Tavern on the Meta

12:11 AM

@ShadowWizard do keep up ;p

1:04 AM

So uh... are two word answers ever acceptable on SE?

I mean, if someone is going to put invisible mathjax in their post to pad it out in order to trick the system into accepting it, isn't that a violation of site policy?

Journeyman Geek

@forest Typically no

forest

@JourneymanGeek In my particular case, I flagged it but no action was taken. It's quite frustrating to see an answer that, in any other context, would be very quickly deleted as VLQ (unfortunately HNQ happens and bad answers get upvotes. Being from 2015 doesn't help either).

Journeyman Geek

@forest ehhh. There's tonnes of ways to do it but the lack of quality would be the primary issue

forest

50

A: How do we know a cryptographic primitive won't fail suddenly?

We don't.${}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}{}$

@JourneymanGeek So what about something like that?

I created a site-specific meta post to see what mods have to say.

But I'm very surprised that it would ever be considered acceptable and am wondering in what contexts it possibly would be. It's just so useless.

Journeyman Geek

It's ... Technically correct...

forest

1:12 AM

Well an answer can't get deleted due to being wrong anyway.

Journeyman Geek

But ya, that's a rare situation where I can see why it would be in dispute

forest

What factors make it ambiguous?

If I were to answer a question in two words and padded my answer out so the system didn't reject it as spam, I'm sure it would get deleted in minutes.

Journeyman Geek

Well that it's an answer that is 'correct' and 'stands on its own' with Bo external sources.

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

Reminds me: on MSU there were a number of answers locked with the "historical significance" reason, except their notice was confusingly the one for questions instead. I reported it as a bug, and a dev responded by manually removing those notices.

forest

I can think of a dozen questions that I could have given a one or two word answer which would stand on its own and not need external sources.

Journeyman Geek

1:16 AM

If it was one of my answers and it HNQed I would likely consider it an embarrassment and pad it out with more information

forest

Then I guess I'll see what moderators on the site have to say.

It may very well end up that I'll be able to answer a lot more questions. :^)

6

A: How sensitive to change are elliptic curve formulae In layman's terms?

Extremely sensitive. In fact, there are only three other positive values that would not violate various security guarantees, and the example you provided was not among them. And even of those three, only the one chosen protects from all edge cases. Now, in a little more detail... Curve25519 is a...

Like this could have just been replaced with one word: "Very".

But then it wouldn't be helpful.

But would it have been allowed?

user302202

1:38 AM

"very" does not answer "how". "It's impossible" does.

forest

"How sensitive? Very sensitive"

user302202

Maybe if you write it in haiku form.

user302202

11

A: 2019 Stack Overflow Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection

Write a Haiku poem that catches the essence of why you think it will be fun to handle 400 flags every day.

forest

hah

Journeyman Geek

@forest or people start thinking you are trolling

forest

1:48 AM

Sure but it'd showcase hypocrisy.

Not that I'd plan to do it though. I don't think I have a single -1 answer on the site.

user302202

The answers that challenge the premise of a question have been a topic on various metas.

forest

Oh wait, no I do have a single -1.

Oh and I can't even delete it because it was accepted. :(

user302202

"You don't" challenges the premise.

user302202

"Very" does not even do that.

forest

I think it only challenges the premise in a very superficial way.

And only because of the way the question was worded.

After all, OP said the answer was not at all helpful.

But the premise of the question itself was never contradicted.

oh well

user302202

1:54 AM

SESE election has 1 candidate already, a well known one: softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/election

user302202

> I have several years experience in the crucible of moderation, Stack Overflow.

user302202

crucible

Noun: crucible (plural crucibles)

(chemistry) A cup-shaped piece of laboratory equipment used to contain chemical compounds when heating them to very high temperatures.
A heat-resistant container in which metals are melted, usually at temperatures above 500°C, commonly made of graphite with clay as a binder.
The bottom and hottest part of a blast furnace; the hearth.
(figuratively) A very difficult and trying experience, that acts as a refining or hardening process.

forest

2:09 AM

(How is that offensive? It answers the question.)

user302202

An answer can be offensive.

forest

youdontsay.jpg

user302202

youdontask.png

user302202

Hate those compression artifacts

user302202

-2

A: How to decrypt a Ubuntu 16.10 encrypted home folder?

why do peeps always call their porn "important files"? FFS drop the Vaseline and pay attention for once!

forest

2:13 AM

youdontsay_screenshot2019.JPEG.gif

loool

That's NAA if I ever saw one.

Bookends

2:46 AM

Ugh, morning

user302202

17 hours left to vote in The The WorkPlace Election. workplace.stackexchange.com/election

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

5:49 AM

@JourneymanGeek Out of curiosity, is it still possible for mods to lock answers with the "historical significance" reason? (If so, the resulting notice will refer to "question".)

