Tavern on the Meta

6:05 PM

Heads up:

Sara Chipps on November 13, 2019

In my very first blog post, I wrote about what a personal experience taught me about the Stack Overflow community. I said we were going to step back and re-evaluate how we deliver feedback, how we can improve content quality, and how we can reduce friction between people. I said that our goal is to have the question asking process be painless and beneficial for new people and Stack Overflow veterans alike.

During this re-evaluation period, we noticed something in our reputation reward system. We give anyone who receives an upvote on an answer ten additional reputation points, but only give five reputation points to people who receive an upvote on a question. …

Stop Harming Monica

The future is now

Feeds

We’re Rewarding the Question Askers

Sara Chipps on November 13, 2019

In my very first blog post, I wrote about what a personal experience taught me about the Stack Overflow community. I said we were going to step back and re-evaluate how we deliver feedback, how we can improve content quality, and how we can reduce friction between people. I said that our goal is to have the question asking process be painless and beneficial for new people and Stack Overflow veterans alike.

During this re-evaluation period, we noticed something in our reputation reward system. We give anyone who receives an upvote on an answer ten additional reputation points, but only give five reputation points to people who receive an upvote on a question. …

Stop Harming Monica

at least (at first glance) it doesn't spuriously mention gender as a reason to do it

Tinkeringbell

@Rubiksmoose Time to go to bed. Goodnight!

Rubiksmoose

XD

Mgetz

6:10 PM

well I guess they finally chose what they wanted to do

about time

Stop Harming Monica

@Mgetz wasn't the point that they'd long ago chosen to do this?

Mgetz

@StopHarmingMonica except they hadn't, there was always the tension between SO/SE being a FAQ and being a site where people didn't have to try at all (avoiding terminology that people don't like is hard).

This makes it clear that the latter is the choice they are making 100% and that trying to close low quality posts (which they are working to help not being a thing) isn't going to be encouraged

from my perspective this is freeing, I can stop trying at all and basically ignore SO/SE

because it's not worth my time to answer anymore or even try

meagar

@Mgetz ... because of this reputation change?

Mgetz

while I don't think it was the intent to drive away people from answering, that will be a side effect

Rubiksmoose

@Mgetz .... Well that's one way to react I suppose.

Mgetz

6:19 PM

@meagar nope, because of the message that we're not really to close or moderate. The goal is more users, not high quality questions

so it's ok to get absolutely trash questions now

Rubiksmoose

@Mgetz That's not a message I see at all in this announcement.

meagar

You're inferring something that was implied as far as I can see.

Mgetz

@Rubiksmoose that's fine we have different perspectives

Rubiksmoose

If anything, moderation and closing low-quality posts is more important than ever.

meagar

This changes nothing for you, if you're a person who likes to moderate.

Tinkeringbell

6:21 PM

@Mgetz Or you can hope that by giving people the power to award ten points, they become more picky ;)

mag

I'm not too hot on the celebration of question askers

as we currently have categorically too many, and the questions are categorically not good enough

Mgetz

@Tinkeringbell they won't, there are allegedly entire discords dedicated to countering down votes and manipulating question scores

Meta Andrew T.

If only we can fix behavioural issue (upvoting on low quality posts). On the other hand, this gives the same chance for those who asks (good) questions to help moderate the sites.

Mgetz

@mag well answers alone don't pay for the site

mag

thats correct, but neither does not getting an answer to your question

Tinkeringbell

6:22 PM

@Mgetz o.0 that's the first time I hear that one... Ouch, that sucks if true.

mag

that is the main pain point that needs minimizing

Mgetz

@Tinkeringbell I've never actually confirmed it but seen it stated in several places. where they coordinate to avoid the serial upvote detector

Tinkeringbell

@mag True, this is one of my downs too. But on the upside, I've often felt a great question deserved a bit more, and now I can give that!

Mgetz

tbf there are people that upvote every downvoted post

@Tinkeringbell I actually prefer a Fibonacci system, you have 100 points per day to vote with. But every subsequent vote on any given item goes up the Fibonacci sequence

mag

the problem is mainly that what askers really want (an answer) is on SO best served by improving duplicate detection

because the vast majority of questions are duplicates

if anything a lot more questions need to be closed to improve the experience for askers, and search needs to be built into the asking process to pre-empt more questions

Mgetz

6:25 PM

I'm still extremely sure that my highest upvoted answer is probably a dupe

there is just no way people didn't know about <input type="hidden" in 2013

mag

What's better then eventually getting a good answer? Getting a duplicate suggestion that contains your answer right now

Tinkeringbell

@Mgetz Does that work or leave you with some random number of points at the end of the day that you can't spend because they're not the next number in the sequence?

