@curious M&TV, for one

@curious Ideally, I'd love to ban them from Gaming.

They're inordinately popular, and don't really offer anything of value.

And due to that popularity, there's lots of contention and argument about widening the exception we put in place.

wat gam is dis k thanx

That is not a game. That is Shrek (2001).

@M.A.R. What evidence do you have that it's from a game? :P

We require askers to provide more than a personal assertion that it's from a game.

@fbueckert i just their was dis dud frm teh store he was gaem nerd

@M.A.R. close

...that hurt to read.

@Mithical Arguably, it's an oompa loompa

We've had users whistle tunes to try to meet our requirement for an artifact.

And, I shit you not, a picture of a blue line on a black background. And that was it.

It was Mario drowning

Heh. Sifting through our old game-identification questions, I found one where someone added a hand-drawn picture to try to meet our requirement.

Ah, there it is.

That was the screenshot provided.

@fbueckert Lol told you, it's Mario in a pool except the game wants us to experience drowning and blacking out from his perspective

@M.A.R. You're seeing way more than I am, then. :P

@fbueckert it's obviously a progress bar... ;)

@ShadowThePrincessWizard Definitely not identifiable from a static image!

@user400654 the fact that nobody made a dumbledore joke yet makes me loose faith in humanity.

→ 12 messages moved to Trashcan

@CptEric careful, loose faith is dangling.

@Mithical so we can't discuss comments here?

Comments, yes; individual users, no.

🚽

So if a troll post comments... It should stay a secret. Nice.

@user400654 yeah, crap.

i mean, you can probably discuss them elsewhere, but... if they be deleted and there's no record of them, that might prove difficult.

@ShadowThePrincessWizard If you see a problematic comment, flag it. But calling out users publicly in chat is not something I'd like to have happen in here.

in before this new post notice architecture is used to post notices that inform users that SO Teams exists

@user400654 I'd say that seems needlessly cynical but...I could see that happening on SO.

"Hey, sorry, your question doesn't belong here! Pay for a Team site, and you can ask whatever you like!"

i'm thinking more along the lines of the SO Teams "notification" that was appearing above the add an answer section of posts for months

it was skinned identically to the current blue post notices

Isn't it pretty normal for sites offering free content to have some advertisement of their paid programs?

@BryanKrause yes

Is it too much to ask for advertisements of such products to be done ethically? you know, like, not in a way that's likely to confuse someone into clicking it?

Is advertisement morally OK in general?

yes

So you refer to click bait tricks?

eh, to an extent, but that's not really what i mean

the click-baity titles of news articles now days are kindof a necessary evil.

if x does it y has to as well or be left behind.

Here however they have full control. there is no competition other than against themselves.

The way the left nav is altered on SO for example, even for users who aren't part of teams, is frustrating to me

@user400654 Sure, it's plain marketing homeland :-D

What would you recommend to your marketing department, when they plan to do a customer programme day?

The fact that the nav was cleaned up to be less cluttered and more maintainable by removing the quick access links at the top... only for a quick access link to be returned that only includes paid products...

tbf i don't even remember what's in that quickaccess tab

i've had it blocked since day 1

There's plenty of space up there for "Questions Tags Users" links

it just feels the majority of changes to the network over the past 4-5 years have been solely for marketing purposes, not community building or improving the network.

@user400654 Maybe one of the reasonings Spolsky and Atwood split over, and Jeff finally left [shrug]

we got a new "Featured" announcement area for important announcements, and it gets used primarily for jobs/teams changes. we get an announcement banner for important announcements, and it gets primarily used for company podcasts. New nav design, and it's strongly influenced by teams.

@user400654 Kind of obvious, as marketing took over with the Welcome Wagon, or long before.

I don't know, the self-advertising seems pretty non-intrusive to me here relative to my experience on other sites with equivalent utility, though I'm more of a SE rather than SO user

Some of the external advertisements have been a bit more of an issue but that's separate

the normal ads i don't have an issue with

the left nav, i just wish SO could have the same left nav every other network has