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12:06 AM
@AndrasDeak ehh. Careers has been one of those things I didn't feel was a good bet
There's a ton of competition from more established players in the field
 
1 hour later…
1:35 AM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, toxic answer detected (168): Can the USA military be used as a police force domestically? by operator af on law.SE
2:13 AM
@JohnDvorak let's try with SO TV instead
anyway, somewhat fresh morning
2:28 AM
@Somewhat ehh, ya
 
1 hour later…
3:53 AM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in link text in body, blacklisted website in body, pattern-matching website in body (359): Where do we find good quality essays online? by leontinerosier on serverfault.com
 
2 hours later…
5:53 AM
Good morning!
It's a beautiful day outside.
Birds are singing, flowers are blooming...
On days like these, SE users like you...

Should be going outside :D
@Somewhat I was in bed all morning with a sore eye ;p
I have this running joke that I always fall sick on off days
@JourneymanGeek don't worry(?), yesterday I also fell sick ._.
@JourneymanGeek It's possible. I sometimes work Fridays feeling just a little off but thinking it's not bad enough to call in sick.. and then feel miserable on Saturday
6:04 AM
@Tinkeringbell oh I wasn't working yesterday too and I was fine
I think its allergies
If you have no distractions, you can focus more on how bad you feel ;)
@Tinkeringbell heh, I have lots of distractions!
@JourneymanGeek Yeah, me too. Can't wait for the weekend :P
I work this weekend XD
Night shift too
[ SMOKEDETECTOR | MS ] BLACKLISTED WEBSITE IN BODY (99): HOW TO CALL OF DUTY WORLD WAR 2 KAUFEN FROM ONLINE GAMING STORE? BY TYRON P ON GAMING.SE
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted website in body (99): How to Call of Duty World War 2 Kaufen from Online Gaming Store? by Tyron P on gaming.SE
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted website in body (99): How to Call of Duty World War 2 Kaufen from Online Gaming Store? by Tyron P on gaming.SE
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, body starts with title and ends in url, link at end of body, pattern-matching website in body, +2 more (492): The last word Reset is for by user957297 on superuser.com
6:44 AM
So... any reason why Monica's tweet was pinned?
not sure
I don't know if I pinned it or who did, and I can't find out
okay, just curious...
@Somewhat I'm guessing it's more about the link to the blogpost that's in it, but I'm not sure :)
7:02 AM
@Somewhat because it is important and can explain what we keep ranting about every day?
Am I reading tim post's latest answer wrong or is it essentially "yeah, meta's unworkable, use whatever channel you like"
@Magisch I got more of a 'meta's unworkable, we need another channel'... and nothing that says 'this channel right here'...
so we're at a point where stack is like any other tech company in sillicon valley
exclusively motivated by moral outrage and investors
7:17 AM
@Magisch I don't think so?
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Shortened url in body (39): Problems with Ultimate Member plugin by thebeardedguy on wordpress.SE
@Tinkeringbell I read that from tim's answer
@Magisch there's two or three issues here
Meta worked as a way to do fr back when it was just jeff
It hasn't scaled well at all
they have PM's and PO's for everything now, and these managers determine the priorities. Couple that with the fact that many employees aren't interested in meta feedback to begin with because it's so negative, and now with the confirmation that meta doesn't work as a whole, it just means "Yeah we did this in flagrant disregard of our core userbase, and we'll continue to, adjust your expectations accordingly"
So basically sillicon valley tech company #199934
I can accept that to an extent
7:26 AM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, body starts with title and ends in url, pattern-matching product name in body, pattern-matching website in body, +1 more (490): smooth-curves-forskolin/ by JoannStarks on apple.SE
@Magisch Is meta driven development better than Twitter driven development tho?
yes
by about infinity %
It hasn't scaled well and that is part of the internal issues se has
Meta has nuance and space to elaborate your point well, and the active users of the site congregate there. Twitter is a perpetual trashfire at the best of times
7:27 AM
Meta isn't perfect or good, but twitter is like going to the townsquare and listening to the loudest yeller
@AndrasDeak ahh, you can actually see that.
thanks
@Magisch tbh. Meta works a little like that too
It does allow you to write more then 240 characters
Without meta SE is just like any company without a real support forum and no way to reach it. Bugs will not be fixed, new features added only as planned and user feedback will be something from the history.