Mgetz

@Tinkeringbell no because you can still spend them individually as one point upvotes

or three points

if you really like something

basically you can keep upvoting until you run out of points

Sonic the Reinstate Monica-hog

9,507 points for me

Tinkeringbell

Ohh. Well... Scaling your votes somehow would be nice. A ten is a perfect score, and it's sometimes hard to award to something that isn't perfect.

Sonic the Reinstate Monica-hog

6:29 PM

And an additional 16 qualifying days toward Epic/Legendary

mag

increasing the external incentive for asking or really anything just strengthens the overjustification effect

Tinkeringbell

What's that effect? Never heard of that one before

mag

if you give an extrinsic incentive for a behavior that incentive replaces the intrinsic incentive and when taken away or becoming less appealing, leads to cessation of the desired behavior

Meta Andrew T.

Well, SO is just unfixable with its current size, no matter what the fixes are... it's the outlier

mag

essentially, if you give your kid a piece of candy when they clean their room, the intrinsic incentive (having a clean room) gets partly supplanted by the external incentive (candy). When you remove the external incentive (stop giving candy) or when the kid no longer likes the candy, the motivation for the task sinks below the level of what it was before the incentive started

wikipedia has a good summary and sources on the topic: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect

Tinkeringbell

6:33 PM

@mag Ah, sure. But what parent has kids that care about clean rooms? You give them candy because they followed your order of cleaning their room....

mag

I used that as an example

Kevin B

eh, i just think it's absurd that any question that receives at least 1 upvote for each 5 downvotes it receives should result in a net gain.

i feel the same way about answers

Rob

Throw candy in the room, see if they pick up after you.

mag

I reckon that this change is unconsequential at this point, but the blog post is hilariously wrong headed, although harmless in my opinion

if the main goal was to help as many people with their problems as possible, we would be doing everything in our power to prevent people from asking and make them search more

Kevin B

i have a -33 question that will go from -36 net gain to +16

Reinstate Monica

6:36 PM

I think it would help the sites that struggle with a Question per Day rate, but at the same time I am on strike so it really doesn't seem to matter

mag

because most problems save for developing languages and frameworks are solved matters on SO and the primary loop of finding your solution is just finding the magic words to type into google to land on it

Meta Andrew T.

Oh yeah, those unpopular feature requests...

Tinkeringbell

@mag Eh, there's stuff that takes months to code and stuff you can do while having a cup of coffee. Working on the big stuff should happen, but it also shouldn't completely overrule any smaller changes.

FreezePhoenix

I get notifications about these podcasts from SO, but never do they actually talk about what's wrong.

mag

@Tinkeringbell Yeah, but in the view of wanting people to help themselves this is detrimental

in fact, if you wanted to do that I think questions ought to give no rep at all and even cost some, to provide an additional incentive to look for answers first

Rubiksmoose

6:38 PM

@FreezePhoenix Well this one isn't a podcast FWIW.

mag

because getting into that habit makes you a better developer

and it's easy to avoid getting into that habit

A lot of the other systems that make SO work, like the question ban, the downvotes and closing are already optimized for that point

FreezePhoenix

Questions already have a cost, that is typing them. What's odd is to note that often it would take less effort and less time to search in the search bar, than it would to type the question.

It's horribly inefficient to have someone make a question that has already answered elsewhere, then another person has to do what the first person should have done!

mag

but I guess having more questions asked is at least good for growth numbers, if not for the quality of the site or outcomes of the askers

the last thing I needed when starting out would have been SO encouraging me to ask rather then search

Meta Andrew T.

Well, let's just see and observe how it goes first~

I mean, I know there's a user who has asked 1000+ questions and having 10k+ rep, but most of the questions were deemed low-quality by the community (not on SO).

mag

given that most questions are asked by one time askers anyways I predict the effect of this positive or negative might be within the margin of error

user58

6:57 PM

Oh hey, I can VTD answers now.

rene

That is a positive outcome

NotThatGuy

@ReinstateMonica I don't imagine it would help new sites much. I expect most people there are trying to help the site succeed and contribute however possible instead of just trying to hunt for rep in the most efficient manner.

user58

:8056778 The support team is made up of staff members, not volunteer moderators.

mag

me too

I gained like 2.1k rep on mse

user58

If you want to report a case of mod abuse, feel free to email staff@stackoverflow.com.

