Tavern on the Meta

But everytime I hear/read someone about the difficulty of getting rep on SE, I always ask: what do you want with the rep, though? Help moderating the site?

forest

12:34 AM

Makes it easier to get jobs.

No Distraction Wizard

on Meta SE? or Anime.SE?

forest

oh

user495830

@NoDistractionWizard What I need is a stable base. Look at the amount of rep. I have. It just goes up, down, up, down, down, down, up, up, etc. (This is not actual statistics.)

ocæon

asking about rep ~~ "putting the cart before the horse"

No Distraction Wizard

Of course, unless you want to put many bounties or target a specific privilege, rep is useless...

user495830

12:39 AM

@ocæon Please elaborate. What should go first? I know very well what that idiom means.

ocæon

just contributions. that is all. rep was never supposed to make a gamified system, just a simplified feedback on how your contributions have been received as a whole

user495830

Hey, @SonictheInclusiveHedgehog .

Journeyman Geek

I don't want to be negative or anything but meta is the hardest site to 'get'

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@Mr.YouKnowWhoIAm Sonic works

Journeyman Geek

On any site though, to me there's two elements. Finding a subject you're good at or at least passionate about and working out how to address your audience

And good answers are where the reputation is.

user495830

12:45 AM

alert("Hello Sonic!");

ocæon

agreed meta is a completely different creature, i guess it's like a customer service desk mostly taken over by customers with varying disparate grasps of the produce at hand in the surrounding stores.. but on a good day that's all shiny

Journeyman Geek

@ocæon eh. I always figured the gamification was intentional

@ocæon the rules are the same. The subject matter is just more self referencial

ocæon

lol if it's gamification then it's a red herring on a stick leading a schizophrenic ass around an invisible maze

Journeyman Geek

Well ..

People game differently

Some folk just chase the high scores, even if they break the game for other people

Some folks metagame - working outside the scoring system to effect change

ocæon

sure, like muze, who concluded they were deliberately asking terrible questions to attract great answers, and quickly followed their qban with an aban

Rob

12:52 AM

I think A51, Physics, Math, Space & Astro, QC, Stats, Sci-Fi are fairly difficult to get rep, unless you are an extreme expert on the subjects. There are certainly easier sites.

No Distraction Wizard

A51 is impossible for me who can't think of any questions...

well, except... referral bonus... which I probably won't use it since I don't have a community to spam

Rob

Even if you can, they get few/no votes.

Journeyman Geek

Leeroy Jenkins

Leeroy Jenkins is a character name for a player character created by Ben Schulz in Blizzard Entertainment's MMORPG World of Warcraft. The character became popular due to his role in a video which became an Internet meme. Knowledge of the video has spread beyond the game's community and into other online and mainstream media. The video is even used as part of military education programs to parody the real life military concept that “no plan survives first contact.” == Video == The original video was released by a World of Warcraft player guild to video-sharing site Warcraftmovies on May 11, 2005...

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

Area 51 doesn't have a concept of reputation retention, so if you contribute a lot of great example questions to a proposal that ultimately fails, you will lose the rep.

Journeyman Geek

Also part of the game

Rob

12:54 AM

Few people visit, few vote, and you only are allowed 5 votes; so you're not going to waste them.

Journeyman Geek

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog what does A51 rep reflect?

ocæon

a51 is for championing emerging needs, once again it's not a 'harder level to get rep on'

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@JourneymanGeek Absolutely nothing, according to Robert Cartaino.

(As I was saying, said rep loss may not be visible for a while, since rep recalcs don't run on proposal deletion, but the old feature to manually trigger it is still there.)

No Distraction Wizard

@JourneymanGeek Converting external community to potential SE ~~pawn~~ members

ocæon

although a51 level on thps3 was wonderful

No Distraction Wizard

12:56 AM

oh, i missed the old thps series...

Journeyman Geek

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog eh. Then what's the point?

user495830

‮Anyways, enough about rep.

Journeyman Geek

If it does reflect the ability to push a proposal through to beta though...

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@JourneymanGeek Because the system there is still designed with reputation and privileges in mind.

Journeyman Geek

@Mr.YouKnowWhoIAm kindly knock it off

forest

12:57 AM

What's wrong with RTL?

