Tavern on the Meta

Okay, it is official

This just in: SE Handles Poorly Polls

It's a real pity the domain choosing question is made as a SE poll

(And Shog9 just got the Copy Editor badge! Unstoppable!)

Q: Last Chance -- Top domain name: pauseforhelp.com. Speak now or forever hold your peace.

4:36 PM

and this is what happens:

16

Jin is ready to start working on your logo so we need to finalize the site name choice. The top-voted choice, quicksave.com, is not for sale. The only viable candidate is "Pause for Help" (pauseforhelp.com), which we are currently holding. If anyone has any awesome, last-minute brainstorming su...

Eh, @Jin - was just on meta.cooking, where's your post?

Wait, you're just now figuring out the engine is bad at polls?

@PopularDemand I got lazy & stopped most of my editing months ago.

@rchern Go explain that to the StackExchange team, rchern, I'm not sure they understood it :D

Today there have been 10 upvotes and 52 downvotes for that question

Yesterday, 11 upvotes and 47 downvotes

I wasn't aware they were under the impression it was good for polls

4:38 PM

So much for Robert asking us to hurry up and pick a domain name

@rchern I will look for this change!

I'm not clear on how that post differs from the initial "come up with a domain name" post.

@TheUnhandledException, it is currently unpublished because I only had the html part done, not the generate image for glitter done.

@PopularDemand All top names were either unavailable or very bad.

Then last night I got distracted reformatting my code into a more proper template pattern

4:39 PM

I need to make a way to include HTML from a link in my CMS...

@badp Noted, but I don't see how that's relevant.

wow. Pause for help is a really dumb name. Sorry, gamers, but you've yet again lived up to my ignorant, prejudiced opinion of you.

@PopularDemand Robert thought it would be a good idea to ask again

@badp It seems like you're saying the poll isn't working...but if all the names are bad like you say, then there shouldn't be upvotes.

@badp And I don't understand why he thought that.

4:40 PM

@Shog9 It wasn't the top voted name, Shog

As opposed to, say, editing the existing post.

@rchern Maybe you should check out the original question

@badp Then why is RobCC claiming it's the only viable one? All the other choices were already taken?

Q: Suggest a domain name for this site

29

Possible Duplicate: Last Chance— Top domain name: pauseforhelp.com. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Post your ideas for a dot-com domain name for this website, which captures the spirit and intent of the site, namely: {name} is intended for expert and advanced gamers on...

discussion top-7 site-attributes domain-name

+46: Quick Save, not for sale

+22: infinite lives, apparently horrible

+18: pause for help

+16: that one level, apparently horrible

etc.

oh, wow... So the top (by almost 3x) was never even a possibility.

4:42 PM

@badp, I've seen the question in the past.

Might as well have just proposed "games.com" and shot for the moon...

If something wasn't available, why was the answer not deleted?

The bestest option in the new thread is StageSix, but it comes at 1990$ plus a trademark lawsuit from DivX, who own Stage6™

@rchern Because it appeared unused and could've been for sale.

so...it was an external factor, but you're assigning blame? :P

@Shog9 -1 I demand a two-word name.

4:44 PM

virtuallives.com

@rchern who am I assigning it to?

It seems like the ultimate issue is that the community hasn't come up with a good name. All other issues are just appetizers. shrugs

@rchern Yup, that's my impression as well. I mean, "Quick Save" isn't exactly brilliant - it'd be a fine name if it was available, but why waste time on it when it isn't? Unless... you really don't have anything.

@Shog9 Joel's policy, "if it's parked it's okay, we can still consider it"

@badp: is it parked?

4:48 PM

@Shog9 yes

Then why aren't they considering it?

It is not for sale.

So wait, if it's parked but not for sale, they'll consider it (but then reject it?) How does that make any sense?

It's parked so it is considered for a domain name. It's not for sale so it's rejected for a domain name.

It was just assumed that it would be for sale.

Oh, ok. So the whole point of the new post is that they finally checked into it and realized it wasn't for sale.

4:51 PM

Yes, and the following options sucked greatly.

Pauseforhelp merely is the least worst.

(Which then gets us right back to Pops / rchern's point: why not just delete the option from the poll?)