I am Monica

7:08 PM

I didn't gain anything on SO because I have 0 questions.

NotThatGuy

I think the vote change just again highlights how disconnected SE is from the community and what's happening on their sites.

Kevin B

i have nothing but negatively scored questions, but i gained rep

I am Monica

Where's the reward for people who look for their answers first? :P

user58

@IamMonica Self-answered questions are officially encouraged....

I am Monica

No, I mean that SO has invariably had the answer to anything I wanted to ask.

user310724

7:10 PM

@user58 thanks, and what if this is a support stuff member misconduct as his or hers answer, as I recognized, was offensive, is there anyone "higher" to report this?

user310724

I came to rephrase but as you replied I continue here...

user58

@JohnDoea Not really. You could try emailing Catija or someone directly, but you're unlikely to get the response you're after.

Kevin B

There is only one point of entry for contacting staff officially

well, two

Mgetz

@user58 but reporting to tim that shog is being abused is not likely to change anything?

user58

*rolls eyes*

Rubiksmoose

7:14 PM

@IamMonica Well SO hasn't been processed yet so nobody has gained anything yet. ;)

user58

Community Manager at Stack Overflow.

Kevin B

I will go up 145 rep, for 7 negatively scored questions

user58

I expect to get at least 25,000 reputation network-wide as a result of this change. I've already gotten another ~7,000 on MSE alone. This will be interesting.

user310724

@user58 if there is no one to supervise the supervisors, and the supervisors don't share their name or at least profile, there is a substrate for corruption.

user310724

I will die in the opinion that this is a problem.

user58

7:18 PM

@JohnDoea Standard escalation goes users > mods > staff > internal staff supervision. I'm not privy to internal staff supervision policies.

I am Monica

@Rubiksmoose well, unless I stand to gain something for zero questions asked, that won't really matter to me. :P

Jon Ericson

@user58 The main rule for the final step is no pointy sticks. (Obviously it's complicated and I'm not really going to talk about it. ;-)

user58

Of course not. That's what wet trout are for.

Thomas Ward

throws sharpened sticks at @JonEricson for reasons

:P

Jon Ericson

@user58 Mmmmmmm.... trout.

Shadow The Princess Wizard

7:27 PM

eating all the trouts

mag

wp:trout

rene

Hmm, just went to the theatre only to learn at arrival that one of the actors fell ill. Short night out.

I am Monica

@JonEricson the pointy sticks thing is a lie. I've seen the tiger traps...

@KevinB lol...

It already felt like downvotes couldn't do much against upvotes. This comes to mind. I guess we'll see how it goes.

2

user310724

@user58 I just tried to email to staff@stackoverflow.com

user310724

I got a response that he address cannot be found.

I am Monica

7:37 PM

@JohnDoea Did it tell you to post a comment on the blog?

user58

@JohnDoea Really? Odd. Maybe it was community@stackoverflow.com.

I am Monica

lol...

user310724

@IamMonica this is Gmail server notification so no blog

I am Monica

@JohnDoea I was making a joke about how the SE staff has disengaged and has resorted to posting one-way stuff on the blog.

It's sort of a mean-spirited joke. I'm not representing Monica very well. I wish I could change this name back. 28 days to go on the cooldown.

Jon Ericson

@IamMonica Downvotes are sorta the wrong tool for outdated answers. This is something we are actively discussing in the Q&A team. More likely we will want to do something to encourage edits, answer deletions or (and this is my favorite) borrow the versioning system we used to have on Documentation.

(Ok, it's mostly just me on the Documentation idea right now.)

I am Monica

7:41 PM

You really want to salvage something from all that effort. I get it.

amanaP lanaC A nalP A naM A

lol meta.stackexchange.com/questions/42769/…

Jon Ericson

@JohnDoea The contact form is a better choice.

meta.stackexchange.com/contact

user310724

@JonEricson the contact form will send my inquiry to the same unnamed person at the support stuff...

I am Monica

@amanaPlanaCAnalPAnaMA you monster. Now I have to spend rep downvoting all of the opposition.

