Tavern on the Meta

Rob

19:01

I thought it was handy when there was a clickable link that said "from review", but I haven't seen one in a while. I don't mind new user's questions about the comment but experienced users are free to make their own agreeing or opposing review without checking in.

Tinkeringbell

@πάνταῥεῖ People also generally dislike having to look at looping gifs for too long ;)

user400654

install an extension that lets you minimize images

:shrug:

Rob

A long delay on the first, last, or both frames makes the looping GIF better. Rapidly sequencing ones get tiresome quickly.

πάντα ῥεῖ

@Tinkeringbell Sure (and including myself), but I thought it was worth it ;)

user1306322

@Rob superuser.com/a/1519253/148699 this answer has a comment with that link

Tinkeringbell

19:03

@user400654 Blegh, more extensions.

user400654

it's just 1

user1306322

just F12, click it and hit Delete

Tinkeringbell

You don't know how many I already have though. At least the 'delete' button in chat doesn't require one ;)

user1306322

but there's gotta be a built-in "hide image" thing especially for animated gifs

Rob

@user1306322 Thanks, that's recent.

user1306322

19:06

yea I browse HNQ :p

no, I don't have a problem >.>

it's not an addiction, mom, I'm learning >.<

Feeds

The Loop #2: Understanding Site Satisfaction, Summer 2019

The Community Team on January 22, 2020

Welcome to CHAPTER #2 of The Loop, a blog series from the Stack Overflow Community team. This post is a deep-dive into how satisfied users are with Stack Overflow.

We’re excited to share research highlights about the work we’ve been doing to understand how satisfied people are with Stack Overflow. We’ve been working hard to explore what users like best about Stack Overflow and what their top pain points are, with the goal of improving the overall experience of using the site. To this end, we’ve launched a site satisfaction survey, in which we continually survey users about their experiences using Stack Overflow. …

πάντα ῥεῖ

@user1306322 Well I could have used the > prefix for the link.

user1306322

I don't think it changes anything

Rob

If you catch it early and know the subject it can be great, or a crushing blow. ;)

πάντα ῥεῖ

@user1306322 So if you click the link then, you're getting stuck?

user1306322

19:08

> upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2c/…

oh

ok then I must have confused it with quoting another chat post by posting only a link to it

πάντα ῥεῖ

OK, I click, see it's boring and close that tab. That's it.

user1306322

I thought you meant it like this: (I'll delete it in a second)

see that doesn't collapse it

I remember seeing a wild long quote chain like that where the chat message's content was getting out of the screen bounds

Rob

You need to edit and add a space period -- to unbox it.

πάντα ῥεῖ

@user1306322 To collapse the link, prefix it with > as mentioned.

user1306322

I usually add some context to the image url :p

@Feeds not how this is posted by "The Community Team" unlike the recent posts by specific people

haha misread Feeds as Feds

we got the government watching us now

Feeds

19:13

"Actually, Jupiter already has a very impressive ring system!" --someone who knows Jupiter is within earshot

Rob

Because it's the blog, and not an SE/SO link.

@Feeds Never cut Uranus

user1306322

ye that's … advice from someone who has never cut their Uranus

Rob

Tis true.

user1306322

but imagine having a planet in the system sliced in half with halves slightly misaligned like it's normal

we'd be telescoping the pixels out of it every day trying to find out what happened and are we next

Rob

They could call it ...

user1306322

19:18

Cutinhalvanus?

Halimede is the closest to "half" in the list

no bodies starting with "demi"

πάντα ῥεῖ

Let's stop trying to make any -anus jokes. That won't lead to anything good at all :P

Rob

@user1306322 Vulvanus

user1306322

>.<

Mithical

Alright.

user1306322

let's get back to melting dogs

πάντα ῥεῖ

19:22

That's fine :)

Rob

user1306322

uhhm

Rubiksmoose

Melting dogs: the unofficial topic of the Tavern.

user1306322

was there some way to onebox an image url which doesn't end with a file extension?

John Dvorak

Yes.