Now the alternative is really to have an interface between that and the actual dev side of things
with productivity and speed of changes being as it is, at the current rate we'll see that sometime 2025
7:31 AM
@Magisch Great, that gives me some time to catch up to stuff :P
not ragging on tim for this. He's being honest, and has to sell a crap situation, so w/e
Btw, Jon made a blog post responding to Monica: jericson.github.io/2018/10/24/lost_trust.html
Looks inofficial, but worth a read
Too many blog posts!
Blog posts are great because they are inconsequential
@Magisch eh. In a sense the important part is hopefully there's something solid to advocate for the changes we hope to see
@ShadowWizard I think bug fixes are still handled over meta
It just means we have to advocate for changes in the same way you do for other tech companies
find a way to make inaction on the issue threaten their revenue or PR
7:40 AM
@JourneymanGeek you mean pixel misfits and capitalization errors
i.E when you want youtube to stop funding extremists, you have to slam them hard enough that advertisers start to pull before they'll act
@JourneymanGeek for now, but it all points towards closing meta at some point. No?
@Magisch so...become an influencer and complain about the size of the close vote queue on twitter
@ShadowWizard no
No wait, make it instagram. How good is your crochet game?
7:42 AM
I suspect that bit is semi status quo
It means that driving real change needs some kind of lever
e.g a situation has to be created where not acting on the suggestion will hurt business substantially. Since revenue is a priority, this will work.
@Magisch well I still prefer the less extreme methods for now. Though I shouldn't really be the one advocating here.
@JourneymanGeek I also prefer less extreme methods. But it's apparent those have lost their effectiveness.
> Meta doesn't track bugs well, it doesn't track feature requests well, it doesn't indicate presence from us well
@Magisch the trick then is not being ignored as the vica
7:45 AM
This reads as "meta is not good, we don't need it", plain and simple.
Vocal obnoxious minority
@ShadowWizard I think you are reading a little too much into it
I think that ship has sailed, rounded the globe, and run ashore in a foreign land
That's their full right... and even if they keep it just for useless discussions that will never result in actual actions of the team, I'm not planning to stick around.
@Magisch *the plane
@ShadowWizard hm
7:49 AM
You disrespect flat globers
I think all the "vocal obnoxious minority" can do now is make themselves painful to ignore
I'll try to be extra obnoxius
@Magisch You're not the vocal obnoxious minority. The vocal obnoxious minority are the people that end up getting suspended ;)
@Magisch my view here is...
well, I think SE just realised they walked into another dumpster fire.
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, body starts with title and ends in url, pattern-matching website in body, potentially bad keyword in body (392): times in keeping with by Jisxglub Glu on codereview.SE
7:54 AM
But this time, they're noticing things they didn't before
they're on a hot streak aint they
There's always been a bit of a 'special relationship' between the userbase and the company
yeah but that special relationship has turned from generally trusting and assuming good faith to 100% pure caustic cynicism
and this is finally the point when they realised that, well, its basically at the point where they can't assume that folks will go "eh, it will get better after the next madcap scheme"
@Magisch the irony of the special relationship is, as a userbase we're too nice to go "y'all have done goofed" until its really late
if Jon Ericson's blog post is to be believed they realised this back when launching documentation
7:56 AM
@Magisch Meh. If that blog is to be believed, Jon now realises, in retrospect, that the first signs were there, at that moment. At least, that's how I remember reading it.
@Magisch yup. On the other hand
historically SE ran on very much a slightly chaotic development model
I know sometimes jeff would see a FR and go "Its done!"
was imo a lot better then inserting middle managers into everything
That won't scale.
