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curious

2:41 AM

→ 19 messages moved to Chimney

Journeyman Geek

3:28 AM

The point of automation isn't to make the boring parts more interesting

its not to do it at all

Meta Andrew T.

3:55 AM

So, automate creating the automation?

Journeyman Geek

4:26 AM

I mean not do the boring stuff

We have a daily task where we need to copy data from one spreadsheet to another

the ideal is... not

I basically press a button, wait 5 min, check through (cause there's some stuff I don't know how to automate), press another button, then send the upload.

I don't even want to do that

Feeds

xkcd.com/2650

Meta Andrew T.

@Feeds Deeponeboxes

Feeds

4:46 AM

stackoverflow.blog/2022/07/26/…

Meta Andrew T.

@Feeds Chat analytics: Less oneboxes, more text

Shadow The Kid Wizard

6:54 AM

@JourneymanGeek well, I get it as "if you don't have to do the boring parts, what's left are the non-boring parts of your job, so it's more interesting". The concept is valid. :)

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheKidWizard what if your job is all boring? :D

Shadow The Kid Wizard

If all your job would be automated, well, you'll stay without a job.

@JourneymanGeek ^

:D

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheKidWizard I didn't say I could automate all of it :D

but the bits I streamlined/automated are not "more interesting"

they're "I can get this over with quicker"

Shadow The Kid Wizard

So less relevant for the blog post. ;)

Journeyman Geek

People read the blog posts? :D

(Actually they do but..)

Shadow The Kid Wizard

7:08 AM

lol

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheKidWizard fairly content lite

but it does sound like "don't do boring/complicated stuff"

over "make it "fun""

Shadow The Kid Wizard

Yeah, you got a point. As usual. ;)

Meta Andrew T.

.

Ryan M

7:24 AM

@Feeds if I saw a post like that on SE with SEO keywords like "assistant" linked to related pages on someone's site in a way that doesn't make sense in the sentence, I would flag it as spam.

Meta Andrew T.

Isn't one of the purposes of the blog to... spam legally?

Journeyman Geek

@RyanM I'm assume partner posts involves SE getting money :D

Ryan M

I sure hope so, if they're gonna write like that.

The links are all reasonable except for the "assistant" one, where they clearly couldn't figure out how to work it in organically.

Journeyman Geek

@RyanM Or its something they're used to

@ShadowTheKidWizard with respect to that comment thread

Sometimes I wonder if that period of time that things were super bad (SE basically scrambling to sort out finances, firing people, going community hostile)...

If people were incompetent or malicious (and trying to basically drive stuff to the ground), and which would be worse >_>

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@JourneymanGeek not sure what you mean. Yes, things were bad, and there were reasons. Even the grumpy me though don't think anything was done with malicious intent by management. They just.... didn't know how to do it better.

So yeah, "incompetent" is the key word. :)

Journeyman Geek

7:36 AM

@ShadowTheKidWizard Well yeah, but the level of cluelessness for some of it is just... hard to grok

Shadow The Kid Wizard

Maybe "lack of caring" as well, which is closer to "malicious", but still not exactly there.

Mithical

Hanlon's razor

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@Mithical your new shaving razor? ;)

oh well I'll Google

Mithical

Hanlon's razor

Hanlon's razor is an adage or rule of thumb that states "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Known in several other forms, it is a philosophical razor that suggests a way of eliminating unlikely explanations for human behavior. It is likely named after Robert J. Hanlon, who submitted the statement to Murphy's Law Book Two (1980). Similar statements have been recorded since at least the 18th century. == Origin == A similar quotation appears in Robert A. Heinlein's novella Logic of Empire (1941). The character "Doc" in Heinlein's story described the "devil...

Shadow The Kid Wizard

For sake of others, I'll quote it here:

> never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity

oh it's oneboxed. :P

Journeyman Geek

7:39 AM

@Mithical well - I've seen some of it first hand, and it was cluelessness

and an unwillingness/inability/communication break down

Mithical

@ShadowTheKidWizard And ignored the advice of people who did know what they were doing. That's bordering on malice already.

Journeyman Geek

@Mithical heh

"No, I've made a decision, and that's final"

(current boss ._.)

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@Mithical closer, yes, but keep in mind they might just not trust those people, or even ego is involved. "No way they can know better than me!"

Ego wars can kill the best places...

@JourneymanGeek sounds like most bosses. :D

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheKidWizard ah, the tricky thing is as SE got bigger the veil got thicker

Mithical

@ShadowTheKidWizard Yup. Utter incompetence. Luckily, things have improved.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

7:42 AM

@Mithical luck, and some very capable people inside who didn't give up.

Journeyman Geek

In theory if there was something completely terrible going on, I at least know who to ~~blame~~ talk to now

on the record

@ShadowTheKidWizard As I was telling someone....

Shadow The Kid Wizard

still .?.

