Tavern on the Meta

Catija

2:00 PM

Thanks :) I appreciate it. I'm glad that it's something people are finding value in.

... that's a really... meh way of putting it... but I'm not sure how else to say it right now.

Journeyman Geek

@Catija There's no easy way to say things like that.

2

Luuklag

@JourneymanGeek +1

Pouring your heart out in front of a bunch of strangers...

I'll leave that to you @Catija ;)

Journeyman Geek

(says the dude who has a 4 line answer in front of him and is trying to get the right tone when feelings are quite mixed.)

Spevacus

I believe in you. :)

Luuklag

@JourneymanGeek You could always convert to a comment ;)

Journeyman Geek

2:03 PM

@Luuklag dosen't quite work ;)

But it can wait for when its ready, or not at all

Catija

@JourneymanGeek Hey, that took me over a week to work and at least 2 people reviewing it and giving me feedback. Take your time.

Journeyman Geek

@Catija Its easy to give tribute to someone you like

or to chew out someone you hate

Catija

It's not easy to be vulnerable when you tend to be the sort of person who's private about stuff and wants to seem strong.

Luuklag

@Catija Showing your vulnerability might only make you stronger :)

Tinkeringbell

@Luuklag This massively depends on who you show it to, in my experience.

Luuklag

2:12 PM

@Tinkeringbell True, there are always people trying to take advantage. But you can't let the haters get to you

I'm personally on the other end of the spectrum. I don't show emotions, ever. That doesn't do me any good either.

Tinkeringbell

Heh. "haters" is an understatement for the kind of people I'm thinking of :P

@Luuklag There's an emoticon in your third-to-last message here.

Mithical

@Catija Yeah... that's why I reserve my venting for very specific places.

Luuklag

@Tinkeringbell emoticon =/= emotion

Journeyman Geek

@Luuklag heh, I spent years hiding all sorts of stuff....

Tinkeringbell

> is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using characters—usually punctuation marks, numbers, and letters—to express a person's feelings, mood or reaction, or as a time-saving method.

From the wiki. So it is also to show emotions ;-)

Journeyman Geek

2:17 PM

Also - well different people have different comfort zones

Ekadh Singh

@JourneymanGeek you trying out for this? meta.stackexchange.com/questions/364332/…

Journeyman Geek

@EkadhSingh No, I'm in the wrong timezone.

Ekadh Singh

:(

Journeyman Geek

@EkadhSingh More seriously- it needs a very different skillset from what I have

Ekadh Singh

Okay. Still :(

Tinkeringbell

2:27 PM

My lost souls button is being slow...

3 seconds between closing and deleting.

Ekadh Singh

@JourneymanGeek what does very roughly mean in this comment (meta.stackexchange.com/questions/364337/…)? Or is that confidential (like the vote reversal bot)?

Tinkeringbell

Was about to ask if anyone had similar trouble but... just realized probably not XD

Journeyman Geek

@EkadhSingh I think its documented somewhere, I'll check

Ekadh Singh

Thank you :)

Journeyman Geek

@EkadhSingh meta.stackexchange.com/questions/131241/… seems the best I can find

Ekadh Singh

2:35 PM

The answer is still pretty vague... “a variety of tools.” Doesn’t explain much.

Journeyman Geek

:D

Is seekrit

But essentially We can't see who voted for which post.

But we can see enough to decide if its fishy or not

SEDE will tell you what was voted for.

Ekadh Singh

Ok

Is there any documented list of things that are secret (eg. Vote reversal bot specifics, what tools moderators have to see voting), or is that also a secret?

Tinkeringbell

I do think there's a secret list of secrets somewhere...

Journeyman Geek

@EkadhSingh If it wasn't secret, we could tell you

Spevacus

Pls leak teh seekrits

Journeyman Geek

2:45 PM

Tells @Spevacus what was in the box

Spevacus

:O I can't believe that was in the box!