@Magisch if you think about it, what Adam did was literally decide something was a good idea and do it. ;)
I don't think the big issue is in the feature request/development model
@JourneymanGeek yeah he just took the wrong idea and missed his responsibility to defend the community he represents
TBH, right now I don't know what the big issue is, except for 'communication breakdown' perhaps...
8:00 AM
not even necessarily the wrong idea
@JourneymanGeek not true. We tried very hard with SO docs, ignored against all pushback
@Magisch but he dosen't represent the community, nor is he an interface.
I don't think anyone would have made a stink if they'd responded something like "These questions might not be sexist, you just took the titles out of context. But that lacking context is a good point, we'll look into it"
@AndrasDeak In general?
Then slap a "status review" on the moratorium question on IPS meta
8:01 AM
@Magisch see - how I would have seen that working, 20/20 hindsight is...
and write something up that you decided to trial a hiatus from the HNQ while it's being reworked
"Hey, yeah, those titles look iffy. We'll temporariy remove the site from notation while we talk to the mods"
They did this exact thing before with renaming comments and it worked just fine
I'm just saying there were instances of early feedback (when they used to ask as before acting) and we were ignored
On our side - well, a lot of ... this kind of communication's stuff mods ended up taking over.
But quite often we're acting on our own
8:02 AM
this course of action wasn't even my idea, it was theirs
(hell, I'm defending the company I was yelling at a few days ago for some reason for the very same things ;) )
so it's your fault! Collaborator
@AndrasDeak :(
that's what MM said
that its all our fault
that... hurt
for all my whining and whinging and complaining I'll probably still stay here because the rest of the internet is a trash fire and I'll take just a fire over that
8:04 AM
@AndrasDeak Masked Man, ex mod - very angry dude, came in with a sock
@JourneymanGeek In a certain way I see the line of arguments. Collectively the mods can force SE to do anything
Literally anything.
Didn't realize it was him
@Magisch we're normal, trusted users
we don't usually have any channels you don't
thought experiment
we have 300 some mods on the network right?
8:05 AM
We kinda had one but ... there's a story I can't really talk about
@Magisch roughly
if 150 decide enough is enough and they'll leave unless SE acquiesces to change their ways, I guarantee you a decision is made to cave in at an emergency meeting that very day
as a collective, y'all have the power to end the company at any point
@Magisch maybe, but the number of mods who're actually active outside their own sites is relatively small
You'd have the same effect with probably 50?
most likely
on the other hand, that's basically burnt bridges
I don't subscribe to this view, but I can see why people fault the mods for this.
^ that's why I don't subscribe to that view, btw
8:07 AM
Now, if the whole SO mod team quit...
I totally believe SE can survive without me being active.
on the other hand, this line of reasoning can be extended to anyone which is why it's fallacious
yup
and that sets the thai political precident
people faulting the mods for not quitting in protest could say the same about SREs, product managers, basically any stakeholder group
it basically turns it into mob rules.
It's also the nuclear option
it works maybe once or twice
8:09 AM
Any large enough group of users can blackmail the company into anything.
@AndrasDeak ... is the answer supposed to be mu?
mu online?
There's a big difference between expressing disstisfaction and the possibility of people leaving cause of recent events
and threatening to hold your breath quit enmass cause things didn't go your way.
I'll leave when meta won't accept bug reports and feature requests anymore, officially.
@ShadowWizard Its worth remembering - there's never any guarentee that a bug report, FR or even pull request would be accepted anywhere
The most we can expect that it gets considered
hmm
Actually a better way to put it is, once the buck stopped with Jeff. Those were big shoes to fill, but I'm sure Jeff didn't accept every FR that came his way (and he quietly impliemented one I asked for, the scamp).
Likewise, the buck now stops with the PM.
So for Q&A, SO Corp trusts Joe to do the right thing.
And sometimes that right thing can be what we ask for. Sometimes not. Sometimes, Its not what folks think it is
(sigh I really am part of the problem arn't I? ;p)
8:17 AM
you're quite forgiving
@Magisch I try to be empatic
Its about the only thing that stops me from being a raging ball of rage ;)
who knows, we don't know the financials of SE, maybe they're in survival mode
@Magisch I can't really tell you anything on that
but it does look like the enterprise/backend team is growing
(or they're shedding Azure engineers like no one's business)
I mean, we thought everything was peachy before... ya...
and we don't really know the full story?