Tinkeringbell

19:23

Put a ! in front of it

John Dvorak

#.jpg

user1306322

yay

Rob

Answer a question, select the image, copy the Imgur, cancel the answer, paste the Imgur here.

user1306322

@JohnDvorak that's also a valid hack I guess

Tinkeringbell

@Rob Smooth workflow... :P

user1306322

19:24

that's a longer hack

or I could just upload it here into chat

anyway, wouldn't it be quicker to get rid of the complaints below the top one and improve the overall metric of goodness that way?

we could talk design, I have some bug requests open and unanswered

Rob

I wouldn't want to click on an off-site image, and some links. It could be Bonga.

user1306322

idk why SO blog posted an image linking to googleusercontent

do google image links provide a way to gather browser stats of readers?

imgur has some public stats now

Mithical

@user1306322 Dark theme is coming soon.

user1306322

by now anyone interested probably has it as a userstyle :p but official is always good

RE: blog, I'd like them to use the same approach and gather stats from various SE sites

Mithical

SO corp doesn't care about the other SE sites

Dan is Fiddling by Firelight

19:29

Probably because even if your browsers malware blockers prevent it from setting a tracking cookie, including a useful image means google still gets your IP to try and match with the rest of the profile they've built on you.

user1306322

I think the data will be almost exactly the same across all non-programming sites, and mostly similar to SO's on programming-related sites

tech and non-tech sites will have a big difference in what users find "bad"

πάντα ῥεῖ

@Mithical The Imperator raises in the 1st order :P

user1306322

@DanisFiddlingbyFirelight as much as I don't like big brother watching over me, so far I don't think google is as much a threat as facebook for example, and so for now I'm not blocking all google-related domains, but who knows what future lies ahead :p

also I use an android phone and tablet so I'm screwed

at least I can use adb to remove facebook

idk about custom roms just yet

Dan is Fiddling by Firelight

**Nod** That's roughly where I am too. Switching away from gmail is also way more misery that it'd be worth at this point.

canon

@user1306322 been using darkreader with maybe two manual CSS customizations for SE. It's been nice.

user1306322

19:34

before the world takes privacy and IT security very seriously (idk if it won't by too late by then) I don't think we'll see many easy ways to guard ourselves from big bro companies that really work well

@canon hooray for userstyles!

πάντα ῥεῖ

We all were screwed already when participating at the usenet (if someone even remembers these times).

Cindy Meister

@terdon THANK YOU!!!

Dan is Fiddling by Firelight

it's been all downhill since the start of eternal september

canon

@user1306322 the darkreader extension makes it pretty decent right off the bat, though. I could have survived without tweaking the generated CSS.

@DanisFiddlingbyFirelight eternal winter, imo... bleak, desolate, wasteland populated by the occassional, shuffling malcontent.

Dan is Fiddling by Firelight

Global Warming has cancelled Fimbulwinter

user400654

19:41

it's too cold round here. i don't like it being cold without there being snow/ice to shut down everything

PM 2Ring

From The Loop #2: "We’re prioritizing optimizations to the question page as well as reduced complexity of the reputation and privileges system." Surely the rep & privileges system isn't that complex? And it's not that hard to find the privileges help page if you want to know exactly how much rep is required for a given privilege. Is it?

canon

The Loop 2: The Desolation of Shog Maybe it all turns out alright. There and back again...

7

user400654

lol

i thought you were mememing, but no there's actually a new loop post

canon

can't it be both?

user400654

not you, pm

i know you are

it's just another episode of lets treat all feedback equally (aka ignore tenure/experience with the platform because it fits our marketing plan)

πάντα ῥεῖ

19:49

@PM2Ring It's not hard to find, though the reactions on any site giving rep for trusted users it almost unpredicable. It goes from emphaty upvotes to counter downvotes.

Tinkeringbell

Let's see... you lose 2 rep for a downvote on one of your answers/questions, downvoting an answer costs you one but for questions it's free. You gain 10 points per upvote, 15 for an accept. There's a cap at 200 but bounties and accepts are exempt from that. There's also a refund an answer you downvoted is deleted, there's vote invalidations and user deletions that can make you gain or lose rep depending on what that user did (but you never figure that out).

Oh, and area51 doesn't automatically recalculate you have to trigger that manually with some obscure button.

