« first day (4138 days earlier)      last day (874 days later) » 

12:55 AM
!!/tea
 
@V2Blast brews a cup of earl grey tea for @V2Blast
 
Excellent.
 
Rob
Citrus bergamia, the bergamot orange (pronounced ), is a fragrant citrus fruit the size of an orange, with a yellow or green color similar to a lime, depending on ripeness. Genetic research into the ancestral origins of extant citrus cultivars found bergamot orange to be a probable hybrid of lemon and bitter orange. Extracts have been used as an aromatic ingredient in food, tea, snus, perfumes, and cosmetics. Use on the skin can increase photosensitivity, resulting in greater damage from sun exposure.Citrus bergamia is commonly confused with Citrus hystrix, which is often called the Thai Bergamot...
 
 
1 hour later…
2:10 AM
Earl Grey is my favorite. :)
 
Rob
2:21 AM
Orange Pekoe is the closest I'll get. Having tried Earl Grey once, I'm sure I'd prefer peppermint or hot pepper; even licorice or mushroom is preferable - though there are many different types of Earl Grey, perhaps my choice was unfortunate.
!!/coffee
 
@Rob brews a cup of Latte for @Rob
 
Rob
See, works out everytime.
 
3:09 AM
 
 
2 hours later…
Rob
5:33 AM
@Feeds Failed to mention that it was gravity assisted.
 
 
1 hour later…
7:01 AM
Funny that xkcd always onebox, without single exception or bug, while the blog usually breaks and won't onebox.
 
7:56 AM
@ShadowWizardIsVaccinatedV3 its not onebox, its xkcdbox
 
 
1 hour later…
9:04 AM
originally reported in March, but topical now as the same user posted another spam with a link to the same site at the same time which was reported and closed a couple of weeks ago (SD report) ethereum.stackexchange.com/a/94153/5061
in fact the question was bumped by the Community bot today which caused the answer to be rereported
 
9:39 AM
^ second post, still unsure whether spam or NAA
first one on Stack Overflow was deleted as spam, posted 1h ago metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/post/337113
 
10:03 AM
Nice username on that one
 
@Luuklag Fun fact: they recreated their account after it was destroyed and got user ID 1000000
 
Being a mod only for 8 days, and already managed to piss someone off
 
You're only truly a mod after you've pissed off your first person. This is promising :)
I predict great deeds in their future ;)
 
Are you supposed to wait until you're elected to do that? Asking for a friend.
 
Not necessarily, though elections are a popularity contest so it's advisable :P
 
Rob
10:17 AM
A mixed punishment: Suspended for two weeks but it looks like they get to keep the user name.
 
@Luuklag Overachiever....
I think I'd count that in lieu of a meta post complaining...
 
hmmm so they quickly recreated their account
oh lol, you already said that
 
I was really tempted to recreate my Math.SE account to snag that ID, but I decided I'd rather keep my flag count.
 
11:14 AM
@RyanM Depends
does having a complaint on MSE before you became an MSE mod count? :D
 
Of course it does.
 
11:33 AM
@Rob maybe mods there aren't aware they can reset the name? Can't explain it otherwise.
 
@ShadowWizardIsVaccinatedV3 or they just nuked the account and he recreated with the same name
This user clearly has no intent of being anywhere near constructive or contributing
Why clean when you can CLEANSE WITH NUCLEAR FIRE?
 
because nuclear fire isn't great for the rest of us
 
@JourneymanGeek so automatic suspension? But then how was that user able to post?
 
@ShadowWizardIsVaccinatedV3 waited a week?
 
11:36 AM
I don't know, I'm not a mod there nor a CM. I can only USWAG a bit :D
 
Oh well if they care they can reset the name, I guess.
 
(UnScientific Wild Ass Guess)
 
@ShadowWizardIsVaccinatedV3 they posted, then the account was nuked, then it was recreated with a different ID
 
@ShadowWizardIsVaccinatedV3 Did the new account actually post?
 
@Tinkeringbell oh, the one reported is nuked?
 
11:37 AM
Yep!
 
If so, disregard my previous messages... :/
 
And then recreated, which applies the automatic two weeks suspension ;)
 
@Tinkeringbell huh. Neat.
Where's 1?
Anyway not spam no idea why someone thinks this way...
 
