Tavern on the Meta

Journeyman Geek

12:38 AM

@Rob Was

Mithical

12:54 AM

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog yes

Luuklag

7:38 AM

o/

I go for vacation for 2 weeks, and all staff are leaving ;)

Tinkeringbell

@Luuklag Well that makes me glad you didn't take 3 weeks then :P

How was your vacation?

Luuklag

It was great, taking a well deserved break from my PC :)

We've been a week to the Ardennen, in a tent. Had pretty decent weather luckily.

Tinkeringbell

7:54 AM

@Luuklag Nice!

Luuklag

@JNat cross site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/22166145/matrics-digital?tab=accounts

@JNat cross site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/22016141/jfhwv?tab=accounts

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

@Luuklag nice! Glad you had fun. :)

Luuklag

Thanks :)

So anything fun happened around here while I was gone?

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

@Luuklag I'm on a bit of a forced break from my PC. Its power supply failed and I'm still waiting for a new one

Luuklag

8:11 AM

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog If that also means a break from work that's great ;)

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

@Luuklag Nope...need to use my laptop

Tinkeringbell

@Luuklag Not here, no...

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

@Luuklag We also visited a mountain range, the Olympic mountains in the northwest US. Got there right after a major heat wave, and left right before another one

Luuklag

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog yeah were having rain waves here, not much of a summer this year

Wouldn't mind taking some of your "heat" ;)

Tinkeringbell

@Luuklag We're having a perfectly normal summer for this climate. Don't rush the climate change.

Luuklag

8:23 AM

@Tinkeringbell meh, flooding of rivers isn't really a normal summer ;)

Tinkeringbell

@Luuklag Okay, but the temperature is normal :P

You also shouldn't want heat + flooding rivers, the humidity will kill us.

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

9:35 AM

@Luuklag some devs leaving, some new bugs, and one blog post that took 6-8 CM's to write properly. :D

But all good, yesterday our own Prime Minister called the mother of a soldier who got hurt badly in a battle, meaning to support her and give some nice words. Just one problem, he didn't even know the name of the soldier, and used some other name. Now that's a real scandal, and made me realize how not serious the blog post issue was.

2

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 Don't forget to mention chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8985530#8985530 ;)

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 Why is your prime minister even calling people XD Doesn't he have ministering to do?

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

Lack of planning ahead and lack of research are bad. Really bad.

@Luuklag oh, and Adam Lear causing mass heart attacks. :D

@Tinkeringbell done!

Tinkeringbell

If you want to make excuses: It could be that he had to do several phone calls like this, and just messed up :P

I think the real scandal is that if things went well, he would probably have used this phone call, these people, as PR.

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

@Tinkeringbell nah, he also yawned while talking with her (it was 10:30 pm) and to add oil to the fire (or rub salt on the wounds?) Netanyahu called shortly after and did say the proper name, talked with more focus, etc. lol

Tinkeringbell

Lovely mess :P

I wonder what our latests scandals are... opens news site

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

9:45 AM

Well, the new pm is a failure, that's a fact. Some give him benefit of the doubt and hope he'll learn from his mistakes. I'm not among them, but also not a big fan of Netanyahu, so it's a problem.

@Tinkeringbell oh, it got tons of exposure in media, with millions of people reading about it, in a nutshell the soldier was badly hit because of "non aggressive" policy we have in place, preventing the soldiers from shooting unless there's clear and immediate risk to their lives. So people blamed those who define the policy...

Done properly, such calls can boost support in the politician.

Tinkeringbell

So, I've got...
- Someone living off of taxpayer money, that got the groceries from her mom and used the social welfare money to buy a BMW and harley davidson has got a final decision in court lowering the amount of money she needs to pay back;
- House prices that are still going up and people blaming everyone and everything for it;
- And stricter rules on immigration that may not even be legal: immigrant children that end up living with e.g. an aunt or uncle can no longer automatically be 'used' as a free ticket by their parents for 'family reunification'.