5 hours ago, by Sonic the Wizard Werehog

Reminds me: on MSU there were a number of answers locked with the "historical significance" reason, except their notice was confusingly the one for questions instead. I reported it as a bug, and a dev responded by manually removing those notices.

Journeyman Geek

6:23 AM

Don't think so. Never used it anyway

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

6:38 AM

@JourneymanGeek If you try to lock an answer, does it show up as a choice for the notice?

Journeyman Geek

6:55 AM

Soooo

I'm in India. I have a flight.

I'm on my phone.

If you need to ask how something works... Maybe meta?

Even site meta might work here

Glorfindel

7:07 AM

!!/alive

forest

Does the author of an answer retain rep if the answer is mod deleted if the post has been up 60+ days and has 3+ rep? Someone mentioned that in a comment on a site meta, but I'd like to double check.

Magisch

@forest yes

forest

ah ok

Magisch

Has to be posted more then 60 days ago and has to be score >=+3 at the time of deletion

Journeyman Geek

@forest sounds right

forest

7:18 AM

Unrelated, but more and more I'm feeling like WorldBuilding.SE is of similar quality to the old Yahoo! Answers philosophy section.

Especially when it comes to machine learning or AI.

Well, I'm certainly late to this by many months, but hey look, more examples of SE staff not caring one single bit about its user base or their opinions!

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

@forest Yes. MSE FAQ, and blog.

@Magisch Not quite; it has to be visible for 60 days. Time it previously spent deleted is subtracted from the post age for the check.

e.g. if a post was deleted 5 days later, then undeleted 25 days after it was posted, it must be deleted later than the 80th day after posting for rep to be retained.

Magisch

point

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

7:34 AM

@forest Well, they actually did care.

forest

Oh that's nice

Shadow Wizard

plz-delete technical papers meta.stackexchange.com/questions/324491/… @Bart @rene @Glorfindel

forest

Ugh, I wish there was a button to simultaneously downvote all answers to a Q. :/

Sometimes answers are just so bad it makes my brain hurt.

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

@forest It's disruptive

Shadow Wizard

@SonictheWizardWerehog sharp eyes and good memory then.... :)

forest

7:38 AM

Yeah but sometimes it's necessary.

Shadow Wizard

@forest no.

It's not.

forest

If you've got a terrible question with 5 terrible answers...

Shadow Wizard

It's racist, in a way.

forest

wot

Shadow Wizard

Discriminating answers based on the question.

forest

7:39 AM

I didn't know answers were a race.

Oh no, the answers are also terrible.

Shadow Wizard

Bad question can have good answers.

forest

I don't downvote answers if they're good but the question sucks. :P

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

@ShadowWizard Do note the second presence of the word "terrible"

Shadow Wizard

@forest sounds like you are, if you want such a button, which means you won't even read all answers.

Maybe you will, but surely many won't bother.

forest

I wasn't being entirely serious. :P

Shadow Wizard

7:40 AM

So such thing is a mistake.

forest

I just hate seeing people on WB have no idea how machine learning works.

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

@forest Out of curiosity, did you find that through the avatar and user profile link?

forest

I mean I get it when it's a question about fantasy, since then you have creative license, but when it's nothing but a glorified What-If machine in Stack Exchange format answered by people with almost no knowledge of anything but pop-sci...

@SonictheWizardWerehog Yup

Shadow Wizard

@JourneymanGeek hard to follow... and to be honest didn't expect Norm to return this time. :)

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

In all honesty, I wasn't expecting that to get as much traction as it did

Feb 12 '18 at 3:41, by Ano

Wow, I didn't expect this to get quite a bit of interest

Shadow Wizard

7:45 AM

Now waiting for @Telkitty to come back. :D

hmm... Joe updated his site profile but not chat profile.

> Stack Overflow product manager on TeamDAG

@Mooseman yes! I'll donate $10. No kidding. ;)

@Mooseman wow, nice. About time you'll settle down. Next step: find a nice lady, build a house... :D

Yeah, three kids for me, growing fine. :)

Bookends

Please nominate yourself on Tezos Software Engineering

And also, the only candidate on Freelancing won by-default

And of course, the main banquet for SEEN: Stack Overflow is currently collecting mod questionnaires

Magisch

8:03 AM

TWP election also ends today at 20.00

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Nervous?

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell I'm unsure about my chances

I'll admit it i'm pretty nervous. I won't be too miffed if I lose, but the anticipation is killing me

Tinkeringbell

I'm guessing at least two of the others have a bit higher visibility on site (more active, and a better score)... So yeah, I'm not sure about your chances either :/

Magisch

yah

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Didn't mean to boost your confidence like that XD

Magisch

8:19 AM

@Tinkeringbell ?

forest

8:33 AM

The US elected Trump so hey, stranger things could happen.

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Just realized my message could be read as 'you have no chance'... didn't mean that :)