Tavern on the Meta

It's a cross between a ticket system, help desk, and a classic forum for those, "I think this is a problem, but don't know how to fix." type problems.

Journeyman Geek

well, kiiiinda

fbueckert

Which generally means yelling into the void, and occasionally receiving a response.

Journeyman Geek

FOlks feel it sucks for the former, not everyone agrees on a second, and the moment people call this a forum...

fbueckert

2:46 PM

It's a bad way to really surface community consensus, but so far, the only way we got.

@JourneymanGeek Referring to Meta, specifically.

Journeyman Geek

@fbueckert well part of that is growth. Part of that is some of the stuff that needed to grow didn't

yup

fbueckert

Kinda analogizing it to the required tags; bug support, etc.

Journeyman Geek

And even when stuff gets fixed, people sometimes do not know...

or don't notice (I see a lot of status completed the last few months)

fbueckert

@JourneymanGeek That's an age-old problem with bug fixes; how do you communicate it? Usually only the one that submitted the ticket knows about it.

And nobody reads patch notes.

Journeyman Geek

@fbueckert well part of the issue is ... kinda the odd structure of SE

@fbueckert well we have folks who put in a meta question, that may or may not get picked up and put into a ticket...

but there's no good reason we need to get informed of a ticket.

fbueckert

2:50 PM

@JourneymanGeek Not disagreeing; just pointing out that communicating changes in any system leaves something to be desired.

Journeyman Geek

yup

I know

I work helldesk in a multi-vendor enviroment

fbueckert

Even feature requests here in my small office (like...maybe a dozen people) have a problem with people knowing what's changed.

Feature request comes in, gets approved, I let stakeholder know when changed, and there's more or less where it dies.

Journeyman Geek

but folks are kinda used to it here. Or were.

fbueckert

To a degree, I agree with people being used to being in the know.

I think it was more a byproduct of SE having a product, and the community being used to being in the drivers seat when it came to changes and improvements.

In essence, we were the stakeholders.

Journeyman Geek

@fbueckert well - least from my perspective, that's important

and that folks feel that they are not stakeholders is a problem

If we're talking about new folks and growth - who're they going to see first?

fbueckert

2:55 PM

@JourneymanGeek I'm going to go out on a limb and say most of the disconnect is that we're no longer stakeholders.

Journeyman Geek

@fbueckert well - in a lot of ways, we haven't been for quite a while

fbueckert

And changing that has led to a lot of disillusionment.

@JourneymanGeek Laissez faire management always leads to disgruntlement when the reins are taken away.

Journeyman Geek

@fbueckert eh, I think it goes a bit deeper

fbueckert

And it can't be disputed that SE's been pretty hands off for quite some time.

Journeyman Geek

Maybe its from my perspective as a non SO person - but a lot of it comes from "We'll have what we need to make things better" ...

and waiting and waiting, and well

and it isn't really that we don't have the reins - a lot of smaller sites still run pretty much on their own.

Its that communication between the company and folks has scaled... badly

fbueckert

2:59 PM

@JourneymanGeek I see all that waiting as people finally taking things into their own hands and just making things work.

Journeyman Geek

@fbueckert or nagging a lot

fbueckert

So SE being hands off has led to a culture of self-sufficiency and perception of being ignored.

Journeyman Geek

@fbueckert well - maybe, but we don't want people telling us what to do

we need folks backing us up when we need stuff

and well, being parts of those communities

Which would probably scale badly now, but shrug

fbueckert

@JourneymanGeek I agree with that entirely.

Journeyman Geek

But honestly? Where I'm sitting now? All I can do is bug folks in the parts of the company I talk to slowly and hope it trickles up ;p

Many of whom probably hopefully see it too

fbueckert

3:04 PM

What I see is the community figuring itself out, and then having SE take an active hand in things again, in a direction the community doesn't agree with, and that's led to this entire kerfuffle.

Journeyman Geek

@fbueckert eh, and not backing us up a lot of the time

fbueckert

Like I've said before, being less hands on leads to being disconnected from the community, and backlash when you try to change it.