PM 2Ring

@Luuklag Well, they announced that they'll soon start an experiment (on SO) to test unpinning the accepted answer. meta.stackoverflow.com/a/410859/4014959

Tinkeringbell

Yep, the world is still an amazing place /s

PM 2Ring

And there was a PSA from the SO mods: Don't be that account: buying and selling reputation and bounties

Tinkeringbell

@PM2Ring Oh wow, they actually posted about that? I saw the rumors, but not this yet :D

PM 2Ring

9:56 AM

The comment thread is worth reading.

Tinkeringbell

Over a 100... pfft, maybe later. If I start now I will get no work done today :P

PM 2Ring

:)

Luuklag

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 yeah I read a bit about that, it also took an manager on vacation to make phonecalls... Those are the signs the company isn't the "startup" it once was

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 ah another sabatical, SE must have a good policy there if everyone is taking them. But other then that 6 weeks isn't that much time either

@PM2Ring yeah, probably a good thing, especially in cases where accepted =/= most voted

@PM2Ring yeah read that this morning. Sad this is necessary.

PM 2Ring

In some places, a good SO rep is very valuable on your CV. In other places, people wouldn't dream of letting employers know how much time they spend procrastinating on SO. ;)

Journeyman Geek

@Luuklag IIRC based on how many years you've worked

and I vaguely recall HR started insisting people take em

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 As some say, meh, its only the internet

I decided to spend part of my day off cleaning the family altar - there's lots of little statues of deities I decided to clean with an ultrasonic cleaner...

With one...

"Uh, mom, I thought this was black granite... its <some other lighter stone> ... Just how much soot is there?

PM 2Ring

10:08 AM

@Luuklag Definitely. In a lot of cases, the OP is the least knowledgeable contributor to the page, so we shouldn't place too much weight on their choice of accepted answer. OTOH, the accepted answer attracts attention, so if it has major problems it gets edits or at least comments that address those problems.

Tinkeringbell

@JourneymanGeek ... That doesn't really sound all that healthy!

Journeyman Geek

I think its about a decade's worth

PM 2Ring

In some tags, eg JavaScript, the language has evolved so much that even the high scoring answers can be bad if they're more than a few years old. When looking up JS stuff, I hardly bother sorting by votes, only activity. If the answer's more than 2 years old, it's probably not so useful, >5 years old and there's a good chance that it suggests stuff that's now deprecated.

@JourneymanGeek Do you use ghee lamps? They make a lot of soot.

Journeyman Geek

Oil

but yeah, more or less

Mithical

...when did the "post is eligible for a bounty in x" disappear?

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

10:20 AM

@Luuklag yeah @Philippe was on his way to airport or something. ;)

@Luuklag yup, here not all employees get it (I don't) but those who do (e.g. teachers) get whole year off once in seven years.

@JourneymanGeek when it's politics, it's more than that. People actually arrive to protest in front of politicians houses as result of online scandals. (Not this one though)

@Mithical did it?? :(

Mithical

I'm not seeing it at meta.stackexchange.com/q/368835/294691

Tinkeringbell

I can't remember having seen it for quite a while now, now that you mention it.

Dude coinheringaahing

I can't see it on any other questions across the network, just from a quick check

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

Only OP see it.

@Dudecoinheringaahing because you're not the OP

oh... @Mithical thought you mean your own question.

Well we need to ask Philippe if he see it.

Dude coinheringaahing

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 Not true, it's been shown to all users before

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

10:27 AM

@Dudecoinheringaahing maybe long ago, don't remember seeing it on questions asked by others before.

Or maybe mod power.

hmm

So you say @Glorfindel was wrong?

2

A: Why is the "bounty eligible in ? hours" message missing?

No; you only see that link on your own questions (the second question you mention is yours; I don't see the message there either). The bounty function is not that important and if you see that message on every new question you visit, well, it just isn't worth the whitespace it is taking. If you ...