@AndrasDeak Dear SE: I don't use adblock. I use UMatrix. Move those ads on your network and I will see them. Just remember that this will also mean that you are responsible for any damage and or malvertising campaign those ads can cause (not that you shouldn't be responsible for that anyway to be fair...). Until that day, sorry. I trust you to not be trying to run a bitcoin miner on my machine. I don't trust your shifting list of ads providers/domains.
I mean, I know as much as you do. They'd basically made a big bet on careers (though I didn't realise how big a bet that was until they announced the restructring).
8:23 AM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted user (68): Why doesn't Stack Exchange merge duplicate questions? by JenniferRStewart on meta.SE (@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog @ShadowWizard)
What we heard was "the numbers didn't quite work out" - but we don't know how much money was lost or what actually happened
ooh, that spammer is cute, spamming in comments?
@Magisch we're told its not in survival mode but
I'll trust that the sun rose when I see a big burning ball of hydrogen in the sky
Thing is if SE spectacularly combusts that's going to be bad for the internet in general
they have quite a user friendly business model as far as "you're the product" type of sites go
@Magisch it is
@Magisch and the whole small village feel of many communities
Which I suspect is part of something someone who isn't an SE insider would have trouble getting
OK, calmer now. After reading Tim's answer for the 5th time. (Luckily it's short enough to allow that.)
The question is simple: "What are the effective communication channels for effecting change to SE?"
@ShadowWizard there's literally no guarenteed way to do it
SOmetimes simple questions don't have simple answers
8:36 AM
Tim's answer can be summarized into: "None. No effective communication channels exist. You can ask, but do not expect to get any reply from us."
And this is sad. Really.
I won't quit over this, but it makes part of me permanently sad. The part that hoped we can give real feedback and expect real response.
Fun fact Kerala Police issued look out notice for 210 people in Sabarimala Temple issue, #167 is a police man.
@ShadowWizard Heh. You could also take it as 'There isn't one set way that'll get you what you want'. Depends on your definition of 'effective' XD
@ShadowWizard well, hypothetically - how would you see that working?
So, a well-written feature request on meta may get just as much attention as a tweet, be that all or none ;)
the difference is a scalding tweet from someone with thousands of followers has the potential to threaten SE's existance and revenue
a meta post even at +500 does not
8:40 AM
I don't know. If someone had posted on meta, people may have gone 'yeah, not okay' and done something soon too. It's happened before, it's not unlikely to happen again?
meta doesn't carry a threat though
no VC investor care about meta
or even knows about meta
they know about twitter
@JourneymanGeek as it used to work in the past. Someone submit a bug report and a dev replies "Thanks, we're on it" or "Sorry, not going to fix that". Someone submits a serious feedback about some major change and asking to make some big changes, and CM replies "thanks, we'll consider this" or "Sorry, it won't happen because [reasons here]". Yes, it requires time and efforts and more work... but direct contact with the customer base is, or should be, priceless.
@Magisch I agree that meta is 'less threatening'. But that's because meta is more 'in context'? Perhaps if that tweet was made on meta, or perhaps even just in this very chatroom... I think it would still have gotten the same reaction, only people wouldn't be mad 'cause twitter'
Meta doesn't work because SE choose to spend their resources on other things.
@Magisch Personally I see the "community" and "Development" as seperate things.
SE's always going to be working on things on different priorities than the users
but the big thing is that communication with the community broke down
8:43 AM
@JourneymanGeek and now tim is saying that's systemic and unlikely to change
that's not what we all wanted to hear
and If we can rebuild that bridge with the community - as was before, we can have folks advocating for these things
@Magisch It's going to change in 2019 ;)
Tim just confirmed what we all knew, that's all.
