Tavern on the Meta

Sparr

12:13 AM

where do chat.SE bug reports belong?

Sterling Archer

Found my favorite moderator quote!

> "I will now note a much abbreviated list of the reasons you were suspended for ~3200 years:"

user302202

1:02 AM

@Sparr on Meta Stack Exchange

user302202

Remember when JavaScript and Lounge<C++> were active rooms?

user302202

@Bookends About the user's own suspension, for a year on Math. A well known user in those circles.

user302202

Another account appears involved in the story.

Bookends

2:23 AM

@MSOGA I realized from their previous username and kind of wondered.... "what? how come?"

anyway, morning...

Bookends

4:21 AM

Google Drive, Gmail down with outage across parts of the world http://bit.ly/2u5IbF7

Tweeted by NewshubNZ on March 13, 2019 at 2:37 AM

welp...

Bookends

5:08 AM

Looks like we actually have an international SE chat room...

The Terminal

For anyone who is passionate about international communities.

4

Magisch

8:22 AM

morning

Tinkeringbell

Morning! :)

Mithrandir

9:10 AM

Magisch

Interesting thought experiment: You could have a golden tag badge with only 201 rep

Mithrandir

You could have a golden tag badge with 3 rep...

Technically. :P

Magisch

How?

CW answer?

Mithrandir

Bounties.

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

@Magisch CW answers don't count toward tag badges.

Magisch

9:15 AM

I was thinking you could have 200 answers in a tag, where one gets 1000 upvotes (within 1 day) and the other 199 stay 0 voted.

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

@Magisch Rep-capped you mean?

Magisch

yeap

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

This leads to an interesting question: do users with a gold tag badge but not enough rep to vote to close get to use the Chaos Emerald (dupehammer)?

Magisch

I wonder what happens if you get a golden tag badge under 3000 rep. Can you still wield the dupehammer but not close for other reasons?

Mithrandir

Yes.

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

9:17 AM

@Mithrandir Documented case where this was possible?

Mithrandir

There's a source for this, but I don't remember where...

Magisch

I could drop 3.8k rep on SO and find out

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

9:36 AM

0

Q: Can users with a gold tag badge but not enough reputation to vote to close use their immediate duplicate closing powers?

It's possible for users to have a gold tag badge but not have enough reputation to vote to close, such as if they've given away most of their rep in bounties, or if they started off posting a lot of highly-voted answers but hit the reputation cap, preventing them from earning most of the rep from...

@Magisch ^^

Magisch

I wasnt that curious about it, just a thought exercise

angussidney

@ShadowWizard you can only report up to 5 posts at a time, and after reporting more than one post you must wait for 30 seconds before reporting any more, to prevent Smokey from being ratelimited in chat

Allspam will only work for users with less than 15 posts - it can handle more because it has a built-in delay in message posting to prevent itself from being ratelimited

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

@Magisch I've been wondering the same thing all along; you made me remember to ask it

rene

10:37 AM

is changing the team tag color a feature?

apparently it is ...

user302202

11:49 AM

I am sure the answer is No: the gold tag badge has its effect after the vote is cast, by changing the status of the question. Without enough rep, one can't cast a close vote, making the badge irrelevant.

Bookends

Yeah, I agree... the dupe-hammer only empowers the close vote, but without close vote privilege itself, it's more of a toy hammer...

Mithrandir

12:04 PM

IIRC, this came up related to the Odinson hat at some point.

Magisch

12:24 PM

I posted a question on MSO for once in a long time

Catija

1:07 PM

Thanks @Magisch :D

@SonictheWizardWerehog Yeah, they do. meta.stackexchange.com/help/badges/25/… The association bonus answer has long been a CW and I just got the gold badge for it last month.

:/ That's the wrong link.

:cough:

Magisch

Minor cleanup

Bookends

looks like 4900 posts (including answers) actually, because post ID is shared between Q&A. (based of experience on traversing post ID one-by-one manually to find deleted post without mod privilege)

Magisch

Interestingly enough, the notification I got from catija's prior ping gives me a server error 500 when trying to access it

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

@Catija That's not a tag badge.

