Tavern on the Meta

Joe

7:00 PM

so 1 out of 10 days it has some minor effect on you, at most

Laszlo Papp

it is not about minor or major.

it is about basic responsibility.

Joe

...

hichris123

And if you just get one more helpful flag, it's irrelevant.

Joe

on a website of this scale

minor or major is rather relevant

if you don't understand that...

Laszlo Papp

it is not like I take 100 GBP from someone, and then say, hey, you can earn it within one day, do not worry. It is a minor thing.

Anna Lear

7:01 PM

@LaszloPapp If you are currently prevented from doing something because of mis-handled flags, let's talk about that. Otherwise, this is entirely moot.

Laszlo Papp

It is a basic responsibility question. I have not even mentioned the fact that this negative stats should go to the moderators IMHO.

hichris123

Anna said it better than I can. Basically: it doesn't affect you anywhere near as much as you think it does.

Laszlo Papp

@AnnaLear: I really do not understand why you think you would be available nonstop 24 hours when I need my flags.

Anna Lear

Every moderator in the network is a very responsible person. I can guarantee that. Unfortunately, they're also human. We strike a balance and move on.

Laszlo Papp

It is not the first one.

animuson

7:02 PM

Unfortunately? What are you trying to say? >:(

Laszlo Papp

Basically, most of my flags (20+) were moderator mistakes.

Anna Lear

@LaszloPapp Er, what? Setting aside the fact that I am almost always here, I'm not sure what you're saying.

hichris123

@animuson She wants to be a computer and a flag handling machine. I think.

Anna Lear

@LaszloPapp On meta? Most of your declined flags were on comments. That matters ... pretty much not at all.

Joe

I'm curious; is there a reason we don't have the ability to add custom comments to every flag reason?

Anna Lear

7:05 PM

Or at you talking about Stack Overflow where the number of helpful flags you cast vastly outnumbers the declined ones?

Shadow Wizard

@LaszloPapp why won't you help them by flagging the comments as "other" and explain "it's not obsolete because I edited the answer"? From what I've seen it's not obvious at all.

Laszlo Papp

What is not so obvious, really?

hichris123

@AnnaLear How many flags does SO get per day? Excluding flags-to-close.

Laszlo Papp

How is the comment any relevant to the answer? It is a short answer, probably one of my shortest. They do not even have the excuse about the answer being overly long.

Shadow Wizard

@LaszloPapp there was a technical comment on your answer that you linked earlier, I read it and it wasn't obvious to me the comment was "obsolete".

Laszlo Papp

7:07 PM

Anyway, I will put it again before leaving: I do not have a problem with them being human, although naturally, they could have paid more attention here, my problem is that they do not take the responsibility for their actions with the stats, but I do.

Shadow Wizard

Anyway just shared my $0.02 on this, can't talk on behalf of mods of course

Laszlo Papp

@ShadowWizard: could you please let me know in what way is the comment any relevant to the answer?

(especially if you check out the history)

animuson

Moderators don't have "negative" stats, as you say. We have a number of flags we've handled, and counts of what types of actions we took.

Laszlo Papp

Well, I would take it as mistaken action.

Anna Lear

@hichris123 about 2-3k, I think.

if I got this query right

Laszlo Papp

7:10 PM

anyway, I will stop flagging obsolete comments. I will not care because the outcome is random. At least, if I ever use it, I will always use custom text. Actually, I am even thinking of writing a signature that "please do read carefully". It sounds obvious, but apparently not for everyone.

Anna Lear

SO flag queue is at 1086 right now.

hichris123

@AnnaLear Wow, that's quite a lot!

animuson

It was only like 700 when i went to bed last night...

hichris123

So @LaszloPapp my point is that unless you make it obvious that something is obsolete, like a custom comment flag, moderators don't have enough time to look very closely so you should help them to make the right decision, not vice versa.

Anna Lear

@animuson Clearly that's the problem. Who told you you could sleep?

hichris123

7:12 PM

Help them to find why it isn't needed anymore. With 2-3K flags per day, mods look at many per day.

@AnnaLear Do you really want to be a computer?

animuson

Clearly the problem was that I spent the entire day in Norfolk and didn't handle any flags. rolls eyes

Laszlo Papp

@hichris123: that makes no sense

if they do not have time even for the simpliest thing (my case is the practical example), then the obsolete flag option should be removed, full stop.