Takes some time to figure all that out.

user400654

Fortunately those are all things that get given to the user in small bits, over a decent amount of time

Each one given results in a notification with a link to a full explanation of the privilege they just gained

Tinkeringbell

privileges? Sure... I don't know of any other place on the interwebz where the basic point system is as complicated as on SE though.

Most other places I'm at it's 1 like = 1 point

PM 2Ring

@user400654 Pretty much. I didn't have high expectations, but I managed to read the whole thing... I did notice that it was posted semi-anonymously by The Community Team.

@Tinkeringbell When you put it that way, I guess it is a little convoluted. :D

user400654

My guess is they're going to boost the gamification process/lower barriers to ~~fool~~ entice more people into joining. just another step toward converting this place into a helpdesk.

PM 2Ring

19:59

Codidact are proposing a more complex algorithm for calculating post scores, mostly for sorting purposes. But their privileges system is much simpler, and there's much less emphasis on rep, which should go a long way to discourage rep-farmers.

Tinkeringbell

@PM2Ring I must admit I'm kinda good at writing convoluted stuff :P

Cody Gray

@Magisch Context, please? Where was this discussed? What's he actually planning to do? We've discussed this in the mod room multiple times, actually, but I don't know if Yaakov was involved. It was with some of the CMs. I assume they've spoken to him already.

And...sorry for the delayed response, as well as if anyone else has pinged me. I'm paying the price for having devoted so much attention to this site last week.

Magisch

@CodyGray can I talk to you in a nonpublic room for a sec

Cody Gray

@Magisch Absolutely. Do you need me to create one?

Magisch

im not a mod so yes

make one and superping me in it

Cody Gray

20:14

Hey, for all I know, you could have won a mod election while I wasn't looking (and then resigned).

Félix Gagnon-Grenier

:P

curious

20:27

→ 13 messages moved to Chimney

djsmiley2k in darkness

21:08

/me looks

@PM2Ring raises an interesting question - what's wrong with rep farming?

user400654

that depends on your goals

if you just want traffic, lots of questions and answers, it's a great thing

it means your gamification process is successfully enticing people to participate.

Bryan Krause

21:23

@djsmiley2kindarkness It's connected to question quality. Rep farming is usually associated with answering poor quality questions (otherwise it's not farming rep it's just answering questions), which discourages improving those questions and encourages asking poor questions

Machavity

@canon Where we take Shog9's one autobiography, add a bunch of elves, and turn it into a trilogy?

Félix Gagnon-Grenier

"The Two Stacks"

Mithical

21:42

Ugh. I'm apparently developing an immunity to painkillers.

...so every time I head into the orthodontist they up the dose of novocaine, and this time apparently the numbing gel before they inject you with it didn't work, so it was rather painful when they stabbed me.

PM 2Ring

@djsmiley2kindarkness What Bryan said. Rep-farmers promote quantity over quality. They answer dupes instead of doing a dupe search. They use FGITW techniques so they get the early upvotes. If the question is unclear they just guess what the OP means instead of attempting to get clarification.

4

On SO, they post code-only answers with no explanatory text, and they often tend to prefer dense semi-inscrutable code over clear readable code. They're more than happy to feed help vampires, homework dumpers, and cargo-cult coders. Etc.

user400654

They're also heavily rewarded by the system for doing so, thus reinforcing the practice. A stray downvote here and there or the lack of upvotes doesn't matter when you're posting dozens of answers a day.

(this all coming from an ex-rep farmer)

the only thing that stopped me from doing it was reaching 20k, thus the end of my ability to earn new privilages

Mithical

16

Q: Welcome Dragonrage and Unionhawk to the Moderator Team!

As we’re sure you’ll remember, Arqade last held an election in June 2019. Since then, the mod team has been working fairly heavily on a few activities that need moderator attention (community building being a core focus of ours). As such, we’ve discussed what to do with the workload, and thought ...

2

user400654

interesting, never considered just skipping elections

(though i know it's been done in the past)

canon

21:58

@Machavity lol

@FélixGagnon-Grenier also lol

Félix Gagnon-Grenier

:P

canon

@PM2Ring I'd condemn them for that more readily if site search wasn't as awful as it is...

user400654

interestingly, the "search" that you get when closing a question as a duplicate is far worse than the actual site search

Often the phrase you use to search shows up in an answer rather than the question itself, so you end up not finding those in that search.