Which is what triggered the new question, which urges us to dick around less and choose more

@Shog9 Because other options don't have enough support

wait, robert says they are holding pauseforhelp i thought

or am i remembering wrong

no, he did say that

@rchern Yes, but it's not a good domain

> No response on Infinite Lives. And everyone--absolutely everyone--that I market-tested "That One Level" on hated it. So I went with this communities highest voted choice, "Pause for Help." I was hoping to hear some better suggestions here. We should be able to do better. – Robert Cartaino♦

4:52 PM

hello, all

@Shog9 just posted

according to you? if that's the winner, then that's what the community chose.

hi @SaraChipps

Q: Design Ideas for Cooking Site

0

Hi all. I'm Jin and I'll be working on the designs for the Stack Exchange sites as they graduate from the beta phase. Each site will have its own unique theme that will reflects its topic. However, all sites will share quite a bit of common elements so they feel like they're part of the Stack Exc...

discussion design user-interface stackexchange

@rchern no, according to him

aw, man... I hate warm, vibrant colors!

4:53 PM

status-testing

Great, that was fixed

Yellow kitchens always look dirty (grease-stained)

[design]

Damn, that wasn't.

Anyway, guys. Has anyone here ever worked with LDAP and PHP?

@Jin Very nice!

@fahadsadah like, together?

@Jin The badges may be a bit too much however...

4:54 PM

You're asking if anyone loves punishment that much?

It's the PHP LDAP library I need help with.

I'm obsessed with how nice this chat is

@SaraChipps I'm obsessed with peaches. But the chat is ok too.

when I have a number next to my head, that means I have a mention in the chat?

@SaraChipps yes, click on the number

4:55 PM

@SaraChipps hey sara

hey @Jin

search.cluenet.org

@badp amazing

No, I didn't write that.

If you enter dvyjones in the username field, an avatar appears.

@Shog9 feel free to comment on post.

4:56 PM

That's a jpegphoto attribute

@Jin: will-do. Still looking it over

Like the pastel green. Reminds me of my grandmother's dining-room walls. And most of her appliances.

Enter fahad. I have an email address in LDAP, so my gravatar should show up

However, the bucket (default photo) does instead.

@fahadsadah testing

github.com/cluenet/ldapsearch and ldap://ldap.cluenet.org (shouldn't need that)

@Shog9 the colors are really from a lot of cooking publications i've been reading lately. the yellow I can tweak some(content area)

4:57 PM

What was it with pastel green back in the '50s? Was that like black-and-chrome today? Did people see a pastel green Studebaker crusin' down the highway and, learing, shout "Sexxy!"

i like earth, pastel type of colors. but i rarely use them in my designs.

@Jin: actually doesn't look so bad in the full-res image; I think the scaling makes the text look fainter than it is.

(editing your post to make the mockup a link)

oh yeah. i urge everyone to click on the full res pone

@shog9 good idea!

updated

woops, mashed your edit - my connection died as I was submitting, so I didn't get notified

@Jin I like the design, @Jin.

5:07 PM

@badp : Re: The second Gaming-domain post. The post was to announce "this is your choice (the top-voted answer) and we're going with this, unless you have any other last-minute, awesome suggestion" ...that everyone would love. It wasn't supposed to devolve into another round of (not a whlole lot better) names.

@RobertCartaino And yet...

@RobertCartaino so what do you plan on doing? :)

Hmmm...

that question as received 20 upvotes and 80 downvotes in the last 48 hours, that's quite anomalous

Barring any epiphanies, the "winning" domain was Pause for Help.

5:10 PM

I think the structure here is poorly designed

A simple poll would have sufficed, instead we had a stackexchange question (albeit meta) which is notoriously bad for polling

I think a simple two round polling would be sufficient, with the top 3-5 from the first round going on to a final poll

Ah, so it's the software that's KEEPING people from suggesting good names? I'd agree if there were names in there that were good but just not being recognized. So how do we fix the software to get people to come up with better names?

Oh, I thought the problem was that people were suggesting new names

We can do top 3 blind polling. We have that. But nobody seems to like the current names.

Gamers are fractious, we aren't going to agree on a name

worse still: many of the good ones are taken

I remember it took forever to come up with a guild name when my friends and I played WoW

5:13 PM

The first thing I learned when I ran a guild was: never let people vote

because nothing got decided

pauseforhelp.com, thatonelevel.com, respawnhere.com

^^^ that would be the poll.

If the issue is that people are suggesting names when you need a decision, then that is the solution

If there is some other issue that you're eluding to then I'm not seeing it

make it a 24 hours poll, we've vasted enough time here...

playerone.com ?