@Rob Part of this was false and is edited out now. I also request you don't make such statements again :)
 
@ShadowWizardIsVaccinatedV3 please look at the history for that domain and tell me it's not spam
there's a comment on the report making it quite clear why I think it's spam
also here's four more reports for it if you're not convinced
three more to come shortly
Please look at the MS report, not just the post, before giving feedback, as you may otherwise miss important context.
 
11:56 AM
@RyanM sorry still don't think it's spam. Answer appears complete, with link to external source.
If you can prove author of the answer works there, I'll change my mind. :)
 
@ShadowWizardIsVaccinatedV3 and they just so happened to decide to post one of their answers on a random GitHub issue using a username that spammed SE with nine posts linking the site?
I am impressed by your ability to give the benefit of the doubt, but this is clearly spam.
They also all follow the exact same pattern of linking the site on random related keywords that seem more SEO-relevant than answer-relevant.
In every answer from the user.
 
hmm well the volume of the posts indeed makes it appear as campaign, didn't notice all of those. OK, mind changed. :)
 
all of which, I note, you can tell from the MS report :-)
but thank you for reconsidering :-)
 
12:16 PM
@ShadowWizardIsVaccinatedV3 I'll remove your FP feedback then
 
@tripleee poof
 
12:32 PM
thanks, here's another
 
@tripleee thanks
@tripleee poof
So you're Smokey backup service? ;)
 
12:53 PM
@ShadowWizardIsVaccinatedV3 figured the ones which linger on would make sense to present to a different audience; I have been posting "still up" notices in Charcoal for a long time when I notice spam which has been reported but not deleted
 
Yeah, that's useful.
 
 
1 hour later…
Rob
2:02 PM
@Tinkeringbell The post was spam and abuse free, the suspension was probably for the name (unless there were comments we can't see); simply being able to display the name in the user list is probably reward enough for the user, and being suspended on an account they have no concern for is little punishment (as JG said ☢️). Skillz vary, but they've been a mod over a couple of years.
 
@Rob I'm pretty sure the suspension here is an automatic one, because the account that posted was destroyed or deleted, not a 'manual' one applied to the new account that has no activity at all.
 
Rob
2 hours ago, by Ryan M
I am impressed by your ability to give the benefit of the doubt, but this is clearly spam.
 
@Tinkeringbell yeah this got me confused too, at first.
@Rob that's different case.
 
Rob
Quoting erased the pencil, an important part of that quote.
2 hours ago, by Ryan M
all of which, I note, you can tell from the MS report :-)
 
9
Q: Bookmark onebox is hiding the reply arrow

Shadow Wizard Is Vaccinated V3When posting a direct reply in chat, there is an arrow indicating this, which links to the replied message. However, when the reply is a bookmark link, the bookmark onebox is swallowing the arrow: To prove this is a reply, here is screenshot of the edit mode: Can this please be fixed? I'm p...

Might edit to add more cases...
 
Rob
2:12 PM
Hiding the hook is a lesser offense in this case, where the ✏️ reins supreme; but it would certainly be 🪝 heavy to have one for the quoter and another for the quotee.
 
This may be the wrong place for this question, but I don't see anywhere else to put it. Lately a lot of older questions on Skeptics have been bumped upwards by (what seems to me) trivial edits by someone called fredsbend. These seem all to be involving someone called Matt Ridley, and are often commented upon by someone called matt_black. I suspect matt_black and Matt Ridley are the same person, and fredsbend may be the same person too.
Anyway, it's a bit irritating to have all these old post floating to the top. Is something untoward going on?
 
That's an excellent point to raise on Skeptics meta then
Though usually, you focus on behavior and not users, so...
Try to avoid suggesting they're the same person? I think it's still safe to mention that you see the same three names over and over...
 
It is probably worth noting, for context, that fredsbend is a moderator.
 
So more reason to not point fingers.
@RedSonja please start a discussion on the site meta, with the facts only, no speculations.
 
It looks like a tag burnination.
 
2:21 PM
Oh, yes, sorry. I take it all back. But can fredsbend stop floating old stuff to the top? At least, not so many?
 