I mean, it can happen... he's not a dev... but it also made sense so I took that as being true back when reading the answer.

ohhhhhhhhhhhh

@Mithical @Dude I'm pretty sure both of you have userscripts for SE, right?

So the userscript showing the bounty link for all questions broke.

And... that's why I don't use, and will never use, userscripts. Can't tell when they will break and when they do, can't know if it's a bug on SE or not. :D

Dude coinheringaahing

I don't think I use that user script, but the grad script I use on CGCC may show it (on mobile rn, so I don't have that script)

Mithical

*shrugs* I was probably just misremembering that it showed on all questions

Dude coinheringaahing

Or ^ :P

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

hehe

Dude coinheringaahing

I'm very good at saying completely wrong things very confidently :P

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

10:34 AM

It's all @balpha's fault! :P

!!/blame

SmokeDetector

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 It's JNat's fault.

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

oh n o

Poor @Brian, only three answers on his farewell post.... :(

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 Well, I could write a fourth but it seems at least one there is already very, very fake and insincere, doubt he wants more of that :P

Dude coinheringaahing

10:56 AM

I've always wondered about downvotes on staff leaving posts. Cause, if you liked the staff member, then you probably understand that upvoting is the respectful thing to do, shows support for them, etc. But, if you dislike a staff member (for whatever reason), them leaving would be a good thing in your opinion -> upvoting the leaving post

Journeyman Geek

@Dudecoinheringaahing Well, 2 ways to look at it

they're really sad to see them go

or just want to see the world burn

Rob

It can work at least 4 ways, so it's hard to say exactly what the vote represents.

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

@Tinkeringbell hey my answer is very sincere! :P

@Rob bad vote day, the little brother of bad hair day.

@Dudecoinheringaahing I don't really agree. Most posts about leaving people encourage the one leaving, saying how good they were etc. If you don't like that person, you disagree with this hence downvote is the logical thing to do.

Rob

11:13 AM

You could be: 1. Glad you were told (for someone else we didn't know until we asked), or angry about being kept informed (so, one would vote up or down as a result). 2. You could be glad they left or sad. 3. You could be happy for them, that they are better off, or angry that they got the job you were applying for. 4. You could like the OP (different from the one leaving), or not (as happened on a recent post), so that's an up or down --- So, no way to correlate the vote with the input;

especially if that's not considered.

Luuklag

12:05 PM

@JNat cross site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/22510161/…

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

@Luuklag cross site flower: stackexchange.com/users/281857/rene?tab=accounts

Luuklag

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 hahahaha

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 Great, that leaves a 50% chance it's one of the others ;)

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

@Luuklag :D

@Tinkeringbell indeed!

Coffee Reduction Project still ongoing, now stable on reducing consumption at work from 5 to 2. One in the morning, and one when leaving to reduce chances of falling asleep while on the way home. ;)

On different matter, got hooked to Final Fantasy 14, the huge amount of available side quests is like pile of chocolate for me. :P

So I paid $20 even though it does have free tier.

Luuklag

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 I couldn't survive on 2

I don't think I even could on just 5

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

12:17 PM

@Luuklag at work. Two more at home. ;)

(first thing in morning, and one in the evening during supper)

hmm.... sometimes more, single shot espresso.

!!/espresso Spevacus

SmokeDetector

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 No such command 'espresso'.

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

:(

Spevacus

squints

slowly sits down

Coffee in the break room wasn't made

I'm dyin' atm

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

quickly puts fart cushion underneath @Spe

Spevacus

lol

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

12:20 PM

@Spevacus OK, so I'll ask. Why? :/

Spevacus

The caffeine ingestion system is a very delicate process. If the timing or order of the process is interrupted, sadness ensues.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 Guess which day I had coffee :P

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

@Spevacus really?? Never noticed lol. But what changed it?

@Tinkeringbell Friday! But what's this? App that calculate sleep score??

Spevacus

Someone brought back some coffee from wherever they visited and didn't put in the right water <-> grounds ratio and resulted in some very weak coffee. Before I arrived at the office, they had just grabbed the last of it and went to make another pot.

