Tavern on the Meta

Mike Tyson and Snoop Dogg as Oprah and Gayle [Deepfake

2:42 AM

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7:04 AM

→ 39 messages moved to Chimney

morning ping to @M.A.R. so he won't feel neglected

Does @M.A.R. feel neglected?

7:35 AM

→ 9 messages moved to Chimney

morning

@rene now he is, yes

Mar 26 '18 at 15:04, by M.A.R. ಠ_ಠ

@ShadowWizard I feel neglected when I get pinged

8:22 AM

@JNat cross site spammer for your gentle care. Thanks! :)

9:57 AM

Weird, what comes up in reviews:

All these people trying to look cool with their weird characters attached to their user names. Pathetic. — Pekka supports GoFundMonica Apr 9 '13 at 17:39

@Rob what review?

Is there a new comments review on meta??

Hitodama

@ShadowThePrincessWizard I assume the answer came up in the low quality queue.

and the comment was posted under said answer

10:58 AM

@Hitodama oh, thought Rob referred to the comment directly

!!/coffee Meta

SmokeDetector

@ShadowThePrincessWizard brews a cup of Mocha for @Meta

You sleep for too long!

!!/coffee Shadow

SmokeDetector

@MetaAndrewT. brews a cup of Americano for @Shadow

and well, office's internet is flaky as usual~

11:02 AM

yay, mutual coffee!

@MetaAndrewT. who's to blame?

AFAIK, apparently our office is using shared bandwidth XD

A: How to say No to idea given by team member, when I know from my experience that it is going to fail?

11:20 AM

156

You do this by presenting the thought process that led you to this conclusion - not the conclusion alone. This gives the team, or the individual, a chance to offer their perspective regarding your concerns. You might find that there are viable solutions to the problems you anticipate, which you ...

I feel like this is a very shareable answer relevant to a lot of recent discussions on meta

'Your thought process is wrong'.

what is right or wrong depends on the expected results which is not always the same for all involved

some managers want the best for their product and customers, some managers want to look cool and stroke their ego, you know what I'm talking about

> If everyone is reasonable and constructive, you should arrive at a reasonable conclusion.

@MetaAndrewT. shared with whom??

Big IF. That's one of those golden rules that's always broken.

11:25 AM

you kinda try to hire the people who look like they'll try to do their best and not screw around in the office and hope for the best

Oh, we're back at discussing workplaces now? I thought it was about meta.

Yeah, workplaces can screen at the door, so to speak.

this is about both of these things :p

this is why I thought it's highly applicable to a wide range of topics

@ShadowThePrincessWizard shared with other offices nearby... :/

sometimes you can't screen at the door well enough and only find out about what kinda person a user/worker is later down the road

@user1306322 Golden rules often are... but because there's always people breaking them, they're not always the most useful.

They only give some kind of moral/ethical framework you'd like people to uphold.. and if people refuse, your rule breaks.

11:27 AM

the most useful … in long term? short term? and what criteria we're talking about?

@user1306322 like those high-rep users that get away from their abusive behaviour...

like the rich and famous people who get away with outright crimes in broad daylight!

world is unjust :p

@MetaAndrewT. so throw a stone at them with a message "STOP USING ALL OUR BANDWIDTH. PLEASE!" :D

@user1306322 The same criteria that are used to determine applicability?

after having twelve people each with a few devices all using the same network a bit ago I'm feeling fairly okay with the internet speed at the moment

11:30 AM

@ShadowThePrincessWizard good idea! fortunately, I'm not the one in charge in throwing a stone, but I'll relay the message to them~

getting hired as Stone Thrower

...which considering it's currently at 14.76MBps download speed, that's probably a sad statement...

the speed is not really the problem, the stability (dropped packets) is...

(and 0.75 upload)

@Mithical still good enough for SE

Just don't try to watch videos...

11:43 AM

Bunch of suggested edits waiting for a review... I rejected most, useless edits of old posts made to get a hat.