Jon Ericson

@JohnDoea Correct.

amanaP lanaC A nalP A naM A

7:42 PM

Why are they reversing that des? I liked that questions were worth less...

im gunna get a million points from stackoverflow.com/questions/5874652/prop-vs-attr lol

user310724

@JonEricson I desire to write to a higher "department" as I believe there must be one.

user310724

Otherwise, who will supervise the supervisors?

I am Monica

@JonEricson Certainly. That's why we were asking for something better. Still, the notion that the signal from the minority of people who know better might be lost against the noise from the majority of casual upvotes, on any given answer, is disheartening. There might be a better mechanism to handle that too.

mag

@JonEricson I wonder what exactly the rep change was for

given that for asker outcomes it looks like it'll have a small negative if any effect

Jon Ericson

@IamMonica The trick is to sort out the "minority of people who know better" from the "minority of people who have strong opinions who might not know better". I'm serious about this. Everyone assumes they are in the right and not everyone can be.

I am Monica

7:48 PM

silver/gold badge "dispute this answer" functionality, imo

user310724

@JonEricson if there are supervisors for the supervisors, how could I contact them?

Jon Ericson

@mag Ultimately the change was intended to prevent a specific form of abuse, it didn't actually achieve that effect and we think it was a bad idea to begin with.

mag

I question why questions award reputation at all

seems like the motivation of wanting an answer is plenty to get people questioning

I am Monica

@mag probably because we set the bar so high for an acceptable question that we need to dangle a carrot.

George Stocker

@JonEricson recognizing you have about a million pings; can you or someone correct the blog post? It says Stack Overflow launched in 2007 but it actually launched in 2008 (also making the math in the subsequent paragraph questionable)

Jon Ericson

7:50 PM

@JohnDoea Maybe explain the situation when you right the contact message and ask them to elevate the ticket to someone else. (And explain why you think that.)

@GeorgeStocker Heh. I'll mention that.

user310724

@JonEricson Thanks, I prefer to write an email if I can.

mag

questions should be a matter of last resort. They are slow, unreliable and a lot more work to get your answer. Discouraging questions in every way possible is vital for people to get to their answers faster

user310724

I mean, if I have a good address

mag

yet it seems like SE is trying to find ways to make people ask more when they ought to be looking at ways to make people ask less and search more

I am Monica

@mag there was an amazing meta answer at some point which pretty much shamed you for asking a question before exhausting google, research, and experimentation. I miss that mentality.

mag

7:53 PM

a lot of the mentioned points run parallel to this. Nobody joins a Q/A community with the intent of becoming a permanent part of it by asking questions. Having to ask questions is a unfortunate thing that happens to you when search fails you, not something you seek out. Not so for answering.

user58

The point of SE isn't to provide a quick answer. It's to document good questions and answers for posterity.

I am Monica

@user58 not anymore it's not.

user58

i'm stickin' with my dream

mag

encouraging people to ask seems backwards and a misuse of resources.

2

I am Monica

lol

Jon Ericson

7:54 PM

@IamMonica Was it working?

mag

I'd rather they polish up the duplicate system, make it less tedious to navigate, and improve detection and scaling of it

I am Monica

@JonEricson It works for me, personally. It doesn't work for a vampire. Are we still allowed to say "vampire" or does that violate the CoC?

NotThatGuy

@mag They probably do that because most websites are obsessed with engagement, even at the cost of everything else.

mag

if I'm in the shoes of one who has a problem they need a solution to, the fastest and most accurate way SO can help me is by removing barriers between me and the duplicate that exists in 99.9% of my questions

Sonic the Reinstate Monica-hog

@IamMonica s.tk/onhold?

mag

7:55 PM

I want to find that thing, I don't want to be encouraged to ask another one. I might not get an answer, or my answer might be less comprehensive.

I am Monica

@SonictheReinstateMonica-hog No, it was a bit more casual and humorous than that.

Jon Ericson

@mag Without questions there are no answers. I think writing a good question is harder than writing a good answer. (Though there's a lot more upside for answer quality.) So instead of saying you get no reward for taking the time to ask a good question, I think the reward should be comparable. The truth is the plurality of questions don't get any votes.

Meta Andrew T.

@IamMonica I only remember a controversial meta answer that got edited...

Jon Ericson

@IamMonica I mean, were there fewer bad questions and more good ones?

user58

1

A: Should the weight of question upvotes be increased network-wide?

