Tavern on the Meta

@Tinkeringbell hehe.. well, got three from a family relative living in the USA.... the Vanilla flavored one is awesome, but this one is... more scary.

Also got 99% cacao chocolate.

@JonEricson hey, why not create a badges tag on the blog? Search gives back 60 blog posts. Doesn't this amount justify a separate tag?

Meta Andrew T.

7:36 AM

How is the blog's search sorted..? By relevance? Because I believe I don't think it's sorted by date posted...

Hmm... looks like the title is prioritized first, then the body

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

7:52 AM

@MetaAndrewT. date of posting

The paging links are even called "Older posts" and "Newer posts". ;)

oh wait

but it's a mess. So no idea.

It's sorted by date only in first results page. Might be simply bugged.

Meta Andrew T.

I think
First order: title then body
Second order: date

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

I think it's bugged or not fully implemented yet. But meh... who use search in the blog?! ;)

Journeyman Geek

I usually use google search to find blogs ._.

But not as much as I used to(hint hint) ;p

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

ringing a bell to wake up @Tinkeringbell since it's almost noon :D

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard It's still two hours until it's noon.

And I wasn't asleep.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

8:10 AM

Not talking here = asleep

:P

Tinkeringbell

Ah. No, I'm just overheating. Almost 30 degrees here.

And I can't turn the fan on yet, or I might miss the doorbell.

Magisch

8:27 AM

@Tinkeringbell but parrots are tropical birds?

jokes aside, 32° here, it's getting tedious to code in this heat

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Blegh. I'll pick a penguin next then.

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell but everyone knows you as the parrot

Tinkeringbell

CONFUSION!

it's super effective

Meta Andrew T.

Heavily furred penguin

Tinkeringbell

Oh no, not going to wear fur. That would be animal cruelty.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

8:34 AM

@Tinkeringbell who/what you expect to arrive?

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard Booze :P

Magisch

You could use a cat next, then you could justify more yarn balls

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

plz-delete (azure) suspend a user meta.stackexchange.com/questions/329680/… @Bart @rene

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch Hmmm. I'm not really a cat or dog person.

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell ferrett then for best of both worlds? or fox?

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

8:37 AM

@Tinkeringbell awesome!

Tinkeringbell

@Magisch I guess I'm stuck with parrot :P

Magisch

@Tinkeringbell or other related birds of paradise

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

8:53 AM

hehe just saw something funny.

> Yes! There will be product updates and they'll resume as early as 2019-06-21!

Who join me to bet there won't be any update in 2019-06-21?

Or July 21?

I don't care there are no updates, really. I do care when we get false hopes.

Just say there won't be any updates, and that's it. All good.

Meta Andrew T.

The product update is Tag Synonym v2, so they have already delivered it even before resuming...

Tinkeringbell

If I'd seen that post before you shared it here, I could've posted the same bet but about 'Shadow complaining about the post' instead of whether there'd be product updates or not ;) You only get to complain if they don't post something Friday (or Saturday for you and me, timezones).

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@Tinkeringbell lol you know me too well! :D

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard You're getting too predictable :P

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

9:08 AM

hmm....

Plot twist: Shadow sending flowers to Tim

Magisch

tim opens the flower bouquet and one of them starts speaking "so about SOCVR...". Tim was sent rene type flowers

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

hehehehee

Journeyman Geek

9:36 AM

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard you are much too cynical sometimes ;p

The exact date probably means they're up to something

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

10:10 AM

@JourneymanGeek doubt it

Sorry but I've just seen too many "Tomorrow!", "Next week!", "Soon!!" with zero action afterwards.

Marshmallow

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard Tomorrow! Next week! Soon!!

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@Marshmallow finally your sockness revealed! Hello Tim!

:P

Marshmallow

Everyone is a Tim

At least in spirit

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

Nah

Maybe Post

yeah, I have some Post in me.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard but rarely actual dates

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

10:17 AM

hmm

Journeyman Geek

I mean, admittedly

I have the privilege of being able to yell to people to yell at people as a MSE mod ;p

and I might nag if nothing happens

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

Also, as others said there already, having a blog post after a new feature is out in the open is far from what we had and what has been asked for. (List of future updates, things the team works on, etc.)