Pops

@animuson Eh? You're on vacation?

Laszlo Papp

or at least, encouragement should be clear that always make custom text if you wanna make sure it is accepted when it is correct so.

about flag queue... I cannot feel sorry.

hichris123

@LaszloPapp The best example of an obsolete comment is I edited it. Those comments look like they provide something to the post, and mods don't know that you addressed it in your edit. So tell them that. Rather than just flagging as obsolete. For those harder to determine ones.

animuson

7:14 PM

@Pops Going on a vacation requires having a job from which to take a vacation.

Laszlo Papp

there would be many people who would be willing to help.... it is the matter of "recruitment" (i.e. election) IMO.

Pops

Sorry, I jumped in and didn't read the scrollback.

Anna Lear

@hichris123 I can neither confirm nor deny that.

hichris123

That reminds me: when is the next SO mod election?

animuson

My parents had a psychic/medium over yesterday so I took off to a friends house so I didn't have to be around for that crap.

Laszlo Papp

7:15 PM

but even if there were not enough people, that does not mean people need to do more than they can do in a quality manner.

hichris123

@AnnaLear I take that as a yes. :P

Anna Lear

@LaszloPapp I agree with that. I don't buy the "but they don't have time" argument.

Laszlo Papp

"Those comments look like they provide something to the post" -> What do they provide really, tell me? I am all ears. What-did-that-comment-contribute?

hichris123

Linky please?

So far back in the transcript.

Laszlo Papp

a mod removed it.

Ask Anna or animuson to paste the text here.

animuson

7:17 PM

@LaszloPapp "look like" is a relative term. We're not all experts in that area, so it's much more possible that a comment looks like it's being helpful. We don't know that.

hichris123

Meh, I'll just go on memory.

And I could be wrong, @animuson correct me if I am, but aren't the posts that the comment was on not shown in the flag queue if it is a comment that is flagged?

Laszlo Papp

@animuson: still not an excuse to me.... because then I would check the history

and then it would be all clear.

yes, I understand it is more time... but that is the price of the quality work.

animuson

@hichris123 The post can still be expanded.

hichris123

@animuson Thanks, that's the price of not being a 10ker. :P

justintime

7:36 PM

Is there a way of supressing closed questions from the list of questiosn that gets displayed on an SE site (1st time on chat. apologies if it is the wrong place)

Jan Dvorak

are they even included in the hot questions list?

Anna Lear

@justintime not in any of the default views. you can do a search for "closed:0", though. For example: meta.stackoverflow.com/search?tab=newest&q=closed%3a0

justintime

@AnnaLear - thanks for that. Maybe I need to bookmark this for the tags I am interested in.

AlienArrays

how do you tell the difference between a moderator and a really high rep sort of like a moderator but not an official one?
thats a real question i have, don't know how to tell, i'm still pretty new, although i guess that would make a very good opening line to a joke!

Anna Lear

@AlienArrays a "real" moderator has a diamond beside their name.

AlienArrays

7:44 PM

Thank you anna

Anna Lear

some employees also have diamonds, but their profiles will say they're working for Stack Exchange, so when in doubt, check that. :)

ElfSlice

rtkh

hichris123

Shiny diamondz...

AlienArrays

rtkh?

diamonds are mods best friends

ElfSlice

oops

It's just gibberish

hichris123

7:46 PM

@ElfSlice Then what was it supposed to be?

ElfSlice

Gibberish.

jadarnel27

Gibberish.

Nonsense.

Hogwash.

ElfSlice

Balderdash.

Laszlo Papp

AnnaLear: I will keep pinging you then when I need to flag something as requested.

jadarnel27

o_0

Anna Lear

7:50 PM

@LaszloPapp If you like. You're welcome to not use the site tools if you don't feel like it for whatever reason. However, I'm probably going to start ignoring your pings eventually.

AlienArrays

About a week ago I proposed that htmldocument is a synonym for html , however it got like removed or downvoted... Isn't it a synonym? Then I saw that Shog9 (diamond) proposed htmldocument for synonym of dom

Anna Lear

It's not my time you'll be wasting.