Yes. I am in favor of changing the upvote value to be equal. Here's why. Question standards We hold questions to... pretty high standards. They can't be too opinion based. They can't be too broad. They can't be soliciting recommendations. It has to be self-contained. They have to be on topic...

Jon Ericson

7:57 PM

I propose that this change has been a step in the right direction.

mag

@JonEricson But you don't deal in rewards. The reputation is a sort of bribe. To encourage people to do things they'd not do otherwise

Jon Ericson

@mag It really isn't.

mag

People have every reason in the book to ask what they want to know, but not every reason to answer for free. The only lever you as SE have to increase question quality is via getting people what they want to know faster (or at all)

Meta Andrew T.

Well, if someone actively posts a good non-duplicate interesting insightful questions and want to help take care of the site but never get upvotes... then sad isn't it...

mag

people asking poor questions aren't going to care about extra rep. They don't care about the site either. They're stuck with a problem and in need of a solution. Any sort of attempt to improve can only flow from that. Question asking just isn't an activity active users do, because it's incidental. I can search out 10 questions to answer tonight, but I can't ask 10 tonight. Having to ask a question happens to me without my input, and only rarely

Jon Ericson

8:00 PM

Arguably reputation is far more insidious than a bribe.

mag

you can't anticipate what you don't know

Meta Andrew T.

Forget those old techs (with hundred of dupes), we're talking about new cutting-edge techs

mag

People whose main activity is to ask questions and who ask a lot are either on the very small cutting edge of a new technology or are being failed by the system that could get them what they want (the answer, nothing else) faster with better dupe detection

user310724

@user58 the second address (community@stackoverflow.com) worked for sending. I asked to further escalate to Catija or support stuff supervision. I hope such escalation will happen; I think it's good that it's in the database at least for the future. Well, thank you for your niceness and help.

NotThatGuy

@mag My theory is answering fewer questions (and closing more) would increase question quality significantly, since low quality askers will start to realise they can't get answers here.

mag

8:03 PM

but they can

user310724

And thank you too @JonEricson

djsmiley2k - CoW

hmmm

I am Monica

@JonEricson I suspect that a more robust feedback pipeline (described loosely here) would do more for question quality. That post talks more of abstracting away quality control action-selection... but the notion of checking off multiple good/bad things for a post, which could then be communicated anonymously to the author via some new feedback panel, might make asking questions less painful.

mag

I'd argue 99/100 low quality askers could get exactly what they are looking for, and faster then they do now

djsmiley2k - CoW

I want a upboat every time a question is closed as a dupe of mine

I am Monica

8:03 PM

They'd have concrete, actionable feedback rather than a generic feelsbad downvote. And nobody's bothered by having to draft a comment.

mag

if only the system was more adept at helping them find what's already here

Meta Andrew T.

ugh, this is the third time I have a deja vu about having this conversation on this chat room...

mag

In the end question quality is only a means to the end of getting as many people as good answers as possible to their questions the fastest

I am Monica

Of course, I don't know how feasible that is... or whether voters would even bother with it.

mag

that is the core goal of the site and every decision should serve that first and foremost

NotThatGuy

8:05 PM

@MetaAndrewT. Things here move too fast. I don't know how anyone could read most messages for more than a few minutes at a time.

Rob

The problem is that some sites require a couple of years of university just to read the question, let alone answering it. Some answers take hours to write (not the best example) and earn very little reputation (even for Doctors, with almost 200K rep.). --- So doubling across the board isn't even and fair.

mag

rep was never even and fair

hence why answerers and voters gravitate towards easy entertaining questions with easy and clearly understood answers

Meta Andrew T.

@NotThatGuy nah, didn't happen in real-life before, but I've experienced this convo twice inside my previous dreams (yeah, unbelievable, just ignore it)

mag

nobody answers some one in a million mutex c problem with a page of code to debug and several concurrency tests for the rep, because even if you get a repcap or two out of it you could have 10 in the time it took you to come up with it.

Rob

^^ That's where the haul is!

Stormblessed

8:07 PM

Why’s there not a meta announcement about the rep? When is it changing?

