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00:42
would people be more likely to read the faqs if they were tagged 'documentation' too?
They might be more likely to read the FAQs if they were linked to from the help center
i reffer mainly to the nature of the words; frequently asked questions on main sites are just marked as [duplicates] with no tag to denote the 'empirical' one, while meta questions get a fancy tag, but that nomenclature does little to reflect their status as empirical.
a great page to have on the help center would be meta.stackexchange.com/questions/7931/… ... can't even remember how i found that now
note to linux firefox users experiencing the add-on certificate problem: if you don't want to install firefox outside of your repositories, you can apply a fix by enabling 'studies' in settings>security i.imgur.com/PDUuipi.png and waiting an hour or two
01:29
@ocæon there is a community FAQ tag and process on many sites
yes the tag exists and it is good, my thoughts were expanding on sonic's chat chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/7700734#7700734 sorry i should have arrowed it.
oh you mean for main questions not meta ones?
@ocæon Yeah, that seems to be for main sites.
oh great another newbie numpty of mine! i should keep a blog
01:56
@ocæon yup
It's also worth remembering that we intentionally don't have empirical answers for many things
And that in some, not all cases we need to consider whether it's desirable to close something as a dupe, and that the point of a dupe closure is still to let someone find an answer....
yes, dupe closure is not a negative act
@ocæon but also that true, universally useful, canonical answers are not that common
not that i ask much, yet. i still have dreams of merging being a simple way to tidy up though, and maybe a distant fr for having question synonyms instead of separate pages
Merging is seriously destructive
seems so, another way in wich this is not a wiki! lol#
02:04
And IMO, tidying up isn't as useful as people think
my natural reflex is to tidy up, so it's just as well i got over that idea while i was still a nameless noob.
my goal these days is to learn the ways of tidying up my own input, so that i can usefully support others in learning that process too
02:43
@ocæon oh that's fine
Also... Ironically... Don't get too caught up in meta
Meta is a means to other ends
hehe, it's literally my middle name, but yes it felt like a natural starting point.
i may join code review and puzzling next, overflow is proving quite.. overwrought
/me goes now
 
1 hour later…
03:57
@ocæon I started on SU - and quite a lot of my involvement initially revolved around that. I'm vaguely active elsewhere - but I feel meta needs to be a means to getting change to the main site(s) rather than a goal on its own
 
3 hours later…
06:48
Sometimes, I'm very glad I don't live on the other side of the country.
Like when 430 rockets are fired there.
@Sha do you have any family or anything down in the south?
In under 24 hours, 430 rockets have been fired from Gaza at Israeli civilians. https://t.co/3hjMkGmtL6
@Mithrandir nope, but I was there during weekend by chance
(journey with daughter's class)
Surprising enough, we didn't even get any alerts or alarms. Things went on as usual, nobody told anything to the kids to not ruin the good mood. :)
Well, we were out in the open, not inside any city, so guess the risk was minimal.
We were here, slept in big tent. First time for many of the kids, it was really nice.
@Mithrandir well.... those north of you got more firepower so don't be too happy... ;)
Also, don't think you got Iron Dome nearby?
(if it's even relevant against the stuff you'll face in case of escalation?)
And now to brighter things!
!!/coffee
07:06
@ShadowWizard brews a cup of Affogato for @ShadowWizard
We've got Patriot missiles.
They're... old
Remember them being fired in the Gulf War, think they have like 90% miss rate.
Nobody every really knows what the army has around here for sure.
hehe.... you saw תמרות עשן? Awesome TV show. @Mithrandir
@ShadowWizard they've been upgraded since then
didn't y'all have that extremely expensive, though fairly effective system?