Jan Dvorak

@AlienArrays It's not a synonym

ElfSlice

Synonyms are for nerds!

AlienArrays

Elves are only good during christmas!

Jan Dvorak

7:52 PM

I propose geek as a synonym of nerd

Laszlo Papp

@Anna: right, so you claim something, and then you accuse me "wasting your time" by following it.

Anna Lear

@LaszloPapp Hmm? When did I tell you to ping me when you need to flag something?

Laszlo Papp

I am not sure it is not a contradiction, but surely not a friendly tone.

hichris123

@LaszloPapp She is a CM after all.

Laszlo Papp

@hichris123: please stay on topic. We were not discussing who is what.

Anna Lear

7:54 PM

@LaszloPapp I'm not trying to be difficult. I seriously don't know what you're talking about.

Rebecca Chernoff

@ShadowWizard uhh, dunno.

Laszlo Papp

we were discussing the unfairness of mistreated flags by mods.

@Anna: it is not friendly to tell someone they waste your time.

just because you have a different opinion about certain things, IMHO.

hichris123

@LaszloPapp Me is saying that she works for SE, does many things other than handle flags, and has a diamond but is more of a bigger-picture person.

ElfSlice

@AlienArrays I can't change it yet. :P

Laszlo Papp

@hichris123: so what? We all know that.... You are stating obvious and known positions.

Anna Lear

7:55 PM

@LaszloPapp I didn't say that either. Let me try again: if you ping me in chat instead of flagging posts because you want an action taken on them, I'm eventually going to start ignoring your pings. Far as I recall, I never told you to stop using flags and ping me (or anyone else) instead.

Laszlo Papp

sure, you did.

jadarnel27

Can you link the message of Anna's where she said for you to ping her whenever you want to flag something, @Laszlo? I can't find it.

Anna Lear

Where?

Laszlo Papp

above....

Anna Lear

Link the specific message please.

Rebecca Chernoff

7:56 PM

@animuson hehe (:

Laszlo Papp

You said, if the unfairness of the site with regards to this goes to preventing me being able to contribute, I should talk to you.

hichris123

Is it this?

55 mins ago, by Anna Lear

@LaszloPapp If you are currently prevented from doing something because of mis-handled flags, let's talk about that. Otherwise, this is entirely moot.

Because that's not saying I'll handle all of your flags for you.

Anna Lear

I'm not sure how you're reading that as "if you need to flag something, ping me."

Manishearth

@RebeccaChernoff RCHERN!

(hello)

Laszlo Papp

@hichris123: where did I say I will handle all the flags?

Anyway, I will open a meta thread for this.

unfair stuff is unfair. At least, it must be known it is ongoing.

AlienArrays

7:57 PM

oh no, not a meta thread!

<3

@Manishearth hi

in any case, I will stop flagging altogether, and the mess will stay around, and then this topic can be closed altogether, and the moderators can also be happier they have less job to do for the site to be better.

AlienArrays

can stack exchange do an episode of "undercover boss"?

Anna Lear

@ElfSlice that's pretty boss

ElfSlice

8:02 PM

@AnnaLear Rameses B is amazing.

Shadow Wizard

@RebeccaChernoff well, hope you won't get disappointed or leave again without a proper goodbye... it's been a year since you were last active, on any site!

Laszlo Papp

I will close it with this:

I would not personally mark comments as obsolete myself anymore. I have somewhat bad experience with it because sometimes - even in the most trivial cases -, they are declined. I saw this happening repeteadly, unfortunately. I appreciate that moderators also human, but the unfairness is that your flag weight will be impacted negatively for their mistakes. — Laszlo Papp 19 secs ago

jadarnel27

Does anyone in here have a suggestion for a lightweight music player app for Android? One that they've used and like?

Manishearth

@jadarnel27 I liked winamp. Better than the stock one. Didn't try anything else

animuson

@jadarnel27 The stock music player? The one that comes with HTC is pretty awesome and simple.

Rebecca Chernoff

8:07 PM

@ShadowWizard yeah, uh...heh.

ElfSlice

@jadarnel27 tomsguide.com/us/pictures-story/…

jadarnel27

Hey, @Manish. Thanks for the suggestion. Didn't realize winamp had a mobile app.

