Tavern on the Meta

bjb568

00:00

dark theme better than light theme for myopia?

Rob

00:30

Prophecy fulfilled:

10 hours ago, by Rob

The questions don't have to be excellent, ideally the answers would be; but that question needs improvement.

Feeds

04:53

Hopefully in a couple of weeks we'll be able to resume our apple-focused updates, because we have SO MUCH to say about Cosmic Crisp.

Feeds

05:47

stackoverflow.blog/2021/01/12/…

John Dvorak

@Feeds :toilet:

Mithical

@bjb568 personal experience says yes

Tinkeringbell

06:46

FWIW, the rollback button itself isn't new. But we had a bug that prevented it from showing up (and working) as intended. That fix is unrelated to the menu updates. — Adam Lear ♦ 6 hours ago

I wonder how long that was broken... I can't remember ever having seen that button.

Sonic the Curiouser Hedgehog

07:18

@Tinkeringbell I never saw it since I registered my SO account in February 2013.

I do remember seeing it in old screenshots, though.

Tinkeringbell

Well it's fixed now XD

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@Tink why don't you make your bug report status-review?

Sonic the Curiouser Hedgehog

To prevent allegations of self-interest

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog meh, it's for the best of the community

It's not like she will get anything from the bug being fixed.

Tinkeringbell

I have not yet seen any flags requesting any of my fellow mods to add that tag...

We're... also not sure if it's a bug or a feature request yet.

If it's not a bug, it doesn't meet the criteria for status-review.

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

07:20

@Tinkeringbell check again.

;)

Tinkeringbell

And now we wait ;)

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

lol

Sonic the Curiouser Hedgehog

Doing such a thing would be unfair to normal users, who can't add the tag on their own. On posts from mods, it's better to have an independent review from another moderator.

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog but the mod follows flags, so other users have to chime in first anyway.

Tinkeringbell

Honestly, the main reason is that I don't know if it's a bug or a feature-request.

Sonic the Curiouser Hedgehog

07:22

@Tinkeringbell Wait, isn't it a feature request that looks like it has community support, and thus meeting the criteria for a feature request?

Tinkeringbell

The whole self-interest thing sounds charitable, but there's little difference between telling Geek to add one and adding one myself.

Except for the outwards appearances.

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog Hmm, perhaps. It might also just be a popular question that spent quite a bit of time on the top of the question page yesterday.

Sonic the Curiouser Hedgehog

"looks" (but as you say, they can be deceiving)

Tinkeringbell

We'll see how the flag is handled :D

Luuklag

08:05

Are all the devs on holidays, except for the one that pushed the change perhaps?

The forest of Reinstate Monica

Devs are always on holidays, in my experience.

Luuklag

08:29

what would be a good tag for this question instead of knowledge:

9

Q: Should Stack Overflow switch from a Question/Answer model to a Knowledge Dissemination model, and how?

It's now been 3 months since this site came public. It is the first one I really got interested in. Many reasons for that: great user interface, permanent activity, interesting questions, valuable answers, and something of a funny gaming/competition flavor with these reputation and badges. And t...

I was thinking about something like model but that's not a tag currently

@Luuklag you stupid onebox, its a CW

The forest of Reinstate Monica

> answered Dec 23 '08 at 22:09

god those answers are old

It always amazes me how time progresses on the internet. 12 years seems like an eternity.

Sonic the Curiouser Hedgehog

09:00

@TheforestofReinstateMonica You can find Usenet posts from the 1980s if you do some searching

Journeyman Geek

09:20

@Luuklag less is more

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

Less is the new More.

Journeyman Geek

model feels like a meta tag too

Meta Andrew T.

09:35

more or less

Luuklag

alright, then just remove :)

I voted to delete this one:

-12

Q: Are there jealous people within Stack Overflow?

It's not the first time that happened, but for example yesterday I answered a question. It was accepted with 3 upvotes. Someone ask to get some explanation so he can learn from it. I edit my post and gave an explanation. Since I edited my post I got a downvote with no explanation. Is this the ri...

discussion stack-overflow down-votes etiquette knowledge

Because it is about a specific question on SO

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@Luuklag no need to delete IMO. Thousands of closed off topic questions, buried in all sites, no point going and deleting them all.