07:12
תמרות עשן היא סדרת מתח ישראלית, שעונתה הראשונה שודרה בערוץ הוט 3 של חברת הטלוויזיה HOT, בתחילת 2009. ב-11 באוקטובר 2011 עלתה לשידור העונה השנייה של הסדרה. את הסדרה יצרו הבמאי עודד דוידוף והתסריטאי נח סטולמן. "תמרות עשן" היא סדרת הטלוויזיה הישראלית הראשונה המשודרת בפורמט השידור HDTV, ותקציבה מוערך כהשקעה הגדולה ביותר בסדרה ישראלית עד כה.באוגוסט 2011 רכשה רשת NBC את פורמט הסדרה. == עלילה == העלילה מתרחשת בצפון רמת הגולן, כאשר כל חברי קיבוץ תמרות עשן נעלמים בן לילה באופן מסתורי, ותחת אפם של הפיקוד המקומי והצבאי באזור. למרות זאת, אין זאת הפתעה לפיקוד, אשר ידעו היטב על אורח חייהם המתבדל של חברי הקיבוץ...
Iron Dome?
No English wiki, I'm afraid... :/
@JourneymanGeek what about it? It's very different from Patriot missiles.
@ShadowWizard same idea though
It can't intercept long range missiles
the patriots were not that good for missile interseption cause they were designed to take out aircraft
07:14
@JourneymanGeek yeah, of course
@JourneymanGeek exactly
We got something with laser in the final stages of development, but it's also not for long range missiles, but for mid-range rockets.
@ShadowWizard sadly the most effective way to deal with them is to convince the countries that support terrorism over actually building up a country that can be self sufficient. And that's not likely to happen
@ShadowWizard Nope, I don't watch TV...
(e.g. rockets fired from Gaza to Tel Aviv afaik)
Though the convincing need not be diplomatic
@Mithrandir eh, keep forgetting this...
but you do watch things over the internet, no?
07:16
Not really.
Movies sometimes... but not Israeli ones :P
@Mithrandir so... all the most popular shows and movies like Game of Thrones, Star Wars... etc.... you got no idea what they are all about?
"I don't watch TV. Its a cultural wasteland filled with inappropriate cultural metaphors created by the liberal media elite"
(naturally, that's quote from a TV show)
These days with Netflix and the like, it's hardly "watching TV" anymore anyway... you watch what you like wherever you like.
Be it computer, phone, or maybe TV screen, but it's not "TV" anymore, in the classic sense of watching whatever you're given to watch by others.
07:34
@ShadowWizard I've watched some of Star Wars.
07:57
@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog I don't think so.
Huh? Avengers: The Force Awaken?
08:13
@Mithrandir oh, good. ;)
@NoDistractionWizard nooo, some merges are not meant to be.....
:P
@Tinkeringbell also, 1 rep user can't chat, so moving comments to chat will take away their ability to reply properly.
@ShadowWizard for some reason I'm under the impression that you get explicit write rights for such rooms
also moving comments to chat is a strange thing.
Its a way to archive things. And stuff worth archiving is rare
 
3 hours later…
11:49
@Rob yeah Peter ignores all comments, at this point after years of this behavior, I suspect he doesn't even read them. And think @rene said he's using a script to detect and maybe also edit, so the script doesn't care about question status... many times he's editing off topic questions that get deleted within an hour.
So yeah, it's irritating to have closed questions being bumped, but it's not very frequent, so not really fatal. He still doing more good than harm. :D
!!/blame
@ShadowWizard It's Olivia's fault.
What did I do? >.>
You were pingable. That is what you did
Not saying that is bad ...
Just explaining facts ...
12:11
@Olivia Be faulty
@Margarine Beep boop, boop be-... BZZT! explodes
Wouldn't stop an R/A flagger though.
X devoid by zero
Rob
Rob
@ShadowWizard Do we have to write a Meta (with a spelling mistake) asking for him to be edit banned? [Note: serious question, but rhetorical].
@Rob Serious answer... You can write as many meta's as you want, but right now people complaining in meta posts are a bigger problem than the edits itself. And I don't even think I can ban people from editing, so unless a CM can do so... :/
12:22
There's no edit ban. Only suspender.
"Let's make Peter edit baned"
Unless SE creates a honeypot post that will automatically suspend the editor ._.
@NoDistractionWizard What if it edits the pot out?
using lower case ell instead of upper case eye, peter's script would see if l do that, right?