ElfSlice

winamp is dead now, better be careful.

jadarnel27

Does your stock player have a name, @animuson? My phone doesn't have one it seems. When I click on a music file, I get the options of Amazon MP3 store player, and some player I downloaded specifically to listen to wav files.

ElfSlice

The stock player that came on mine is pretty decent too. Mine's an ASUS tablet.

animuson

8:11 PM

@jadarnel27 It's just called "Music" - it comes with my HTC ONE, not something you can download from Google Play. But my HTC Incredible also came with a stock music app that was pretty awesome too. I assumed all phones did. I almost always stick to stock apps because they're usually the simplest and easiest to use.

ElfSlice

@jadarnel27 Poweramp

@jadarnel27 Rocket Music Player

Laszlo Papp

Can people give a helping hand here with the closure? stackoverflow.com/questions/21029783/…

reopen help needed: stackoverflow.com/questions/21024154/…

it is sad to see 5 people mostly irrelevant to Qt based on the track record, closing a valid question.

jadarnel27

That's really odd. I don't see any kind of stock music player on my RAZR MAXX HD.

Thanks for your suggestions as well, @ElfSlice =)

I'll take a look.

animuson

8:26 PM

My phone also has an awesome TV app, which acts as a channel guide as well as a TV remote.

No more annoying TV guide ads! Mwuahahahaha!

jadarnel27

That sounds pretty sweet.

animuson

Now whenever someone says "I can't find the remote" I can simply respond "well what brand is your TV, I'll just use my phone."

Dennis Meng

animuson: do you have the rep recalc link handy? trying to figure out why i have 1 more rep on Mathematics (rep page shows nothing)

animuson

@DennisMeng Users can't manually recalculate their rep anymore.

The audit is still available at /reputation though.

Shadow Wizard

Yeah, there is rep eating worm on the loose

Until it's hunted down the devs disabled manual recalc

Jeroen Vannevel

8:34 PM

stackoverflow.com/questions/20984947/…

Firefox 4..

Dennis Meng

@ShadowWizard But I gained 1 rep o.O

Anna Lear

@DennisMeng check the "show removed posts" checkbox on your rep tab

Shadow Wizard

@DennisMeng most likely answer you downvoted was deleted, it happens to me many times

@AnnaLear it won't show deleted answers that he downvoted, this used to be available in the old top bar but not anymore

Dennis Meng

@ShadowWizard Ah yep, that'll do it

Shadow Wizard

wait, there's a manual link.. let me look for it

Anna Lear

8:37 PM

@ShadowWizard the rep tab should still show it. I think.

Dennis Meng

@AnnaLear It does. Just did it

Shadow Wizard

@AnnaLear hmm.. let me check

Jeroen Vannevel

stackoverflow.com/review/suggested-edits/3770734

Really..

Shadow Wizard

oh my it does show!

Jeroen Vannevel

There should be a requirement to have at least one experienced reviewer review suggested edits before allowing it to be approved

hichris123

8:40 PM

@JeroenVannevel I can't wait till I'm at 2K (at 1860 right now)

Shadow Wizard

@JeroenVannevel I'm surprised minitech didn't ban him over this one. I would, if I were a mod. One day edit ban would make the site somewhat better and cleaner place.

Jeroen Vannevel

oh god

if he has more I'll just custom flag him

hichris123

And this one

Way too minor

Shadow Wizard

@hichris123 this is not that bad, he did remove noise

Jeroen Vannevel

It's not that bad, to be honest

most stuff was okay

he should've removed the 'Java' from the title as well though

hichris123

8:42 PM

@ShadowWizard True, but there was more stuff to improve.

Bad title, grammatical errors.

Shadow Wizard

nah, nothing really obvious. That edit was OK. Not good, but also not bad. Anyway those title edits... are just plain wrong

Jeroen Vannevel

His last 15 posts seem decent enough except for those two, I'll assume it's a temporary lapse of judgement

jadarnel27

Have you used any of those music players, @ElfSlice?

ElfSlice

@jadarnel27 I don't think so. My tablet came with a decent stock one. They look pretty good though. Sorry!

jadarnel27

No worries, man =)

I was just curious. Whether you were just googling, or speaking from experience.

hichris123

8:56 PM

@jadarnel27 How about Google Play Music?

jadarnel27

Apparently, Google Play Music was the stock music app. Which I removed because I didn't like it (for reasons I can no longer remember).

