Meh, those things don't exist for me anymore

It will, one way or another.

This specific event might, sure.

@M.A.R. which things?

It's been going on for so long I'd probably not realize anything if it turns back to normal

But the enmity between community and corporation will slowly build.

@Shadow "drama drying down" "meta going back to normal" "Atlantis and armored human fish"

@forest ur lego

wot

@forest so X users will leave. New users will arrive. SE won't fall, just change its face.

Oh of course it won't fall.

Oh that old story about that old guy and that old painting

@M.A.R. @Bart and the Mona Liza?

@M.A.R. Dorian Grey?

But it will increase the likelihood that it will suffer from disgruntled users suing it over the various legal matters (copyright license violations and whatever), which would be less likely if the community was truly in sync with the corporation.

That for some reason started aging instead. And boy, did people suck at preserving art.

Like, a little idiot drew on it with crayons and then "Oh nooo, this fellow has committed an evil act and look he's ugly now"

@forest actually I pretty much feel multiple things are at a breaking point. There might not be much more goodwill for SE to spend.

lol

Or Mr. Bean sneezed on it and they decided he murdered someone.

@JourneymanGeek How do you mean?

@JourneymanGeek see, this goes back to the old days, even before documentation, when Baggins folk were hunting wild animals with spears and

I lost myself

Literally there's going to be a point where stuff can't be fixed and there's basically just a bunch of bitter snarky folks left who don't care either

@M.A.R. look behind you

@JourneymanGeek but will new users be affected?

GAAAAA GET OUT @Sha, you're burning the whole house down with your flame CGI

@Shadow In time they will be, yes.

@Shadow Who do you think they will first see ?

@forest not so sure

@JourneymanGeek new users don't read. So... nobody? ;)

@JourneymanGeek Dorian Grey

@Shadow SE survives because it has a powerful community.

@Shadow Us mostly

@forest well I still don't see any real change in SO.

The hyphen site didn't fall because it had no hyphen. It fell because the company went in a harmful direction, and a new, better alternative appeared.

@Shadow Changes always happen after the drama has done its damage.

@forest it fell because of money.

Why pay when you can get it for free?

@Shadow when word gets out, instead of "OMG Godwin law arseholes", that "nah, you can't find an answer on SO anymore", it will start losing its relevance

Which has arguably already started

I've seen that mentality slowly appear in the wild.

Not quite that blatant, but I've seen the beginnings.

@forest It's been going on for about 4 weeks. Small stuff has changed but the source of the drama is still there

But I think a better programming site is a catalyst, and doesn't cause a shift in the equilibrium

@JourneymanGeek In 5 years, we may know what the long-term effects are.

Sneezing, diarrhea, migraines

It could range from SE falling, to SE simply losing a lot of traffic and having a sad community.

@M.A.R. Cancer is indicated.

@M.A.R. but new users will fill the gap.

Or it could lead to CMs getting a shot at deciding things and this whole mess is mostly fixed or forgotten and we get productive communities that empower the other products

HAHAHHA

OMG

@Shadow Not if new users don't find a healthy community to settle into.

I know for a fact that I would not have joined and contributed if I had started now.

Only to gain enough rep to chat

@forest well, the power of rep is very strong.

Nah I could use bots to do that.

Only a sith deals in absolute rep.

People will see chance to get rep and start answering, not caring about anything else.

Sure, but those people alone aren't conducive to a growing community.

Rep whores exist, sure, but a whole community of them? It would die quick.

Or at least, it would not be beneficial to people seeking serious answers to hard questions.

@Shadow Well, this says SE/SO would be a small little community with a bunch of guys who decide to spend time here rather than the current monopoly on programming questions that SO has been till now

What am I doing speculating about the future of a community in a chat at 3 a.m.

\me sleeps. Night

s/\\/\//

Nah, I've always me'd with backslashes for some reason

huh

@M.A.R. Actually this is kinda the future I want

ACTION #channel :sleeps. Night

@JourneymanGeek How dare you

@JourneymanGeek Not if the company has anything to say about it! :P

شب بخیر

The unicode. My eyes burn.

drags @M.A.R back from bed

I can't read Arabic anyway.

I can read a bit

I know a few words.

Mostly just from racist jokes though, tbh.

lol

And Hebrew?

Literally nothing. I know some Yiddish words like... bagel.

I'm not a fan of that general region of the world though, anyway.

Due to the various religions (I'm an atheist).

Actually, I'm not a fan of the world as a whole.