@ShadowThePrincessWizard Grinch.

In some cases they made the text inaccurate... so I agree.

@ShadowThePrincessWizard Oh man. They have hats for that again?

If anyone wants to edit old posts and do something useful, consider adding image descriptions to posts that need them.

@terdon-stopharmingMonica sure

45

Q: Retire Werewolf Hunter

It's that dreadful time of year again, hats. Not that I dislike hats so much, but all the pointless post bumps from winter-bash-2014 are something I don't want to see on the question list. The culprit, of course, is the Werewolf Hunter hat (given out for editing 5 questions on meta that were pos...

11:53 AM

:(

12:06 PM

):

:o

The Loop #1: How we conduct research on the Community team

2:54 PM

→ 17 messages moved to Chimney

Feeds

3:13 PM

Donna Choi on December 11, 2019

👋Hello! I’m Donna, the Community Design Lead at Stack Overflow.

Welcome to CHAPTER #1 of The Loop, a new blog series from the Stack Overflow Community team. This post is a deep-dive into our research approach: what it used to be, what it is now, and how it continues to evolve.

Learn more about The Loop in CHAPTER #0 (yes, our chapters are zero-based).

If you work on a product that’s ever benefited from research – whether that’s talking directly to users, analyzing experiment data, or any number of other research methods – you know how indispensable these inputs are for making the right decisions. …

oh god I don't even wanna click...

It's... not that bad for the first few paragraphs :)

Though meta feedback has changed to 'ship' in the second figure...

I guess they won't be "ship"ping on Friday anymore 🤔

Why not?

It's a bit weird to see meta feedback is only taken into account when something is shipped, but it's at the same level as A/B tests so I don't really understand why those are under 'ship' either... looks like it's just... missing a step.

I'll read the whole thing first ;)

Final verdict... not too bad.

It seems like they're only putting meta as a method of feedback on a finished and shipped change, instead of having meta give feedback before the change is released.

3:23 PM

Which is a terrible idea

Evidence: everytime they did it before

@JohnDvorak Devil's advocate, is it though? Legitimate question: besides the CoC what change has SE shipped without consulting MSE that has had actual practical, objectively bad effects?

(not saying the CoC has had those effects, I just don't want to have that debate)

> Meta feedback. We monitor Meta for bug reports and small usability/copy issues after shipping changes to the site. Note that this may change based on what the next iteration of Meta looks like, as mentioned in the previous chapter of The Loop.

advertisements?

^

either that is a poor disambiguation or confirmation that meta as is is deprecated fully

3:30 PM

@JAD ah yeah that's probably a pretty good example. I always forget about them because my site has never really had any besides community ads AFAIK

I tend to forget about them because ad blockers

Front page as advertisements. Google ads. The deprecation of Meta. Constant insults toward the Meta community.

3

@Magisch :|. Some additional feature requests seem to have been made in response to the post notices, and have a deferred or review tag?

the latter isn't really a release is it?

Also the deprecation of Meta I wouldn't count as a release either since it hasn't officially happened yet.

So, too soon to tell what effect that might have.

Of course MSE is not going to like that because MSE likes being heard and feeling like they have a say. Because who wouldn't? I feel that is a separate issue.

3:33 PM

@Rubiksmoose I also think it's not really a feature they would look for input on either way. I doubt they'd've used the Loop for that either

@JAD Yeah, not sure where ads would fall on their 4-square chart.

"this is happening, deal with it"

anyways, gotta go

@Rubiksmoose MSE technically still has: once things have shipped ;)

Though technically this still feels a bit like it's about SO, not SE.

@Rubiksmoose There were the 2017 design changes, which were announced beforehand and meta influenced some of the decisions (e.g. saving the Worldbuilding robot). It's more losing the chance for stuff like that.