I am Monica

lol, "when?"

mag

It already changed, they're just not done recalculating yet

the announcement is the blogpost, I guess. Because thats how they do things these days

I am Monica

exactly

mag

No sense in asking the userbase when you know you won't like the answer

I am Monica

rep-wipe imo. Fresh Start™

mag

8:08 PM

nah

rep is near worthless anyways

Stormblessed

But like...that’s so bad for being able to see a record of things that have happened on meta

mag

all you get is more tools to burn your free time in service

my primary concern in continuing to be here other then the friends I made in these spaces is to maintain the fact that SO makes my life a lot easier then it'd be without it

and by a lot I mean I get to goof off for like 4 hours a day because nearly every problem I face has a ready made and deeply explained solution at my fingertips that I can tap at will

Stormblessed

@Shog9 hi! Will there be an announcement post with more details, or just a blog?

It's grate:

@SmokeDetector tpu-

8:12 PM

@Stormblessed Just the blog as far as we've been told.

Stormblessed

Well I feel like writing a post

If that’s true

So the historical record or whatever has it

Good idea?

Rob

Be ready to take the hit.

Stormblessed

CW probably

But I don’t want to conflict with SE if they plan to make one...?

Rubiksmoose

@Stormblessed I mean there's already the MSE post that tracks changes to MSE. It's probably already going to be added as a line there.

Stormblessed

8:15 PM

@Rubiksmoose Already there, it is

Rubiksmoose

I don't really see the need for a post documenting it further then.

Stormblessed

But it’s not such an easy thing to find in there

NotThatGuy

@mag I've accepted that my contribution makes little to no difference in the success (or failure) of the site as a whole and often even very little difference on the threads where I post answers.

Still haven't quite managed to leave entirely though.

Rubiksmoose

@Stormblessed Does it need to be super easy to find?

Stormblessed

yes...

There’s that post about when it was changed at first

But not a corresponding one

Tinkeringbell

8:20 PM

@Stormblessed Drop a comment on that one linking to the blog post.

That's as visible as you'll get it, all info in one place!

Meta Andrew T.

@Stormblessed already on meta.stackexchange.com/a/322016

user287113

What the heck is going on with Stack Overflow (company)? A lot of bad decisions recently.

Tinkeringbell

Hi I'm Tink, and you are? :)

user287113

Asking questions or formulating problems is almost always a lot easier than providing solutions to problems.

user287113

@JNat Any comments?

Tinkeringbell

8:22 PM

so... change should be good then?

Stormblessed

@Tinkeringbell ugh I can’t find that one now...

Tinkeringbell

@Stormblessed No worries ;) You'll find it eventually :)

user287113

I doubt that this change will improve the quality of the questions. Actually, I think it will encourage users to ask a lot of questions only to get more reputation. For example, on AI.SE, we have a certain user who frequently asks weird questions, who's been surprisingly upvoted many times. This change is very very risky and probably a very big mistake.

Tinkeringbell

Well, reducing it apparently didn't either. So if questions are really that hard to write, might as well have a good reward for it.

I kinda like that the blog post acknowledges that there's more work to be done to increase question quality, and even states what they're doing with regards to that...

user287113

This change is a very big mistake. Formulating a problem (for example, asking for a proof) is a lot easier than providing the solution (i.e. writing the proof).

user287113

8:26 PM

Roughly, Stack Overflow decided that P=NP (it is just a joke).

M.A.R.

@nbro I do not think that is an exhaustive view of questions.

Tinkeringbell

Ah, so now you're suddenly changing... that helps the discussion... Nice breath wasted...

M.A.R.

@nbro Statistical outliers

Goedenacht @Tink. How're you doin'

I just spent 2 hours and 21 minutes solving math.

Tinkeringbell

@M.A.R. About to sign off... Not interested in wasting more time on this ;)

M.A.R.

BTW, Skeptics has been surprisingly interesting recently.

user287113

8:28 PM

To me, this change is very beneficial. I asked so many questions that have been upvoted many times. So this is not a personal "beef".

Meta Andrew T.

Until this mosquite go away, I can't sleep...

M.A.R.

They had a tip for warding off mosquitoes

user287113

I am just worried about the users that keep on asking weird, out of context and even poor questions, who will receive a lot of upvotes, basically for doing nothing or trolling.

M.A.R.

2 mins ago, by M.A.R.

@nbro Statistical outliers

Poor questions getting upvoted is a concern, no more than it has ever been.

user287113

@M.A.R. Well, on AI.SE, it is not a statistical outlier, it is often the rule, and nobody solves this problem

M.A.R.

8:30 PM

You are entitled to your opinion. I am not a frequenter of that site anyway.

Meta Andrew T.

