Oh, Doe John!

Hello from a military bus.

@Mithical how is the in-flight entertainment?

@Mithical Good luck in the coming... months?

I seem to remember it may even be years...

!!/watch chamsocweb247\.vn

@SonictheK-DayHedgehog You don't have blacklist manager privileges, but I've created PR#5095 for you.

wow spam lives for over 20 minutes on MSE... new bad record.

zZz

@Mithical at least bus has WiFi? ;)

Are you wearing uniform? @Mith

Fun fact: I don't have many vivid memories from my army service, but several of those I do remember are from traveling in a bus. Memory is weird.

@ShadowWizardWearingMask nope

@Tinkeringbell 3 years for standard service.

@ShadowWizardWearingMask also nope

Haven't received a uniform yet

@Mithical so you're not yet enlisted officially?

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Blegh. Poor kid.

Where will you serve? @Mithical

@Tinkeringbell meh, it might be helpful. :D

Is it Sunday?? Why so.... quiet.... here? lol

echo

Congratulations to @ShadowWizard for 10 years on Meta.SE!

Thanks! Name change completed too.

Went with something simple. :)

BTW, joined SO even before MSE, and joined 6 other sites 9+ years ago.

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Happy tenth birthday. That explains your sense of humor.

Just remembered: one of my sister's teachers had the first initial and last name "K. Day"

So their email address, which uses this system for all teachers, was kday@

@Tinkeringbell thanks, and lol! :D

Pretty sure I had less humor when I was actually 10. ;)

@ShadowWizardWearingMask And part of that remark is really serious ;) I have seen 'old' users on MSE behave quite a bit differently from 'new' ones XD

@SonictheK-DayHedgehog huh, nice!

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Same here.

@Tinkeringbell yup

@Tinkeringbell yeah, burden of school is heavy... ;)

@ShadowWizardWearingMask Party!

Oh, thinking about it, pretty sure I didn't like monkeys when I was 10. This came only much later. /cc @Ollie @Rob :P

@rene yes! You bring the whiskey?

Smokey can bring coffee, and tea.

Hmm, I'll ask Adriaan to bring so Ardbeg: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardbeg_distillery and ardbeg.com/en-US

@rene good, so you pay. It's cheap, only €3500.00.

That is why I brought in Adriaan, as I believe he can get that stuff cheaper.

@Adriaan isn't pingable. :(

I pinged him in SOCVR

Oh no. He got a laser.

Sure it's good idea to bring him here? ;)

@ShadowWizardWearingMask When I was in Elementary School one of the big deals was field trips, and one of the list of places where we went was the Zoo; if you're thinking that they had monkeys there you'd be correct. --- There's a limit to what I can say, but the monkeys are smart. They'd be cute near the cage and encourage people to get closer. --- Then they'd fill their hand and chuck it at the cage, causing it to splatter; painting the crowd, who'd run screaming. --- Good times, good times.

@Rob LMAO.... lol... rofl... etc.... :D :D

Well, never had anything like that. :)

Our schools don't have field trips to the zoo, I don't remember what we did have, but it was usually just boring.

You had untrained monkeys, and we had untrained tourists - coincidence, I think not. --- It happened for years, until they changed the layout.

@Rob they put the tourists in the cage and let the monkeys go?

They made the throwing distance greater.

Also, we went to the: museum, art gallery, planetarium, peanut butter factory, pool, skating, lots of places ....

I also missed quite a few field trips in primary and junior school due to bed wetting problem.... so if the trip was for more than one day, I didn't go. I vaguely remember being only in two such trips, in the 11th and 12th grades.

Each place had something to (mischievously) do, but watching the monkeys was the biggest laugh.

oh, in 10th grade there was a big trip to Poland instead.

@Rob wow, nice... and who paid for all of that? Parents?

Yay! Chat updated.

I'm now a cake. :P

@Rob so you only watched? Didn't take active part in any of the throwing? ;)

@Adriaan hello!

Thought @rene was just kidding, lol. :D

Hi!

Paid for by School Board, school budget, everyone donate $5, etc.

No-one kids about Ardbeg!

So you bring this? ^^

Well, hmm, I might earn a Swiss salary, but blowing €3.500 on a single bottle is too steep. By far.