Maybe someone will want to use it as example some day, or it has useful answers, etc... better let it be.

Luuklag

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating Well I am by no means planning to go through everything. But a burnination is a perfect moment to clean up the mess.

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@Luuklag disagree and won't add my delete vote, but it's your right to cast yours. ;)

sdc coffee Luuk The Deleter :D

SmokeDetector

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating brews a cup of Mocha for @Luuk

Meta Andrew T.

09:48

that question... ah, when I got a chance to increase my close vote review stat...

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

12:01

@Luuklag refund!

Luuklag

12:26

thx for that @ShadowWizardisVaccinating

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@Luuklag :)

!!/refund Luuk's coffee

SmokeDetector

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating No such command 'refund'.

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

:(

Luuklag

sdc coffee Shadow

SmokeDetector

@Luuklag No such command 'cofee'.

@Luuklag brews a cup of Cappuccino for @Shadow

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

12:36

:D

Tinkeringbell

13:20

meta.stackexchange.com/q/359512/369802 < any thoughts in here on rolling that back to the previous revision because the current one a.) is an attempt to invalidate an existing answer and b.) is just plain lies (I did not misunderstand their request for an ability to be able to move profiles between accounts?)

rene

@Tinkeringbell well, I didn't even understood rev 1 or 2 so I was surprised that you answered and I'm not sure I like the mod angle in your answer. If anything the last revision makes more clear why the FR is useless and better not implemented, which still is the gist of your answer. If anything, edit out the meta commentary but keep the "improvement"

if you want me to make the edit, just yell ...

Tinkeringbell

No, now I'm curious first to know why you don't like the mod angle in my answer :P

Not making it easier to abuse the system is a good reason to not implement things, I would guess... but apparently you disagree?

And yes, if you don't mind, I'd appreciate it if someone else edited out the meta commentary :)

rene

13:36

I would rather address the benefits for the FR based on core qualities: better content, easier UX, higher retention, etc. Additionally you could argue what you need to still be able to moderate that. Not allowing an FR because it is hard to moderate rules out a lot of features, including posting stuff ...

@Tinkeringbell done that

Tinkeringbell

@rene While this may be true, this feature requests adds no benefits like that :) I did point that out in my answer too: "it's likely to cause more trouble than create benefits that can't be had by using the feature to hide site profiles or taking a second to think and create a second account before 'ruining' your main one."

Rob

Added comment explaining SE's categorical splitting.

rene

@Tinkeringbell okay, got it. Fair enough.

Tinkeringbell

I do agree it's a good thing to keep in mind though, as I do agree I may have a tendency to say 'Dear God no, this such a horrible idea that only someone that would want to troll would suggest this' silently before writing an answer XD

Rob

It's their question, and resulting up or downvotes.

It's all too common for someone who hasn't been here a few years to share their idea for an improvement, occasionally they are great.

Tinkeringbell

13:45

@Rob True :) And I think a good feature request also explains which one of the things rene just mentioned would be improved by it instead of just saying 'I want this because I can't do this now'

Rob

rene's comment above implies that it ought to have been closed for "Needs details or clarity" prior to it being answered.

Tinkeringbell

It can still be closed for that even if it is answered. ;)

rene

In general: an FR that benefits just your personal use case aren't worth posting.

Tinkeringbell

Eh, I don't think it's that black and white either, but you at least need to explain what use case that is so that people can see if they have the same use case XD

Else I'm going to come up with my own use cases, which usually involve sockpuppeting and making money ;)

Rob

Frequently ideas are: how about this, that, and the other thing. Wouldn't your lives be great! (not a question, a proclamation). Then the rep falls like tears, if it wasn't at 1 already, and sometimes there are protests of the indignity; the failure to understand the poorly explained, selfish, impractical idea.

IRL they are sometimes referred to as s-ideas.

But not here.

terdon

13:56

@Tinkeringbell do you understand what the OP is suggesting? I don't. I mean, what difference would there be between this and either i) hidden accounts or ii) multiple, separate accounts. I don't get what the user is trying to suggest at all.

Tinkeringbell

@terdon They have account A, and joined a non-tech stack with that. Now they want to move their non-tech site profile to an account B.

I did already point out I did not see any benefits of this construction over hiding accounts

But what they want is essentially to have multiple, separate accounts... but move one site profile from account A to account B.