Catija

Ah. You didn't say tag badge. :)

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

1:17 PM

4 hours ago, by Sonic the Wizard Werehog

@Magisch CW answers don't count toward tag badges.

@Catija Yes I did

Catija

Ah. Whoops. :D

Seriously, though... I've asked you how many times not to ping me when we're just messaging back and forth?

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

Sorry about that.

Please edit the ping out of that message.

Catija

@SonictheWizardWerehog It's not about the connection of messages... it's about the alerts. At this point, there's no reason to remove it.

Magisch

I can imagine it gets annoying if you have volume on and the sound is the same as a ping from one of the internal chatrooms y'all use

Best to limit pings to urgent matters only and rely on the facts that they'll read it eventually in normal conversation

Bookends

Well, I set the sound notifications on this chat room to 'none' because I'm easily distracted by sounds... but I can see that it's probably not a good idea for RO and CM

user302202

1:33 PM

A sensible setting, I wish it was also an option for main and meta sites.

user302202

(Meaning: turn off notifications.)

user302202

Currently, if one decides not to deal with site X anymore, the only way to avoid notifications from that site is to request profile deletion.

user302202

1:48 PM

The delete-undelete war in the name of diversity continues

Magisch

just deleting something because you disagree with the proposed solutions or premise is a foul imo

We assume good faith, so we assume the user has asked this in good faith. There seems to be a real lack of that in the responses. I'm a bit disappointed.

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

Why aren't users prevented from voting to delete twice?

Journeyman Geek

cause sometimes you need to delete something more than once

Bookends

@MSOGA closed and deleted, that's why I missed it on the Filtered Questions...

Journeyman Geek

and we actually rely on people to handle these things

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

1:56 PM

Locking would be the perfect remedy if it were an answer, but as it's a question, it would prevent it from being answered.

Journeyman Geek

once again though, we could have someone take a look, let people know to leave things well is....

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

2:12 PM

@MSOGA There might be an explicit exception in the code that allows gold tag badge holders to vote to close as duplicate, and thus triggering the chain of events leading to an immediate closure.

user302202

I find telling people that something is wrong with their gender is rude.

user302202

The vast majority of SO users were born with the gender they currently have. It's not up to the OP to push them to change.

Journeyman Geek

hm... what?

Catija

Sounds like a... misunderstanding of the thesis of that question.

The dev community is ~80:20 split. If SO is only 93:7, that means we're underrepresenting women. That doesn't mean we have too many men... it's subtly different.

Journeyman Geek

@Catija 80/20 based on what?

(and that's important)

and the demographics could potentially vary by country

user302202

2:21 PM

X being too small is exactly the same as 100-X being too large.

Catija

@JourneymanGeek True. I'm guessing the stats I looked at were US based...

user302202

Anyway, if the OP wanted to change things, they could go to some mostly-female community to advocate participation in SO. Instead, the message is to the existing SO users: you are too male.

Catija

@MSOGA Not with percentages. You can have exactly the same number of X and increase the number of Y and you have two different percentages.

Journeyman Geek

@Catija I half suspect, unscientifically speaking, that could be different in say.... india.

@MSOGA On the gripping hand its useful to know why people who want to participate don't

I don't mean the muckrakey types. I mean the actual folks who find SO scary

Magisch

@MSOGA Is it? I'm male and I don't get that feeling at all

Tinkeringbell

2:24 PM

@MSOGA Who says they want to change things? I just read that question and it's just asking for an opinion of SO on whether these percentages are okay... no value judgments attached.

Journeyman Geek

I have a (male) cousin who uses SO a lot, but never really got an account cause he never needed it.

Magisch

There's room for a nuanced discussion about if something adjacent about the Q/A format or new user experience is disproportionally off-putting to women without demanding that the men involved leave

Catija

@MSOGA The OP doesn't want to change things... They're asking whether we want to change things. We (internally) do. We want everyone to feel like they can ask or answer questions here and succeed by helping them know how to do that well. It's hard to hear that people you're friends with are scared to use your site - and a lot of that is because they don't understand how the site works... and I'm talking about men, even!