@forest Parts of the company would love that. Parts of the company wouldn't notice

I generalize "the company" to the parts which destroy the community.

Just because it's easier that way. It's like saying "the government won't let us do X" while not having to specify that you don't mean, say, the NTSB or CDC which have no powers to make laws.

@forest I don't actually think there's malice as much as cluelessness

I agree.

Malice is not likely to be a motivator, although ego may be to some extent.

That's always a thing

And, dare I say it, some level of hypocrisy? :P

And being out of touch

yeah

"Let them eat cake" and the like

@forest bagel isn't Yiddish... I think

Not that I advocate for the beheading of any staff members.

Eh. I would dare say the last few weeks might have been educational

> Borrowed from Yiddish בייגל‎ (beygl), ultimately from a diminutive of Middle High German bouc, boug- (“ring, bracelet”), from Old High German boug (“ring”), from Proto-Germanic *baugaz (“ring”); compare obsolete English bee (“ring, metal ring, bracelet”), Middle English bege, beh, Old English bēag, bēah, Old Frisian bāg, Old Saxon bōg, Middle Low German bōg, Old Norse baugr; also compare dialectal Austrian German Beugel, Beigel. See also beag.

@forest hehe good to know. :D

And any change I want to see would be constructive

@JourneymanGeek To be honest, you've been saying that about a lot of the past drama, but I don't really see it educating them. I really wish it were, but I simply don't see it happening.

@forest I see/ hear a little more

I really hope your prediction is right.

As I see it, SE is going the way of Activision.

I cannot share most of it though

/me hacks Journey's computer and reads all the sooper sekret hidden transcripts

/me leaks them to Wikileaks for big drama

Hah

It's mostly boring and involves a lot of mock chicken entrail reading. Seeing who is talking and where....

I.e. about 80% of major leaks.

A lot of it is actually public too

Say, what pronoun should a green biological ecosystem like me use?

I vaguely remember hearing that "tree" and "treeself" was actually a thing.

Erf don't be silly

Folks are still touchy over this crap

I'm a forest. This is srs bsns!

I see my brethren (treethren?) getting cut down all the time. Deforestation is a major problem. Whenever I'm referred to as a he or a she, I feel the pain of microdeforestation..

Though jokes aside, I really do hate how people treat the more wooded areas of the world.

@AGirlHasNoName Hm, dismantling prison industrial complex?

No, just something I feel strongly about.

I don't identify as a corrupt for-profit slavery enterprise.

I identify as a forest. Always have.

It's in my name ffs! :P

(And it's forest, not forrest, which would be a name)

On Crypto.SE, one of the best contributors identifies as a carrion-feeding fowl.

An ossifrage, to be precise. (Part of cryptographic lore)

And they go by they

Yep. I had a conversation with them about that a few months ago.

But yeah pronouns are a touchy topic

So I seriously recommend not joking with it

Well "treeself" was a joke but "forest" is in my name.

Ya. The name is fine

Also thanks to your Ava, we know you are he/him

How does my avatar indicate my gender?

Unless you spent the last month in some serious self reflection. And that's fine too

Only guys go shitpost on ED, then?

@forest No. We kept getting it wrong and you corrected us 😂

I never corrected you about my gender. :P

I've heard people refer to me as both she/her and he/him. Frankly I don't care which one is used.

Since I'm a forest, not a human with a gender.

Yes you did

I'd love to see a link to that.

Also I don't think the COC covers species dysphoria

Since I consciously don't affirm nor deny any gender.

Too much work to search

Because it doesn't exist. :P

Oh actually....

Not saying I'm not a he/him, though. Just saying that I never affirm nor deny either way.

@JourneymanGeek Hey there's no dysphoria. I'm a bunch of trees, not trees stuck in a human's body!

Right. Trees can't type

Forests are more than just trees.

I'm a bunch of trees but I let frogs type for me.

(Seriously though, I don't identify as male or female, at least not online, so you can be free to use whatever pronouns you wish, except for "they" which breaks grammatical numbering).

stackoverflow.blog/2019/10/25/…

Oh god does SO have a deal with Facebook now or something?

@forest Not really, it doesn't really break numbering

@SonictheReinstateMonica-hog It does, although to be fair, so does the plural "you".

It's because "they is" and "you is" are not grammatical.

Yeah, speaking of that...we Southern Californians get around that by saying "you guys".

At least where I'm from, we learned that "guys" is a gender-neutral term.

I use y'all occasionally, though not really online.

And some people use all y'all, but I'm not a fan of that.

That's the Texan way