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

I had to get my mirror out to read it

forest

Just copy it and paste it somewhere.

That will undo the RTL unicode.

No Distraction Wizard

Oh, RTL unicode...

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

@forest Now how was I supposed to know that, given that it's difficult to select on my machine?

forest

What machine are you using?

Fix your buttons.

user495830

12:59 AM

It is RTLO, and I am proud of it. Right-to-Left Override

forest

I use RTL (among other things) to obfuscate my email. Works well.

Vote Dukakis

@NoDistractionWizard Comment anywhere? This is the rep restriction that causes the most unhappiness around SE.

Rob

˙ʇɐɥʇ ǝʞıן puɐ 'sıɥʇ ǝʞıן s,ʇI

Vote Dukakis

Of course, people put more energy into complaining about status quo than into an effort to change it.

See also; the complaints about Avengers spoliers in HNQ, never mind the existence of an option to hide HNQ.

user495830

@Rob What Unicode char is that? I would like to start using that.

Vote Dukakis

1:01 AM

Or maybe they don't have an account... in which case, there's a marketing campaign opportunity, before a major movie release: create an account and hide HNQ now, or else...

forest

It's not a unicode character.

Those are actual unicode symbols.

Rob

@Mr.YouKnowWhoIAm 𝕀𝕥'𝕤 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤, 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕝𝕚𝕜𝕖 𝕥𝕙𝕒𝕥.

ocæon

@SmokeDetector if that's the FDA email address, that's supposed to be there

forest

E.g. that upside down t is U+0287.

Rob

𝔗𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢'𝔰 𝔪𝔞𝔫𝔶 𝔳𝔢𝔯𝔰𝔦𝔬𝔫𝔰, 𝔟𝔲𝔱 𝔴𝔢 𝔡𝔬𝔫'𝔱 𝔫𝔢𝔢𝔡 𝔱𝔬 𝔰𝔢𝔢 𝔞𝔫𝔶 𝔪𝔬𝔯𝔢. 𝔒𝔯 𝔢𝔫𝔡𝔩𝔢𝔰𝔰 𝔭𝔞𝔤𝔢𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔦𝔱 𝔥𝔢𝔯𝔢 𝔴𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔴𝔢 𝔠𝔬𝔪𝔢 𝔟𝔞𝔠𝔨.

user495830

1:05 AM

@Rob And how did you do that to "and like that"?

user495830

@Rob Same here.

forest

@Mr.YouKnowWhoIAm Again, those are unicode characters.

user495830

@forest Yes, but what chars?

Rob

Try copy paste a bit to Google.

forest

^

Each one is its own char. I gave you one example for the upside-down t.

user495830

1:07 AM

@forest I mean the range. I get RTLOs, by the way, by going to unicode-table.com/en/#202E.

forest

oh

idk paste it into a search

Unicode is insane.

Let's just go back to 7-bit ASCII.

user495830

Nope. Unicode includes so many languages.

Journeyman Geek

@forest Its annoying

sigh why is the response to "don't do that" is people doing it...

@Rob I'm dyslexic. Those things are hard to read and makes it harder for me to read those bits.

I can which makes it worse

So please don't do that.

No Distraction Wizard

They are welcome on the ~~Den~~ secret chat room on Meta though, so please feel free to express your creativity on there...

Journeyman Geek

Thank you

No Distraction Wizard

1:17 AM

Disclosure: I'm not a member of the Den :/

Journeyman Geek

@forest unicode is nice if you actually need to type in non english languages

My mom's had a tamil word processor for over... I don't even remember how long.

We went from one that did transliteration, to one that used a non standard charecter set (TSCII) which would only work with specific fonts.

Now? She can type stuff on her phone, send it over and we can just copy/paste it.

forest

Let's all write in EBCDIC instead.

Rob

@JourneymanGeek I will not post anymore. To save you reading the last one I mentioned that the demo is over and advised others of not using the method to fill the chats with such text. If they heed my advice we won't see anymore.