Throw it back at SE. Boom.
12:27
l don't think so
derp, l can't even see if l do that
@ocæon L thlnk lt mlght
wait until screen reader mads at you
@NoDistractionWizard nuu i forgot about them sowwy
No Canadian in this chat.
Rob
Rob
12:32
Change Peter to "short for Richard" and he'll be banned for the other word.
🤯
12:47
Okay. And what do y'all think Peter will think of you if he reads this? Can we be a bit nicer please? :)
Rob
Rob
... banned for nothing. - That's how I'd read it.
So, Peter's literally been doing these edits since... the beginning. To the point where IIRC he was interviewed for one of the SE blogs
Least from an old timer's perspective, its pretty harmless, even automated
ah, the old SU blog
@JourneymanGeek rene just linked that too! :)
Rob
Rob
As I said before, the only complaint from me is that one person hammered and then after it's closed one person tosses into the queue for a few more people to deal with the bump. I don't have a problem with early pendant, it's late edits that are pointless.
@Rob but sometimes, a late edit, or answer is still needed.
12:58
Interesting discussion. I was also surprised that closed questions, that are really unsalvageable and will be deleted (even if they get an upvote after the edit), are edited. But I was rather worried Peter was wasting mostly his time, not so much that he did much damage.
And i suspect whatever he does dosen't really take account
@Rob nope, just roll eyes whenever he's doing it and move on. ;)
My point here was that I'd really, really like and prefer it if this room is not one that is regularly used to complain about, or even lobby for suspending/banning specific people. That's as far as I know just basic chattiquette!
Rob
Rob
It's true for 10 year old questions too.
12:59
I mean, lots of folks here tend to post necromance too
if you happen to see something that needs fixing, you're not going to check the date
Rob
Rob
It's not the person, it's the bot. It's not the account, it's one action. So, it's OK for him to ignore, what should we do? [Also, rhetorical]
There's nothing really to do
You can edit them before he is able to!
Rob
Rob
13:13
In case anyone missed the context, and what was discussed previously, ShadowWizard was replying to this ping.
Sorry for the digression, but since we're talking about closed questions. Why do people upvote them? Questions that are clearly off topic or otherwise not of great quality, I do not mean controversial closures with drama on meta and in comments. I see that regularly on stacks.
@Rob hey why no ping? :(
looking for pings
@AnneDaunted oddly enough, sometimes closed questions are useful.
or just "Oh to $warmplace with the man!"
@JourneymanGeek To be more precise: Off topic, unanswered, unsalvageable or OP doesn't seem to care.
@AnneDaunted pity votes
It's a thing.
Rob
Rob
13:24
No ping because I didn't want to disturb you from whatever important business you were attending to, and you know that; possibly some people whom have joined the old discussion in the last few minutes don't know where (or why) it started.
"Oh, this question is interesting!" upvoted
But it helps no one, maybe except for the upvoter, who feels better then
93
Q: Is there an actual "pity" or "sympathy" upvote problem?

Jeff AtwoodThere have been a number of discussions about "pity" or "sympathy" upvotes. https://meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=pity+sympathy+upvote That is, the idea that once a post is voted down to -1, some kind-hearted user will come by and upvote the post, no matter how terrible or wrong it may be, to...

Old, but still relevant.
@NoDistractionWizard not even this... it's "Oh, poor user got a downvote, let's cheer them up with an upvote."
And yes, I'm 100% there are users who do this. ^
@ShadowWizard this is based on my experience on seeing already closed ID req on Anime.SE suddenly got upvoted.
Also ID questions on M&TV
13:28
@AnneDaunted well that's different, guess many still oppose the decision to ban those questions.
So it's act of rebellion, of sorts.
Rob
Rob
@AnneDaunted The explanation I received is that upvoting is one of the few things that people with low reputation can do, and along with earning a supporter badge for answers they can get a 🥇 gold electorate badge for questions.
Requests for medical advice on Parenting.SE - do we want to encourage people to ask strangers on the Internet, instead of a medical professional?