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard well, yeah, but that's a problem with a few dimensions

SE's never really worked out how to scale communications past the early days, and a lot of stuff that worked great on a smaller network (blog posts and meta for bug reports and communications) haven't scaled that well

and solving that, least as they seem to have planned it, literally feels like they're trying to build another 'product'

which does concern me a little

But we're literally trying to fix a few years of (and I use this term too much) community "technical" debt, pretty much from the ground up.

Even the blog - we went from it being Jeff's mouthpiece, to basically marketing fluff, to something in between?

and quite honestly - I hear a lot of how MSE is scary for folks not used to it

Tinkeringbell

@JourneymanGeek So far, I still see only marketing stuff on there?

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell well, the new badges were announced there

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

10:27 AM

The blog is SO oriented, not SE.

Tinkeringbell

@JourneymanGeek Which is still a kind of marketing...

Focused on the image SO has.

Journeyman Geek

and what Tim's talking about sounds a leeetle like going back to announcements on the blog

@Tinkeringbell well, plausibly but its still not as fluffy as the clickbaity garbage they had before.

Tinkeringbell

That's probably true, but I wouldn't be so fast to claim this isn't just another kind of marketing, instead of no marketing

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell not what I said though ;p

I said "something in between"

Tinkeringbell

Something in between implies a part that's not marketing ;)

(At least, that's how I read it ;) )

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

10:30 AM

What Joe started was good. Why change it? :/

rene

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard it got chewed on ....

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@rene ever watchful dog, yeah

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard that's a good question - and tbh, I think part of it is that they're still working out the Q&A PM situation, considering there's a job ad up

Which is confusing since I thought Megan was the public Q&A PM

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@JourneymanGeek Meg is the new PM, maybe they want another, separate, dev team?

Meta Andrew T.

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard Yesterday! Previous week! Past 6-8 weeks!!

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

10:36 AM

History!

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard maybe

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

Anyway while at it... another thing that irritates me is the ton of status-review bugs, with no update for years. IMO after adding that tag, it's expected to get update once, say, half year saying how the review is going, or remove the tag after that period if no review was done.

Marshmallow

@Tinkeringbell I wanna see more of you two arguing over semantics.

Tinkeringbell

@Marshmallow Oh, we do that from time to time...

Sep 18 '18 at 10:41, by Tinkeringbell

@PaulWhite In summary, we figured out that we had different definitions of safe space and went on discussing moderation in other terms

Marshmallow

status-review

Mithrandir

10:40 AM

@Marshmallow I prefer sailor parasites.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@Marshmallow Noble attempt to piss me off! Luckily for you, I'm calm today. :D

Marshmallow

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard is that a new magazine or something

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

Vogue

Marshmallow

Considering the Times, we might need a CalmToday

Journeyman Geek

@Marshmallow we disagree a lot

If we didn't, there would be no point

Marshmallow

10:45 AM

I disagree

Journeyman Geek

I agree

actual diversity means I can go "Hey, I am mad at this person for these reasons! Could someone review" and get a review from someone with different experiences, and cultural background

What offends me, may not offend an american or a european

Marshmallow

I'm offended that you did not mention Middle East in your assessment of assessments

rene

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard just a small observation: on MSO we have the Trogdor room where we basically try to reduce the backlog of open tag related requests (burn, clean, synonym). Only organizing and prioritizing work is 6 to 8 users effort taking 6 to 8 days and then we only know what is going to be done in the next 6 to 8 months. And then two or three mods need to drive that forward. By all means: size is an issue. It is too big to handle.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@rene so it boils down again to "don't do it if you don't mean to act upon it", this time about adding the status review tag.

Journeyman Geek

@Marshmallow I don't have any middle eastern co nods

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

10:52 AM

nods

@JourneymanGeek @Mithrandir is from the Middle East and a ~~nod~~ mod. ;)

Mithrandir

*mods*. Errr, *nods*

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

hehe "nod" in Hebrew means "fart". (slang) :D

Or a small water container. (the official word) lol

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard not on the sites I mod ;p

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@JourneymanGeek ohh

rene

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard yep. I would totally agree with a process where every status-review tag is removed for now across all meta's and then only add it again if there is actually review taking place and in 6 to 8 days that either proceeds to status-planned or status-declined. Maybe introduce a status-not-feasible-in-6-to-8-months (status-blocked)

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

11:19 AM

@rene nah... maybe just review all the status reviews. :D

rene

No code being build for 6 to 8 weeks ...