Unfortunately, there's no way to edit posts to remove a tag without bumping them. However, if it's disruptive, it could be reasonable to discuss on the site meta whether such tag removals could be done more slowly so as to make them less disruptive to the front page.
 
@RedSonja three in a time is fine.
That's also what @Glorfindel is doing here on MSE with script to fix broken links.
!!/coffee Red
 
@ShadowWizardIsVaccinatedV3 brews a cup of Mocha for @Red
 
But yeah it does look like it was a one-off modification to 8 posts...which really isn't that many.
 
Skeptics moves slowly enough that you'll pretty much always disturb the frontpage to some degree. I don't see any excessive bumping here, though
 
2:25 PM
And it isn't occurring regularly, at least not from that user.
 
You have answered my question perfectly and in a civilised manner. This is what SE is for.
 
@RyanM I should note that this isn't technically true: staff (likely only devs) can remove tags without bumping posts, but moderators and normal users can't.
 
@RedSonja sure, Tavern is full with lovely people. ;)
 
@RedSonja Cheers! Happy to help.
 
2:28 PM
:-D
 
@RedSonja you're welcome to stick around and become regular, though there's a Test first. :D
 
I'm slightly amused by the suggestion that they're all three the same person, I don't consider that very likely
 
@ShadowWizardIsVaccinatedV3 sold out by now... :(
 
user803868
@RedSonja Hi. So, it didn't feel like a lot of bumps to me. The list was short (8 someone said, but I recall 6 in my mind), and thought just bump them all in one go. That makes it "one" event, instead of 6 spread out by a day or two each.
 
user803868
I'm not aware of any Skeptics meta policies regarding frequency of post bumps, but I certainly understand the annoyance when it seems too much.
 
user803868
2:37 PM
We (skeptics mods) have locked posts in the past because the OP was bumping them too much, but that was more about our personal irritation with those instances than anything else.
 
user803868
For tag edits, I'm still surprised a mod tag edit bumps the page. If a mod is editing tags on old posts, it's very obviously a tag clean-up effort.
 
user803868
Actually, if I knew my tag edits wouldn't bump the page, I'd probably go looking for tag clean-up, rather than just take care of tag problems when I run into them (not that frequently). And actually, I don't do many clean-ups simply because of this bump problem.
 
@frеdsbend Honestly this would be a good feature request...
 
user803868
I'm sure it's been mentioned.
 
Generally the motivation for "every edit bumps" is abuse, but if mods are abusing the site then we have bigger problems :-)
 
2:42 PM
That's a really, really old problem and I don't see SE changing this
 
Well, I'd still upvote the feature request ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/109510/tool-for-peer-reviewed-no-bump-mass-retagging
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/178147/automatically-queue-up-and-evenly-distribute-mass-edits
https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/137706/repurpose-the-new-review-system-for-large-scale-tagging-operations
Those are my old feature requests related to that
 
user803868
@RyanM Now you have to upvote three times.
 
"Tag-only edits by mods don't bump" is surely a lot less dev work than any of those suggestions, though.
 
user803868
Probably less than a week's work.
 
user803868
2:44 PM
But I'm not that intimate with SE's code.
 
user803868
Seems likely to me there's a boolean bumpPost, but maybe not.
 
@RyanM The problem is that this is an important mechanism to allow these edits to be visible and reviewable. And as far as I remember, this is a point where SE is extremely unlikely to change their opinion. So that solution is simply not possible, which is why I proposed a bunch of much more complex solutions back then
 
user803868
Probably, SE imagines a large amount of accusations of moderator wrongdoing. We get enough of that already.
 
@MadScientist At least in my mind, there's a big difference if only moderators can do this. They're already trusted to perform quite a few actions unilaterally and with little reviewability; this seems pretty trivial compared to the rest of their powers.
 
user803868
Here in this chat, the edits were public and reasoning was resolved without formal complaint, without moderator intervention, and without SE staff intervention. The system works.
 
2:47 PM
it's not really that much about intentional misuse, but simply misguided large-scale changes that could cause lots of damage before they're even discovered
Removing the bumping reduces the transparency
 
user803868
There is something to be said about tagging being a proxy for community opinion, too.
 
user803868
One person, moderator or not, could very easily have a misguided opinion on what a tag does or should mean.
 