@AnneDaunted sometimes it's fine to get a quick and not 100% reliable answer, when it's not risky. But yeah, there is a line somewhere.
Not everyone got a doctor accessible for them.
A lot of those things are well...
site culture - some folks think that ID questions are essential, some don't
@Rob Some people do nothing but upvote
Rob
Rob
13:32
On Space.SE "How do I build a rocket" questions are OT.
If you know for sure someone is upvoting really bad stuff all the time, think it's cause for suspension since it harms the site. So mod/CM should be alerted and check.
Rob
Rob
👍
@ShadowWizard Too risky and the questions usually lack details, so not even a professional could, at least not in our format
@AnneDaunted "What kind of painkiller should I buy" doesn't sound risky.
@AnneDaunted It's worse when they ask chemists
13:33
Essentially something anyone can find with proper Google search.
What kind of pain, killer?
@NoDistractionWizard 1000 needles
@ShadowWizard actually, that can be
Rob
Rob
What people in north American often end up with is carfentanil - does that sound sufficiently risky?
13:36
@JourneymanGeek painkillers are sold in super markets. And unless someone tell "Take 50 in a day", it's not risky.
@ShadowWizard or more than 8 for an adult
@ShadowWizard Price shopping recommendation. I also don't see a stack this could be on topic on
meh... question about quantity is indeed off topic for SE sites.
@ShadowWizard Ha, says you.
But as for type among the types sold out there... can't see why not help them make the research.
13:37
@AnneDaunted considering there's only 2 sites that do shopping recs at all, after a fashion and they're unusual
Certain pain killers can do . . . mean . . . not nice . . . unwelcoming things to your liver or kidney.
@ShadowWizard Well, the product rec rule aside...
and admittedly they've been selling asprin since right after cocaine was the hot new product for bayer....
@Margarine And there may be several other reasons why a specific pain killer may not be suitable for everyone.
2
Q: How to decide which painkiller to take?

fstanisThis is a dilemma I find myself in every time I'm in need of a painkiller: should I take paracetamol (acetaminophen), ibuprofen or aspirin? I've come across several articles outlining the differences (most notably one by NHS and one by NPS) and, while a good overview, they don't really provide a...

"You should drop cocaine and use aspirin"?
13:40
Nothing about price. ^^
Rob
Rob
0.03 mg (invisible) is lethal.
@ShadowWizard hm, medical sciences has been kinda one of those sites they've been trying to hash out no?
Used to be health
@ShadowWizard That's clearly different from a pain killer recommendation, it's about How to decide
@JourneymanGeek dunno, not active there enough to really know....
@AnneDaunted "should I take paracetamol (acetaminophen), ibuprofen or aspirin?"
Sounds like asking for recommendation to me. ;)
Not a great question, but it's there, and not closed.
I thought most of the problem is... personal medical advice?
13:42
@Journeyman also, they do close tons of "Seeking medical advise" questions there.
I have no idea where the line goes, to be honest, some of my own questions got closed this way too.
@ShadowWizard "What kind of painkiller should I buy" - every answer suggests a different painkiller, you buy the one with the most votes. The question you linked to asks how to decide for yourself which painkiller to buy.
So there's nothing wrong with group medical advice. ran away
@AnneDaunted Right.
@AnneDaunted hard to see the difference.
@ShadowWizard TBH that question I would close in my site.
13:43
@ShadowWizard hence why Q&A is hard ;p
and working out what's on topic
@JourneymanGeek hehe, true
Okay, next Q: Why is Q&A hard?
heh, all my closed questions on Health.SE are gone... weird, pretty sure at least one had a positive score. :(
@ShadowWizard The difference is: Teaching a man to fish rather than fishing for them
@AnneDaunted sounds like SO ;)
13:45
Anyway, I'm not Medicals Sciences so I don't know what kind of questions they are okay with
@NoDistractionWizard that's a good question
and something I think every mod, experienced user, CM and probably anyone actually involved in the network needs to ask.