If we can figure out why people don't participate, we can find ways to address that when appropriate and make the site (network) more interesting to more people. And then we gain in the value of their participation. My husband spent an hour writing an answer to a question that's unanswered... and never posted it because he was worried about downvotes.

Magisch

I'm getting a little irritated with every attempt no matter how respectful to discuss this issue being smacked down with "you're just trying to push your agenda"

Catija

I think my husband's pretty darn good at what he does and he's one of those people who loves to document and explain things... he's very deliberate. If people like that don't want to use your platform, that's making your platform poorer.

Journeyman Geek

2:28 PM

@Magisch that isn't inaccurate - just depends on what your agenda is ;p

Magisch

Meta.SO is notorious for being unfriendly and hostile. Not among women in particular. Among a broad spectrum of people. I know people here on the network who are scared to ever set foot there, and these are veterans of SE sites that know all of their mechanics. I don't want to be part of that

Journeyman Geek

@Magisch ~~In theory~~ MSE has the same reputation with many

in theory?

(and this room. both are a work in progress ;) )

Catija

Downvotes on dupes here make me sick.

Journeyman Geek

@Catija I'm notoriously sympathetic to dupes.

Magisch

It's worth noting that for a large chunk of new users, they're not bad users, or slobs, or deadbeats or not intelligent. Even when they fail their first question or their first meta post. Thats a failure of the site to teach them well, and, to a small extent, a failure of us to teach them how to use the site

Journeyman Geek

2:30 PM

and ya

but not much to do

@Magisch and many of us started with much laxer rules

Magisch

I was that guy once, sift through my early questions and tell me I wasn't that clueless noob. I know I was. It doesn't mean just because I've seen 10.000 others since that I get to be caustic

Catija

@Magisch Exactly. And that's why we're working on the AQ wizard and JIT notifications for what to do in situations.

Journeyman Geek

@Magisch I was that clueless noob ;p

I try not to forget that

Catija

My first MSE question was closed for being relevant to only a single-site.

Magisch

And frankly if I'd been treated on meta like we treat noobs now I don't know I'd ever have started to participate more

(some people would see that as a net positive)

Catija

2:32 PM

Hey, your question today is a great one.

Journeyman Geek

@Catija the learning curve is... a thing.

;p

And least for me, apparently steep

Magisch

This learning curve is more like a cliff you're thrown off and you better learned to fly by the time you land

Catija

I learn quickly, apparently. Even with that question, I don't have anything negatively scoring.

But I bet you I'd have it if I'd asked the question today.

Oh, wait... it's at -4. Somehow I survived.

Shog9

So, I think there's a missing piece in this discussion: scale

One of the best things for MSE was splitting of MSO

2

Catija

For those with 10k and @Tinkeringbell who want to see my sad start on MSE.

Tinkeringbell

2:35 PM

@Catija ^And the ones with diamonds ;)

Shog9

Not because SO people weren't contributing, but simply because there were so many of them

Catija

@Tinkeringbell There's only one of you.

Tinkeringbell

No CM's with diamonds and less than 10k? Wow :)

Catija

Well, I think staff can see deleted content without a diamond... think...

@Shog9 Risk of framing the discussion for what makes sense for SO rather than .... everyone else?

Though, that still happens, to some extent. I commented as much on an answer recently.

Shog9

@Catija yes, but now consider MSO

Magisch

2:38 PM

MSO has developed a sort of sub culture that deviates quite a bit from main

Journeyman Geek

@Catija I had 7 years between my first question and my second apparently

Shog9

how many questions on MSO are going to be interesting / relevant to everyone active on SO?

Journeyman Geek

@Magisch just as true of MSE

Magisch

I know exactly which tone I need to hit for my questions not to be downvote bombed. If I phrased this differently and made the exact same point it could be at -10 right now

Journeyman Geek

@Shog9 a good chunk of folks probably won't even care about meta.