3:50 PM

@Rubiksmoose moving the MVCE page, the 4.0 license change

killing HMQ

the HNQ fiasco

@StopHarmingMonica Only half. There were posts on IPS meta arguing a removal from HNQ and seeing HNQ as a problem, and MSE was asked how to improve HNQ...

the thing they initially did, they decided to do without community input

despite, as you say, there already being community input for how to deal with it

@StopHarmingMonica Because the community input was already on IPS meta.

but what they did ignored it

No?

> There has been historical discussion both on IPS Meta and in chat plus in various places around the network about getting IPS off of the HNQ list. Knowing how users felt about the site's presence in the HNQ made it easier to justify the action both at the time and now. This discussion gets to the heart of the problem, though:

> I completely agree. Ironically, those past meta discussions are why I thought this wouldn't be that big a deal, but I understand how the whole thing ended up coming across very differently in practice.

3:57 PM

@Mithical Yeah that's a flip side to my question that is also worth considering, what topics in the past has MSE made a positive impact on when we were asked beforehand. Good point.

Luuklag

I think MSE is still fine, I posted about this stupid hat, and things got fixed, to a certain (logical) extent

TBH, it seems the network is making a bigger deal of it than IPS :P

I just fired off a TSQL answer on a POSTGRESQL question. How embarrassing...

@Rubiksmoose don't exclude the times when MSE had a positive impact despite not being asked beforehand

@StopHarmingMonica Also fair.

4:01 PM

@canon Are they very similar?

The best example of constructive feedback having significant effect I can think of was the MIT relicensing

As we see with the 4.0 relicensing, if they had just done it there would've been no going back from what they agreed was a bad idea

Any dibs on how many more legislative mishaps is the company going to make because the lack of feedback?

at least their plan was legal that time

Ehh... shall we turn this just a bit nicer, and not do the dibs thing? :|

I'm fine with people discussing times they felt things were helpful/not... I'm not so okay with it turning into a negative joking/poking thread.

There's a huge amount of constructive back-and-forth with the devs all over MSE

Everything's just tagged [discussion] or in comments so not easy to find, but anything [status-complete] perhaps counts?

4:06 PM

that of course depends on what you define as a mishap

Well, at least I like the clarity the blog post offers: SO is going to work on stuff, and Meta does get input (after they have decided the direction they are going to take stuff in). There's been a lot of grumbling over people feeling like they had no input on the direction any more, at least that expectation has been set straight now?

@Tinkeringbell Agreed. that doesn't seem like a productive or useful direction for conversation.

And looking at the post notices as a most recent example... there's plenty of stuff with status review tags so unless people want to argue that they should've had influence before hand and we'd still be arguing blue vs red vs green backgrounds... doesn't seem too bad for me :P

That the expectation is "set straight" doesn't really answer to what is bothering people.

it simply runs them over

@user400654 Yeah, of course it'll feel that way if you don't like this expectation...

4:10 PM

@user400654 Well expectation mismatch is at least one major aspect to the discord for sure though.

People are amazingly flexibly minded creatures, they'll find a way to live with it ;)

This constant pushback is certainly one way

@Tinkeringbell I think the options are to either "case all the things!" or pass a string to the crosstab() function. In either case, there are other answers now. I just deleted mine.

It's certainly been successful to some extent thus far

Anyone in here familiar with the concepts of cognitive consonance and dissonance?

4:12 PM

*raises hand* slightly

I both am and am not

Or am I just going to bore people if I were to talk about that in relation to the things discussed here now? :P

cognitive resonance?

Hmm. I don't think I have a book on that one XD

i can guarantee that it won't move anyone

4:13 PM

It probably won't, no :P It's something you have to do for yourself XD

medium.com/cognitive-resonance/…

Chris says Reinstate Monica

@Tinkeringbell I'm interested. I only have vague armchair knowledge about them that is probably mostly too vague to be useful.