@nbro why did it get upvoted in the first place?

user287113

I cannot mention the specific user, because I think this is not allowed, but this user keeps on asking weird questions and giving completely wrong answers. He's 2.5k of reputation on a site where the most upvoted user doesn't even have 10k

M.A.R.

And it is generally very uncool.

500 kelvin

That's halfway there.

user287113

Uncool?

user287113

Uncool is having to deal with completely wrong answers every time

Rob

8:32 PM

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Best_Friend_Is_a_Vampire

Meta Andrew T.

No need to mention the specific user. Some SE sites have such users, but the rep is irrelevant as long as they got upvoted regardless of the quality.

M.A.R.

Isn't AI a new-ish site? It's too rash to decide on voting patterns in a beta methinks.

user287113

Well, this is my point. Reputation should be a good indicator of the knowledge of the user

user287113

@M.A.R. It's been around for more than 3 years. Not really new

Meta Andrew T.

nope, reputation is never meant to be a knowledge, but more like a trust. tag score is more relevant to knowledge (which is only based on non-cw answer's score)

3

M.A.R.

8:34 PM

@nbro I dunno if it's your writing style or that you really feel strong emotions about the arguments you're making every time, but the tone that the written text (faultily maybe) conveys doesn't usually encourage further conversation. I remember we've had a few unpleasant encounters over this.

user287113

This is a very big mistake. This will encourage users to keep on asking questions only to get more reputation, even though they may not even need an answer to such a question.

user287113

@MetaAndrewT. You've got to be kidding

user287113

Upvotes are a synonym for quality or, at least, they should be!

I am Monica

quality or pity

M.A.R.

Nah

THIS is a big mistake

Do not build a city out of a computer simulation, people.

user287113

8:37 PM

Hm

M.A.R.

There are unexpected consequences. Like things taking up space.

djsmiley2k - CoW

lol

M.A.R.

@IamMonica Quality pity

2

user287113

Well, I really think this is a relatively big mistake. But, well, I think I can handle it!

Meta Andrew T.

@nbro I'm not kidding: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/41409

Raedwald

8:38 PM

@M.A.R. I saw a book named "Crap cycle paths" that is full of those.

NotThatGuy

@nbro Constructing a good question can take a ton of time, often much longer than it would take for someone to answer it. The problem is most questions aren't very good and plenty of those are already being rewarded through upvotes, and the good ones people would ask anyway because people taking time to construct those tend not to care that much about reputation.

Meta Andrew T.

but let's move on~~~~ and on~~~~~

M.A.R.

So when is the rep calc. I wantz repz.

user287113

@MetaAndrewT. Your arguments or whoever has an opinion similar to yours makes no sense at all. Votes exist for evaluating the posts. There is no other goal for them.

Meta Andrew T.

Agree to disagree then

M.A.R.

8:40 PM

@nbro No, it does. It's called an argument of ethos.

And it sounds Greek. I must be right.

@ter spends most of his life being right, for example.

71

Q: New Reputation Calculation - was the community asked?

Stack Exchange is recalculating everyone's reputation to award more reputation for receiving an upvote on a question. To my knowledge, the community wasn't asked for input on whether this was a good idea or not. Considering that 2.4 million people are about to receive varying levels of reputation...

user287113

@NotThatGuy I don't really think so. Questions take me a lot more time to answer than to ask. Why is the sky blue? Everyone can ask this question. But almost no one knows the answer, unless you have studied it.

M.A.R.

This has moved from a rhetorical question to a trick question.

curious

→ 11 messages moved to Chimney

M.A.R.

@curious did you kill the cat

user287113

Tricky question?

M.A.R.

8:43 PM

Only if I'm working for the orga Whoops

curious

@M.A.R. Finally, someone got it!

@M.A.R. You win....uhm...i didn't plan for this

NotThatGuy

Well, okay, it depends on the site and the question. A "why isn't my code doing what I want" question can take hours to turn into a vaguely decent question and get a good answer in a few minutes.
Even just researching a very simple question can still take a lot of time (a question without research isn't very good, despite what all the upvotes might tell you).

user287113

SE websites are basically useful because of the community, because of all of us that dedicate time to them, especially to answer questions and clean up comments and posts. Now, the community should have more impact on the direction of the sites, IMHO.

M.A.R.

I keep getting Yearlings.

Is that normal

Jon Ericson

@M.A.R. Yes. If you asked useful questions on a bunch of sites.

M.A.R.