Tinkeringbell

Journeyman Geek

(Was a reference to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_(1995_film) :D )

Catija

@Tinkeringbell ... that feels almost too meta :P

Tinkeringbell

@JourneymanGeek 1995. I was four when that was released. My spongebob episode is more from my time :P

@Catija But since you said 'almost' and not just 'too meta', I will now assume there is such a list :)

Journeyman Geek

2:51 PM

And a secret list of lists of secret lists of secrets.

@Tinkeringbell the first rule of secret lists is you don't talk about secret lists.

Catija

I'm not even sure what the list would be - votes that lead to the reversal script and how we determine when you're question/answer banned?

Tinkeringbell

I guess those two, yes. And CM tooling?

Journeyman Geek

@Catija and I guess the exact nature of more sensitive mod tools

Tinkeringbell

@JourneymanGeek Actually, this reads like a movie that should go on a list.

Journeyman Geek

A secret list?

Catija

2:53 PM

Dunno, I guess we do get a bit hand-wavy about some things... at least... I remember being surprised a bit when I first started poking around.

Ekadh Singh

But what if the movie was also secret?

Journeyman Geek

@EkadhSingh then you wouldn't know about it.

Tinkeringbell

@Catija I mean, that's probably a good thing too :)

I keep it a secret at work that I can do some stuff with hacky workarounds, just because I know that once I tell people, I will be spending hours just on those hacky workarounds :P

Spevacus

^ This is the way.

Ekadh Singh

@JourneymanGeek but what if I went youtube.com/watch?v=O9k9PKN0YMY and saw it anyways (just assume for a second that I don’t suck at coding as much as I actually do)

Journeyman Geek

2:57 PM

;p

@EkadhSingh Two words

Ninja. Badgers.

user400654

🚽

Ekadh Singh

@JourneymanGeek I am quite comfused (edit: and bad at spelling confused)

Aren’t all ninjas kiwis?

Journeyman Geek

@EkadhSingh and probably grateful we didn't mail you a bobcat. They don't let us mail bobcats any more.

Ekadh Singh

Stack exchange is based in Texas?

Journeyman Geek

Well no

Ekadh Singh

3:02 PM

Oh

then what does bobcat mail mean?

Journeyman Geek

You can do this one in every 30 times and still have 97% positive feedback.

Ekadh Singh

LOL

but the person didn’t use the bobcat as an office chair. That’s just wasteful smh my head

But what does ninja badgers mean?

Journeyman Geek

Badgers, who are ninjas.

Or ninjas who are badgers

Ekadh Singh

What about niners who are badjas?

:)

Somebody should make a list of secrets in a meta post

It would probably include, cm tools, moderator tools, how to get question/answer banned, and how to get your votes reversed

Journeyman Geek

@EkadhSingh Well the last is no secret

Rob

3:14 PM

@Tinkeringbell Spelling Reference: Luuklag's Answer and stackoverflow.com/company/work-here/3131115/…

Journeyman Geek

Wait, or ask a mod, and if they think it looks fishy, they send it to a CM

rene

Just ask a question, tag it C and C++ and you're q-banned

Ekadh Singh

@JourneymanGeek I meant the specifics of the vote reversal bot

Journeyman Geek

@EkadhSingh It reverses votes

Ekadh Singh

the specifics

user400654

3:25 PM

If you just downvote everything, you're less likely to run into it

Meta Andrew T.

What? Mods can reverse votes!?!?!?

Journeyman Geek

It takes a vote someone did, and undoes it.

It checks once a day IIRC

Meta Andrew T.

Oh, I read it wrongly...

@EkadhSingh FWIW, we mods don't even know, just like we don't know how the automatic post ban works.

Ekadh Singh

@user400654 have fun hitting the vote cap tryna downvote everything

And losing a frick-ton of rep if you continually downvote everything

Meta Andrew T.

Downvoting questions don't cost rep though...