Rob

It's sort of "Move question from site to site" except it's move account from user to sockpuppet (without having to ask staff to unmerge).

Tinkeringbell

@Rob profile, not account ;)

Nov 25 '20 at 20:25, by Catija

The terminology gets thrown about lazily a lot but I try to use it correctly... a site profile is a single site's "account"... an "account" is the hub account for the network that "owns" the profiles. If a mod or user deletes a profile, the account is untouched. When a user recreates that profile on the site, the info about the suspension is retained in the network account and plopped back on the new profile. But that still requires them to be the same account.

Rob

Very Catty. ;)

Tinkeringbell

I hope not!

Rob

14:09

I don't think it's incorrect to say that they are asking to unmerge their (singular) account's profiles and remerge them into new accounts of one or more profiles each.

Tinkeringbell

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Rob

Suggested easy to use UX design:

Sliding puzzle

A sliding puzzle, sliding block puzzle, or sliding tile puzzle is a combination puzzle that challenges a player to slide (frequently flat) pieces along certain routes (usually on a board) to establish a certain end-configuration. The pieces to be moved may consist of simple shapes, or they may be imprinted with colours, patterns, sections of a larger picture (like a jigsaw puzzle), numbers, or letters. Sliding puzzles are essentially two-dimensional in nature, even if the sliding is facilitated by mechanically interlinked pieces (like partially encaged marbles) or three-dimensional tokens. As...

terdon

@Tinkeringbell yeah, but that exists already: just make separate accounts.

Tinkeringbell

@terdon It does, but that doesn't work retroactively. OP has already made a profile and made a post with it, so that's why they want to move instead of just making a separate account with a new profile at this stage.

Rob

But they don't want to lose the less than 100 rep that they've already earned on one account, and suffer the waste of hiding the profile, when they could easily manage the splitting up of an account - like that's not going to lead to abuses of reputation transfer outside of the bounty system.

I'll give you profile X,Y and Z in exchange for your profiles on A, B and C - then each of us will be geniuses in our respective areas.

Feeds

14:23

Want to teach your kids to code? Here are three apps that can help.

Ryan Donovan on January 12, 2021

Like many of you, I am a coder with kids at home. What better time to start exposing our kids to the career we all think is amazing! You do think programming is amazing, right? 😀 Well, even if you don’t, coding teaches kids the fundamentals of logic and encourages them to think abstractly. Let’s…

Rob

^ There's the answer, just make your own site that works the way you want.

terdon

Ah, I see. Thanks, @Tinkeringbell and @Rob

Tinkeringbell

NP.

Meta Andrew T.

14:41

@Feeds Grasshopper?

apparently not...

Νеvеrꭑoꭇе

AfternoonZ

Meta Andrew T.

woahHhHh~ zombie after noon...

Νеvеrꭑoꭇе

Confirmation: it is possible to delete your user for a specific site and keep the others, right?

Meta Andrew T.

@Νеvеrꭑoꭇе yep, I have ~~abused it~~ done science a few times on 3dprinting.SE

Νеvеrꭑoꭇе

so for example, delete meta.SE user and keep SO one?

Luuklag

14:43

@JNat cross site spammer:stackexchange.com/users/19362662/shaip

Νеvеrꭑoꭇе

thanks, needed to know that for a question on Meta.

Rob

@MetaAndrewT. It's last in the list of other suggestions in the link in the article.

@Feeds The CoderKids website suggests real languages, which makes a lot more sense.

Dunno about suggesting C++ but it's on the list of a few similar sites that offer suggestions of where children should start.

Whatever happened to BASIC?

Luuklag

@Rob Don't think sending a 5 YO off to Python is going to be very succesfull

Rather learn them to read and write first

rene

Basic had goto. Is bad.

Luuklag

I love Goto in VBA

makes things so much easier

Meta Andrew T.

14:56

@Feeds Or well... Colobot

Luuklag

That way I just write one loop, and can jump midway into it using goto, saving me from writing another loop alltogether

Will it be spaghetti for others, well yeah probably.. xD

Journeyman Geek

controversial take. The universal ability to code is overrated :D

4

and in a sense means a lot of other useful tech skills are undervalued

Luuklag

I don't think we should really teach kids how to code, but teach them the mindset, and logic that goes behind coding. That's far more valuable and widly applicable.