Journeyman Geek

SE went from 4 CMs , who I suspect were vaguely on "we're trying to get them to leave"

to basically roughly as many CMs as we've ever had, with the team growing by roughly a new CM a quarter

workload's probably heavy

@ShadowTheKidWizard If

Ryan M

also from "escalations handled in months" to "escalations handled in days"

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@JourneymanGeek well yes, that's major part of the overall "getting better".

Journeyman Geek

7:47 AM

@ShadowTheKidWizard which I'm appreciative of

but I kinda think the 'worst' of it should be a cautionary tale

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@JourneymanGeek and here I lost you. ;(

Journeyman Geek

lol

Shadow The Kid Wizard

(or just don't know the background?)

Journeyman Geek

Oh just in general!

That things were bad, they got better

Ryan M

...which is good, because I've raised 11 escalations in the past 6 hours.

Journeyman Geek

7:49 AM

but people need to remember the bad so it dosen't get that way again

@RyanM still waiting on my big one

but the small ones have been ok

Ryan M

Yeah, mine should be pretty easy, unless the voting rings are bigger than they look to me.

It's all voting fraud and plagiarism.

Journeyman Geek

@RyanM I wonder if that really really shiny/expensive tool shog used to use is still around

Ryan M

Expensive?

Journeyman Geek

@RyanM in terms of computational resources

like you could run it, but it took ages

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@JourneymanGeek SQL queries?

Journeyman Geek

7:50 AM

but would throw together really nice graphs linking users

Shadow The Kid Wizard

oh

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheKidWizard bit more than that

Ryan M

Oh, yeah, they still use that.

Envious that you don't know the answer to that question off the top of your head ;-)

Journeyman Geek

also tbh

@RyanM Not really as bad an issue on MSE and SU

Ryan M

Yeah, hence the envy :-p

That's not a slight on you by any means.

Journeyman Geek

7:52 AM

And I'm mostly running on fumes so there's a lot I forget/don't follow up on

@RyanM there's less value to SU rep than SO

the only value in MSE rep really is 'access' as far as getting taken seriously I guess

Ryan M

Mostly that we see responses with nice charts and a userscript to view a table...pretty regularly.

Journeyman Geek

In theory if you're in the 'right' places in the world, might help you get hired by SE

Ryan M

Also, on MSE, this could be legitimate voting.

Journeyman Geek

lol

MSE has all sorts of strangeness

Like how we need tables of contents for posts

Ryan M

haha. yep...and people don't get annoyed at you for posting 13 answers to a question.

Journeyman Geek

7:56 AM

Well sometimes its justified

Its the wierd situation too of "Its not a ticketing system, but people like to use it, so its a ticketing system"

Ryan M

I was going to guess I was somewhere close to the record...but actually I'm not. The record is 67 answers to one question.

Journeyman Geek

lol

maybe more

there's also deleted answers

Ryan M

Good point. Just checked, though, and that's still the record (and the correct number for that post).

Journeyman Geek

In theory you should have the same on MSO?

Ryan M

Second place: 42, Third place: 39, Fourth place: 37, Fifth place: 36, Fifth place: 36

Journeyman Geek

8:07 AM

ah ok

but the rough thing :D

Ryan M

On MSO, the record is 25, on the incredibly buggy high-contrast-mode launch.

Second place: 11, Third place: 9, Fourth place: 8 (me!)

Journeyman Geek

8:40 AM

ah, one thing we're bigger in :D :D :D

Ryan M

Also, more programming questions :D (compared to MSO)

Journeyman Geek

.....

Its so bad I think every MSE mod has the lost souls userscript installed

Ryan M

I have the Super Shotgun installed instead.

Adds a lovely "Not Meta" button that downvotes, closes, and deletes the post in a single click.

There are other buttons, too, but I get less use out of them.

I also have another button that instantly closes a post with a generic "not about programming" reason in one click.

A button that bans and destroys a user in one click and three confirmatory keypresses... that one gets a lot of use.

Journeyman Geek

I tend to think needing to use a userscript for this feels like a failing

Ryan M

Oh I agree.

A lot of this stuff should be part of the UI. But it's not, so...

Also the fact that destroying a user doesn't also ban them for a year is annoying. That would save a lot of spam in our diamond inbox. Like half of it is us banning spammers.

Journeyman Geek

8:51 AM

I feel like that's something we can ask for

Ryan M

Yeah we probably should.

Journeyman Geek

If there's a mistake the user can probably contact SE and ask

Tinkeringbell

@RyanM Is it really necessary for it to be a year? IIRC, it already adds a 14 day suspension, is that not enough for SO?

Ryan M

Yeah. Or they could let them reply to the ban somehow when they recreate the account, but that would be more dev work.

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell 7

and they come back

Tinkeringbell

8:54 AM

@JourneymanGeek 14

Ryan M

@Tinkeringbell I have seen people wait that long and post more spam from the same account, and I've seen them quickly recreate profiles.