Ekadh Singh

3:28 PM

@MetaAndrewT. what I was suggesting was a list of secrets that people aren’t allowed to know

@MetaAndrewT. some people just want to watch the world burn

Journeyman Geek

@Catija heh, you set a really tough standard for the rest of us. Answer posted :D

user400654

@EkadhSingh It's easy enough to leave an answer every now and then to get all your rep back

Ekadh Singh

@user400654 for you...

user400654

i mean

are we talking about meta?

because the bar is quite low for upvotes there

Ekadh Singh

True

i meant the site in general

Sometimes it’s quite difficult to get upvotes in my experience

Journeyman Geek

3:33 PM

@EkadhSingh ah see, you get it back when its reversed.

Then you loose it all when you're suspended.

Ekadh Singh

Lol

Journeyman Geek

Then you get it all back

Ekadh Singh

@JourneymanGeek <s>by creating a sockouppet</s> (Disclaimer: I do not support making sock puppets)

Journeyman Geek

@EkadhSingh ah see

then we nuke the sockpuppet and suspend you

Ekadh Singh

WHY DOES STRIKETHROUGH NOT WORK! AAAAAAAAAAHHHH

Journeyman Geek

3:34 PM

two for 1

~~YES IT DOES~~

Ekadh Singh

How

It’s not working for me

Journeyman Geek

~~LIKE THIS~~

Ekadh Singh

~~test~~ FINALLY

Spevacus

~~Strike me down, and I shall become far more powerful than you can possibly imagine~~

Ekadh Singh

@JourneymanGeek ~~nord VPN~~

@Spevacus ~~It’s over far more powerful than you can possibly imagine, I have the high ground!~~

SPArcheon

3:58 PM

@EkadhSingh Just saying ^.

Ekadh Singh

I’m on a school device rn so some images are blocked for me :(

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell I want to edit my post just so I can put "et tu Tink" as an edit reason :D

Ekadh Singh

@JourneymanGeek are we going to have a party in the tavern once you reach 1k answers? :D

Tinkeringbell

Hahaha sorry... couldn't resist. I promise next time I'll just put something like 'put the commas in their right places' again :P

Journeyman Geek

@EkadhSingh Maybe put up a sign saying... "This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here."

Catija

4:05 PM

@Tinkeringbell Why are you putting apostrophes in plural words... :P

SPArcheon

@EkadhSingh Just a picture from the intro of the game "The New Zealand Story"

Tinkeringbell

@Catija Because I'm obviously daft.

rene

Was expecting Dutch but daft will do

Tinkeringbell

This one is probably explainable with 'because Dutch says it's 'komma's''.

SPArcheon

@EkadhSingh Which happens to have you play as a Kiwi. With a bow. Ridding air baloons and shooting giant pink whales made of ice. Kinda a trippy game.

Ekadh Singh

4:07 PM

@SPArcheon sounds interesting

Catija

... Kiwi? The fruit?

SPArcheon

The bird.

The one that does not exist anymore.

Journeyman Geek

The mineral

Catija

That's... less trippy.

Tinkeringbell

@SPArcheon Wait what? I thought kiwi bird still existed!

Catija

4:08 PM

The Kiwi bird is still alive and well... you mean Dodos?

Meta Andrew T.

Dodo fruit

rene

@MetaAndrewT. less trippy ...

SPArcheon

@Tinkeringbell oh, right got them reverse. But it is a kiwi.

Journeyman Geek

..

Ekadh Singh

My chat is buggy rn

sorry

user400654

4:10 PM

buggy

Ekadh Singh

Or laggy

idk

SPArcheon

@Catija try the final game to top them all.

A name, a mission.

Meta Andrew T.

@SPArcheon so trippy ...

SPArcheon

@MetaAndrewT. just a joke or you actually tried that game?

Meta Andrew T.

Not playing, only watching speedrun videos.

SPArcheon

4:14 PM

ok, but you saw it. Then you know.

it is basically a meme in the gaming community.

Few games have a worse reputation than that one.

Ekadh Singh

@JourneymanGeek how do you put up a sign in a chat room?