(and/or incorrect)

@Tinkeringbell Because IPS wasn't the first instance where people complained about that very problem, by far not (as in multiple years far).

So. When we say one thing but do another, or hold inconsistent beliefs, psychologists call it cognitive dissonance. Dissonance is uncomfortable, so it motivates us to find ways to reduce dissonance and achieve consonance. This can include avoiding situations and information that would likely increase dissonance.

Meat eating is used as an example: We generally hold a moral value of 'don't hurt animals'. Yet parts of the meat industry do hurt animals. So if we want to eat meat, we either have to admit we don't care about hurt animals... or, we try to separate the meat from the animal (callin…

lol

don't needlessly hurt animals

if a shark attacks me in the sea, I'm sure as hell gonna end up hurting it

4:24 PM

@djsmiley2k-CoW Okay, then I'll argue that you can live on beans and don't need meat... Don't ruin the example, it's just that :P

No personal endorsement attached ;)

But now I've lost my train of thought!

hehe

👍

@Tinkeringbell historically the difference in terminology has nothing to do with that, it's because in Norman Britain the farmers spoke English but the wealthy meat-eaters spoke French

*early English and early French

Let's see... I think the point I was trying to make is that some of the arguments I see made here are ignoring some information for the sake of avoiding more dissonance, and making up other information to increase consonance.

@StopHarmingMonica Eh... the same thing happens in Dutch though XD

example?

4:26 PM

@user400654 ham instead of varken :P

...

Was there never a Franco/Norman ruling class in the Netherlands?

But more seriously... I've had the discussion about IPS and HNQ a few times now. People seem to very easily accept the premise that it was just a tweet that got us out of HNQ, despite the information out there... if that example helps build their narrative of 'SE not listening to us but to Twitter'.

well, no, i think the HNQ is an awful tool

@StopHarmingMonica Ehh... I don't have the history books handy. Prolly.

4:27 PM

It emphasises the worst of the worst and brings it to the front for everyone to view

Just focus on the packaging then...

similar to other such initiatives highlighting "high quality" questions that really are just questions that people found interesting.

or funny

I assumed the Low Countries had a greater degree of Francish/Germanic back and forth than Britain did

@ChrissaysReinstateMonica Oh, sure, that's in one of the quotes. I meant more that 'the network' keeps bringing it up as an example of not being listerened to... while the quotes I have seem to suggest otherwise.

similar to staring things in chat that out of context would be flaggable

4:29 PM

@StopHarmingMonica I know there was something with Spaniards... but dinner is ready ;)

laters!

remember lifehacks?

i started answering as many questions as I could, on lifehacks, by involving knives :D

Interestingly (hopefully), in Japanese, meats are just [animal word]+[word for meat]

(on a basic level at least)

Spanish/Dutch fun fact. The colour Orange comes from the fruit (Spanish Naranja), but the House of Orange is completely unrelated, from the French city (Latin Arausio).

Lot of insignificant edits for werewolf hunter.

@StopHarmingMonica Is Orange called Naranja in Spanish?

@NogShine urh, I've already commented on several ancient questions by mistake

4:38 PM

why are so many ancient questions getting edited

Werewolf hunter hat.

great.

@NogShine the fruit and the colour are, the place is called Orange

It's called Narinja in Telugu. Both the fruit and colour. Colour get its name from the fruit.

I just think it's neat that these two completely unrelated words, both of which have unusual etymologies on their own, combine in the Netherlands

4:41 PM

Only difference is a letter. That's surprising.

Of course they adopted the colour orange because it's the same word as their name.

@StopHarmingMonica we really should have switched to the Pharao

(the Dutch for the colour and fruit is Oranje)

@NogShine presumably they got it from Spanish/Portuguese merchants on the Silk Road?

4:56 PM

@StopHarmingMonica I had always assumed the house was also related to either the color or the fruit, or both. Are you sure it isn't?