Journeyman Geek

Pretty sure it was a week

Ryan M

It's 14 days.

Tinkeringbell

@JourneymanGeek meta.stackexchange.com/a/278803/369802 14 ;)

Journeyman Geek

mea culpa ._.

Tinkeringbell

8:54 AM

But at least you managed to get me to search for evidence :P

@RyanM Yeah, recreation shouldn't really be a problem if they're suspended, but if they really wait 14 days before posting again from a recreated account, that's dedication XD

Ryan M

I can't say for sure if people are posting spam on the recreated accounts, too, in part because, once again...the tooling kind of sucks.

Journeyman Geek

@Tinkeringbell just have a script that cycles through credentials

Tinkeringbell

Fair enough, automated the boring parts...

Ryan M

A lot of these accounts are definitely created in advance..."aged accounts" is (apparently) a thing, according to a spammer shilling them on Stack Overflow.

it's not unusual for the accounts to be a few weeks old when they start spamming

At any rate, we currently do, as a matter of course, suspend spammers for a year when we destroy them...

Journeyman Geek

I had a one year 3 month old account spam

then nuke it

Ryan M

8:58 AM

...which might also be partly because it's easier to do that than to just destroy them, and now we're back to "the mod UI sucks"

Journeyman Geek

@RyanM Ehh, yes and no

the mod UI does sometimes suck

Meta Andrew T.

... take a 14-day recreation while waiting to recreate account?

Journeyman Geek

but the fundamental problem is the tools to stop it also need some focus

Ryan M

the tools to stop spam?

Journeyman Geek

@RyanM well yeah

or as I like to say "reduce the profitability of spamming"

Ryan M

9:00 AM

I think that's a separate, but related, problem.

Meta Andrew T.

need moar periodical accounts clean-up system...

Ryan M

but definitely a real problem.

Journeyman Geek

@MetaAndrewT. I need a better way to say 'expensive'

But it takes a lot of resources to clean them up

manually or automatically

Meta Andrew T.

unfortunately

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@JourneymanGeek costly

Journeyman Geek

9:04 AM

@ShadowTheKidWizard ._.

I mean in terms of resources, not cash money

Shadow The Kid Wizard

> costing a lot; expensive.
> "major problems requiring costly repairs"

Sounds like it can also be used for resources.

Something costs a lot of resources, so it's costly. :)

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheKidWizard people assume it means money tho

but It could mean that

or dev time

Ryan M

+1 costly ("costly in terms of...")

tripleee

9:35 AM

flag-pls spam softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/440031

Shadow The Kid Wizard

11:28 AM

@JNat and yet another cross site spammer waits for your handling, after long years of being silent member on SO. Thanks! :)

Smells like the speed of @Journeyman's nuking. ;)

(it was SU spam)

@JourneymanGeek oh, so the other SU mod who roams here, perhaps. :D

Journeyman Geek

Actually no

community killed

the user tho

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@tripleee k

Fun fact, spammer has account on SO for over a year, but without spammy info.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheKidWizard the interesting thing is I think someone cleared out the account

and the spammer didn't even notice (but then again, its probably a bot)

Shadow The Kid Wizard

@JourneymanGeek no, unless identity stolen, looks like it's really her. Wonder if it's worth reporting to LinkedIn she's spamming sites over the internet.

Journeyman Geek

@ShadowTheKidWizard unless that's fake too

I could put there that I'm vice president for left sided toilet seats at spoo and urien inc.

Shadow The Kid Wizard

11:40 AM

heh

@JourneymanGeek well goal of spam is to help the company gain visits, so if they hire spammer that taking the identity of one of their own employees it's quite silly.

@JourneymanGeek oh, you mean fake LinkedIn?

Journeyman Geek

11:54 AM

yup

tripleee

I think they mean if you trust information you find on LinkedIn, I have a high-ranking question and answer site for sale

Shadow The Kid Wizard

lol

Well from own experience 90% of LinkedIn profiles are job hunters anyway.

curious

12:16 PM

→ 15 messages moved to Chimney

Shadow The Kid Wizard

→ 20 cats moved to Cattery

curious

and yet, I'm still here =^^=

@ShadowTheKidWizard I'd move there though!

Shadow The Kid Wizard

12:48 PM

@curious you're the 21st

@curious purrfect! :D

curious

21 is half of 42, seems like a good number

Journeyman Geek

3:16 PM

@V2Blast I get the intent, but its rather amusing to see SO get referred to Stack Overflow (in english)

V2Blast

3:35 PM

@JourneymanGeek Lol, when I was originally making the list (internally) I was handling a request from Stack Overflow in Portuguese to change the setting, so it was a necessary clarification at the time :P

Shadow The Kid Wizard

5:36 PM

Fast Moderation 101

Journeyman Geek

Oh THAT was me

Shadow The Kid Wizard

hehe

Should put a message on SU: "Don't bother to spam, it would be nuked in matter of seconds". :D

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