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user287113
9:00 PM
Soon they will change the downvotes to be -10, so that people will ask a question only when it is really worth asking it or provide an answer when they know the topic perfectly.
Can you let me enjoy this extra rep bubble for now? Let's wait a little and then complain if we see negative behavior magnifying.
user287113
The SO company should be more aware of the consequences when they are messing with the reward system, because they will obtain different goals. It's just reinforcement learning, guys!
Rob
Rob
Will people be stingy with their question upvotes and hold everything to a higher standard moving forward ...
@nbro What makes you think they aren't?
user287113
The last change they have made to the reward system, which was working pretty decently
9:01 PM
Probably not. It doesn't cost a thing @Rob. Unless people want to be petty somehow.
@Rob Maybe. That's something we are looking at.
The previous issues, it was obvious why the community was voicing concerns. This time, I'm not sure anyone has done the research and has the data to make a reasonable prediction and then worry about future pitfalls, and it's just the guruâ„¢ common sense arguments, and there are conflicting ones all around.
Rob
Rob
Two opposite answers.
I'm really looking forward to a lot of new data about how the reputation system really works. Mostly we (all of us) are guessing.
@Bart I'm already petty at that :(
Back then, I almost always upvoted HNQ. Now? Never touch that upvote button again...
9:03 PM
1 message moved to Trashcan
I need someone to convince me one way or another whether this has potential for harm, and single glaring eyesores don't count. Then I'd consider raising my metaphorical rather apathetic pitchfork
@MetaAndrewT. you're just getting older and grumpier. Join the club.
Rob
Rob
It doesn't help with the holidays coming up in a month, to have fewer visitors from which to derive the statistics.
Noooooooo
@Bart Thanks for the invitation!
9:04 PM
The Seniors Club is taking over the Tavern!
@Sha! We need more immature jokes!
get off my lawn
Your voice sounds fake and young.
older than yours :P
Fake
user287113
Ok, guys, I gotta go back to work, reading literature :)
9:05 PM
Not enough "back in my day" @ArtOfCode.
@Bart well lemme tell ya, we never had this namby-pamby repumatation at all
Friendly reminder not to shoot the messenger. — Zoe 2 hours ago
You kidding me? He's frigging bullet proof.
@Bart "back in my day voices were fake and young"
I like it.
Don't tell the company, or he becomes a meat shield
Meta shield?
me(at|ta) shield
9:07 PM
@M.A.R. yes I am. HE IS. I meant he is. No suspicious business going on here at all. whistling sounds
or me[at]{2} shield, though that's not as concise
@JonEricson We're good at dealing with complete garbage, sure. But anything even just slightly better tends to get a few upvotes. At least when it doesn't slip through the cracks. Very few people seem to be asking themselves whether a question they're seeing has any future value whatsoever before upvoting it.
PLEASE OH PLEASE convince me this is going to be a problem. Of course, there's the usual "there was no consulting the community" thing, I'm totally fine with that. But this one, I think the downvotes are even less than dislikes somehow.
Well, I'm not assuming anything about any single downvoter.
@M.A.R. I don't see it becoming a problem in the slightest.
Not problem, but as a change it is sending the wrong message to the public
9:10 PM
But if I get the time, I would like to read an elaborate convincing argument on why this in itself is going to harm things, from any of the folks who are going to reduce that post's score to -100 in a few.
@Bart Spoken like a true pair of glasses.
@JohnDvorak how so?
@JohnDvorak I'm not sure the kind of message the public gets over all this
Do they even have receivers? Outside SO, I bet >90 percent of the "public" is nazi mods close teh queschen
2
If not sending the wrong message - you're right I can't read public's minds - it does reward the type of behavior we don't want rewarded.
@M.A.R. It's hard to be sure it's going to be a problem, but it should be easy to see why it might be a problem if you're of the opinion that bad questions get upvoted way too often as it stands (which encourages users to post more such questions). If you're not of that opinion, you probably won't and shouldn't think it's a problem.
Rob
Rob
Parity Error: Feed the hamster!
9:13 PM
@NotThatGuy What I do know is that we're very prone to bias, as a species.
And as other things too.
@M.A.R. Yes, that's why the apparent lack of hard data to back up that decision is perhaps the most concerning / frustrating part of it for me.
@M.A.R. yes. It's a burden, you know.
@NotThatGuy I'd argue that askers can't possibly know whether their question can have future value to others. (Unless they are already experts in the thing they are asking about. And if they are, I hope they are self-answering. ;-)
Speaking of which, my top question:
67
Q: How can you untar more than one file at a time?

Jon EricsonI have a bunch of tar files in a directory and I want to extract all the files from them at once. But this doesn't seem to do anything: $ tar xf *.tar What's going on here? How do I untar a bunch of files at once?