@marc that would be better than what we have, but probably taken

5:20 PM

@MarcGravell instantdomainsearch.com

People hated expertdexchange.com :(

I'm still proposing expertlexchange when the plitics site comes up

amazingly enough, it seems to be not taken

@balpha which one?

playerone

> Registrant:
H. Thanh
2843 University Avenue
San Diego, CA 92104
US

Domain Name: PLAYERONE.COM

5:22 PM

hm -- so much for instantdomainsearch.com

you probably typed in: playerone.com

typing in the .com screws it up

yep, that's what I did

UI fail

or user fail, whatever :)

I'd say ui fail, as you can't have a . in a domain name

problem exists between chair and server

hmm, never heard that version

i'm used to PEBKAC

5:25 PM

> UI fail or user fail, whatever :)

Same mistake here. Rank amateur that I am :)

@rchern me too

Back on topic, @Robert if you want a better suggestion for a domain name I'd say you're going to have to force one on us, we're not going to manage on our own.

geez, who is letting these hoodlums in? :P

Plus I seem to be ip-banned from Whois, which is odd.

5:26 PM

PEBCAK is too often short-hand for, "We don't understand our users well enough to design a UI that makes sense to them"...

it's not like we haven't come up with nice domains. Just they're all used or too expensive.

That's the hyphenless 2010 .com domain market for you, especially in the gaming segment

(not like adding hyphens would help)

can we make a time machine and register domains in 1992?

Why do some folk have scores under their names?

Because they talk more than others.

Talk more.

I contacted the guy about throwncontrollers and he said he had a website slated to launch in that domain in fall 2010, but here is the thing, he registered it back in '07. I'm willing to bet that come winter, there will still be no website

I can do that

5:28 PM

If you chat a few lines, it uses the space to show things like a bigger avatar, rep, etc

Hi

@tzenes I'm "most okay" with the top-voted choice. I'm considering a focused chat room session (announced) to get a bunch of people in the room brainstorming interactively last week's impromptu version. It would be a last-ditch effort before we implement Pause for Help. We made way more progress in last week's impromptu session (but still no ultimate result) than 2-1/2 months of a meta thread.

Is @rchern still online?

@RobertCartaino I'm definitely willing to contribute and we can probably pin that in chat to get people on later today

oh

how do I do lines /n

test
got it

5:30 PM

lookie! a score.

test/n int

lol

@tzenes I would suggest letting me plan something more comprehensive, inclusive (mail everyone or something), and hopefully decisive.

Just a few "send" works to. You don't need to ctrl+ret

Like

This

NothingToInstall for WA is growing on me. SeasonedAdvice rocks.

@SergioTapia, yo

@RobertCartaino Ok

5:32 PM

Ah,the old Shift Enter trick
test

yep it works. >)

Sandbox

Playing around with formatting

There really is a room for everything.

@RobertCartaino Go ahead, make your day

Is there one for goat milking?

I would move the messages to the sandbox, but I can't find the ctrl key on my iPod.

5:35 PM

@Marc, it is next to the any key.

rchern

can i contribute to StackFlair?

Sure, whatchya wanna contribute? I don't have it committed yet. I was going to, and then realized I was about to commit my connection string. Probably not the best idea.

just bought 2 more domain names.. this is kind of addicting

yeah...

that would've sucked xD

hey @rchern, stackflair.com is available

5:39 PM

you should totally buy that domain and have it serve the app

stackflair.com/478324/image
stackflair.com/478324/html

If you use MVC2 the urls would be simple to make and simple to support

you don't need to use mvc2 to use routing. i am using routing though

of course not but it's much sexier :3

Not like the ui is that heavy for StackFlair

though if i do individual customization like you've suggested...

@Fosco Quick! Buy up all the new Gaming suggestions!

Oh, also, DreamHost doesn't do shared windows hosting

5:43 PM

1and1.com is where im doing hosting now

i already have 6 or so domains on a basic level account

any smokers here?

yeah

dreamhost doesn't :(b but I've heard good things about Winhost

I'm about to head out to lunch but @Fosco did you see my reccomendation about LiquidWeb?

hmm no i didn't.. will check them out

(not that I've been paying any attention to this conversation, LOL)

@Fosco Truly excellent support, very high quality hardware

Anyway, time to find food and then meet with a client. BBL!

cya

5:48 PM

@Fosco, are you saying that 1and1 packages come with free domains?

(my dad has our family site through 1and1 but i've never looked at the admin side of it)

Dreamhost has a 9$ promo for ayear unlim hosting and bandwith plus free domain reg

but not windows :P

not free domain registration, but i've added on multiple domains to my hosting for no additional fee

i just bought 2 more domains for $8/each from them

Hehe, $9/yr Dreamhost to $60+ with Winhost :P

licensing is an itch!

6:04 PM

almost makes me think learning php just for StackFlair would be worth it, heh.

jajaja

i wish i knew how to run GIT on windows

seems like too much hassel

6:19 PM

Winhost is pretty cheap. Are they any good?

@SergioTapia it's not bad, what issues are you running into?