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

Hire a new dev whose only role would be to review bugs then. ;)

Magisch

status-currently-not-planned

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard Yes, you be the person that justifies that expense to the board. Especially on a startup strapped for cash

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

"Investing in Community Faith"

Magisch

Which community? The current one you see as so problematic that you need multiple top down initiatives to change and better it?

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

11:36 AM

Overall community, the users of all sites

Nobody is expecting all bugs to be fixed, but having the review/planned tags working as they should, would be nice. :)

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard more broadly though - they're using meta in ways the Q&A platform wasn't intended

and I suspect using meta as a lightweight ticketing system is a pain point

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

True. So get rid of all status tags except declined and completed.

And publish a list of "bugs currently under review" when bugs are really under review, for bonus Trust Points. ;)

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard nuking tags is a pain

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard that's literally using meta is a lightweight ticketing system

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard I think that's basically what I've seen so far, except for a few 'status review' tags, which to me communicate as much as 'we're going to think about this'. If that thinking isn't done two years later, it's kinda safe to assume it's not going to happen XD

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell well the problem with status-review tags is...

unless the person who set the tag is keeping track....

Tinkeringbell

11:50 AM

Most people I know off can be pretty relentless at not letting people forget about things ;)

Maybe that's what status-review is for :P Determining if people still feel it's a big problem 6-8 months later XD

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell which can lead to fatigue

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

plz-delete two graphs meta.stackexchange.com/questions/329737/…

Magisch

It's a unsolvable problem. The community has gotten used to and the level of investment in the platform demands communication that became impractical with scale

so ... what now?

Journeyman Geek

@Magisch well, there's a few possible solutions.

Question is what you want to invest in. People? Tech? processes? Any mix of these?

Magisch

12:07 PM

@JourneymanGeek My wild guess is they don't have the time and money to invest into anything big right now

Journeyman Geek

@Magisch I doubt they're broke broke.

They do seem to be hiring for Q&A

stackoverflow.com/company/work-here

and investment dosen't necessarily mean money

Magisch

Probably not broke-broke, but not exactly swimming in cash either

Journeyman Geek

it can also be in terms of time and resources

Anne Daunted

12:30 PM

Sad to see SE introduce new badges without discussion (blog posts don't count), especially when these badges incentivise undesirable behavior.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

12:49 PM

plz-delete mutation meta.stackexchange.com/questions/329735/…

@AnneDaunted why undesirable behavior?

Also, as Jon mentions in the blog post, the original idea was posted on Meta years ago:

44

A: Get rid of the Reversal badge

Questions meeting the criteria for the reversal badge are not bad of necessity. There do exist a small number of questions that are downvoted because of lack of understanding by the voter. That wouldn't lead to a score of -5 or below, except for the existence of voting rings which the moderator...

> Reversal is changed to require that the question have -5 score when the answer is posted, the answer gets +20, and the question later (possibly with edits) reaches +5 score

+51/-7 is a nice score, meaning enough people agree.

Magisch

1:10 PM

I don't think turning a question around is undesirable behavior

Anne Daunted

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard Questions are not just downvoted and closed because they are bad, but also because they do not fit into the SE Q&A format. These badges encourage answering such questions before they get closed. This might not be a problem on MSE, for example, where programming questions don't stay open long enough. But on some smaller stacks, even the most obviously unfit questions will stay open until a mod steps in.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@AnneDaunted no, your first part is already wrong. The badge is not awarded when a question is closed. I mean it can technically be, but it's very rare for a question with negative score to become positive score if it's closed.

Anne Daunted

@Magisch Imagine I go to IPS and ask something like "Should I marry my abusive fiancé?". The mods aren't there yet and a few users cast DVs and close votes, because it's primarily opinion-based. But it's still open. Then someone writes an answer "Yes, because the female has to obey the man.", people heartily agree and upvote it. The user receives the badge.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

The idea is to answer border-line questions, which are on topic, just asked in a wrong way.

So with a little nudge, they can become good and helpful questions.

Magisch

@AnneDaunted That is a failure on the part of the people then

Anne Daunted

1:18 PM

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard So my first part is not "already wrong".

Magisch

the problem in that case isn't the badge, the problem is the fact that the question was left open & that a bad/abusive answer got upvotes, both of which can be dealt with seperately

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@AnneDaunted no, no badge. Badge awarded only if question gets to positive score too.

Anne Daunted

@Magisch Imagine a stack with even fewer members who are able and willing to cast close votes.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

And such a question will be nuked out of orbit anyway.

