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Sonic the Curiouser Hedgehog

6:05 AM

@JNat Cross-site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/20274156/trustable-shop

Sonic the Curiouser Hedgehog

8:27 AM

@JNat Cross-site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/20379557/utter-bug

rene

9:03 AM

→ 14 messages moved to Chimney

Mithical

> The rarest hat that we could find on users’ avatars is Rep Hunter, awarded only to 20 users. If you are one of those who won, congratulations!

Oh cool, exclusive club.

Luuklag

9:25 AM

@JNat cross-site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/20229659/alexa-john

rene

12:55 PM

→ 9 messages moved to Chimney

rene

3:25 PM

→ 6 messages moved to Chimney

bjb568

3:57 PM

@Tinkeringbell hmm, kind of strange that the last we hear of it is the stats on how well it works and then it disappears.

Tinkeringbell

@bjb568 I think the gist of that blog post was 'Sure, the stats show it worked well but the stats also show the new question thing works even better'? I did not read very critically though.

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

4:56 PM

IMO the mentorship project was ideal.

Veteran users will review questions from new users as they're being written and be able to help the asker in chat-like platform.

Tinkeringbell

Didn't that have a pretty bad issue with scale?

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@Tinkeringbell don't remember for sure, it worked well "live", with few dozens of questions asked after being "mentored". I do believe they could find enough users, and tweak the system so that if there aren't enough available, the ordinary Ask Question procedure will take place.

Meta Andrew T.

Mentoring Documentation of SO TV?

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating Hmm. I like everything about that then, except the part of bypassing it when it doesn't scale.

user400654

5:17 PM

iunno

that's asking a lot of unpaid volunteers

imagine the burnout on that kind of thing would be swift

it's gonna be the same issues over and over, which are all specified in text elsewhere, eventually it'll just get optimized out to "see FAQ --->"

Meta Andrew T.

mentoring, but done by chatbot...

Tinkeringbell

@user400654 To an extent though, they're doing the same stuff now, but only after a question is posted?

user400654

eh, i don't think it's actually getting done at any reasonable rate at the moment

Tinkeringbell

True ;)

Moving the step forward might still save someone that's thinking of posting some frustration though. It takes away the argument of 'I spent time on this, so you should too'.

user400654

the bigger benefit of the mentoring bit was that these questions were put in front of people willing to help, which is certainly a useful feature that we (SE staff, not us regular users) may be able to create without the bits that don't scale

Rob

5:23 PM

277

Q: Can we make this meta site work for mentoring?

In July 2014 Shog9 proposed Stack Overflow Academy on Area 51. I was skeptical and thought it was sort of a joke. The idea that anyone would go to yet another Q&A site in order to ask a question on Stack Overflow seemed crazy. But the more I thought about it, the more I liked the proposal. Over t...

user400654

effectively, a next iteration of the current "first posts" queue

Rob

174

Q: Mentorship Research Project - Results + Wrap-Up

Check out SO Podcast 117 to hear Kristina talk about the mentorship experiment. First, if you haven’t read the original announcement post about the Stack Overflow Mentorship Research Project, you should go and do that now. If you don’t, the rest of this probably won’t make a ton of sense. From ...

discussion new-users mentoring

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@MetaAndrewT. don't forget the good old Shop. ;)

@Tinkeringbell well, better than have the users wait for a mentor for a long time, it will just make them go away.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating well - in a sense, mentorship happens on its own when a community is healthy

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@user400654 the satisfaction of seeing a question you mentored posted and getting upvotes, or at least not closed on spot, where you know for sure that would have been its fate is great. Many will surely be happy to do it.

Tinkeringbell

5:28 PM

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating True... I just like equality too much ;)

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@JourneymanGeek not at all, not even a bit. I talk about interaction before the question is posted.

Not after, when it's closed and with -10 score.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating kinda sorta exactly

So - here's an interesting problem

Lets say we had a chatroom to get people to talk about and mentor new users ...

what gets them to move from chat to the posting on the site?

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

People don't read. But if seeing actual person helping them in chat platform, they do listen.

@JourneymanGeek the system. The chat is synchronized with the Ask Page, the mentor see their draft.

And when the draft is good, the mentor says "Good! Now post." and that is it.

Journeyman Geek

A

Ah

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

It worked perfectly, with the help of Jeremy who made few tweaks to the code.

Journeyman Geek

5:31 PM

I can see that working on a smaller site, but SO?

(We never got the cool stuff trickle down to SU :D )

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@JourneymanGeek so scale again... and same answer: I think better mentor even only 20% than nothing as we have today.

Rob

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating "... seeing a question you mentored posted and getting upvotes ..." - much like the joy of seeing a well researched and written question, where you and others have contributed a helpful comment or edit, receiving upvotes; and eventually becoming a canonical (where you are also neither credited, nor made to be a polisher).