@terdon-stopharmingMonica 100% en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Orange

@NogShine actually Telugu may be the original en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_(word)

> Roman Orange was founded in 35 BC by veterans of the second legion[2] as Arausio (after the local Celtic water god), or Colonia Julia Firma Secundanorum Arausio in full, "the Julian colony of Arausio established by the soldiers of the second legion." The name was originally unrelated to that of the orange fruit, but was later conflated with it (see Orange (word)).

Well damn. That is interesting indeed!

@StopHarmingMonica yeah, I'd read that but it doesn't clarify that the French city wasn't named after the color/fruit which is also orange in French.

@StopHarmingMonica I thought of the same. Telugu is an ancient language.

But en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange,_Vaucluse has what I posted above: the name was different.

@terdon-stopharmingMonica I hadn't found "Orange (word)" (which has the best summary), was confirming via "Orange, Vaucluse"

5:03 PM

Yeah, but I'd always thought that the town of Orange was named after the fruit or color. Surprised it isn't!

Arausio ~> Arauja ~> Orange

@terdon-stopharmingMonica that's the fun bit

indeed :)

5:40 PM

@Mithical though I don't think that blog post is a "smack in the face" as one comment put it, I really do appreciate the tone you set in your response. (not that I expected anything differently from you, but still)

@Rubiksmoose Thanks. I was trying.

@NogShine but I didn't know when they'd have oranges in order to have a word for them

πάντα ῥεῖ

@Mithical Just as I said in my comment. The point of no return seemed to have passed by when the new CEO was entitled.appointed

@πάνταῥεῖ do you mean appointed, or did he express entitlement somewhere?

πάντα ῥεῖ

@StopHarmingMonica I probably meant appointed, didn't find a better word.

5:52 PM

entitled is usually an adjective
> believing oneself to be inherently deserving of privileges or special treatment.

not a verb meaning having been given a title

πάντα ῥεῖ

THX for the info.

Show off your hats, includes a link to the WB2019 chat room.

@Rob meh

Mehr

@Rob No. meh

6:01 PM

🚽

6:17 PM

*currently wishing there was a way to mute notifications for comments on a specific post*

6:28 PM

There is, but it also usually shuts down teh conversation

6:40 PM

urgh. @JourneymanGeek I see you're here; around?

or Tink if you're lurking

If someone could leave a note under this answer about not piling on that'd be great

And the sooner the better :-/

?

I mean, If they didn’t want comments or feedback they coulda just not answered

...no, that's not the way it works. They answered; now it's on us to not pile on and swarm in to attack. It's on the community to not pile on.

3

Since when is giving honest opinions attacking?

3

putting a mod note there not to pile on might cause more pile on

considering current sentiment

6:47 PM

@user400654 Some of those comments aren't just "honest opinions"; they're downright hostile, which is counterproductive for the goal of the question.

@Mithical I was putting up a christmas tree :D I'll keep an eye :)

@Tinkeringbell Great, thanks.

@user400654 Ummmm many times? It is entirely possible to have an opinion and to express it in a way that is hostile. It is also generally possible to not do this with most opinions.

Just because something is honest, doesn't mean it is appropriate.

But yeah... not piling on would be great. Just like in chat, see if people reply first and give them that time. Having to reply to 5 people at once is uhhh.. a bit intimidating ;)

It’s not exactly any one persons fault if multiple people want to respond

It just comes across as “please sit down and be quiet”

6:54 PM

That's true... but there's stuff there that's not exactly asking questions, or even people answering questions asked with 'jokes' of their own... not all that helpful. I'm keeping an eye on it.

Feeds

7:13 PM

Not actual size, except technically at one spot near the left.

M.A.R.

8:03 PM

@rene Fake news, negative press covfefe

☕️

8:18 PM

@Feeds Present day, so two weeks from now we fall out the end ...

@Rob christmas? awesome.

can we leave it til new year? would be more approriate.