Shog9

2:39 PM

almost no one cares about meta

Journeyman Geek

@Magisch heh, I have a -8 on one of mine. And I'm proud of that one

Catija

@JourneymanGeek I only made it four months... apparently the meta urge runs deep.

Shog9

it's like asking who cares about the church basement.

Journeyman Geek

@Shog9 other than the nutty ones

@Catija I suppose I was too focused on SU, and only got sucked in around when I got modded ;p

Magisch

@Shog9 Now imagine you tell people "If you have trouble fitting in with the church community visit the basement for advice and guidance"

Shog9

2:40 PM

@Catija Folks care about the AA group that meets there, or the ladies' auxiliary, or... They don't care about the room

Catija

@Shog9 The ones who do their events in the basement?

The people who meet there may care.

Shog9

they care when something is wrong with the venue

Catija

People in AA may benefit from a warmer, more welcoming atmosphere.

Shog9

when it's too cold, or stuffy, or smells like mold, or the custodian forgets to unlock the doors, or...

Journeyman Geek

@Shog9 like the walls are covered in blood?

Shog9

2:42 PM

and they really care when someone screws up and the AA group and aux group both show up on the same night

Tinkeringbell

In the end, it's going to be owner of whichever establishment that decides how they decorate and maintain it, and the kinds of crowds that will be their target audience...

Shog9

and that's what I'm getting at: MSO has a lot of different functions pertaining to a lot of different groups, and they're all fighting for the same space

Magisch

I feel like most meta regulars have good motives, it's only you get so tired of reading the same thing every week that you become jaded and snarky

Tinkeringbell

Time to start redecorating then, and to fine the rough wedding party that trashed the place...

Magisch

And then, because you've been doing this for 2 years, all the extremely specific procedural and cultural knowledge blends together into "common sense" which is neither common nor makes sense to anyone who hasn't spent 2 years on meta

Catija

2:43 PM

> But I don't like that color, it's too orange!

Magisch

And suddenly you subconsciously expect people to respect your time by informing themselves before posting. If I wasn't here for half of them, I'd have no clue how to find the myriad of things that were discussed and have been "settled" since then

Journeyman Geek

@Magisch Actually to me one of the hard bits of SE is...

Shog9

Example from the last week: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/381024/…

Journeyman Geek

how scattered and arcane a lot of our ways are

Shog9

That question is probably relevant to folks working with HTML, DOM, XML maybe, JavaScript maybe...

It's probably not relevant to someone doing, say, SQL

Tinkeringbell

2:46 PM

@Catija There's entire venues that revolve around the idea of offering more than just 'an orange room'. You can rent another room then ;)

Catija

52 questions in a tag is a lot for some sites, though...

Shog9

this is the most popular question by score over the past 7 days - and I'd still wager it's not interesting to the vast majority of folks

Magisch

I find a large part of meta interesting. I'm a glutton for trivia

I think though that the downvote = disagreement system is fundamentally defective

Catija

Huh. It's not really about SO Q&A, though... and I'm not sure that a "decision" there would even mean anything about how we change what we do... I mean, we have a catch-all bin for "don't see a job you like here, here's a general application to fill out"...

Magisch

It just hides controversial posts. We never get to seriously have uncomfortable discussions

Shog9

2:49 PM

@Magisch I've said this before, but that whole notion is a red herring. You see this same effect in large, popular tags on SO

Journeyman Geek

@Catija concequence of SO getting... well more than Q&A

@Magisch Its more we're the only meta with meta voting rules and regular rep

Catija

Downvotes will always mean "I don't like this"... we just explicitly allow it on meta and even here we have it used rampantly for things that aren't really appropriate... like support and discussions.

Shog9

You get too many people looking at something and a significant number won't like it. When you largely depend on upvotes from folks who find it later on, that hurts the score a lot.

But forget voting. We could turn off voting entirely and this would still be an issue, because folks usually want a useful response

if the folks responding skew toward "I'm irritated that I'm even looking at this", you have a really big problem

Bookends

3:22 PM

FR: remove voting, allow every user to comment instead

user302202

It should up to the folks to manage their irritation. I manage mine by reading a book chapter instead of, say, reading SO posts or replying to comments / chat messages.