@spoulson, no clue. it's been quite some time since i've shopped around for hosting.

I'll have to try them out

I have an app I'm working on that may be a good candidate

6:57 PM

Anybody here good with WCF?

I'm ok at the basics. I deliberately avoid the exotic stuff, though.

I'm a big fan of "keep it simple"

@MarcGravell Well, that might be the best approach for my situation

Hey Sergio

@spoulson what question u got

@MarcGravell specifically, I have something I want to run as a service but on a shared host where services can't be isntalled

@MarcGravell So I've checked out running as a Timer kicked off by the ASP.NET application start event.

6:59 PM

hello marc

@MarcGravell Seems to work ok in dev. But I soon found out that WCF projects have no application start event.

@MarcGravell So I've reverted to putting a web front end on it and having it manually started.

so i checked my blog stats and it seems 200+ people saw StackFlair- i think it'll pick up :D

and with a host application

@spoulson when we coursed that in Uni I remember you could host a WCF service in two main ways

@MarcGravell Wondering if there were a better way to auto-start a background thread in a WCF project

as a service (which you dont want)

Well, WCF handles things like threading and sync-context anyway - not sure that (background-thread) is a good idea, simply because WCF probably isn't going to use it. Can't you just use the IIS/ASP.NET WCF host? Perhaps with a custom service-factory if you really need?

There is also the runtime host component - ServiceHost or something? I'm a bit rusty. But you can use that puppy to run a WCF server from a console exe.

7:03 PM

yeah

Ok, I have two main components: An ASP.NET site for web UI and WCF service for doing the work.

yeah! i remember now, that's what we used in class

Technically a third, a background scheduling thread. It processes a series of timed events at scheduled times based on whatever is scheduled in the database.

I'd think that a scheduling thread should run with WCF, which is why I put it there. So taht the web UI can run on a different server if it needed.

I already set it to approve only, meaning i manually approve posts but my list of approvalsis like 200 with 99% being spam.

guys how can I handle spam on my wordpress blog

Once I did that, I found there was no provision for application start

7:05 PM

You might have to enable asp.net-compatibility mode, but that is a crock of hack ;p

@SergioTapia You learned this stuff in class? Man, all I ever got were theories.

@MarcGravell What service factory were you talking about?

@PopularDemand yeah

In the (very small) markup file (.svc), you can optionally set a service factory that is responsible for creating your service. Useful if you can't do all your config in static files.

I used it once to disable http 100%, due to a broken NLB

(due to how WCF lifts itself above ASP.NET (and even IIS, depending on the version), and how IIS handles config, it simply couldn't identify the site over http; needed https or it YSOD

Oh man, what a day. Is it Friday yet? :-(

7:09 PM

status-always-Friday-in-Iceland

My life has turned into Friday to Friday - I now actually look forward to weekends so I can relax with the wife and baby boy. :D

Maybe I should move to Iceland

HoLyVieR' UNION DO EVIL SQL--

status-always-Iceland-at-MSO

status-iceland-is-a-synonym-of-MSO

Before every day was just the same

7:13 PM

@PopularDemand Can I move into MSO?

Q: What kind of edits contribute to the editor badges?

Can someone answer this, or am I going to have to award Jeff another bounty?

32

The descriptions for the editing badges are: Editor: First edit Strunk & White: Edited 100 entries Copy Editor: Edited 600 entries I'm wondering, does "entries" include your own questions/answers, or are these badges just for edits to other people's stuff? Other questions about the...

support badges editor strunk-and-white copy-editor-badge

@TheUnhandledException Welcome to Iceland, sir. Here are your new papers. Note that, while we use the term "papers" for consistency, your documents are printed on waffles -- please do not ingest them. You can see the man at that desk about your unicorn.

HoLyVieR' UNION DO EVIL SQL--

@PopularDemand YESSS!!!

I am happy now!

populationOfMSO++;

status-so-much-better-here-in-Iceland

@MarcGravell I'll check it out. Thanks.

7:22 PM

sooo, with all the discussion about blogging earlier, kind of makes me want to start one too.

@TheUnhandledException I must now quote Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need. Feel free to ignore me for the next couple of minutes.

ICELAND
According to a competing travel guidebook, Iceland offers--this is a direct quote--"boiling mud pools." We're on our way!

ICELAND FACTS AT A GLANCE
Unit of Currency: The Tusk
Biggest Industry: Jumper Cables
Motto: "Skjaarglt Kjooorsklangelt KfvoOOOOO..." ("Are There Any Boiling Mud Pools Around HeEEEE...")