Maybe I should try it again.

Did that automated deletion / closevote-aging script die again? Or is the closevote queue just climbing naturally again?

hichris123

No hats anymore.

jadarnel27

How many review-related hats were there?

I didn't realise that was making such a difference.

hichris123

I don't know.

winterbash2013.stackexchange.com

Still up.

Joe

I don't think the close vote queue dropped all that much due to hats

iirc it was almost entirely due to the corrections

Dennis Meng

9:11 PM

@jadarnel27 there's one for 5 reviews in one queue, and one for 5 reviews in 5 queues

plus close/delete and reopen/undelete

jadarnel27

Thanks, @Dennis.

I'm with @Joe. I can't imagine that made a huge difference.

But...I've been wrong before.

Hell, I've been wrong today.

Maybe more than once.

Dennis Meng

it's not a very interesting today if you're not wrong at least once

hichris123

@jadarnel27 You have? gasp I thought you were a god.

Dennis Meng

five if you're important

jadarnel27

I answered a VB.NET question today. That at least felt wrong.

Joe

9:16 PM

I think it was shown not to have made much difference

I think I saw a graph

can't recall where though so

might be hallucinating

hichris123

Well, it did get below 100K 'till right around the end of hats.

Dennis Meng

@Joe there was one question on meta about whether hats made us better people. i think it got downvoted to oblivion though

Jeroen Vannevel

@DennisMeng Can't make us better if we're already the best!

animuson

@hichris123 That was due to a bug in the nightly process that expired close votes, though. It cleared out about 7,000 or so questions from that queue.

Shadow Wizard

@DennisMeng hey it's my question! And no, it got more upvotes than downvotes :D

Dennis Meng

9:19 PM

@JeroenVannevel First thought that came to mind was "If that's so, why is Jon Skeet's rep still going up?"

hichris123

@animuson True, but if it's still running (and didn't die or anything) then how do you explain the correlation between huge rises and end of hats?

Shadow Wizard

15

Q: Has Winter Bash made you a better, more contributing, user? Please share your story

Winter Bash 2013 came and went leaving behind satisfied users who had their share in the fun. 35 "ordinary" hats and 10 secret hats, users went hat hunting all over the place. My question is, if you were one of those hat hunters, did anything "stick" i.e. you started doing something you did not...

Dennis Meng

Huh. Could've sworn it was -8 or something last I checked. Must've been another question around then

Shadow Wizard

It reached -2 at some point and was closed but all is good now

Dennis Meng

ah

also, i want a 15 point question

highest i have is 13

Shadow Wizard

9:21 PM

@DennisMeng hmm... let me see... ;)

Thomas W.

is there any community manager god-mod SE staffer whom I can bother for a few minutes to help deal with what appears to be a repeat of system abuse since yesterday on one of the sites in the SE network (askubuntu)? The 'nixveloper' user was initially sniped for the abusive behavior SE-wide, as far as I can tell, however the spam is back on the site now.

hichris123

@ThomasW. It's back?

Thomas W.

@hichris123 if you mean the "make us mods" spam, apparently.

Shadow Wizard

@DennisMeng no it's not, it's 14 :D

Thomas W.

@hichris123 case in point askubuntu.com/a/403112/10616 and askubuntu.com/a/403116/44179 and askubuntu.com/a/403117/44179

Dennis Meng

9:22 PM

@ShadowWizard Lol. I feel a little dirty having this many questions without an accepted answer though

Thomas W.

although no sight of the nixveloper user who seems to have been sniped

hichris123

@ThomasW. Hmm... I don't know if it's the same, someone linked this user as spammy and the person was destroyed.

Thomas W.

@hichris123 that's the same spam we've seen for weeks, this is different spam, that has only started in the past 24 hours

Shadow Wizard

@DennisMeng it's Meta.... I think Jeff has never accepted a single answer

brb

Thomas W.

there's 25+ spam flags from me alone and many deleted user######s on Ask Ubuntu with this chain of spam.

hichris123

9:24 PM

@ThomasW. Why did someone randomly start spamming AskUbuntu?

Seth

@ThomasW. he was indeed sniped.

@hichris123 It's not quite so random.. but rather.