Tinkeringbell

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 It's from the fitbit app :) And good guess! (Technically I had the coffee on Thursday, but it did influence my Friday sleep :P)

Spevacus

12:23 PM

TL;DR: No coffee for Spev for another few minutes.

Luuklag

@Tinkeringbell I'm jealous!

Tinkeringbell

@Luuklag Don't be :P This was me catching up from a lot of missed sleep in the week or two before this ;)

Luuklag

Your Aug 15 would be a good night sleep for me

Tinkeringbell

XD That was a really bad night over here... but the two weeks before that were similar.

Last week was mainly spent sleeping and working.

Luuklag

@Tinkeringbell You should've seen my last night before my holidays ;)

Tinkeringbell

12:26 PM

@Luuklag IIRC, that one was 'non-existent'? :P

@Spevacus :( It's just a few minutes though, hang in there!

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

@Tinkeringbell :-()-:

Luuklag

@Tinkeringbell Yeah I think I finished at about 4

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

@Spevacus ohhh nasty!

Luuklag

Last email was sent: zaterdag 7 augustus 2021 om 03:56

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

zaterdag? Who's that?

Luuklag

12:29 PM

Saturday

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

Zater, as in more zat, DAG?

Spevacus

Coffee: Acquired. We made it.

Luuklag

dag = day

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

ohhh

zater = satur

Tinkeringbell

@Luuklag Oof. That was a rocky start :P

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

12:31 PM

In Hebrew the names are just the day order, translation is "First day", "Second day", etc. lol

Luuklag

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 haha thats easy

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

Except for Saturday, which is special and isn't called just "Seventh day"

Luuklag

I litteraly have no clue where the names came from in Dutch

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

@Luuklag it's one click away ;)

@g3rv4 hey, what's up? Talking about sleep here, you get more of that, recently, with the daughter growing up? :D

Luuklag

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 apparently part is from the Romans, and part is Germanic

onzetaal.nl/taaladvies/dagen-van-de-week

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

12:34 PM

My (little) daughter (4 y/o) still wake up twice every night, luckily usually only for few minutes each time, to have water and pee. Since I'm awake anyway, it doesn't really matter. :)

@Luuklag huh!

g3rv4

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 :sigh: nights are still challenging, I think the most significant chance has been managing our expectations and taking whatever we can :P

Journeyman Geek

The tamil ones are named after planets? Sorta

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

@g3rv4 oh, I see. Hope it will get better! :)

@JourneymanGeek Saturnday?

Plutoday!

Journeyman Geek

5 planets (earth dosen't get a day, and I think they skip the last few) and sun and moon.

Luuklag

@JourneymanGeek saturday, sunday and monday are still from romans (saturn, sun, moon)

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

12:37 PM

yeah

Luuklag

the others are from Germanic gods

@g3rv4 yeah that's the best you can do. It will get better some day ;)

Unless you happen to expand your family even further before that ;)

g3rv4

@Luuklag and if it doesn't... hey, at least we're used to!

@Luuklag there's really 0% chance of that happening. Like... literally 0%

Luuklag

@g3rv4 not my call to make ;)

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

@g3rv4 umm never say never.... accidents happen... :/

But yeah, can see why you don't want to have more kids now. @g3r :/

@Spevacus longer version of "k"? ;)

Spevacus

Heh, kinda. I already feedbacked :)

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

12:44 PM

flagged both

(after creating account ;))

Luuklag

Same here @sha

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

1:02 PM

@Spevacus ?.?

Luuklag

his previous reply reversed ;)

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

lol

Ollie

1:41 PM

@Spevacus keep saying that and Smokey mind wind up flagging you

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

@Ollie !

Ollie

Hello @ShadowWiz

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

Hello @Oll -e

hmm, are you relative of Wall-E?

Ollie

heck no

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

Too bad, so cute..... :P

Ollie

1:43 PM

Looks like something KennyBOT made up.. ?