Also VTC too broad
More practically - Its probably because asking good questions involved getting halfway to the answer.
@ShadowWizard 1) I feel pain and want to buy painkillers - how do I go about that decision, what should my decision making process be. 2) I feel pain. Tell me which painkillers are there and which one is best by upvoting the respective answer.
answering well gets the rest of the way, and asks the questions OP might not have thunk about
@AnneDaunted about eyesight, sitting, and cellular phones... (top 3 questions on the site. ;))
@AnneDaunted hmm... yeah, that's more clear.
Later, we'll have notstackoverflow.com, notsuperuser.com, notserverfault.com that only accept discussions instead of Q&A...
13:50
lol
14:00
@NoDistractionWizard No need, Jeff already took care of that!
14:12
@NoDistractionWizard and if they can survive on their own merits, that's fine
huh??
Can it be spam that became HNQ? That's a first.
Should I flag?
@ShadowWizard probably a custom flag, pointing this out
though feels a lot like the lack of SE etiquette, other than all the blacklists
@Mitch This user is a known spammer!!! E.g. see this obvious spam from half year ago. I really have no idea why you undelete spam on this site and don't personally care, but it might open up a breach for other spammers to follow. — Shadow Wizard 1 min ago
meh
Guess he'll just delete my comment(s) but had to express my opinion.
14:19
that's a bit confrontational ;)
custom flag has 0% chance to do anything, so not worth trying.
Anyway... that's enough for this... anyone want coffee?
Rob
Rob
@ShadowWizard That's gellular - 😆
!!/coffee Oliv
@ShadowWizard brews a cup of Mocha for @Oliv
It's too late for coffee .-.
@Olivia :(
@Tinkeringbell cute!
:) I hope he's recognizable...
@Tinkeringbell The force, strong in this keyboard it is
@Olivia But it was supposed to be a Dobby! :P
Huh?
14:28
It's green
Dobby isn't green. ;)
I'm not @Tink :D
Rob
Rob
@ShadowWizard He was blacklisted for using a gratuitous signature of a blacklisted site and probably not disclosing that it's his own site. More direct to the question: I can't advise you how to flag/feedback other than to recommend that you use the correct flag, using the wrong flag will result in an audit failure and eventually a kick. --- If you don't know then you can skip offering feedback and face no penalty.
@ShadowWizard It's the only thread I had :(
lol
Also the robe...
oh
I thought that was Yoda
@Olivia Don't worry, it's supposed to be ;) I was kidding ;)
14:31
rofl
^^"
That's Dobby baby ^^
@ShadowWizard That one is ugly :(
not mine! :P
Hahaha ;)
It's a doll
14:32
umm... no? It's a baby.
oh wait
@ShadowWizard With it's fingers glued together?
lol yeah it's a doll. LOL
Didn't have close look
OK
Here you go!
Not a doll! :D
That one looks knitted
It's for sale
I don't want it :P
Just spent a pretty large sum on crochet supplies yesterday XD
14:36
@Rob no. He was blacklisted half year ago already for several spam posts, e.g. this one. 1000% pure spam.
If that HNQ was alone then I'd agree.... but it's not. It's a proven spammer.
And now that site just gave them free views.
And no, proven spammer can't just become a helpful user.
 
1 hour later…
15:54
why is editing or responding to closed posts so bumpy?
surely being closed could be an opportunity for multiple revisions and rabid commenting to go on without bothering anyone until it's flagged for reopening based on the sum of their merits?
It's to avoid hidden spam
comments don't bump questions, ever
hidden spam? the post can't be reopened without review anyway, and experienced users and their bots are still passing through.. don't the measures required for moderating comments on closed posts also apply to it's q&a content?