Bookends

or... as always, GitHub Reactions

Journeyman Geek

@Bookends I could see that working on metas

user302202

@StackExchange twitter account came alive with its first non-RT tweet in 3 years.

Shog9

3:41 PM

Best arrow. Must upvote. — yivi 5 mins ago

Solution to our meta woes

Tinkeringbell

Wonky voting arrows? You could also basically build a random behaviour behind a 'vote' button ;)

Shog9

naw, naw... Reject posts without illustrated screenshots.

Tinkeringbell

Ah. That might work, though knowing people... I don't want to know what they'll start drawing as soon as it becomes a requirement.

user302202

Did someone want to conduct exit survey of SO users? Your opportunity

Feeds

I'm trying to get the page locked because some jerk keeps adding "Yachts".

Tinkeringbell

3:50 PM

@MSOGA Ehhh... usually when twitter people are in that kind of mood, you don't drop them a message 'here's 20q's, can you answer them and explain yourself?'... it only makes them more mad ;)

Kevin B

just more evidence that people don't search or don't know how to or don't care to

Tinkeringbell

Ehh, the tweet doesn't say what happened so that conclusion seems a bit flawed too

Kevin B

?

"does anyone know where the delete account button is"

what is unclear?

Tinkeringbell

How that relates to not searching, not knowing how to search or not caring to search?

Kevin B

a quick search will give you that information.

Tinkeringbell

3:56 PM

Oh, that kind of search. Sorry. My fault then... I was thinking this was another of those 'people on SO should search before asking if they don't want their question closed' kinda thingies.

In my defense, I'm half distracted with dinner preparations.

Kevin B

granted, there's nowhere on SO itself (other than the help center) where that search would give that information

if you didn't know about the help center's search that wouldn't help you

Shadow Wizard

@Tinkeringbell what you prepare?

Kevin B

.. what's the use of the "recent tags" and "recent badges" on the right column on SO?

seems like it's just text to fill empty space

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

@KevinB You happen to be seeing that in lieu of HNQ? It was a temporary glitch reported a while back, and later closed as no longer reproducible. (Prior to the 2014 top bar, that's what used to be in that spot.)

Kevin B

i disabled the HNQ

through user preferences etc

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

4:11 PM

@KevinB I guess the prior layout exists as a failsafe for if HNQ fails to load for some reason. I guess there was a temporary glitch a while back which took it down briefly, and then your user preference setting is making it fail to load.

Kevin B

I'd like to see a module for that section that displays recent meta questions for the site you're on

I'm guessing those two modules are just there to fill in when there's nothing else to display

Dragonrage

Anyone know if there is a sede query to get the count of deleted questions for a specific flag?

user302202

Flag information is not in SEDE.

Dragonrage

Sorry not flag, tag

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizard pasta

user302202

4:28 PM

@Dragonrage For a specific tag, like this.

user302202

Gets more complicated if you want such numbers for all the popular tags.

Sonic the Wizard Werehog

@Shog9 Let's not forget about the small proportion of users that do.

Dragonrage

@MSOGA thanks, that worked for what I needed

user302202

Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me)

►

Magisch

that was fun

internet at work dropped out

whole building dead

rene

4:45 PM

Why? Is the building powered over Internet? So called PoI ...

user302202

I figure all the people in the building died from acute Internet withdrawal.

Magisch

No I mean our ISP had a outage

not even that funny we couldn't send some packets due to all our delivery notes being generated by an automatic ordering system for UPS

Bookends

5:05 PM

your ISP had an outage, after Google had an outage, after Verizon had an outage...

John Dvorak

If Google had an outage each time Verizon has outage...

user302202

5:26 PM

There would be an outrage.

user302202

6:53 PM

"Hindsight is 20/20." But after the first 50 times one sees the same style of language mysteriously turn out to be linked to the same agenda, one begins to suspect that foresight can be pretty good too. — Nathan Tuggy 1 hour ago

Magisch

Gotta stop seeing an agenda everywhere and take that as proof it's not a discussion worth having. We all have one. I have one that's personal to me and probably doesn't align with yours. Everyone has a opinion and underlying value system

An argument stands independant of its intent here. If it's a good argument, the intent doesn't matter

Bart

@Magisch I only have a Google Calendar. Does that count?