8:47 PM

Should I consult my badgician? shuffles pamphlets anxiously

user58

You need to have 200 rep x (number of years you've had an account), so the changes are probably pushing you over.

Jon Ericson

(Yearling is an odd ~~duck~~ badge.)

user287113

@NotThatGuy Here the question is simply "Why is my code not working?" How difficult is this question to ask? All the details of the specific context is just a matter of pressing a few more letters. What's difficult about that?

2

M.A.R.

Duck . . . badges. AVIAN FLU! Runs around in circles

Jon Ericson

My meta Yearlings are the result of announcing a lot of election results. So especially odd.

Bart

8:48 PM

Every time someone mentions ducks, I think Inf has returned.

M.A.R.

@Bart Ooooh. No history lessons in this chat.

Bart

@M.A.R. No history lessons, the future also doesn't go here. What's left? The present? By the time I finish typing that has passed as well.

M.A.R.

@SmokeDetector Alright, shallow answer, repeated promotional link. Spam.

NotThatGuy

@nbro You should reduce it down to a minimal example. You should try different things to figure out what's happening. You should do a few searches to try to make sense of the behaviour. You should take some time to properly verbalise the problem you're facing so you can search for it and your question actually makes sense.

Unfortunately very few people actually do any of that.

M.A.R.

@Bart Someone's feeling philosophical today.

Kevin B

8:50 PM

I find asking questions extremely difficult because they solve themselves

M.A.R.

I should have given you my calculus questions.

mag

IPS went through apparently, I got over 10k there now :p

user287113

@NotThatGuy Well, that's essentially you solving your own problem. Then what's the point of asking for help?

M.A.R.

@KevinB Just to let you know, every time you make a one-liner, a case of cancer cures itself.

Bart

Seeing as I've asked only 1 question on SO ever ... that's not going to have much of an effect. MSE however ... oh boy.

M.A.R.

8:52 PM

I'm still not 10k.

user287113

@Bart Well, how many people will think like you? I would bet money that from no on you will ask a lot more questions

Rob

With the reputation increase for questions should we offer some reputation for the Q&As on child metas, since those have some benefit for each site some of the time?

M.A.R.

As if NOW I would have used them

But the sheer amount of funness in deleted rants . . .

Bart

@nbro I hope very few. Otherwise we're screwed.

Kevin B

@M.A.R. is that a compliment, or,

M.A.R.

8:53 PM

It is.

I'm only snarky when it's Journey. Or 58. Or rene. Or everyone else.

Bart

^ ban pls

Rob

🛶

M.A.R.

@Bart I think this kind of motivation is mainly for new-ish but not absolutely new users.

Say, 50 to 500 rep

So a much smaller demographic than we would scare ourselves to imagine I imagine

NotThatGuy

@nbro The point is to create a high-quality question with future value to other people. If people just constantly ask a bunch of duplicate questions and things that have no future value, then we might as well give up on the whole repository of questions and answers thing, because then we're basically just Reddit. Reddit isn't bad, it's just that their posts have essentially no long-term value.

Bart

Oh yeah, I'm fine with the changes @M.A.R. All good with me. Just saying it won't have much of an effect on me other than more useless MSE rep

M.A.R.

8:55 PM

@Bart well it probably goes without saying. I'm more responding to the general worries floating around

Would an 100k'er be more likely to ask questions? Statistically unlikely

You know, I think this discussion needs a normal distribution flickering gif

user58

Hey, I like asking questions, and thanks to the change I'm just about up to 100k rep... well, network wide....

Bart

I think any change will spell disaster. As will changing nothing. We're all doomed. DOOMED I TELLS YA!!

user287113

@NotThatGuy I think that this wasn't a real problem. I think that people, especially regular users, already know that they have to put some effort into writing a question. More importantly, I don't think that this change will change anything regarding this aspect (otherwise they will get downvoted, no?)

M.A.R.

@user58 ugh, you were already too heavy to carry around

Meta Andrew T.

If only I can find and ask questions... I've always find it hard to find something to ask...

user58

8:58 PM

@MetaAndrewT. Doing a tiny bit of research on a topic like... Constructed Languages to lead to a whole bunch of questions to ask.

Jon Ericson

@NotThatGuy But do those questions get upvoted? Sometimes yes, of course. But question bans have probably done more to prevent this sort of abuse than changing upvote reputation from +10 to +5 did.

M.A.R.

@user58 Sturgeon-style

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