Journeyman Geek

that's fine

or the broader skills of troubleshooting and analysing a problem

Tinkeringbell

Not flooding the job market with hundreds of kids sounds nice to me :P

Luuklag

15:02

yeah exactly

@Tinkeringbell It's not like were going to have a surplus of good coders any time soon, so don't worry

Tinkeringbell

@Luuklag "good" ones perhaps not, but bad ones? :P

Journeyman Geek

@Luuklag Its the miserable ones that worry me.

Tinkeringbell

Teaching kids to code is cool as long as the kids want to code. And those lessons can then be used to teach them those broader skills as well, as they're going to need them.

If the kid wants to play playdough or marbles instead, they're kids... let em XD

I bought arduinos for my youngest brother and me, because he wanted to learn. When things became too 'difficult', he was done and went back to playing racing games. But he learned enough apparently to be handy enough that he now has a job as technical dude in a racing simulator place.

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell there's this guy who DIYs controllers... :D

(I hope to try to learn to stuff like that when I move out. )

Tinkeringbell

I have already promised myself not to start any new hobbies after moving out. It's going to be hassle to fit all the existing ones into the single apartment already :P

Luuklag

15:07

@Tinkeringbell Your apartment isn't finsihed yet, have them make it bigger ;)

Tinkeringbell

@Luuklag I could've gotten an extra bedroom actually, but it would've taken a lot of light from the room.

Luuklag

@Tinkeringbell would be helpfull if you ever wanted to expand your family xD

Tinkeringbell

This one's from Funda, apparently some people are already moving out again :P I'm getting a similarly layed out apartment, the extra bedroom would've covered one of the doors and the little window :)

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell :D

Luuklag

Then they turn the porch into a bedroom, poor design choice

Any update on when your's will be finished?

Journeyman Geek

15:09

@Tinkeringbell I intend to empty as much of the bucket list as possible when I move out

and that includes the small trebuchet.

Tinkeringbell

@Luuklag Hopefully before 'bouwvak' this year. But that's if everything goes without a hitch, they are now waiting for paperwork and hoping to restart building early February. There can be delays in paperwork, delays in getting construction materials, covid delays, weather delays...

@JourneymanGeek Hahaha that actually sounds fun though :)

Luuklag

Between februari and Bouwvak you can't expect any weatherdelays

Tinkeringbell

I hope not. It wouldn't be the first time that we get big freezes in March though.

Luuklag

@Tinkeringbell Isn't most of the exterior work done already?

Tinkeringbell

No, it's only those big white blocks for now... it still needs a roof, and brick walls, and basically everything else XD

Rob

15:16

@JourneymanGeek Chemistry is popular around here, and the resulting explosions from homemade bombs in the park.

@Tinkeringbell A good reason to not participate on Stack Overflow.

Luuklag

@Tinkeringbell yeah then weather kinda is an issue xD

Rob

15:31

@Tinkeringbell The Lego birdhouse.

Tinkeringbell

Aww that one is nice!

I saw a set that was made to look like a bunch of flowers... I admit I was tempted to buy it for display in the apartment XD

Luuklag

@JNat cross site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/15265663/…

ouch that is a harsh URL to type by hand if you needed to

Journeyman Geek

15:50

Hm. Looks like there's a potential widespread issue across the network

Tinkeringbell

I haven't really noticed anything yet today...

Journeyman Geek

9

Q: Weird: "connection failure"

A couple of minutes ago, I was experiencing "connection failure"s on Mathematics Stack Exchange, and other sites. What's happening?

bug status-review

Also had issues uploading screenshots

Tinkeringbell

Yeah I saw... no-repro here though.

Luuklag

@Tinkeringbell same here, but then Glorfindel did notice, so its not a localisation issue

Or it is really local

Journeyman Geek

It's random

Luuklag

15:54

anyways, im off to pick up the kids. Cya guys

Tinkeringbell

@Luuklag I'm going for really local... :P

@Luuklag Cya!

rene

16:47

→ 45 messages moved to Chimney

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

17:01

@Luuklag school? ;)

rene

some kids

@Luuklag I guess you know this one ....

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

Good old times...