Journeyman Geek

I don't trust some of the voices that go "We want to change things here but we're not going to engage the community at all"

I don't trust the more extreme voices here too. But we can't get the moderate, calm voices heard until they get mad.

fbueckert

I see that as a byproduct of feeling like they're not being heard.

Journeyman Geek

Naw, it just works.

But its not how I want things to work XD

fbueckert

3:08 PM

I get that contempt invites automatic dismissal. But when you have someone still here, trying to be heard, I believe that has some merit to it; if you're trying to retain your core userbase, then listening to those people, even if you decide not to adopt their ideas, is a good idea. These are the people that still care. It's when silence falls that you know you've lost them. Communication is a two way street, and users expressing frustration and contempt signals that it's breaking down, if not totally broken. — fbueckert Aug 23 '18 at 15:25

There are some users who care greatly, but are frustrated with actions taken, and it shows in their interaction with staff.

Journeyman Geek

I was frustrated

But well, I also kinda politely yelled a lot.

buuut they also rolled out a huge change, and made a few big mistakes.

and if folks were like "Hey, so this is happening, but what do you guys think"

off the record

fbueckert

@JourneymanGeek How do you do this off the record in a way that's still open to feedback?

Journeyman Geek

3:29 PM

@fbueckert probably on chat ;p

as opposed to say hangouts

Or hell, maybe townhall chats. Those worked well ._.

That's frustrating :/

"Oh they actually did this and this and this and those things oh wait"

@fbueckert as opposed to... well I guess formal user testing or meta

and I'm usually more coherent on chat than in person at 3am in the morning XD

fbueckert

3:46 PM

No worries, man.

Coherency is a fleeting concept most days, anyways.

404

@Feeds [title text] How is malediction different from femalediction?

Shog9

4:03 PM

the latter is "unforgivable curse", which comes later

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

@404 It's when it's said by iron

Speaking of communication breakdowns between community and staff: I was trying to point them out long before they happened, and nobody believed me at the time; now see what's happening.

@JourneymanGeek I asked why Town Hall chats were discontinued, and have yet to receive a response.

@JNat Cross-site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/16531302/…

M.A.R.

5:10 PM

@SonictheAnonymousWizHog When

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

@M.A.R. I believe you shivered at that point

Well, it was more or less indirect, through subtle things like my post on how to get official responses to meta questions, and my pinging staff to make sure things were responded to, etc.

M.A.R.

No I was gonna sneeze but I didn't

Now my nose is on fire.

It's your fault for not letting me sneeze.

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

To be fair, though, at the time, I had effectively been frozen in time between November 2013 and December 2017, and so when I rejoined the site I was expecting that official responses would be more like they were in 2013 (fast and frequent).

At the time, SE was more in a "what would Jeff do" state.

John Dvorak

Today, it's deep in the "what would any other corporation do" mode

Sonic the Anonymous WizHog

It could be because the investors are putting pressure on SE to make money

Proposal: high-rep users can purchase ownership shares in SE for cheap.

John Dvorak

5:18 PM

That would create even more dissent when SO inevitably refocuses even more towards quantity

canon

6:01 PM

@404 is it?

404

6:31 PM

Even with the flurry of recent activity at Where should CMS questions go to?, this question was viewed 116 times in the (almost exactly) 10 years since it was asked.

404

8:39 PM

Possibly the first time an already-extended election failed on a fully graduated/designed site? webapps.stackexchange.com/election/4

TBH that site is mostly a description of how web apps worked in 2011. Its value for the internet is between negative and zero.

M.A.R.

Not if you're a historian

Shog9

unless you count the first election on WebApps, which we didn't fail but would have if we'd had the same criteria we do now

M.A.R.

Part of me thinks how the future history book will function considering how many things get done, and then another part of me thinks whether we're even doing as much as before

Where's my flying car, or super fast spaceship?

Shog9

helicopters exist. Turns out they're not sufficiently better than horses.

404

@M.A.R. xkcd.com/1259 In 60 M years aliens will know humans only by the posts on Worldbuilding

M.A.R.

8:45 PM

@Shog9 They're way more awesome than horses though when crashing.

So epic. So much CGI budget.

Shog9

I donno. A crashing horse is pretty impressive

M.A.R.