I only knew it was going to be useful in the future because I had the same problem several times before I learned not to do tar xf *.tar.
That's why "clear and answerable" are my criteria for upvoting questions.
@JonEricson When trying to judge whether a question might have future value, I look for (a) things which are so common someone looking for this specific question can't possibly use them to find it (e.g. "why is my code not working?"), (b) questions that have too much other stuff or don't dig deeper so it won't be useful to those with problems with the same root cause ("why is this 500 line program throwing a NullPointerException?").
I try to assume someone, somewhere will at some point have a similar problem. I don't count it against a question if I think it's very unlikely that someone will have the same problem (only that that person won't be able to find this question).
9:27 PM
@JonEricson That's a bit too low a bar innit?
@M.A.R. Well, I also have to remember to do it.
There should be additional criteria. Since there's usually not more than a few people voting on a question, to ensure at least a small degree of differentiation for most questions, you need to be a tad bit stricter than that
@NotThatGuy When people say things like "future value" that's almost always what they mean. (At least in my observation.)
@M.A.R. Why?
Some things like "does this guy even wanna learn?" or "is this nothing more than what almost every programmer/engineer/student/leprechaun is being taught?"
I mean, who really cares if two questions of similar quality have wildly different scores?
9:31 PM
You need to weed out questions that are more thought-provoking
@M.A.R. Why does the quality of the asker matter? If the question is answerable and clear, it's a benefit to the site.
@M.A.R. Do you mean "weed in"? ;-) Or are thought-provoking questions to be avoided.
There is probably no ultimate or easy way of objectively doing that, so some additional criteria at least narrow it down
Weed between
@JonEricson I'm just not good with weed.
Say, for every hundred questions, 50 would meet your criteria, but 10 askers would have put more effort than typing out the question
@M.A.R. I guess I don't see why we need to make this more complicated. It certainly hasn't helped reduce bad questions to make complicated voting (or closing) rules.
As in, we already block about half the attempts to ask.
Well, not rules, obviously. That is very impractical. We're trying to come up with an exemplary voting behavior we can encourage
@JonEricson hypothetical SE site, whatever.
My criteria for upvoting questions is having it be something that makes me question everything I thought I knew about people, changes my life forever (in a good way) and dispenses free candy.
3
My standards are probably a bit too high though.
9:37 PM
@NotThatGuy I'd say so. I vote anything up that's posted by one of my sockpuppets.
I'm just saying that the average SO question being absolute . . . uh . . . having a lot of problems with grammar, formatting, punctuation, clarity, objectivity, prior research etc. doesn't need to affect the voter's ideal behavior
Is there a way to view what our rep was on a site before the recalc?
@NotThatGuy If you upvote, is the candy still free?
@Stevoisiak Yes, TARDIS
Too strict the guidelines and a lot of questions would end up with zero votes. But I find that a lot of people are too apathetic, a few are too strict, and not enough vote in the direction of keeping the ideal balance (ideal defined as the most differentiating viewpoint that sorts the questions neatly)
9:43 PM
I struggle when I come across a poorly written question, but it was the same problem I was having
I've been more reserved about downvoting too these days. It feels about as effective as pissing in the ocean. All you can really hope to gain is upsetting the person next to you.
Do I upvote because this question led me to an answer? Or do I downvote because the question had a giant block of code with unrelated issues
@NotThatGuy don't piss in the ocean. Apparently there's plastic in our pee.
Only in plastic-framed glasses man.
. . . glasses. Manglasses.
So I dunno where you get that from but it's not like it's not known anyway.
That's from 2009. That's seven years before 2016.
If you want to see your network reputation before the recalculation: stackexchange.com/users/current?tab=reputation
I archived mine with Archive.org, just in case :P
9:50 PM
Don't tell anyone but everyone is secretly enjoying the rep boost.
Rob
Rob
It doesn't help that on some sites we go out of our way, a half dozen people might spend an hour, helping people to improve their (our) question while on some other sites it's soup guy.
@M.A.R. I don't ask enough questions or pay enough attention to my rep to have noticed.
It doesn't come close to making up for the 2k I lost (out of less than 3k) when they deleted the CoC FAQ.
yesterday, by 202324
I've heard on TV, we all piss plastics. Eeeek.
10:46 PM
Good luck in the coming future. The site is changing, the users are too. Be prepared for the worst. — Mari-Lou A 11 mins ago
11:25 PM
@M.A.R. I've gained the Yearling badge everywhere. (I don't keep much of an eye on my rep, so I'm not sure how much it's changed.)
@Rob I've seen some truly heroic edits to rescue interesting but terribly written questions. I've done a few. skeptics.stackexchange.com/posts/10253/revisions and christianity.stackexchange.com/posts/16121/revisions are the same original writer.
11:42 PM
Rob
Rob
@TRiG Yes, they came up with Lifejacket and Lifeboat to reward the poster when they get a voting reversal, unfortunately there's little reward for the editors. --- I've answered downvoted questions that I could understand, but weren't well received; earned some "Thank yous" and 25+. It all depends on the site, that's why I disagree with a simple doubling across the board, some sites are hard to ask and answer on.
11:57 PM
I think I got a massive boost on meta :D
Well not me me, my main account

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