We've had 2 user bans/breakdowns in the last 36 hours and one of them started this.

Thomas W.

^ this

Seth

They've been doing it almost non stop for the last 12 hours.

Thomas W.

^ that too

hichris123

So it was some user who was bad in the first place or just was good, got banned, and started spamming?

Seth

9:27 PM

@hichris123 I'm honestly not sure.. both users weren't exactly "good" users. One got high (he admitted it himself) and started spamming, I'm not exactly sure about the other.

hichris123

@Seth Wow. Where's your mods?

Thomas W.

@hichris123 alive now, and supposedly SE staff are now investigating this, so... issue resolution in progress, maybe?

shrugs Guess i bugged you all for nothing, sorry for the noise.

hichris123

Someone should answer one of the plea's to be a mod and want $1M from them.

:P

Dennis Meng

@ShadowWizard I checked for kicks and found ~18

Doorknob of Snow

10:08 PM

Me no like this new close reason. How do we close "do my homework" questions and "help me I will not post code because you can read my mind" questions now? :/

qwertynl

When did @balpha (i think) get his own error page? stackoverflow.com/error?aspxerrorpath=/flags/questions/21032206/… :-)

hichris123

@DoorknobofSnow Unclear what you're asking, if I read correctly.

Doorknob of Snow

ah, okay.

Lance Roberts

Wow, I can't believe this question that Shog motivated to be asked so many people downvoting, especially since the new close reasons are very Unclear (pun intended).

-9

Q: Close reasons cheat sheat

Shog9 commented on his answer explaining the new close reasons, when asked for more clarity: I will answer a separate question on this topic with a mapping of specific examples of questions to close reasons though. After I eat breakfast. If someone asks one. So here is that question. I not...

discussion close-reasons

Doorknob of Snow

"write my code for me" still doesn't fall into that category though...

hichris123

10:09 PM

23

A: Improving "demonstrate a minimal understanding"

Take #3: Catching camels, not gnats First off, a big thanks to everyone who pitched in here - trying to distill a broad class of (often ill-defined) problems into a clear, helpful bit of guidance is quite a challenge - I'm happy to see so many folks willing to take a crack at it. In particular,...

Lance Roberts

I am very happy though that we now have a close reason for typos and syntax errors.

hichris123

> Unclear what you know == Unclear what you're asking

@Doorknob ^

Doorknob of Snow

okay...

Mark my words, this is probably not going to be an improvement :/

Undo

I win!

erwaysoftware.com/blog/running-mysql-on-an-external-hard-drive

hichris123

Weird for me, too.

Lance Roberts

10:10 PM

We needed better specific close reasons, not just one generic one that covers 80% of closes.

(made up percentage, but it is and will be high)

hichris123

We'll soon find out, @Servy. "minimal understanding" confused too many close-voters - as much as I liked it, I have to concede that we may have been just replaced the poorly-understood "too localized" with another "I don't know what this means so I'm going to use it everywhere" reason. — Shog9 5 hours ago

Doorknob of Snow

but now aren't we making unclear that "I don't know... use it everywhere" reason?

Lance Roberts

Yep, that's what I see.

hichris123

Yeah, I don't know why we didn't have a discussion on this.

Shadow Wizard

@qwertynl it's random. I found them all though!

12

Q: How can I see all the images of the error page?

So, SO is down at the moment, and so when I try to load a question I get an error page with a URL like this: http://stackoverflow.com/error?aspxerrorpath=/questions/... That page has a title of "Oops! Something Bad Happened", some explanatory text (nice job on that BTW, it's very clear), and ...

feature-request status-declined 500-server-error

Lance Roberts

10:14 PM

I think it will be very unclear to most question-askers why their question is unclear.

They did have one, but they made their decisions really quick.

hichris123

@LanceRoberts However ironic that is, it's true.

qwertynl

@ShadowWizard :-)

Cool

Shadow Wizard

@qwertynl yup it's pretty new too, there used to be only one, static, lolcat

qwertynl

@ShadowWizard Yea. That is the only one I remember

Anna Lear

@ShadowWizard we had more photos taken at the October summit, but I'm not sure if they're live or not.