8:32 PM

ugh. Is it reasonable to rollback superfluous edits right now, or am i just making the problem worse?

@DeNovosupportsGoFundMonica Probably just making it worse, if the only reason to roll back is to make a point.

Then again, if you don't have the hat yet... go for it.

i mean, the hat's there to cause people to make stupid edits, why not make stupid edits

I'm not looking for a hat, and the rollbacks I've made have been because I think it was better before the superfluous edit.

We should just pick 5 posts that anyone can edit/roll back and forth.

isn't there a formatting sandbox?

8:34 PM

Add werewolf, remove werewolf...

If it's over a year old...

But I think it's only questions?

So we're going to need 4 more ;)

ah, didn't know the requirements

trying very hard not to rollback bad edits...

Didn't realize that "on-brand" was a damning accusation.

C'est la vie.

?

8:46 PM

Lol

@Tinkeringbell Just more censorship. Maybe enough people thought it was unfriendly that it was just auto-deleted. I couldn't really say. Anyhow, any SO policy which eschews transparency and discourse is decidedly on-brand, of late.

@Tinkeringbell 3, now.

9:09 PM

@Rob Oh, that's better!

(especially the main thing too)

Okay. But comments that point that out on posts that are an attempt at transparency, while not 'damning accusations', also don't add any value.

I can understand everyone is upset. But chasing off the people that are trying to be as transparent as possible is not going to increase transparency or discourse, I hope you understand that?

Like I said... if people have any questions for Donna, please ask them (nicely!). If people ask questions that you know the answer too, don't be afraid to answer those either. But just venting disagreement/opinions on the tiny bit of transparency that's left is going to diminish that too.

People should review the edits the correct way, if it's valid then approve. If there is an appropriate rejection reason then reject. Tip: When making a post or edit, avoid causing problems.

@Rob Improved Tip: avoid causing problems.

Not just when making a post or edits ;)

😕 Wonders what else people do, comments are a post. Puppetry?

@Rob Yeah, votes are one thing, I was also thinking perhaps chat? I've never heard someone refer to a chat message as a post too. And 'avoid causing problems' can be a general useful rule in real life too, though we then get into golden rule territory again where I have to admit it won't apply to all situations because when others cause problems, sometimes you have to cause problems in return.

🛠️

9:22 PM

@Tinkeringbell No, I get it. Don't complain about a lack of transparency when someone is being transparent about not being transparent. :P

the transparency³ rule

@canon At least don't give them a reason to say they can't be transparent because meta is hostile ;) Right now, I believe Donna when she says that the team is small and has to be selective. Based on the whole thread underneath the question though... it might be nice to have one of the people involved there drop a comment on the answer that asks to advertise that setting a bit more, if that's what they use to invite people ;)

@canon XD

@Tinkeringbell I added a self-answered Q&A pair (gross, I know. Feel free to downvote) about it to help with visibility.

If you have ways that can perhaps make them more transparent with the resources they've got... Sure! But I doubt that people are unaware by now that a boatload of people feel bypassed by this.

I kinda do like the speed with which Loop blog nr. 1 followed nr. 0. If they keep that up... there's already an increase in transparency too ;)

@canon Done XD

@Tinkeringbell hah

meta.stackexchange.com/a/340198/369802 < more fun stuff?

2

9:29 PM

Yussss!

@Tinkeringbell r.e. the quick turn around on blog, yes, much better

Okay. Well. Play nice everyone! I missed bedtime so see y'all tomorrow and don't be surprised if I'm a bit grumpy :P

Transparency (Panda Page):

i mean... releasing a chart of feedback from "users"... from a source people have deemed not trustworthy... isn't all that useful to building trust when there's no proof said feedback wasn't cherry picked to fit a goal.

curious

→ 5 messages moved to Chimney

9:42 PM

There is certainly a different threshold in what is considered hostile in a comment on a staff post vs. what is considered hostile in other circumstances.

@Rob seems sensible.