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 more like Wall-E-T - I wish...

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

Nah, not enough pee.

:P

Ollie

err

OK then ;)

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

Kenny can give pics of cats.

And cow.

oh no

in Shadow's Den, 14 secs ago, by KennyBOT

~ The cow kicked the bucket... try later

:(

Bad Kenny!

Ollie

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 Nice answer - you shoulda affixed a header saying "A shortened summary of the Life of Brian."

Only he ended up peacefully leaving SE and not on a cross

Luuklag

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 OMG they killed Kenny!!

SPArcheon

2:00 PM

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 another day, another Disney coincidence....

Feeds

You’re living in the Metaverse, you just don’t know it yet.

Ben Popper on August 23, 2021

The concept of the Metaverse was coined by sci-fi author Neal Stephenson decades ago. Have we reached some meaningful inflection point in our journey towards this dream?

Spevacus

flag-pls spam freelancing.stackexchange.com/a/10216/25082 - (Metasmoke link)

Luuklag

@Spevacus k

Spevacus

Thanks guys :)

Ollie

Gone.

@Glorfindel Was this intentional? (If not pls leave it, it's cool like that). If it was intentional, could you make it so it doesn't redirect to the post when you've actually taken action, otherwise I'd rather just go to the post like it used to.

SPArcheon

2:12 PM

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 Also... is that the new multi-element hypostasis?

Spevacus

@JNat Cross-site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/22333947/customboxesworld

Ollie

I was a lick away from posting that @Spevacus.

Spevacus

:)

Meta Andrew T.

!!/lick

SmokeDetector

@MetaAndrewT. licks ice cream cone

Ollie

2:14 PM

@SmokeDetector Cross-site spammer: stackexchange.com/users/15484767/spevacus

Spevacus

pls no destructerino

Ollie

;)

Glorfindel

@Ollie oh, that's on /questions – I've tested it on the homepage and there it appears in line with the author information. Perhaps I should find a better place for it here.

Ollie

@Glorfindel Looks okay-ish where it is - maybe just move it back a touch to be in line with the "asked X centuries ago" label?

Glorfindel

It intentionally redirects, for the rare cases where it's actually a valid post (I almost made that mistake last week).

But perhaps I could make that optional, I'll have a look. If a moderator makes a mistake with that, the consequences are much worse ...

@Ollie that makes sense, yes. The extra vertical space doesn't really matter, I guess.

Ollie

2:35 PM

@Glorfindel ya don't say... could just make it an extra check for the moderators.

Thanks for the correct retagging @bobble - can't believe I missed that.

bobble

@Ollie I mean, the tag you added was also a good one

Ollie

@bobble I... didn't?

Dude coinheringaahing

The revision history shows you both added and removed closed-questions :P

bobble

oh, brainfart. I didn't check closely which tags were removed

Luuklag

@Dudecoinheringaahing happens sometimes, it automagically re-orders the tags I think, and that shows as this

bobble

2:45 PM

17

A: Diff shows tag being added and removed in the same revision

The tagging system automatically sorts tags based on how many times they're used. However, this is relatively new, so when a new edit is processed for an old post, the system sees the sort as a delete and re-insert because it is now in a new position. Such edits do count for the Organizer badge, ...

Ollie

throws seeds at @Slate

Slate

Food!!

Spevacus

Omnomnom

bobble

To get her attention, all you need to do is throw a hat, don'cha know?

in The Reading Room on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, Aug 17 at 21:43, by bobble

humphs and drops large hat onto @Slate

Ollie

@bobble I dint'ch know that, thanks!

But food is more likely to make a good impression ;)

throws seeds to @Spevacus

SPArcheon

2:50 PM

Ollie

Signs like that always raise red flags.

bobble

Spam or R&A?

Spevacus

Yes

Slate

@bobble It's true... a hard-earned fear of hats.

bobble

Does it depend on the kind of hat? Some are better than others

Ollie

2:52 PM

@Spevacus there's nothing abusive about it that I can see.