@Shadow10YearsWizard Remained at a safe distance.

There are other Ardbegs, even special editions, for around €500/bottle which are very good as well and a lot more affordable. I usually go for the standard ones of about 50-100

@Adriaan even for me? :-(

;-)

The liquor store has a few bottles costing 10-20x that; waste of money.

@Adriaan hehe, nice. I just bought original Israeli whiskey for my brother, for $60 or so. (200 NIS)

That takes the cake.

@Rob glenfahrn.com/de/… slightly too expensive as well :P

@Rob and your friends?

@Rob wow, probably 100 years old stuff, right?

@Shadow10YearsWizard I already suggested this, the super deluxe edition with extra aging is less than 15K - a steal!:

They'll bottle and box it for you when it's ready, netting you more than several cases.

@Rob oh, missed it!

Same stuff, but bulk purchase.

My budget is 100 NIS though. With my sister joining it became 200, which is the exact price of the bottle. :)

Delivery cost 35 NIS more, but I took this extra hit on myself without crying. :D

Insured delivery?

IInInsInsuInsurInsured ddedelddelivery?

Could be worse, and better than buying shirts.

FF!!!

@Rob keyboard

Replace

I assume the delivery has insurance, yeah... didn't check in depth, but if for example the bottle breaks during the delivery, the seller will just send a new one.

It's common sense.... I hope... lol.

Mobile phone, software error. --- thought I'd fixed it. (Angry Face!)

@Rob maybe it's a userscript.

Seriously. Check "hammertime".

Nope

Back in 5 (10, for a truck)

How is it being triggered? Randomly? @Rob

Bye, @Adriaan! Hi, @Adriaan! :D

(saw you leave and join in one swipe)

Oh great, pink elephants in the room. How am I supposed to think about work now?

(Hi!)

lol

Pink is deceiving, he's luring people with it, give them expensive whiskey, then... censored

:P

Mmmmkay. I'll find the mace before accepting the whiskey then? :)

Someone having issue with disk size on MSE.

not anymore

Poor soul.

And the actual error got nothing to do with size. lol

Just some common permissions error.

@Tinkeringbell you need no mace, you have diamond shield. ;)

It's @Adriaan that needs a mace, if anything. :D

Elephant can hit really hard with a mace, when I think about it.

@Shadow10YearsWizard The formula seems to be: Wait 15m + additional random amount of time. --- Solution: Close and restart browser.

@Rob quite like SE solution to misbehaving cache.

Better than MACE, and for a hint - it's a truck:

Water Cannon Truck, with capsicum.

Ironically, used in Turkey. I like pepper on turkey.

@Rob used anywhere. Even here in Israel against protestors.

Not used in North America, AFAIK.

That's water.

@Rob yeah, only guns that shoot actual steel bullets. ;).

@Rob common people don't like to get wet. (from water)

:D

Bean bag, and plastic shells; unless a real round is purported to be needed.

@Shadow10YearsWizard Water may not be enjoyed, but look closer at my photo - the water is orange because it's mixed with capsicum, see the people wearing gas masks, crawling, choking ... --- Water is weaksauce.

On a more pleasant note ...

Looking forward to AMD's announcement in 2 1/2 hours. New GPU lineup, which hints at the M100 coming RSN.

@Sha, still awake?

At least if you have to joke on a pink elephant... thing about Dumbo, @Shadow10YearsWizard

(also known as "how to give little kids nightmares in an otherwise normal movie")

@Rob ZzZ

@Νеvеrꭑoꭇе OK, will do! :D

@Shadow10YearsWizard congrats for the 10y wizard :)

@Shadow10YearsWizard KK

And now they've posted an off-topic question: meta.stackexchange.com/q/355908/622284

CV-pls, if you can.

all clean now

\o/

Communities and Connections will Power our Growth in 2021

@Rob oh that's nasty

@Rob no third K

@bad_coder thanks!

@Tinkeringbell with soap?

No soap needed.

Just that watergun Rob posted ;)

@Tinkeringbell can't see traces of orange, how you made them go away?

Mod secret.

I know! You moved it to the above blog post. :D

telling CEO what Tink just did

Yeah, like he'll listen to that rambling...

He must listen to me!

Shadow the Karen Wizard?

I have army of Wizards!

Or shadows? Hmm...