Rob

22:24

Life, elsewhere:

24th Month – (Carrot Feeding Frenzy) NO filter, NO CO2, NO Ferts 5 Gallon Nano Tank

►

PM 2Ring

@canon Very true. I rarely use the internal search, unless I'm doing a tag search with multiple tags. When dupe hunting, I mostly use a Google site: search, but even that's not great if you can't supply some good keywords. And those keywords need to be in the question. Trying to find answers via keywords with Google is often hopeless, since Google is heavily biased towards questions, especially question titles.

The worst dupe answerers (IMHO) are the people who locate an old question they've answered previously and literally copy & paste their old answer as an answer to the new question, with maybe a little minor editing. OTOH, that's to be expected when the system rewards such behavior and does not reward people who spend time searching for good dupe targets...

Félix Gagnon-Grenier

@Rob I genuinely don't have the faintest idea what I am watching, and I love it

user1306322

is there a list of tags which have an icon on SO?

also

@user1306322 That would be great and I totally agree, but it's almost midnight for me and I don't want to do the research on that right now. Would you mind editing in some examples? To address Richard's comment, the previous CEO did exactly what you are talking about (not to mention his whole personal blog), but there is a rich history of other examples. — David says Reinstate Monica 1 min ago

can someone edit in some good quotes?

I'm not a SO/SE historian :s

user400654

22:41

i mean, that depends on your definition of buzword

Rob

@FélixGagnon-Grenier They know nothing of our world ...

Mithical

@AaronHall - thanks for your thoughtful answer. I would like to take you up on your offer to meet face-to-face at our NYC office. My team will reach out to you by email to arrange a meeting. I look forward to engaging in a deeper discussion with you. — Pchandrasekar ♦ 7 hours ago

Well that's a welcome surprise.

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

Wanted to gauge the tone of this answer before I post it:

> It happens because we [get a lot of blatantly off-topic questions](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/305749/377214) on this site from new users. I've chronicled several reasons as to why this might happen in that post, but the most common reason is that one follows a link to this site (e.g. from a help page), and doesn't realize that they've been directed to a different site before asking their question.

We tend to moderate those quickly, in part to reduce their visibility on the site. Unfortunately, sometimes, an on-topic question will mistakenly be lumped into the wrong category, usuall…

I hope it doesn't come across as negative to Meta regulars, and if it does, I'd like some tips on how I can rephrase it so it doesn't.

user400654

23:00

well, it's kinda making the assumption that you're opinion of the question in question is right, and that those who voted to close are wrong.

you might be right... but... that's what voting is for

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

I removed the part about template patterns before posting the answer.

Here's the question for context:

0

Q: Why is a bug report about StackOverflow's search functionality considered "off-topic"?

A bug report I posted earlier today (Search fails to find matching issues) was just closed due to being "off-topic". This is despite the fact that it is a very clear, easy to reproduce bug affecting a core feature of this site, for which I have outlined clear reproduction steps. This bug affect...

discussion specific-question off-topic

The question in question had been marked "blatantly off-topic".

@user400654 And it was just reopened by an SE employee

user400654

i agree with the reopening, i'm just saying.. you're assuming what other people thought

i would have just stuck with it was improperly closed and not elaborated on the users who closed

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

I don't think I've focused too much on the users. The second sentence of the second paragraph refers to the close reason, not the users.

user400654

23:21

i am incredibly confused. i swear i just saw the question that question was asking about answered, and with no comments (i left a comment on it,) but now i can't find it

Ah

it was on SO

2

Q: Search fails to find matching issues

When I search for the string "cwlogs.push.reader" "reason: timestamp could not be parsed from message" on Google, one of the top results is the following StackOverflow question: AWS Clouwatch logs agent (awslogs) going crazy and writing GBs to log file However, when I then attempt to search for ...

bug search

(which is probably more appropriate anyway)

mso*

Rob

23:41

@HeyJude Calendar?

@user400654 It was here and there, I left a comment on MSE asking to inform people when question copying.

user400654

yeah it was really odd... because i saw no reason for the comments to be wiped, since the answer didn't seem all that... sure. i was thoroughly confused for at least a minute lol

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