@Slate, detectest thou any abuse?

Dude coinheringaahing

@bobble Arguably, a crown is a hat :P

Slate

It's true, some hats are much better than others.

@Ollie I have a bird's-eye view of the situation, I'd say.

Ollie

So just spam flags @Spevacus, @bobble

Spevacus

For whom doth that SmokeDetector beep?

Ollie

Me!

Doncha, @SmokeDetector?

Now I'm in for a cutting reply from the battle-hardened veteran who's been fighting masses of spam through the ages... great.

Spevacus

2:58 PM

"When you come for the king, you'd best not miss."

SPArcheon

... I'm starting to think this SharePoint bug may require better tools....

this should do.

Journeyman Geek

hm

Spevacus

:|

Journeyman Geek

I am getting a service is not available on SU

....

I was going to say the same

Spevacus

Is it Meta time? :P

Journeyman Geek

3:02 PM

If meta is up yes

Spevacus

Eh, it's back for me.

SPArcheon

@Spevacus may have missed the target.

Dude coinheringaahing

MSE and CGCC are both working for me

Spevacus

Well that was weird.

Ollie

SO, MSE, and InfoSec briefly went

Journeyman Geek

3:03 PM

SU went too

Ollie

S'been doing that a lot recently. Dodgy hardware?

Slate

I think the possum in the server room who keeps it all working had to take a bathroom break.

Journeyman Geek

and that's a bit of a wierd error

@Slate I believe SE lore is its a unicorn.

But that almost looks like a load balancer or CDN error ._.

bobble

@Slate ... hopefully not on the servers?

Journeyman Geek

@Ollie between Nick's posts and knowing someone who used to be a SE SRE.... I think SE would be aware of dodgy hardware, and they have enough spare capasity to take a dodgy server out of the rota

Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2

3:36 PM

@Ollie :D

@Luuklag nah only the cow

huh! Cow is back!

in Shadow's Den, 16 secs ago, by KennyBOT

@SPArcheon hehe

Rob

4:03 PM

@ShadowWizardWearingMaskV2 The overzealous RO isn't around I see.

Mithical

4:19 PM

*eyeroll*

rene

6:16 PM

needs 1 maor

Ollie

Gone.

Oh, and meta.stackexchange.com/questions/368897/… pls, also needs 1 moar

gone as well

lovely. I <3 20Ks.

7:27 PM

7:38 PM

@KevinB Things still bad there?

Dude coinheringaahing

ooo, I'm only 10 flags away from Marshal :D

Slate

I'll post 10 spam answers for ya. Gimme a quick moment.

Spevacus

@Dudecoinheringaahing >:( Get 3k so you don't get all those free helpful recommended closure flags.

Tinkeringbell

If we all upvote him, he could probably miss out on those last easy 10 :P He's nearly there XD

Dude coinheringaahing

You can try, but I've specifically been using bounties to keep myself below 3k here :P

Spevacus

7:43 PM

You fiend

2

Dude coinheringaahing

1) I don't need/want the rep here, so I prefer to use bounties to attract attention to unaddressed feature-requests and 2)

in The Nineteenth Byte on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, Aug 3 at 15:29, by caird coinheringaahing

@user I kind of started out flagging just to get Marshal, then I realised that I prefer a slightly less binding way of saying "This should be closed" when I'm on MSE, because I'm less confident in my knowledge of the site and it's culture. Plus, flagging as a dupe still posts this "Does this answer your question?" comment, without actually making it 1/5 of the way to being closed

I'm not as familiar with the site culture here, and for non-lost-souls, I like having a less-binding way of indicating I think something should be closed than a vote

Spevacus

I go in the reverse direction. I prefer to act under the assumption that whatever action I take will occur immediately. It ensures that I'm 100% certain in that choice.