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@Rob nope.

And even so, very different. When someone see their question nuked out of orbit, even having helpful edits and super friendly comments will never bring them back.

Rob

Well, you should offer an improvement to the former Mentorship program, on MSO.

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@Rob no, that's a dead horse. They'll never put it back to life.

I'm just ranting over "what if".

And that's also why I didn't believe for a second the Ask Question Wizard will be alive.

Rob

5:37 PM

Not everyone is a negative receiver of helpful and polite comments or quality edits by an expert in the field; while others make their post to prove that you agree with it, and if you don't they are never coming back - except to remind you that they are leaving.

Physics.SE made a specific type of question off-topic because of that:

> "Non-mainstream physics, including pitches for personal theories We deal with mainstream physics here. Anything that couldn't be published in a reputable journal is not appropriate on this site.".

Too many first timers rewriting the way it works, to support their questions or answers.

bjb568

5:59 PM

@Tinkeringbell oh, is the wizard the "old question flow" in that case?

if so, it looks like they chose quantity over quality again.

Tinkeringbell

No, the old question flow was just writing a thing and posting it, then came the wizard... now it's write something, press 'review your question', then post it, IIRC?

bjb568

then the graphs in that blog post don't compare the current one to the wizard at all?

Tinkeringbell

Why do you have to ask such difficult questions?! :P

I just found a blog post that mentions the new question flow is better than the wizard XD

bjb568

: 3

Tinkeringbell

Actually, there seems to be a bit more to the new question asking than just the review step ;) I just opened up a question asking window on SO, and this is what I see:

(Ignore the stuff that asks me to confirm that I want to post a public Q/A, that's because I'm also on a Team ;) )

But it has steps on the side!

On IPS, where I have more rep, I only see:

I think the most important thing though:

> As of today, the new question workflow performs better in terms of task success (people who intend to ask a question successfully posting their question) and the same in terms of question quality. From a technical perspective, the new workflow is easier to maintain and build on moving forward.

If it does basically the same as the wizard but is way easier to iterate on and maintain, that's a fair decision. I do think this data comparison was between the old flow and the new flow, and not the wizard and the new flow.... but I'm not sure.

bjb568

6:11 PM

I see.

Tinkeringbell

MSO may have more discussion on that?

user400654

8:45 PM

🤪

Tinkeringbell

@user400654 On a toilet.

rene

→ 6 messages moved to Chimney

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@Tinkeringbell thought only I have grinning face on the toilet. :D

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating That's not a grinning face, that's one that's having a mental breakdown! :P

Which is semi-normal now given the world news :)

user400654

^

Tinkeringbell

8:56 PM

I can recommend AGDQ and crochet instead :)

twitter.com/Tinkeringbell91/status/1346921996614033410?s=20 < Like that :)

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@Tinkeringbell well, I did say it long ago...

Dec 24 '18 at 12:10, by Shadow Wizard

I said it before and I'll say it one more time (for now): Trump is the biggest mistake USA has ever made in its entire history. He says the right things sometimes and most of the times has the right goals in mind (he's not evil), but the way he's doing it, the way he doesn't listen to anyone, leads to very dark future. That financial crisis is only the beginning. </rant>

Tinkeringbell

Ah yeah, dig up the 'told you so's :P

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

lol

Tinkeringbell

I think everyone can find one if they look hard enough :D

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

nah nah in your eye ♪♫

But actually to be honest, during his time on the throne it could be worse...

He really lost it, when he lost. Literally.

Now I can totally see him calling in Twitter "My people! Grab your guns and take what belongs to you! Let's make America Great Again!"

Tinkeringbell

9:01 PM

The whole thing is crazy if you're sitting on the other side of an ocean.

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating Nah, he said stay peaceful ...

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

rofl

user400654

he did not call for them to stop

🤔

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

Peaceful with gun pointed to the enemies, which are anyone who isn't a supporter.

Tinkeringbell

@user400654 True. The local news site had a good comment on that though: These people are kinda busy and prolly not looking at their Twitter anyways XD

user400654

from some of the pictures i've seen it looks like at least some of them are having a grand ol' time

smiling, waving to cameras, walking around carrying a podium, posing at desks,

Tinkeringbell

9:04 PM

Too little people in there to prevent that, it seems. Which sucks.

user400654

hope they don't go defacing things

lot of art in there

Tinkeringbell

Honestly, I think art is kinda low on the priority list rn ;)

(and that comes from someone with a heritage management degree XD)

user400654

eh, at this point they've already evacuated everyone

this is just disruption now

Tinkeringbell

That's also true. Still, getting people out without getting shot and dismantling all the other messes seems to me to be a bit more important than the art at this time.

Rob

9:48 PM

There's an Art in everything.