Vote Dukakis

How you can tell that @JonEricson had a busy day:

0

Q: 2019 Moderator Election results (unofficial)

Here is the result of running the ballot file in openSVT using the Meek SVT method: Loading ballots from file blender-stackexchange-com-2019-election-results.blt. Ballot file contains 2 candidates and 185 ballots. No candidates have withdrawn. Ballot file contains 185 non-empty ballots....

Charlie Brumbaugh

Photo contest on the Great Outdoors.SE outdoors.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1465/… should any wish to join

forest

1:27 AM

@JourneymanGeek Wait so why don't you just not read it?

Journeyman Geek

@forest I do need to know what's happening.

And its annoying.

forest

You need to? :o

Journeyman Geek

But at a personal level. So I'll just politely ask and hope people realise I have a reason.

forest

So if I post encrypted text, you'll try to decrypt it?

Journeyman Geek

@forest that diamond badge does have a few drawbacks.

@forest I'd ask you nicely to stop

then kick you.

;p

You always get a chance

forest

1:29 AM

What if I use steganography and encode a secret (but encrypted) message in the 2nd letter of each word I type?

Journeyman Geek

@forest if it looks like nonsense, I treat it as nonsense.

forest

The good thing about stego is that it never looks like nonsense.

Journeyman Geek

I'd need to know its stego

forest

What if that last sentence was stego?

Journeyman Geek

@forest so... we're now rules lawyering

forest

1:30 AM

aw

Well it's not stego :(

Journeyman Geek

"Hey, stop abusing unicode please, its hard to read" is a reasonable response.

forest

Can we talk via inline images with recaptcha-esque warped text?

Just so like, the evil robot empires can't read it?

Journeyman Geek

@forest I will kick you

forest

I'm not actually going to post captchas. :P

Journeyman Geek

And I mean, I will literally want to kick you IRL

forest

1:32 AM

lel

I'd kick myself if I had to read a lot of captcha text.

Journeyman Geek

I have even worse trouble reading it

forest

Are you a robot? :o

Journeyman Geek

I'm dyslexic.

As mentioned

My brain already does wierd stuff to words even without help. Most of it subconciously.

forest

Sounds like some fancy robot speak to me.

Myself, I'm a forest, so I don't even have eyes.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

1:45 AM

@VoteDukakis @JonEricson Looks like you forgot to post the election results

@forest There's a reason why Google switched from the obscure puzzle to simply asking users to be honest about whether or not they are robots.

forest

Right, selling their ML research with the military to enhance drone strikes.

(Yes that's actually the reason, for the "select the image" parts at least.)

Journeyman Geek

@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog actually... they apparently use other actions on the page as well as switching to identifying things so they can train machine learning.

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

But not always...most of the time, upon clicking the box, it immediately verifies you and you're on your way

forest

Oh, that's browser fingerprinting.

It's not just looking for honesty. It's peeking into your browser internals.

As well as doing behavioral analytics (taken a few seconds before you click as well).

Journeyman Geek

yup

of course, there's totally value in working out if the person who clicked on an ad is made of meat or a chinese click farm

No Distraction Wizard

1:54 AM

I prefer to get my browser fingerprinted by Google than no body cares about me :)

(self-existensial crisis)

ocæon

does this self solved with an offsite solution look like a promotion? stackoverflow.com/questions/55930256/webpack-4-font-issue

forest

No way to tell.

Journeyman Geek

@ocæon does feel a lot like a link only answer

So maybe comment about how it would be useful to say how to use this, and why its superior to the alternative or something.

ocæon

2:09 AM

thanks, not my area of expertise so i kept it brief

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

2:50 AM

delv-pls 2k+ meta.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/64511

@JNat Cross-site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/15848955/…

Jon Ericson

3:14 AM

@VoteDukakis If only that’s the only thing I forgot...

Vote Dukakis

Hopefully you're still aware of Andre Romelle Young...

Close to home for on-the-go coffee drinkers like myself: Starbucks, Dunkin Race Against Bans, Taxes on Disposable Cups

Um, I don't have a solution either. Could the coffee cups be made edible?

With the taste approximating a glazed donut, preferably.

Wasn't a problem when I stayed in to drink my 2x espresso from a porcelain cup but these days I have to run back to the office more often than not. :( Destroying the planet in the process.

user495830

3:39 AM

Woah! Two users just joined at the same time and made a cool effect on the boxes for the users.