Tinkeringbell

@Dudecoinheringaahing Heh, don't worry too much. Users here will get angry at you if you get it wrong, so it's not like you'll be missing out on feedback :P

Dude coinheringaahing

@Spevacus That's my biggest hang-up of running for mod

I already have a gold tag badge for code-golf (which is on ~85% of questions on code golf, for some reason :P), and unless I know for sure that the two are dupes, I'm much more cautious than I was before I got it

I trust my own judgement, but I'm painfully aware that I'm fallible and so like to have at least someone else to back me up :P

Kevin B

eh

if you get it wrong, others can vote accordingly

Spevacus

7:48 PM

Well, Code Golf has, unless my search is bad (or you guys delete a lot of dupes), 620 dupe questions across the whole site which is... Very, very low for a whole-site search.

Kevin B

(unless you're a mod and you deleted it)

Dude coinheringaahing

@Spevacus We don;t have that many questions tbh (and yes, we do delete dupes quite a lot) :P

Kevin B

IMO, if it was a post worth existing, it will come back if prematurely deleted.

either in the form of the delete being contested, or just someone else having the question

Spevacus

Well, then I'd say the hesitation on Code Golf specifically is very justified considering the low question total + low question duplicate closure amount. Plus Code Golf is... Special :)

Dude coinheringaahing

@KevinB Yeah, but I prefer to not be in that situation in the first place. If I have doubts about hammering, I'll often bring it up in our chatroom :P

Tinkeringbell

7:50 PM

@Dudecoinheringaahing XD And how do you think mods work? We do exactly the same: when in doubt, chat :P

Dude coinheringaahing

@Spevacus One thing that would lead to that, thinking about it, is our Sandbox. We encourage all questions to be posted there first, and we catch a lot of duplicates before they get posted to main

Spevacus

@Tinkeringbell Having access to a vast array of additional second opinions must be nice in troublesome mod situations.

Dude coinheringaahing

@Tinkeringbell Y'all aren't just robots employed by SE to close and delete things? :P

Tinkeringbell

@Dudecoinheringaahing Sure, but sometimes we need extra computing power. That's where we try to hook in to the collective hivemind.

Dude coinheringaahing

That's not what all these low-rep users tell me, about the "abusive, power-hungry mods" :P

Tinkeringbell

7:52 PM

The hivemind is always busy, so if it's not needed we're not allowed to use it :P

@Dudecoinheringaahing Like I said... there's never a lack of feedback.

Spevacus

One of the problems I have when new folks drag forth the "Mods are evil here" rhetoric is that you can never be sure who they're talking about. 90% of the time that new user probably never interacted with a moderator, they got their question closed/deleted by normal users. But, that's not really conveyed too well to new users, and to be honest that doesn't matter - The end result is that their contribution was moderated in a way they felt wasn't fair.

You can't begin to fix that problem before you begin to fix the core new-user-onboarding-but-doing-it-in-a-way-that-makes-sense problem.

Dude coinheringaahing

Oh yeah, the number of times I've thought about asking "Did you mean mods or people with moderation tools?" on those questions before realising there's no real point :/

Tinkeringbell

The most annoying there is ... it's no use explaining 'Yep, that's how these sites are supposed to be' either... There's a mind already made up and there's no reasoning with that.

Kevin B

it's an irrelevant bit of information for the problem the user is having

Dude coinheringaahing

@Tinkeringbell I'm sure. But given how hesitant I am with a hammer (and that's only applicable in one situation), having an absolutely binding mod hammer would take some real getting used to, I'd imagine. And, to make it worse, I've had discussions with my site mods about being (imo) slightly overzealous with VTCs :P

Tinkeringbell

7:59 PM

@Dudecoinheringaahing Hey, if you don't want a hammer, feel free to keep using the screwdriver :P

Dude coinheringaahing

Course, sometimes I'd very much want to use the hammer :P

Tinkeringbell

But then don't complain when you're struggling to hammer nails ;)

Kevin B

eh, you'd probably figure it out soon enough. As a mod, you'd be able to fix any problems you cause with closure anyway.