@Tinkeringbell linkedin.com/in/karen-wizard-a04b993

No, not me. ;)

@Tink second offense (at least).... looks like just deleting their stuff isn't enough. :/

@Shadow10YearsWizard Blegh. Handled.

yay!

boop

anyone got a moment to critique a post?

sure?

pastebin.com/5wGPWenz

as a response to prasanth's post

Has a few spelling things, but mostly looks ok to me :)

yeah, same from me.

spelling things are fixable

more worried about tone and content

Well nothing to worry about there, as far as I'm concerned. May be a going a bit off-topic but... well, you're right that trotting out the ticket smash as a success is just putting a spin on it.

posted

@JourneymanGeek Have an upvote and a spell-check ;)

Thanks for the good SSL edit, @bad ;)

@JourneymanGeek careful with the barks, that's all. ;)

@Tinkeringbell 2 in the price of 1?

Oh, no... he's paying extra for that.

@Shadow10YearsWizard I just want to be mindful that I'm not the guy who keeps fixating on one thing ;)

though I'd love to see a day when I can stop reminding upper management that the community managers/team matters

No worries about tone or content there (though I agree with Tink it's sort of flowing off topic, but not enough to be too far off). It's a really good answer, and really well-worded.

I think its longer than the blog :D

@JourneymanGeek I hope for the sake of SE that one day you'll be able to nudge the upper management from within, as CM or maybe even more than that.

@Shadow10YearsWizard the resume is literally in their inbox.

that's why this feels so awkward

You have skills, you have the passion, you have endless pool of patience... heck you'll be at least as good as Shog. SE will be really stupid if they won't see this and hire you.

Yeah I hadn't said anything because other people worded it better than I would have, but the requirements that you pointed out are really unnecessary and eliminate a lot of really good potential candidates, especially from within the mod team across SE's network.

It's really frustrating.

Hey. No one is as good as Shog!

@Catija try and see. :)

@JourneymanGeek Doesn't feel that long, but then again the blog always seems longer to me due to buzzwords and other fillers.

Nobody has to be :D

Have Mr. Geek hired! @Cat ;)

Except Shog himself, I suppose.

@Catija Funny thing is Shog would qualify :D

I have no control.

@Catija Okay, @JourneymanGeek can be better than Shog then ;)

Shogeek? Journeyman Shog?

lol

@Shadow10YearsWizard I've already tapped on everyone I can currently and formerly inside the company ;D

@JourneyShog

@Journeyman9

@Catija you have more paths open to... places. ;)

@Spevacus If I ever get hired as a CM, I'll change my name to Journeyman9 for at least a week, if I remember :D

@JourneymanGeek So... that's kinda the funny thing. Who is Shog vs who is Shog in any of our minds... Anyone with that degree of visibility has a mythos built around them... and that changes how they're perceived... on the individual level, at least... for some, he was terrible, for others, a mentor...

@Catija I know

But... he's also just a guy.

@Catija I mean the literal 3-5 million users :D

And he got there by working at it and figuring things out and being willing to fail and screw up.

@Catija "I am Shog, the Great and Terrible"

@Catija I think the persona counts for something

I certainly take advantage of mine :D

@Spevacus I suggested Professional Geek. Geek10 was too cliche :P

Assuming he gets hired.

Well, they haven't rejected me yet!

@JourneymanGeek meh.

@Catija to some extent, least for me, the big internet personality lets me get things done

its also a drag cause people expect miracles, when all I do is just talk to people and listen :D

🚽

It becomes a lot harder on the other side.

People expect miracles... :D

but at the end of the day, we all work with constrants.

I could probably solve half the problems on the network with unlimited power. And cause twice as many :D

Not... so much that but that... what you say gets put under a microscope that... honestly, isn't really fair.

C'mon, do a miracle already, Mr. Geek...

@Catija Well yes.

Just talking to people becomes harder when they expect you to actually do something.

:D

I kinda know

Look at the number of MSE posts I wrote before I got hired and since.

that's actually a bit of a structural problem

it's easier to express how you think things should be, when you don't know exactly how things are

My thoughts on a meta post... just feel scary.

lol

I know the feeling

Different reasons of course

Some posts, like the one just now - they feel essential, but I'm certainly going to annoy people in power.