Anne Daunted

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard Thanks, I understood that. I've seen enough closed questions receive upvotes.

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard Maybe on MSE.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

1:22 PM

@AnneDaunted well.... if you have solid examples of the badge awarded to bad answers, by all means start a meta discussion or feature request asking to remove/change the new badges. :)

Maybe it can be omitted from sites like IPS.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard The only Boat/Jacket badges I have are on IPS. You won't take those from me!

But I understand and share AnneDaunted's worries.

Anne Daunted

No, I just wanted to have this mentioned at least somewhere. Not on every stack are there enough people to cast close votes, to understand which questions are appropriate or not (or care), to refrain from upvoting bad content. With somewhat more subjective questions, these badges are an incentive to answer them.

Tinkeringbell

There's plenty of questions that get both closed and answered, and their negative score is later turned around because it won't get roomba'd for example.

Journeyman Geek

@AnneDaunted the same's probably true of the badges they replace

the need to go to a positive score hopefully smoothes over the worst of it

Anne Daunted

@JourneymanGeek Not Tumbleweed. But I'm glad it no longer exists.

Magisch

1:27 PM

Also more importantly, the reversal badge has a negative incentive

if you improve the question and it gets upvoted before your answer gets to 20, you don't get the badge

Anne Daunted

@Tinkeringbell Some people seem to actively target closed questions for upvoting because they disagree with site policy or whatever.

Magisch

turnaround from -3 to +3 is incredibly rare as far as questions go though

Anne Daunted

@Magisch How about a post that doesn't contain a question, just a billion issues. But you feel you know what the OP wants to ask (and you want to answer) so you basically turn it into your own question and turn it around this way. That's not always the desired behavior, is it?

Magisch

@AnneDaunted In some way, it is

If you took something unsalvageable and turned it into useful Q/A somehow, that is a good outcome

Journeyman Geek

@AnneDaunted or you help the OP turn it into such a question with the right questions

Magisch

1:30 PM

and often the most helpful for OP too, when someone has enough insight to dig through the miles of buried lede and identify the core issue and answer it

Anne Daunted

@JourneymanGeek Unfortunatly, the OP doesn't come back.

Journeyman Geek

@AnneDaunted we're assuming the worst ;p

Anne Daunted

@Magisch Or completely misses it.

Journeyman Geek

they won't come back with tumbleweed and maybe even reversals either

Magisch

Lets just appreciate 1.200.000 questions on SO " Asked a question with zero score, no answers, no comments, and low views for a week " before that

thats far more worrying

Anne Daunted

1:32 PM

@JourneymanGeek That's my experience on SE. Also, why mention Tumbleweed? Nowhere do i say I want that back.

Journeyman Geek

@AnneDaunted well, or reversal

which is pretty much the same as the new badges without the incentive to improve the question

Anne Daunted

@JourneymanGeek So instead of one badge incentivising bad behavior (Reversal), we now got 2 (Lifejacket and Lifeboat). In my opinion, we could also have gotten rid of Reversal with no replacement.

Journeyman Geek

@AnneDaunted it incentivises folks answering and improving questions with lower votes.

and you're entirely working off the assumption it incentivises bad behaviour

Anne Daunted

@JourneymanGeek Maybe caused by the stacks I mostly follow.

Journeyman Geek

that might be

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

1:41 PM

Yeah... for me negative score doesn't automatically mean bad.

Meta Andrew T.

2:09 PM

Tumblr badge?

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@Tink I've just stumbled over this. Top answer is exactly what you said the other day. Kudos! :D

Feeds

Ironically, I've been having these same arguments for at least a decade now. I thought we would have moved on by now, but somehow the snide complaints about millennials continue.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard Told you it worked :P

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

:D

Meta Andrew T.

2:32 PM

IMO, Lifejacket/bloat might be better as a one-time badge though

But seeing that there are only 862 gold Life badges compared to 304 Reversal badges on SO, I don't think that bad

(unless something is weird on the implementation...)

Which is... which one is true?
1. Answer is posted when the question is negative, then it becomes positive, or
2. Timing is irrelevant as long as the question has 3+ downvotes but still maintain positive score

Tinkeringbell

@MetaAndrewT. I think the first one? There was an answer on MSE suggesting as much, I think.

rene

@MetaAndrewT. I totally accept a dice.Roll(); somewhere in that code path ...