Shadow Wizard

10:28 PM

@AnnaLear wow, it's like giving me a candy! <going to look>

Oh, nothing new :(

Can you please add those photos? Pretty please? :)

Talking about candies, I find this rather sad:

qwertynl

@ShadowWizard lol

Shadow Wizard

True games fall far behind this... well.. not-a-game

Joe

I'm not sure I understand why unclear is the default and not too broad for questions asking a billion things

or, rather, asking for a complete project

Flyk

@ShadowWizard can you have a looksie at this edit and see if you agree it makes the post clearer?

Joe

too broad says to me, this question isn't a single item question that can be concisely answered

Shadow Wizard

10:34 PM

@Flyk lol I just saw it and commented before seeing your chat message

sorry about that!

Like I said there, I wouldn't change "disable" to "not show" but otherwise yes, a good edit.

Flyk

@ShadowWizard "hide" is the way the flag button is handled

I figured keeping it consistent for usability purposes

the delete button does actually hide if you cast a successful delete vote already

same with the flag button on that page

Shadow Wizard

Oh, didn't know that. OK then, let it be :)

Hope Lance won't get upset though

Flyk

you don't mod tools, bro?

Shadow Wizard

@Flyk not a lot, no time for this, so just jumping in from time to time

hichris123

I really am uncomfortable flagging givemetehcodez as unclear what you're asking.

Anna Lear

10:47 PM

@hichris123 that's more like "too broad"

you know what they're asking, obviously, but "There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format."

I'm a big fan of not shoehorning every close reason into the off-topic category. other close reasons are (or at least can be) quite fitting.

hichris123

@AnnaLear So has too broad turned into minimal understanding?

Anna Lear

@hichris123 no. I think attempting to redefine existing reasons as something that's now gone because it was problematic is missing the point.

Lance Roberts

One of the goals should be to make it easy for closers to pick the right reason. I had such a hard time the syntax error stuff when they got rid of 'too localized' because I could never be sure what category to put it in. Now we have that covered, but I'm going to have a hard time choosing a reason for those other types of closures.

By having more specific reasons, worded well, it cuts down on the cognitive choice time, which can really kill you if you're trying to get that queue down.

Shadow Wizard

Hey guys anyone ever played Papo & Yo?

jmac

11:41 PM

@AnnaLear Any chance you (or another of the community managers) could try to identify what sorts of questions we don't want, and what reasons should apply to what general categories of questions? The piecemeal changing of reasons seems to happen a bit too frequently, and isn't solving the problem. That was the goal of the changes to close reasons, but half a year later, we're tweaking them again...

I tried tossing my understanding in a single post but I don't think it's polished as-is, and may be better off as its own separate discussion. I think that the headache is that there's a need to control both askers' understanding of what's okay, as well as that of closers', and the two have very different needs/perspectives on the issue.

Michael Petrotta

While similar questions may be on-topic here, this one was solved in a manner unlikely to help future readers.

Is my brain not working for me today? How does this close reason apply to questions?

(that may or may not have answers)

jmac

Where is that language @Michael?

Michael Petrotta

New off-topic close reason.

Reading Shog's answer, I might be getting it.

jmac

Ah, okay, this: "This question was caused by a problem that can't be reproduced or a simple typographical error. While similar questions may be on-topic here, this one was solved in a manner unlikely to help future readers. This can often be avoided by identifying and closely inspecting the shortest program necessary to reproduce the problem before posting. "

Michael Petrotta

It's intended to be used closing questions after they've been answered (or commented with an answer, more likely). I guess.

jmac

11:54 PM

Yeah, there was a hullaballoo about typo-correction questions a while back

(how to handle them, if they should be closed before being answered, etc.)

Michael Petrotta

Oh, I remember.

Makes sense. Unclear == code behind a link will take a little more getting used to.

Lance Roberts

That one is to finally give us back a 'Too Localized' reason.

Michael Petrotta

Better close reason description, @Lance, so hopefully less drama.

jmac

I am not thrilled with everything being tossed under "Unclear" because to anyone asking a question, they will almost definitely assume that their question is clear, and explaining the reason will likely be tougher than answering their question.

Michael Petrotta

Agree.

Lance Roberts

11:59 PM

Yes, @MichaelPetrotta, I like that reason,

but don't like the one-size-fits-all-and-explains-nothing Unclear close reason.

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