SPArcheon

I know someone tried do remake that in Dreams on the PS4

Journeyman Geek

Very carefully

Ekadh Singh

?

Meta Andrew T.

What sign? Pinned star?

Rob

4:31 PM

Super long tag.

Meta Andrew T.

Oh. The Sign.

Shadow The Vaccinated Wizard

6:10 PM

@Luuklag meh, let it

grabs the last popcorn

Under attack now, long range missiles from Gaza launched on my home town.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard :( You stay safe!

Shadow The Vaccinated Wizard

@Tinkeringbell thanks, I'm in a shelter, kids still bit scared.

Tinkeringbell

Yeah, duh.

Ekadh Singh

@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard hope it ends soon, and everything goes as well as it can

Luuklag

7:34 PM

@ShadowTheVaccinatedWizard I wish you the best of luck. Hopefully you can comfort the kids a little.

@Spevacus Yeah you're right, I thought I replied to the report before that, mobile isn't that usefull ;)

Spevacus

Mobile chatting is tough D:

Luuklag

7:50 PM

What do we think of this deleted Q&A? meta.stackexchange.com/questions/363751/… I don't think it should be deleted, it has a good answer by Animuson, that is far more to the point then the dupe it was closed against

Spevacus

I pointedly did not vote to delete it because I did feel like it had a degree of lasting value. I'll also vote to undelete with you.

Did the deed.

thx Rob

Voting mob!

It's a distinct and specific difference, but still a fair duplicate; same answer, no.

Luuklag

8:02 PM

@Rob Well yes, but the answer in the dupe target is harder to concretecize. While the answer by animuson is as concrete as it will ever get.

Rob

✔️

forest distrusts StackExchange

8:59 PM

46

Q: We’re looking for a new Vice President of Community at Stack Overflow

You might have noticed that we posted a VP of Community job description on our “Careers at Stack Overflow” page. It’s a big role, and important here at the company. As we move forward in the process of becoming a product-led company, we’re putting a lot of thought into our original product - our...

> Sara Chipps has decided to leave the role of Director of Community and Stack Overflow, and May 11th is her last day with us. We are backfilling Sara’s role with a VP rather than a Director to reflect the importance of our communities and the Community management team within the company

huh

Kevin B

🎉

forest distrusts StackExchange

When did she join? I thought she joined recently.

Catija

Define "recently". She's been our Director for two years.

forest distrusts StackExchange

Ah. 2 years ago feels recent to me.

Catija

I'm not at three years yet.

forest distrusts StackExchange

9:02 PM

Compared to many people here, you're new as well. :)

(And so am I. It's crazy to think this site has been around for so long)

forest distrusts StackExchange

9:14 PM

Well, I'm hopeful that the new VP will be able to help heal the relationship with the community.

Kevin B

_

forest distrusts StackExchange

Maybe we'll be able to put these past awful years behind us.

@KevinB An underscore?

forest distrusts StackExchange

9:33 PM

4

Q: What should one do if they are being targeted by a single individual?

For the past few months, every one of my questions (total of eight) have been downvoted almost immediately after posting. If they are poorly written questions or even if asking a question for something that shouldn't be attempted, I deserve and welcome the downvote. I am not paranoid or a cons...

support comments down-votes serial-voting

Isn't it fairly easy to tell who is downvoting by looking at public rep changes?

(I know it wouldn't work for this guy because downvotes on questions don't cost rep)

Kevin B

not beyond a shadow of a doubt

forest distrusts StackExchange

But there's a finite number of users.

Kevin B

i'm sure there's at least a few hundred people who's rep will change at that exact moment

forest distrusts StackExchange

hm

Kevin B

but lacking any public event to tie that rep change to, you can't really confirm when exactly the rep changed

forest distrusts StackExchange

9:36 PM

It'd take walking through each user's rep at n second intervals, and discarding those who could not possibly have downvoted you, right? But if it's serial downvoting, it should be pretty easy to finally figure out who it is because they'd be the one user who always loses 1 rep at the time you get a downvote, even if at any given check of all users, multiple people may be candidates.