@Shog9, your "I'm entering the room" floaty icon just got in the way of me clicking on "all rooms." Turns out that clicking while it's floaty does still bring up the user info popup thing.

HA!

anyone here have an ipad? Trying to guess how usable etc chat is currently...

icelandic boiling mud pool: hewgill.com/photo/trips/islands-world-2009/iceland/…

Lance Roberts

7:28 PM

@Pop, seems like only Jeff or someone on the Team can really answer that one.

Yeah, see, it's not all happiness and giant volcanic ash clouds. There's some bad stuff too.

books.google.com/… (ugh, maybe I should have looked at the surrounding pages before linking)

@LanceRoberts I was hoping it might have been documented already in a comment here or a blog post there.

Of course, the moral of my story is that Shog is a big interferer.

@mmyers AWESOME -- wanna take over my company for me so I can jump into a boiling mud poooOOOOOOHHHHUUUUCCCCHHHH!!!!!!?!?!?!??!?!?????111111

And volcanic winters under ash clouds. Can't forget that.

@spoulson Can you go skiing on volcanic ash-snow?

7:34 PM

The A51 badges Promoter, Campaigner and Activist have now been called the "Referral Badges" on MSO. What can we call Announcer, Booster and Publicist?

I haven't been skiing in a long time!

@TheUnhandledException Yes. You can also make volcanic ash-snow angels. And volcanic ash-snowpeople.

@TheUnhandledException Yes, and in a t-shirt!

But be advised: you're on your own against the volcanic ash-snow avalanches. We haven't hired any volcanic ash-snow patrollers yet.

Awesome. I am now a happy citizen of Meta Stack Iceland

7:37 PM

@MarcGravell If you send me one, I'd be happy to test it for you.

nice @rchern, nice :-)

@MarcGravell I have an ipad..

@MarcGravell the chat works pretty well on the iPad, I was using it on Friday..

and I can test something if you need.. it's always with me at work.

Three new dupes in Regulator Headquarters. Well, they're not new questions, but they're newly posted to RegHQ.

One of them should stay open.

Hello All

Hey @Chacha102

7:46 PM

Hi Cha

Well, that's new. "Close reasons can only be fetched every 10 seconds."

that's been there for a long time. You clearly haven't been closing enough stuff. :)

@GregHewgill I wish I could find out my personal statistics on closing.

But yeah, I meant "new to me."

WTB moar statz

@Chacha102 Okay, I didn't say anything the first time that was posted, but... didn't those guys, y'know, lose?

7:51 PM

Guys, is it possible to both play "Dwarf Fortress" and have time to do porgramming?

tags: [poll] [games]

status-declined

@Chacha102 What's the picture?

@mmyers How I feel today :-)

You don't see it?

motivational poster-style:
[orcs]
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH!
(Vocabulary is for wimps)

7:52 PM

It is located at 102content.com/images/waugh.jpg

Anyone know where to download the Microsoft Macro Compiler? Fancy messing around in Assembly... MSDNs version is from 1999, one in Microsoft download center says a few years old, but Wikipedia says there was a release a few months ago... can't find it anywhere!

Lance Roberts

@Pavel, There's always time to do porgramming!

it is just for messing around, not sure its worth asking on SO about!

status-already-tuesday-in-tavern

Hello @Diago

@Chacha102 No, we have a whitelist-based filter.

7:53 PM

@Chacha102 It's Tuesday there?

Diago

@Chacha102 Ola

@LanceRoberts well, some things have a tiny chance to attract you better :-)

Waugh, a Diago!

@Wil microsoft.com/downloads/en/… ?

Diago

@PopularDemand wave

7:54 PM

WWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!

@Wil you might want to check the actual date when the wikipedia entry, which says "it was released a couple of months ago" was added.

@Diago That clean install is working beautifully. Well, there are problems, but I don't think the OS is to blame.

@Diago you might be interested in RegHQ, there is new content there.

@spoulson Thats the one I saw, it is dated 2006 - @PavelShved Wikipedia says April 12th 2010 - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masm

Thanks anyway to both of you - May start a question on SO then.

@Wil if you want to just mess around with assembler, use something like nasm nasm.us

is no one going to star WAAAAAAUUUGHHH?

7:57 PM

don't waste your time with MASM :)

Woo, halfway there: "visited 369 days, 50 consecutive"

@Wil not that I'm too evil... but I guess your question will be closed quite fast :-)

@PavelShved Why would it be closed? :S It is genuine?

visited 101 days, 84 consecutive

@GregHewgill It was always something I wanted to look at - Microsoft have so many resources on MSDN for it, I thought it would be easiest to go down that route... TBH, I know nothing about it and don't care that much what I use.