How would bots and experienced users know what to check for spam if edits didn't cause bumps?
user302202
SEDE Sunday: April 2019 vs April 2018. The site of the month is Software Recommendations with almost 250% growth.
user302202
+--------------------+------------+------------+---------+
|        Site        | April 2018 | April 2019 | Change  |
+--------------------+------------+------------+---------+
| softwarerecs       |        506 |       1762 | 248.22% |
| ham                |        119 |        261 | 119.33% |
| martialarts        |         74 |        143 | 93.24%  |
| retrocomputing     |        236 |        428 | 81.36%  |
| hardwarerecs       |        113 |        192 | 69.91%  |
| politics           |        702 |       1085 | 54.56%  |
user302202
16:08
The increasing popularity of Martial Arts, Amateur Radio, and Retrocomputing suggests SE users are preparing for dystopian future soon to come.
9
user302202
One in which they will not need Ukrainian language or Mythology, and where being a Vegetarian is no longer an option.
... or desireable
@VoteDukakis what are those numbers?
questions per month?
user302202
Posts of any kind per month, including deleted.
@VoteDukakis and we seal our demise by giving up on interpersonal skills altogether?
user302202
16:17
Who needs Interpersonal Skills when you have Martial Arts?
2
@ocæon Nope :) If anything, 192 posts is way more suitable for the community we now have. There's a pretty great core of people that are moderating those 192 posts, and we're having a lot less problems with opinions ;)
@VoteDukakis That too XD
IPS.SE's motto: "Take your Interpersonal Opinions elsewhere"
as in "go find out what the people are doing and tell them to stop it"?
@JohnDvorak if someone is editing many closed posts, it feels rather odd that every single one has to be triple checked. though i guess a random sampling would get messy, it'd be like a backward audit.
Au contraire. If someone makes 40 edits of their own posts per day, in all likeliness it's a case of rage quit
16:30
@Olivia /me curtsies to the visage of mighty randall
there's actually a video of randall's infamous livingroom ballpen somewhere, and i realised how massively jealous i am.
16:44
@ocæon hey stop that.
@JohnDvorak or rage-get-out-of-q-ban
@Margarine i can't, this is important!
Wow, I did not think that I will be an unpopular post. It seems to be a very unpredictable community. — peterh 25 mins ago
His words, not ours. I might need to refer to him as a lamppost next time he annoys me in an argument. It's probably offensive for normal posts to be called lampposts.
17:29
@Margarine Why is it unpopular?
@Alex TBH my own fingers twitch close to the down arrow every time he says something, ready for the smallest hint of whatever conspiracy theory he's readying the setting for.
Spammer wins. Spam on AskUbuntu gave them second page when Googling for install Telegram app. (13th position out of 43,700,000)
Oh, it's the user?
It could, of course, be excused with lack of research or somesuch
@Alex Yep.
@ShadowWizard How long did it sit on the site?
 
1 hour later…
Rob
Rob
18:42
@ShadowWizard This is what "winning" looks like.
user302202
Do I correctly understand this post as saying each user has at most 30 comment (upvote|delete) actions in a day?
user302202
It's just strange for both to be counted toward the same limit.
18:58
No it's both strange and weird.
user302202
> We, therefore, hypothesise that places with higher levels of trust should contribute more to StackOverflow, the world’s largest question-and-answer platform for programming questions. In relating the city-level contributions of 266 OECD metropolitan areas to infrastructure, economic, and trust measures, we find this hypothesis confirmed.
19:35
@SonictheInclusiveHedgehog Thank you!
(not pollutinh the question itself with posting a thank you comment)
19:46
That is so German of you. :p
user302202
20:40
A subset of the post volume table above, focusing on the science sites:
user302202
+--------------------+------------+------------+---------+
|        Site        | April 2018 | April 2019 | Change  |
+--------------------+------------+------------+---------+
| astronomy          |        406 |        525 | 29.31%  |
| mathoverflow       |       2401 |       2574 | 7.21%   |
| physics            |       6238 |       6300 | 0.99%   |
| chemistry          |       1728 |       1743 | 0.87%   |
| stats              |       5824 |       5461 | -6.23%  |
| math               |      44240 |      37878 | -14.38% |
user302202
Poor Biology is in danger of being overtaken by Astronomy.
user302202
(Obviously, neither Economics nor Data Science belong in this table. Neither does CS, imo.)

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