Kevin B

assuming there's a reliable way to get that rep information

can't use sede,

forest distrusts StackExchange

Rep is public.

Kevin B

right

so you're gonna crawl millions of profiles in realtime?

forest distrusts StackExchange

You can't get timestamps of events but you can create granular timestamps by polling them.

Not millions, just active users.

Kevin B

stackoverflow.com/users

which ones are active tho

you can narrow it down to week,

forest distrusts StackExchange

9:38 PM

"Last seen" is public metadata.

Hm

I imagine "last seen" is updated on various actions, including downvotes.

Kevin B

in the past users attempted to get this information (and were quite accurate) by simply tracking interactions on a given post

forest distrusts StackExchange

Tracking interactions?

Kevin B

who commented, who answered, edited, bookmarked, etc

forest distrusts StackExchange

ah

Kevin B

you can then look at all of those user's reputation to watch for changes

forest distrusts StackExchange

9:39 PM

Yeah that's easy enough but it only works for people who do interact.

Kevin B

right

forest distrusts StackExchange

That's what I do if I suspect a specific person is downvoting me.

Kevin B

but, it can rule them all out

the lack of information is also information

forest distrusts StackExchange

It is.

This just gets me thinking about how practical it would be to create a service with an API where a user ID can be input, and candidate downvoters would be output, narrowed down over time. It would be pretty easy for smaller sites, but I'm having trouble thinking of a way to get it to scale to sites as large as SO without hammering the website and running afoul of the ToS with DoS-like behavior.

Kevin B

if you kept a running tab on the users who have interacted with your past posts, you'd have a smaller more reasonable pool of users to look at

i imagine you'd run into throttles pretty quick now days

Rob

9:43 PM

There's a huge delay. Go to a site that's unused by you. Vote up a good answer. Look how long it takes your profile to report that you voted, and then even longer for the Supportive badge - it may be visible on the post almost immediately but it's delayed for everyone, even your own votes.

forest distrusts StackExchange

Really? I know that some websites scrape SE and they still manage to do it.

@Rob Unused meaning a site you don't have an account on?

Rob

No, not necessarily; you could have registered but barely use it - want a suggestion ?

forest distrusts StackExchange

Is the delay modulated with jitter/done at specific intervals, or is it basically just a timer?

@Rob sure

Kevin B

well, as an example, i just voted on something, my last seen hasn't updated to reflect i interacted somewhere

forest distrusts StackExchange

Ah. So last seen is very coarse-grained.

Rob

9:47 PM

Try here, find a fairly good answer, upvote, wait. Should take at least a few minutes, rarely several; refresh once a minute.

Kevin B

i'm up to 3min past the interaction now

forest distrusts StackExchange

@Rob But the rep change is instant, isn't it?

So even if last seen doesn't update rapidly, it'd be enough to exclude users who haven't been on in the past, say, several weeks. The instantly-updating rep change would be sufficient from there.

Kevin B

it is for your profile, but i dunno if it is for others

i know of a bot that can test that

Rob

On the post it changes the "score" but them getting rep takes a fraction of a second and you losing one for a downvote takes longer - try it on that site where you are unvoted.

Kevin B

definitely not instant

waited ~ 10 seconds

forest distrusts StackExchange

9:51 PM

@Rob But I assume your loss of a rep when you downvote someone is fairly quick.

Rob

You can narrow it down, "proof" is another thing; unless no one visits for a long time.

Kevin B

yeah the tes ti ran looks at my profile's rep

10 seconds after the vote, it hit my profile and didn't see the rep lost

forest distrusts StackExchange

What I'm envisioning is the ability for the service to return potential downvoters.

Kevin B

that's simply a list of the people who've interacted

forest distrusts StackExchange

Maybe I just have to do the math to find out how long it would take to narrow down to a single candidate given reasonable polling intervals.

