not you personally:)

Anne Daunted

The Shog-before-Shog?

Martin James

@Shog9 If it was on 'multithreading', I would have seen/handled it, if I was able:)

@AnneDaunted Shog8, maybe?

Anne Daunted

:-)

Shog9

21:18

Looks like I misremembered; this was the inspiration:

0

Q: Sharing message queues among threads (in Windows)

Is there any way to share a message queue among several threads, or otherwise to read a message queue of a different thread, without using hooks?

multithreading winapi

Mark Amery

@Shog9 Huh; this nails something I was thinking about how to put into words about the mention of users coming here to "get help" in the draft CoC misrepresenting what our objectives are in an unhelpful way. I think I will quote it.

SmokeDetector

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body: I would lIke to know if adding ingredients will degrade aloe vera by Jade Pfeiffer on chemistry.SE

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

Right now it's just delays and delays for my cousins waiting at Mumbai. They're probably going to miss their connection to LA.

Mark Amery

21:49

Done: meta.stackexchange.com/a/312391/200582

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 I read it. It asks a simple question: "Do answers deleted indirectly as result of the question deleted, or answers self deleted, contribute towards answer ban? And if so, can it be reconsidered since it's not fair?". Your answer is vague and can be summed as "Don't worry". The dupe isn't 100% dupe but close enough, asked before, and with answer that is at least direct: "Yes it does affect the ban". So IMO if one wants to post answer with more details, it better be posted there anyway.

Shog9

@ShadowWizard the question you closed cites the question you closed it as a duplicate of

did you notice this?

Shadow Wizard

Sure.

Shog9

And...?

Shadow Wizard

This isn't dupe shield.

Shog9

21:53

I don't know how to properly interpret the words you just typed.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Shadow I think you should revert your use of the Chaos Emerald there. I recant my request above.

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 If I write "I don't think my question is dupe of [other question]", it's not giving me automatic shield against closing as dupe - it still can be a dupe.

Shog9

@ShadowWizard That's not what Aaron wrote though.

Shadow Wizard

> This was mentioned here, but no satisfactory answer yet.

Shog9

So... There's been a new answer posted since 2013?

Shadow Wizard

21:56

So you say "no satisfactory answer yet" should prevent the closure?

Shog9

One that also happens to address self-deleted answers?

@ShadowWizard I'm asking you straight up if this question is a duplicate, that is, if the question you picked as the original represents an identical problem to the one reflected by this question.

Jon's question, in a nutshell:

> However, if an answer is left to a question and that question is subsequently closed and deleted, this means all the answers are also deleted. Do these collateral damage deleted answers count towards the Answer Ban criteria?

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 identical? No. But it's similar enough, and decent answer should also include more cases.

Shog9

Aaron's question, in a nutshell:

> there are certain cases where I don't think it would be fair for deletion to count against the answerer, and would love to see some clarification / guidance (without revealing any specific details about the algorithm):

Shadow Wizard

@Shog9 that's the "sub" question. The title contains the real question IMO.

If anything, that part should be separated into feature request asking that such deletions won't count towards the ban, as it's unfair.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@ShadowWizard I always think that the body contains the real question, and that if the title doesn't match, that should be edited.

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