Tinkeringbell

17

A: Does lifejacket potentially disclose one of your votes?

No, it doesn't. Your vote at the time the badge is awarded does not matter - we don't check to see if you later upvoted the post, we only look at the post score for the current score. We only exclude the answerer's vote when checking what the score was at the time they answered the question. We...

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

2:51 PM

so mechanic

@rene 1 moar needed

rene

+1 for effort :/

Meta Andrew T.

@rene we should answer and salvage that question!

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

Del votes are possible now

Sonic the Bracketed Hedgehog

3:54 PM

2

A: Does lifejacket potentially disclose one of your votes?

Yes, it can disclose the answerer's voting choice if they voted on the question before answering. If the user earned a Lifejacket or Lifeboat badge despite the question score only being -1 or -2 at the time they answered, respectively, then it's known that they upvoted the question. Additionally...

Tinkeringbell

4:15 PM

@SonictheBracketedHedgehog Not relevant. We were talking about other things.

Olivia

4:31 PM

@Tinkeringbell -1 very unfriendly please someone remove chat next

Sonic the Bracketed Hedgehog

There wasn't much context about what was being talked about, that I could understand.

Ah, that's right - this message posted in between threw off my understanding.

Tinkeringbell

@Olivia Removing chat would be bad. IPS would lose its comment bot!

Meta Andrew T.

removed "removing feature" feature

EKons

@Tinkeringbell actually, there was no chat back in '08, it was added in '10, so... yeah, not sure if we want to remove it, given that it was deemed necessary :D

well, comments do have a functionality to move long discussions to... oooooooh

rene

4:48 PM

actual weather: heavy rain, thunder and lightning

Sonic the Bracketed Hedgehog

@rene Here in South Florida I have to endure that every day

Tinkeringbell

@rene Actual weather here is cloudy, with a chance of the same, but still too hot :P

rene

yeah, temp is not dropping yet

Sonic the Bracketed Hedgehog

The rain duct in my new workplace is located on the inside, so whenever it's rainy it makes a loud waterfall noise in our rooms

rene

not sure if waterfall noise is something you want to hear inside your room ...

Olivia

4:52 PM

@Tinkeringbell And by removing tumbleweed, bad questions can sneak past moderation more :]

Meta Andrew T.

I don't think I've ever trying to find bad questions by browsing tumbleweeded questions...

Olivia

Try. you'll find a lot of stuff worth downvoting/closevoting (at least on SO)

And/or a bunch of stuff to edit

Tinkeringbell

@Olivia I kinda guess you can still find them once a week with SEDE?

Perhaps some genius can script something ;)

Olivia

@Tinkeringbell maybe, but it's nowhere near as real-time as the tumbleweed badges

There's usually a batch of somewhere between 1 and 40 each hour (some times up to 100). say there's an average of 15 tumbleweeds per hour - that's 2520 questions per week, which are a lot easier to keep up with in real-time (vote wise) than waiting. Not all of us have unlimited ~~power~~ votes you know :')

Tinkeringbell

5:08 PM

@Olivia I don't have a single close vote on SO :P But I understand, that's a lot to keep up with.

rene

shakes petals

Olivia

5:24 PM

eats some flowers

@Tinkeringbell yep. I'm already short on votes as it is

Tinkeringbell

@rene Relax little flower! It's just a summer storm :)

rene

I'm under the table now. It will be fine soon.

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

@MetaAndrewT. pretty sure many do. Or did...

rene

5:40 PM

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard there is Badger : chat.stackoverflow.com/users/7240793/badger?tab=recent /cc @MetaAndrewT.

Olivia

Badger Badger Badger Badger MUSHROOM MUSHROOM

Tinkeringbell

@rene Tables are pretty awesome places to be under ;)

canon

5:56 PM

Kind of curious whether receiving a tumbleweed badge is more damaging than asking the type of question which qualifies for it. I somehow doubt many of the affected users are even aware they have that badge.

Sonic the Bracketed Hedgehog

New users are notified of it

Tinkeringbell

6:09 PM

One summer storm has arrived here too :D

It looks like we will be in the middle of it too, so that's cool :)

Shadow The Curly Braced Wizard

6:28 PM

@SonictheBracketedHedgehog most new users never check their inbox

@Tinkeringbell no summer storms here... Even few drops of rain are very rare. :(

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowTheCurlyBracedWizard :( Last summer we had a very hot and dry summer too, this one seems to be hot and humid.