For example, there was a question that got asked yesterday... and I have thoughts about it... but I don't share them.

Other times, I'm wondering if I do more harm than good

Eh, those are kinda different.

Well, you also have to worry about what the company feels

I don't

... but if you got hired, you would.

if I get hired, sure, but I feel I'd have an obligation to be internally opinionated

I would

but that's kinda one of the tradeoffs I need to consider. Hopefully I can do more good inside than out.

uh oh pinging Rob might soon bring undesired results...

oh wait, exact match first. So @Rob should ping only @Rob even though there are two more matches. Right?

the other robs will still see a blue highlight, but i don't think it'll create a notification

(unlike @Mith that pings both @Mithical and @Mithoron as it's not exact match)

well, the same notification that any other not exact match would

yup

Shadow THE 10 Years Wizard Mr. Bill Shakespear

Hmm, actually I wonder if "The 10 years wizard" is possible. "The 10-year wizard" is certainly

A question:

Oh wait.

It probably is correct. But only with the article!

@Ollie An answer:

Oh wait.

@Catija Except Nog Shine.

sdc gag M.A.R

@Ollie No such command 'gag'.

gg

No, my question is: Do we still need the inappropriate-advertisements tag?

We do have the Report ad feature now.

It seems unlikely that it'll be used anymore, and it only has...

Ten questions.

sdc ungag M.A.R

@Ollie No such command 'ungag'.

I've asked my question now. You can talk ;)

@Ollie Didn't we already have the "Report ad" feature when these were being posted?

I think they stopped because of a . . . an announcement maybe?

I don't think so. The official post was posted 7 months ago.

@Ollie ask on meta 😁

@Ollie Might still make sense to post on meta once SE screws up the ads badly enough again

People were pissed that SE decided to use Google Ads, so they pledged to report ads until SE would decide to do something about it that's more efficient that a lot of anti-SE buzz every few days

And then we will fix it @MadScientist

I wasn't paying attention anyway, but that was the point I turned on AdBlock for SE sites.

@JourneymanGeek Yep. Buh-bye.

Since when does posting need Buh-Bye.

Glances at the numbers of tabs in this window

@M.A.R. 46 currently, what about you

@QueenieGoldstein Three windows, a total of 80 something tabs

One has six, the other around 15

i have 3, but 3 in each, so total 55

About 1/5th of them are stack exchange sites

i'd say keep the tag, it's likely to become needed again

I don't think we get rid of tags just because a tech has become obsolete. If the tag is still needed to classify the questions, keep it.

I've written an answer that confirms / support that.

What are some potential arguments for and against implementing this feature request? Notifying users by email approximately one month in advance of their questions being deleted by the 1-year RemoveAbandonedQuestions Roomba, to tell them to edit it with updates or improvements or place a bounty if they're still looking for an answer, or self-answer it if they've since found it themselves.

i don't see any value in it

@user400654 If the user takes actions to try and get it an answer, then there's another Q&A pair on the site, increasing the knowledge base for overall users. If they post a self-answer, same thing, except the overall process is faster.

i mean, if it's been... uninteresting, unanswered, for nearly a year, is it really increasing the knowledge base if it sticks around?

purely from a quantity standpoint, maybe

@user400654 Perhaps it just didn't get seen by enough people at the time it was asked, perhaps because it was asked on a day where a bunch of other questions were asked and their question went unnoticed. Maybe it may get seen again if the user just edits it.

Other possible reasons include it being "a super-obscure topic and few people even read it -- or maybe it means there is room for improvement in the question" (meta.stackexchange.com/a/309533/377214).

Anyone else have any potential arguments for or against such a feature request?

I also remembered: from a curation perspective, if it gets bumped, it's possible that someone might find a duplicate for it or see that it's no longer considered in scope for the site, and thus allow them to kickstart the closure process on it, lessening the time it can be used as a "broken window".

just seems like the wrong kind of notification to me

something much earlier would be far more beneficial. Give the user some tips a few days later if their post isn't receiving attention

rather than waiting till it's about to be deleted

I sort of agree with 🚽 here. Grab their attention with some tips to improve/increase visibility (mention bounties if they've got the rep to do so, and clarifying, meaningful edits) early if there's not much activity on it after a couple days. Whether that's through an in-site inbox notification or an e-mail... I can't say. But after months of no attention, will the OP (assuming they're a first time visitor) even care to read/improve their question at that point?