Spevacus

It helps that all of these things are very easily reversible.

Kevin B

well, except for user emotions, but, meh

Dude coinheringaahing

8:00 PM

@KevinB Yeah, it's that "probationary period" that has me concerned. Of course, I'm sure that I've just built up this in my head, for a situation that may not ever happen, that I've spiraled out of control :P

Kevin B

yeah it's a... as a normal user, you can't fix a mistake that you and 4 other people made single handedly

once you have the ability to take that action single handedly.. you also have the ability to undo it single handedly

even if 5 people did it

(aka the dupe hammer)

Dude coinheringaahing

I'm not sure all mod actions are reversible tbh. Turning hair ginger seems like a lossy operation, in that you can't figure out what colours peoples' hair were beforehand :P

Tinkeringbell

Oh, there definitely are some that are hard/impossible to reverse, like account deletion.

Spevacus

Well if you're reaching for account deletion then you'd better have a good reason :P

Dude coinheringaahing

Is "Prefers pancakes to stroopwaffles" a good reason?

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

8:10 PM

@Tinkeringbell While that's difficult and time-consuming, it's not impossible. The team does do it if a user with lots of content who had their account removed as underage later comes back when they're of age. An even more impossible thing is account merging: you have to go through every event and pick apart which one happened to which account, etc.

Spevacus

I'm sure there are flashing lights all along the way saying something along the lines of "Oi mate don't press this unless you want whatevers on the other end to be an unrecognizable mound of ash"

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

It was possible in SE's early years for mods to merge accounts

Slate

There are definitely certain times it's easier to make mistakes than others.

Confirmation dialogue boxes don't stop much more than casual misclicks, though, imo.

Kevin B

or clicks due to idle curiosity

Tinkeringbell

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog IIRC, that just re-associates posts, and not votes and any other activity (like e.g. review badges?)

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

8:17 PM

@Tinkeringbell Don't know, but probably. Point is, since the posts/activity only belonged to one account at the time of the deletion action, all of them can easily be reassociated to a new account. But to undo a merge, you have to pick apart which ones belonged to the other account and which ones didn't, which is much more arduous.

Dude coinheringaahing

@KevinB I don't know about y'all, but I would very much like a sandbox.SE site where users can play around with features they weren't sure about (including things like mod tools). Never going to happen, just something I'd like :P

Slate

@KevinB Ime it tends to be pretty clear when a click Does Something, versus just showing some info. Generally mistakes are made when someone was certain about something that ended up being wrong - human error, which happens from time to time (and is honestly understandable).

Could be wrong, though. And folks have different experiences with the tools.

Kevin B

the experience i'm drawing from is when i click on something im certain of, but still expect some kind of confirmation

like when doing something as important as destroying a user

Tinkeringbell

I think I can second that. It's either 'being sure about what this button probably does' and then it doesn't do that (which is how I messed up a tag merge once), or missing information that makes it so you're sure about what you're doing, but then when the information turns up it turns out you sure were wrong.

Kevin B

it's possible that you neglected to read some important detail on the page prior to the click, only to notice it at the last moment. that confirmation gives you a bit of comfort, even though it's almost never needed.

sort of a... is this little bit of inconvenience worth preventing that one time that the confirm prevented disaster

Slate

8:32 PM

That does make sense

Kevin B

i wish i could remember what it was, but there was something i did recently on a web app that didn't have a confirm when I expected it to. fortunately I did intend to perform the action, but it made me uneasy

wouldn't have been something here

Slate

9:02 PM

There's a particular internal page that causes me some consternation with which it is possible to make a very annoying mistake. It has no confirmation, either. (Thankfully I've only seen this once so far - it stands out for this reason.)

Makes me a li'l tense just opening it.

Mithical

9:26 PM

@KevinB Not as if we don't have any tools like that...

Kevin B

for the kick mute?

it's been a looong time since i've needed to reach for that

Mithical

No, the mod suspend tool.

Kevin B

well, that's undoable, right?

Mithical