Magisch

you are an inanimate pair of novelty glasses

Bart

@Magisch youtube.com/watch?v=Xa_db5l0q4Q :p

Oh god, this is awesome! :D I get this as a comment on an old answer of mine, and then they go on to post an answer which is pretty much what they accuse me of :D

I love people

Tinkeringbell

@Bart I'm sure people love you too

Bart

7:07 PM

:D I doubt that sometimes.

Btw, did you find your fountainpen?

Tinkeringbell

Nope :(

Still missing. I'm afraid I'll be buying a new one this weekend, if possible.

Bart

:( What kind was it? I should get mine repaired, but it's almost not worth it.

Tinkeringbell

Ehmmm. twas black, with a few gold coloured accents... a Parker, I think?

Bart

Haha, so I can get no recommendations other than "black with gold"? :p

Tinkeringbell

I was thinking of just going to the bookshop where I bought it and see if they still stock the same one ;)

If they don't, I can get used to another fountainpen

Bart

7:14 PM

I have a Waterman Expert. Lovely pen which lasted for almost 20 years now.

Tinkeringbell

Ah. I had one with a shorter 'tip'.

I'll find my pen, or buy a new one... The ones from HEMA just don't write that nice :(

Found an image of it, I think: parkerpens.net/parker95.html

Bart

7:35 PM

Oooh, lovely

Tinkeringbell

Yeah, and not for sale online anywhere anymore :(

Or I should try my luck at Ebay or something

user302202

16

Q: Goodbye and thank you, Jaydles!

Today is Jay Hanlon’s (aka Jaydles) last day at Stack Overflow. Since I’ve been working with him for nearly 7 years now, I wanted to take a minute to wish him a public goodbye. Jay joined us way back in the day as one of the top users on Area 51, where he was super excited about helping propose ...

discussion stackexchange

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

Goodthank and bye you, Jaydles!

user302202

👍

Bookends

7:51 PM

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ I almost suggested Gillette's, but that will come to a bad end

Kevin B

🎂

Mithrandir

...I get concerned about filling out forms that come with a warning that incorrectly filling them out is against the law.

user302202

Tax forms tend to be like that.

Bookends

Well, I guess "deliberate deception" is against the law?

Mithrandir

I mean, it's understandable that the army wants accurate information, but having to fill out a form online that comes with such a disclaimer is slightly disconcerting. What if I misclick something and don't notice?!

Kevin B

8:02 PM

you better un-misclick it

Bookends

Don't sweat it... just reconfirm your input 3 times before submitting it. I don't think you'll get into any trouble before having a chance to clarify it.

Mithrandir

totally isn't paranoid and quadruple-checks all forms before submitting them anyway

Bookends

as someone who has been called for interogation at airport and saw many people being called for confusing and misinputting the disembarkation card

user302202

Airline app: Please select your action
- Check in
- View reservation
- Cancel

user302202

Does the last one mean "do nothing" or "cancel my reservation"?

Kevin B

8:11 PM

cancel reservation is what i'd assume

rene

8:35 PM

It cancels the flight, even if it is currently flying ...

M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@rene 76% of airline crashes explained?

rene

9:02 PM

@M.A.R.ಠ_ಠ explains why you're not allowed to use your electronic devices on the plane

EKons

9:24 PM

@MSOGA let's see where we should redirect the app creators... oh, I found it!

btw, oh the irony...

user302202

11:34 PM

The impression I always had, listening to the Stack Overflow podcast, was Jay was the one guy really trying to do good things for the community, in the face of, well, a bunch of people with other priorities. — Steve Bennett 2 hours ago

user302202

Under a post by another one of those podcast guys...

user302202

Anyway, VP of Community position is not advertised on /work-here: too important for public listing, or expecting an internal hire?

The Terminal

Transcript for