@Magisch It is right now
sigh
I shouldn't be the one doing this ><
@JourneymanGeek I can handle it ;)
8:44 AM
And that's kiiiinda part of the problem?
@JourneymanGeek I'm afraid there's nothing to build; There is no gap, as there's nobody on the other side.
yet here you are, because none of the SE overlords deign to grace us with their presence in discussions like this
I can't tell you everything will be better and we're going to all be kumbayah my lord.
Well ok that was unfair it's dead in the night at their places
Kinda
@Magisch critically I can't tell you what SE wants to do outside what I know
I'm waiting on what SE's going to do too
8:46 AM
@JNat daily cross site spammer‌​. Thanks! :)
To be honest, yes, I agree that Meta is not working (as it's supposed to be). Comment at 5, upvote at 15, downvote at 100, then add association bonus for most of us. It will be core users downvoting casual user's critique, and those who don't have privilege will be left alone, cannot supporting their critique...
It feels almost like they don't even have the resources to pretend to care right now
@Magisch and that's a thing I've been saying a lot.
SE putting more resources into the community side of things will be a start
Maybe there aren't resources to put there
@Magisch Well, that would be a shame
8:48 AM
And that is how what made SE special dies
SO, I'm a management major (oh, god, I must have had a horrible past life)
and from those shoes...
how do you actually tell a non SE insider that there's value in the community? What's the advantage to the bottom line?
Goodwill has no dollar value
How do you put that lose of goodwill as a potential threat or weakness in a way that someone who isn't here would get?
I'd argue the goodwill is the only thing enabling this whole enterprise to begin with
@Magisch you know how a site works
we're all unpaid volunteers, the experts SE cherishes are usually ridiculously expensive when contracted to do work. The sheer dollar value they continue to donate to SE for free is mind boggling
I've got 100k rep on SU. I have a few million people reached. But what's my dollar value to SE?
8:52 AM
@JourneymanGeek That... shouldn't be too difficult? I've worked retail. One of the things you get taught is to always be nice, even to your non-paying customers (the ones that don't buy anything that time round) as you don't want your store to be known as 'the one that's only nice to you as long as you pay'
@Tinkeringbell well, that's an ideal?
but if you're a coffee shop, do you want people sitting around just for "atmosphere" ?
@JourneymanGeek Perhaps not, but you do want to be that place where someone can come rushing in with a toddler that's nearly peeing their pants and say 'the toilets are over there'.
The problem is of course, is when the coffee shop takes second string to the "lifestyle outlet" part of the business ;)
@Tinkeringbell technically I think a good chunk of the CMs would know what to do ;)
this is all just navel gazing anyways
@JourneymanGeek $0
8:56 AM
we can spend days pontificating about what should be done, fact is, nobody from SE reads this, even if they did, they're probably a CM with little lever in the company
@JourneymanGeek Being nice doesn't mean e.g. staying open past closing time because someone in a scooter decided to drop in at 5 minutes to close and demands time to browse the store. Being nice does mean not closing the doors on the elderly lady that's using the seats at your shop because she's exhausted but her taxi cab isn't coming, and helping her make the necessary phone calls.
@Tinkeringbell true
@Magisch that can be part of the problem.
and I wouldn't know how to get the CMs the leverage
so we're just screwed
good that we arrived at this conclusion
@Magisch I'd urge a little patience but...
That's how we got into this mess ;)
@JourneymanGeek i'll believe it when I see it
8:58 AM
But I really am going to wait for Tim's offical response + see if some of the things that have been promised before I'm optimistic
First forgive, then see improvement, then forget ;)
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer (86): How to convert ts files to avi in OSX by daveclark966 on superuser.com
never actually forget
@Tinkeringbell I don't think forgetting is good ;)
if something like this happens again, it'll show that they have changed and learned nothing
8:59 AM
Forgiveness is earned. Improvement is hoped for
so they're sort of on notice now
@Magisch nah, we can keep ranting here and suggest awesome ideas, but we need to realize that's all it is: empty rants and ideas that will never reach their destination. Personally, ranting sometimes feels good and lower the anger/frustration. :)

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