Sure, but can't mods already silently cause large-scale damage with tag deletion and merging?
 
user803868
Merging, yes. I don't think we can delete. I would have done that instead...
 
Meanwhile, another user and I recently retagged, I think, 92 posts on Stack Overflow in about 15 minutes...I'm not sure anyone noticed.
 
user803868
2:50 PM
I don't think we had 92 new posts in the last 50 days on Skeptics.
 
Rob
"You know that there's a lot of accusations going around when new visitors show up in The Tavern"™
 
user803868
It's slow enough that you can literally read every new post within a day.
 
1.6 questions/day...that'd be 80 questions per 50 days, at least, so yeah (unless you also count answers, then it's probably more)
Makes Law's 9.1 questions/day look positively torrential.
On the plus side, it probably means you don't have any tags with 92 mistagged questions in them...
 
user803868
Oh, yeah, I was using "post" to mean "page" (since pages are bumped), but answers should count, so I guess it's a bit more.
 
(...out of 100. It was a poorly named tag.)
 
2:54 PM
Well, while I'm waiting for my build Skeptics is the place I click on first, after Hot Network. So I notice. Thank you for being worth clicking on...
2
 
user803868
High Internet praise right there.
 
I quite enjoyed the post that really could have accurately cut off after the opening line of "DO NOT DRINK BLEACH!" but did elaborate nicely on why should you not drink bleach.
2
 
user803868
@RyanM You'd be surprised. Some quasi meta tags, or big topic tags like "united-states" have many questions. But this is more a problem with the tag, not really that people have been using it wrong for years.
 
Skeptics can be about everything, it's hard to have a consistent and useful tagging system for that
 
user803868
Like a WP blog.
 
user803868
3:01 PM
And you're limited to 5 tags...
 
Rob
3:33 PM
^^ We are, but that's far from the limit.
 
 
1 hour later…
4:57 PM
@RyanM Do you prefer LifeHacks? The site that suggest to watch an eclipse using an old floppy disk film as a filter?
0
A: What office equipment can I use to safely observe a solar eclipse?

panonskiRemember the floppy discs? We dug one out from our storage, opened it up and looked through the film sheet. Alternatively, a friend of mine took a lighter and a glass cup mat. He placed the glass mat above the lighter to get some soot onto it and watched it through the mat.

 
@SPArcheon That glass mat idea sounds like a great way to go blind
 
the computer monitor.
easy
 
@RyanM But but... it has Archimedes golden seal of approval.
 
5:20 PM
Stack Exchange is so popular that even dead serial killers visit from time to time :P
 
@cairdcoinheringaahing I propose a new chatroom "Tales from the Crypt"
 
 
2 hours later…
7:03 PM
@Glorfindel we had the same idea :P
 
7:40 PM
@EkadhSingh-ReinstateMonica #greatmindsthinkalike - it's unavoidable on a site like Meta.
 
 
2 hours later…
9:22 PM
I do wonder how it'll affect SE, with AWS sponsoring a bunch of sites and running a direct competitor
 
meh
their sign-in page goes to a 404
can't get to it from my aws console either
their header takes up a 3rd of my screen
i feel claustrophobic
 
@KevinB sounds familiar D:
 
9:39 PM
can comment without any prior rep
and downvote
seemingly no vote lock-in
imagine it'd be popular among users who are up on their certifications, since they get immediate recognition for aws certifications
i actually earned a point and a rank for casting a dv
 
10:09 PM
@JourneymanGeek Weird.
 
It could be different parts of the company not knowing what the other is doing
 
I mean... it doesn't hurt a company that huge to support both.
 
But it also could draw away attention/mindshare
 
For me it's honestly sort of not that surprising... Amazon has a pretty common habit of building everything in house, even when there's existing options they could use insetad.
 
(also on my second night shift of this round, so I'm not entirrretly coherent, so Its something I'd revisit when I'm done with work and got some sleep :D )
 
11:09 PM
@JourneymanGeek will they re;Post the content from SE?
 
they definitely seeded from somewhere
 
11:30 PM
@MetaAndrewT. see. I'm not awake enough to make that joke
 
I just awoke, and that's the first thing I could only do...
 

« first day (4138 days earlier)      last day (874 days later) »