JNat

@Ollie gone before I got to it

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

17:16

@JNat how?! You're the only spammer hunter around....

Oh... all accounts deleted by per-site mods?

JNat

presumably, yes

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

heh

JNat

and it's an unregistered account too, so

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog gone

@Luuklag gone

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

waiting eagerly for my turn

JNat

@Luuklag gone

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating I have a 3 week backlog, so you may need to sit tight ;P

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating gone

@Spevacus gone

@Luuklag gone

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog gone

@Luuklag gone before I got to it

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog gone

Ollie

17:31

@JNat Shame.

JNat

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog gone

@Ollie gone

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog gone

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating gone

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog gone

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating gone

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog gone

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog gone in one of the above somewhere

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog gone

@Spevacus gone

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog gone

Ollie

Lot of spammers to clean up, @JNat?

JNat

3 week backlog, yup

@SonictheCuriouserHedgehog gone

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating gone

user400654

17:48

🚽

JNat

and I'll take care of the rest of it tomorrow :P

Ollie

Does anyone else help nuke network spammers @JNat?

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

@JNat oh, I always do. :D

Thanksx3, @JNat @JNat @JNat ;)

Ollie

sdc coffee Shadow

SmokeDetector

@Ollie brews a cup of jQuery for @Shadow

@Ollie brews a cup of Espresso for @Shadow

:8704036 brews a cup of Espresso for @Shadow

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

17:52

@Ollie pretty sure that he's on his own, and not as part of his official job too.

Ollie

Coffee x3 @Shadow.

Shadow Wizard is Vaccinating

:D

Spevacus

18:07

Why is everything on fire?! Oh, JNat brought out the flamethrower again.

Ollie

sdc blame

SmokeDetector

@Ollie It's Tim Post's fault.

Ollie

@Spevacus It's not his fault!

Luuklag

18:25

@ShadowWizardisVaccinating daycare. I'm lucky that my wife is a teacher and the kids are allowed to attend.

@rene nope, not a fan of Koefnoen.

Thanks for the load of chat pings @JNat :)

Martin

19:41

AFAIK, the suggested tags are enabled only on SO. In this answer I see that it is necessary to have at least 20k questions. Does somebody know whether this means 20k questions in total (on the site), or 20k question in a single tag?

rene

@Martin I read that as it works for even 2 questions but it wouldn't be accurate.

Martin

:-)

Tinkeringbell

And I could've sworn the interface suggested the 'design' tag for my question on MSE yesterday...

Martin

To be more specific, I asked because this was now raised on MathOverflow. I have posted similar suggestion also on Mathematics.

I suppose MSE means meta.se. (Some people are used to MSE = math.se.)

Tinkeringbell

Oh, yeah. If you're here, it means Meta SE ;)

rene

19:55

I tried a few 20K sites but it isn't on by default.

Or the threshold got higher

Martin

Oh, I do not think it is on any site by default. I thought that a site had to request this from SE to be switched on.

rene

That seems to be the correct conclusion. I guess the tag engine can't handle too many sites?

Martin

Ask Ubuntu has two questions on meta which are tagged suggested-tags.

I did not notice other per-site metas with that tag: stackexchange.com/filters/408079/suggested-tags

rene

@Martin there is this somewhat disheartening FR: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/320163/…

so the argument seems to be: it costs dev time and "training" the tags is hard.

Martin

The answer to that question says: "For each individual stack, you'd have to pick at least 20,000 (old) questions to train the classifier."

rene

20:10

For which I would say: SEDE can do that "pick" ....

Martin

So it probably is 20k questions needed on the site. (I came here mainly because somebody suggested that this could be understood as 20k in a single tag.)

Rob

AskUbuntu has the tag though the main search didn't spot 2 uses of it, and your filter did.

20K seems like overtraining, considering that there's questions with similar sentences and no tag; to serve as a weak negative (might be missing the tag, while ones having the tag are still subject to having the additional tag incorrectly added).

rene

21:09

→ 9 messages moved to Chimney

→ 4 messages moved to Chimney

Spevacus

<3

rene

→ 2 messages moved to Chimney

rene

21:32

→ 2 messages moved to Chimney

Sonic the Curiouser Hedgehog

21:47

I always thought it was a site-specific setting that could be disabled.

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