Kevin B

9:53 PM

you can give weight to the type of interaction

and over a long period of time weed out the tag regulars

forest distrusts StackExchange

The information SE makes available that is relevant is 1) changes to post scores, 2) changes to users' rep, 3) last activity (at very low granularity). Is there any other useful information?

Rob

[Looks at the source code] Ah it's anti-Forest™, Gump proof.

Kevin B

it's just not a really useful thing to do

in the end

at best it's not going to be that accurate/useful, and you can't act on it anyway

Rob

✔️

forest distrusts StackExchange

@KevinB But imagine you are being downvoted. Such a service could return after a week that user 123, 456, 666, 420, and 69 are the only ones who couldn't be ruled out. At week two, it could return users 123, 666, and 420. Week three, it could return only 666 (of course assuming only one person is serial downvoting, not multiple). And s/week/day/ for small sites.

Kevin B

9:57 PM

or... you could wait till week 5 and raise a mod flag, and the mod can decide if there's anything fishy going on using their limited tools

Rob

👿🌩️

forest distrusts StackExchange

Yeah but that only works if something fishy is going on. What if you just have a secret unadmirer?

@Rob I don't get it.

Rob

You summoned it.

Kevin B

I've been hit by a lot of revenge votes on my questions, but i have so few questions that it wouldn't take long for someone to downvote them all, even at 2 a day

or 1 a week

5 weeks?

lol

Rob

Besides, for revenge they frequently upvote.

Kevin B

9:59 PM

i wouldn't even notice the rep drop, due to passive +10's, and random +1's from things i've downvoted being deleted

forest distrusts StackExchange

@Rob I summoned random unicode?

hm

Rob

Yes, you gotta watch out for that.

Kevin B

and if someone really wanted to go downvoting my answers.. have at it, i'll enjoy watching

forest distrusts StackExchange

I've only experienced serial downvoting a few times.

And only on small sites where the culprit was rather obvious.

Kevin B

like, i can't hurt my own rep gain even when trying

forest distrusts StackExchange

10:02 PM

It must suck on SO where serial downvotes might get lost in the noise of genuine downvotes.

Kevin B

lol

forest distrusts StackExchange

I only posted once on SO. Got no answers, no upvotes, and no downvotes.

Although I did get some very helpful comments.

Luuklag

10:20 PM

@forestdistrustsStackExchange Thats what I remember about my forst few posts. They pointed me in the right direction. Tought me the lingo. And got downvoted and deleted pretty soon I think

forest distrusts StackExchange

My question wasn't off-topic or anything. It just didn't get any attention.

0

Q: Why does strace believe this memory is uninitialized when attaching to a process?

I have an extremely simple program that does nothing more than call recvfrom() in a loop. According to its manpage, one of the arguments is a pointer to the length of the address. This address is initialized in the .data section to the integer value 16. I noticed some strange behavior when I atta...

linux memory-management assembly strace

I'm actually surprised roomba hasn't eaten it.

Catija

Has more than one comment.

Ryan M

@forestdistrustsStackExchange Might be worth copying some of that info into a community wiki answer.

forest distrusts StackExchange

10:37 PM

@RyanM Is that what you're suppose to do on SO?

Ryan M

@forestdistrustsStackExchange I think it's generally recommended SE-wide

You're also not obligated to make it CW, but it's a nice touch if you're not really adding to it :-)

of course, if you do add your own explanation then I'd say definitely go ahead and claim the rep

forest distrusts StackExchange

ah

ymb1

11:52 PM

I've always wondered, does filling the description of images -- [![enter image description here][2]][2] -- do anything? Like for search indexing perhaps?

forest distrusts StackExchange

I think that's what is displayed if the image fails to load.

Doesn't it become the alt text or something?

Spevacus

@ymb1 For users who do not have images rendering in their browser, or visually impaired users who use screen-readers, it helps for them to understand what was supposed to be there. While not required (obviously) it's nice to fill them in with something descriptive.

ymb1

Oh that is a nice accessibility feature, good to know!

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