Journeyman Geek

3:54 AM

I know that one shouldn't judge a ~~book~~ movie by its ~~cover~~ Trailer ...

but the new Sonic movie looks... dreadful

Sonic The Hedgehog (2019) - Official Trailer - Paramount Pictures

►

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

It looks like the main character was designed by someone whose only knowledge of how it looks is a vague recollection of how it looked in the original Genesis game, and nothing more than that

...and with very little memory of the antagonist

Sonic the Inclusive Hedgehog

4:16 AM

Is this question a repost? I recall seeing something like it earlier. meta.stackexchange.com/questions/327565/…

Mithrandir

5:16 AM

@g3rv4 Oh, yeah, you are in for a couple rough years :D

Rob

@JourneymanGeek You should (not) see the fan reaction videos. Those two should date.

Rob

6:17 AM

Remember: Always keep your resume up to date!

Pee & Poo - Unflushables Launch Event 2019

►

Vote Dukakis

I just published Dear @StackOverflow, I really want to talk but I don’t believe you’ll listen to me anymore. https://link.medium.com/mbZ4gtCpkW

Tweeted by MakotoTheKnight on May 1, 2019 at 6:17 AM

About the curl thing

forest

They deleted it? O_o

Oh good it was undeleted.

I fail to see why such a good answer should be deleted.

The lock is enough.

Vote Dukakis

Need a feature kind of like the announcement tag that was once proposed for meta... But for guest blogging on SO.

rene

7:02 AM

@Glorfindel I cater for my own coffee so with me you can ask a technology question to the guy who does the catering. You're invited ;)

Shadow Wizard

7:19 AM

@forest deleted by moderator(s), undeleted by CM.

Rare case where the community can't manage itself properly.

forest

Seems like it.

Shadow Wizard

(i.e. they don't know what's best for them, so SE staff need to intervene.)

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizard Interesting stuff to read, can't wait to try that approach on IPS :D /s

forest

It seemed more like the mod unanimously deleted it, and another mod reversed that.

All the while the community was having a discussion.

Shadow Wizard

@Tinkeringbell nah, less mod power there... ;)

@forest no. Jon isn't a mod, he's a CM, employee of Stack Exchange.

forest

7:21 AM

Well I mean someone with moderation powers.

Shadow Wizard

His decision overrules any mod.

Kind of like when Shog nuked a chat room out of orbit.

forest

Except this was a reverse abuse of power. A... use of power!

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizard Hmm? I was talking about leaving off-topic stuff up, open, unlocked, undeleted because it looks so interesting and you know IPS, if people have a sufficient opinion it'll get votes ;)

Shadow Wizard

CM can use their power to make decisions that are not popular, but required.

forest

@ShadowWizard Thankfully, this was a popular opinion.

It was divided, but it's not like everyone was against it.

He was going against one moderator who deleted it without consulting anyone.

Shadow Wizard

7:22 AM

Looks like most mods were in favor of deleting.

(I think? Didn't look into it deeply)

forest

Really? I didn't notice that.

It seemed to me like there was a pretty even split.

Shadow Wizard

hmm

forest

With most people being for "close and lock, but don't delete".

Shadow Wizard

@Tinkeringbell ohhh lol.... that won't end well

forest

Isn't that basically what IPS already is?

Tinkeringbell

7:24 AM

@ShadowWizard I know... yet from an outsiders perspective, it seems that that is what is going on at SO with that question right now!

Shadow Wizard

Surely SO haters will use it to bash SO, yeah.

Tinkeringbell

It's off-topic... but it's highly voted. It's undeleted, and Jon is saying that he'd like to reopen and unlock it as well...

Shadow Wizard

"Look! They close awesome questions!"

rene

@JNat cross-site spammer with today a new answer on SO and a bunch of suggested spam edits on Super User

forest

Well unlock maybe, but reopen?

Tinkeringbell

7:30 AM

@forest I can follow the reasoning for deleting it then... roomba won't get it because the voting is so skewed. If you unlock it, people will start another close/reopen war and perhaps even a delete vote war.

forest

I do think it should be locked.