I get the idea, and honestly it wouldn't hurt, but I don't see it having a meaningful impact in the sense that I don't think many would follow the e-mail to their post and potentially improve it after all that time.

LOL

😎

@Spevacus If they don't care, they'll just ignore the message and let the question be deleted.

Though I do get one counter-argument: if the user doesn't care for an answer but does care about reputation, and their question has upvotes and downvotes canceling out the score, they'll stand to lose rep from the question's deletion and so may resort to irrational things.

In any case, are there any clear arguments for implementing the feature?

It might, in some cases, increase engagement

maybe

not necessarily always in a good way, but strictly in the form of increasing a metric,

I made this comment on a different feature request:

i'm generally more in favor of deletion over not. With the number of incoming questions coming in, it's highly unlikely it won't be repeated

Deletion encourages reposting, though

in my experience... the reposting will happen either way

I will admit that my viewpoint is different. I do agree with the point of the Roomba scripts (to remove abandoned questions useful to little to no one), but I disagree with their implementation because some useful questions end up getting (IMO mistakenly) culled as well. I think such cases are better handled by a community review queue where users have expanded rights to vote to delete such questions, or at the very least an automatic moderator flag to alert mods to either delete or salvage.

It has the potential of at least alerting a newer user about a system-wide procedure that continually deletes old questions, and that their post is about to fall under its deletion. It provides a degree of transparency that isn't immediately visible to most users.

An initial step in the right direction would be to reset the timer if a question deleted by the Roomba is subsequently undeleted, rather than the current model of immediately re-deleting them. Reversing said deletion serves as a signal to the system that its deletion was incorrect, and that it should let humans handle it from then out unless no further useful actions are taken.

Shog recommends reposting as a means to avoid the scripts from immediately kicking in again, but Monica's answer above states that that's a bad idea because the prior history of the question is effectively lost. This will solve both of these cases.

What would you think of that as a feature request?

We can try to politely engage new users who post questions that aren't well received but there seems a pattern: New, don't check for dupes, present 1/3 baked idea, log off for a day or two, return to protest the downvoting by comments and refute helpful advice, wait a few hours, repeat the last two steps a few times, and penultimately declare a conspiracy; finally make a parting shot, vowing never to return.

A burial notification may do no better; but I know I wouldn't mind knowing.

@Rob SE's model in the past years has been to try and push users through this process as fast as possible so they reach the "vowing to never return" stage as fast as possible.

I'm not sure what the goal is anymore

the sinister side of me says they want to just end the "this question isn't a good fit" end of the process

rather than preventing said not a good fit question from happening

I know there's been a lot of work on preventing

but... there's only so much that can be done

if people don't read the messaging presented to them, or don't understand it because it's not their native language, or decide to just not participate at all because they've read elsewhere the network is full of elitist pricks, there's really not a whole lot to do there to prevent the inevitable, all we can do is deal with the result.

So lets work on that part, dealing with the result

@user400654 Make the ability to receive such a notification require 20 rep; people riding the road to ruin or used a hit-and-run account aren't notified, but people with minimal participatory abilities are included.

and... not necessarily just in the form of giving people power to act on the question

more, just in time notifications

assuming they're still on site

Question posted, gets a bunch of views, and noone interacts with it? tell the user that, suggest they improve it

Getting downvotes? explain what downvotes are and how they should act to reverse the situation

I wouldn't mind even receving such on-site popups for posts ive downvoted recently that received a significant edit

just... not in my inbox

@user400654 I think many people are concerned about their question(s), it's just the presentation, caretaking, reaction, and follow-up that needs tweaking: meta.stackexchange.com/q/7046/282094 (and right column) - possibly due to a new user viewpoint: meta.stackexchange.com/q/174032/282094 - they have preconceived notions and out of sync expectations - a height-challenged dictator -

They asked, so your answer must meet their requirements, enforced by the selected answer checkmark. --- Learned in school, the Teacher asked and your answer must meet their expectations - except that not a correct application of their experience.

@user400654 Downvotes are hidden (not notified) in the Achievement cup notification - to "ensure a positive experience" (there's a Meta for that).