Shadow Wizard

@rene and maybe ban robo reviewer from reviewing? superuser.com/review/suggested-edits/860067

Someone approved the spam edit.

Those people are dangerous to SE, and better be banned from reviewing.

forest

lmao

That's sad.

Shadow Wizard

Yup

rene

@ShadowWizard oh, you might want to mod flag that. Or ping @JourneymanGeek ...

Shadow Wizard

7:34 AM

Likely one of those who just review to get badges. :/

@rene but you already pinged @JourneymanGeek ;)

rene

I did?

Oh

Shadow Wizard

hehe

Shadow Wizard

8:13 AM

How come "best product" isn't blacklisted by Smokey??

rene

blame the regex

Shadow Wizard

!!/test "best product"

SmokeDetector

> Would not be caught as a post, title or username.

Shadow Wizard

:/

rene

Smokey would report all posts on Software Recommendations ...

Shadow Wizard

8:15 AM

oh lol

So make it possible to override the check per site

rene

8:34 AM

To be honest. I believe that exists already. I haven't looked at Smokeys code for years now.

Shadow Wizard

9:06 AM

o_a

Rory Alsop

9:36 AM

@Muze you keep on doing the same bad things you have been told not to do. Over and over and over. No mods will have patience with you any more. I have talked you through this so many times, as have others. Once you start wasting that many hours of mods and community folks who have tried to help you and still keep on trying to game the system, evade bans etc, this is what happens!

Shadow Wizard

9:50 AM

aka out of credits.

rene

11:31 AM

→ 35 messages moved to Chimney

Vote Dukakis

12:36 PM

This is “office hours” for a CS class at Cornell. Demand & supply of CS educators here totally out of wack. I assume many schools are facing the same problems with the sudden uptick of interest in the CS major.

Tweeted by juliankoh on April 30, 2019 at 9:14 PM

So many people Q-banned from SO...

2

Tinkeringbell

@VoteDukakis What is office hours for actually? I never had those when going to school/university... unless you mean those are when a professor is in their office trying to do their work but you're free to interrupt for serious stuff?

Vote Dukakis

Yes, the hours when the professor can be found in the office & is expected to help students with whatever they are struggling with in the class.

Of course, I want to do my work during that time but argh, someone comes in.

Sometimes people hold office hours in some public "help desk" area that is not their office. That's considered more student-friendly, I think.

Tinkeringbell

Strange though... you're supposed to learn your stuff in class or look to other student groups for help here, you're not supposed to overwhelm a professor like shown above!

I bet that if that hallway just set up a student study group, problem would be solved XD

Or the professor is doing a very bad job

rene

I have a business plan: I'm going to sell those to Universities: grafilabel.nl/l/volgnummersysteem-startersset

Vote Dukakis

In class, one sits looking at Powerpoint slides while the professor is pointing with a laser at one or another line of code.

Then they get an assignment to print a hexagon of stars or some such, and have no clue.

Tinkeringbell

12:46 PM

@rene Can I buy shares? :P

@VoteDukakis :/ Okay. So way of teaching needs to change, but still. If they're all there because they don't know how to print a hexagon of stars, they really should start looking for help in places other than that line!

Rob

I just finished locating and putting new batteries in my laser. One of the greatest inventions combined with the other.

Vote Dukakis

@rene Cornell uses a homegrown solution queueme.in which was broken when the picture was taken.

rene

@Tinkeringbell sure!

Rob

They're probably accessing their SE accounts and playing online gaming.

Vote Dukakis

Apparently the number of CS majors grows by like 25% a year. Source. And here I was wondering where all the math majors went.

Shadow Wizard

12:53 PM

@Rob this laser?!

@VoteDukakis they did the math of how much money they'll make.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizard If they really did they'd have realized that going into CS en masse would devalue their jobs :P

Vote Dukakis

Strangely, the CS-Math comparison that that site gives less than 1K salary diff: 96K for CS, 95K for Math.

Apparently, the U.S. institution that produces the most CS graduates in the country is University of Central Missouri. Which is the first time I ever heard of it.

Also, I'm happy it's May 1 (locally) - it means that "math appreciation month" (April) is over. Was overfed with lame math jokes/pics/videos from day 1.

Transcript for