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user315433
12:01 AM
@hichris123 How do you think people perceive your 6,046 downvotes? Were you thinking about that when casting them?
 
More or less - I'd like people to, well, be less chatty.
That reduces people being mean to each other, and increases signal
and everyone wins.
 
Ethnicity as a dichotomy is a European thing.
 
except the guy who MUST say thank you
 
@bro Fair point, but I'm not sure how you make that nicer; at some point, you have to have some indication of quality.
 
user315433
In general, it's a lot easier to preach kindness to SO users when you're not active on SO.
 
12:04 AM
Let's apply some kindness and welcome to the CV queue…
How many total posts are in that now, including the hidden ones?
 
@bro There is some truth to that, I think the rudeness is a symptom of the quality problem.
The users who are most active see the worst posts and become less willing to help out those who struggle.
 
user315433
@bjb568 Too many, because Too Broad is being used as super-downvote on "lazy" posts.
 
@hichris123 It's about time. If LQ posts were rare enough, there wouldn't be a need to be snarky and quick about DV+CV and move on. But there are so many of bad posts because it's so quick and easy to make them that the system left to deal with them can't be welcoming.
 
user315433
One can be quick without being snarky. Snark doesn't help anyone at all...
 
We reached the point where we don't have enough time to moderate SO to the standards of β sites long ago.
 
user315433
12:08 AM
FR: disable pasting in comment box.
 
Snark doesn't help anything, but it's caused by the inability to spend time educating new users.
 
I think this is a good example of the problem:
@chrisz get your point, but in the context of stackoverflow where even starting the question with "Hi" is considered a waste of space/time/resources, having to "prove" that I did my homeworks looks exceedingly silly. I have a 10 years experience with Matlab and I'm migrating to Python. Having to prove that I'm not lazy is almost an insult... Anyway... if these are the rules I'll stick to them — Luca Amerio 22 mins ago
There is a legitimate reason for showing your work: it avoids XY problems and helps solve problems faster (and avoids the truly lazy).
But making it a "requirement" also turns away users who likely did attempt to do their research but found nothing, and thus didn't mention it as they didn't see the point.
 
user315433
12:26 AM
Who says you can't begin a question with "Hi" on SO? Hi I'm a new in Java
 
I'm responding to the brown signal, @ShadowWizard.
\o
 
user202362
I take a grudge - why there is so little medicine that directly heals people rather than helps your body to heal itself? Medicine helps, but mainly we expect our bodies to heal itself ..
 
user315433
The medicine is like "I see you want to get healthy, but what have you tried yourself?"
 
user310756
 
user310756
@TelKitty more foal spam and still no foal
 
user202362
12:38 AM
@YvetteColomb I like how your two foals are trying to eat from each others buckets :p
 
user202362
Got a flu, can't speak (in real life)
 
user202362
Flu is like your body's immune system's routine maintenance - to have a very deep test every a couple of year the minimum to see it still works. Like some kind of military drill of your body.
 
@YvetteColomb that foal looks adorably scruffy.
is he going to get bigger? or is he going to be a wee bit runty for life ?
 
12:57 AM
@YvetteColomb Looks so green... Not at all like how I picture Australia.
You sure you're not in NZ?
 
user202362
Coastal Australia is very green
 
user202362
it's the middle that has less trees, but even the middle has some grasses, just few trees
 
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, pattern-matching email in answer: How do I apply for a no interest loan from Social Security Admin? by Josef Lewis on money.SE
 
Hi CMs; any chance we could get a general discussion thread for the recent blog post (on MSE or MSO)? The few that have sprouted up on Meta by users are... well... a bit pointed and narrow in scope. I have a few things I would like to actually address/ask about but since comments are closed and there's no associated meta post... I've come away having something of a bad experience with it.
 
@TylerH Feel free to post one. (I personally don't want the pings associated with that, unfortunately.)
 
1:12 AM
eh... the problem is I only want to ask about "We’re planning to test a new “beginner” ask page that breaks the question box into multiple fields" and whether it's taking any cues from meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/358600/…
 
@TylerH Lot easier to discuss specific critiques than to wade through a grabbag. So, y'know... Feel free to post specific critiques.
 
And posting a new thread about just that feels a bit like... just repeating myself from the first thread
 
so my tire was a lost cause; one nail went through the sidewall
which means I have a new tire
and a growing pile of old ones
you might not think a pile of old tires is all that useful
 
people voluntarily nailling tires
 
@YvetteColomb nice picture ! Yes really green, still have snow where I live :) and my local meteo still play trick on me, from tomorrow to saturday they announce around 15cm of snow
 
1:14 AM
but a tire looks sufficiently like an O
a BIG O
to be useful in certain cases...
16
Q: Typo on https://api.stackexchange.com/docs/create-filter

Claire FurneyIn https://api.stackexchange.com/docs/create-filter When the size of the parameters being sent to this method grows to large, problems can occur. This method will accept POST requests to mitigate this. 'to' should be 'too': When the size of the parameters being sent to this method g...

 
@Shog9 they were really useful in the Black Hawk Down movie
 
never watched that
 
I'd wager a full tire is much more efficient than a big S to bash people' head with
 
It's really good if you enjoy war movies
 
1:16 AM
is it deadpool good?
 
I take it that's the new standard for all movie types?
 
@FélixGagnon-Grenier Depends
They're different kinds of movies
 
well, deadpool did set some kind of new standards, in my limited pool of movies :)
the meta is strong in deadpool
 
@FélixGagnon-Grenier I'm guessing you will be seeing Deadpool 2 soon after it releases, then?
 
user310756
@Shog9 we're right on the coast - less 1 km from the sea - so very lucky - most places are in drought
 
1:19 AM
:thumbsup:
 
@TylerH I guess so too :)
 
user310756
@TelKitty I have such a cute video of them - he keep pushing her out of the bucket (him being the little one - now named Noddy)
 
back to the drama at hand; I'm still not quite sure how to approach thinking about all the twitter bubble about SO
 
user310756
@JourneymanGeek he will be on the small side maybe 13 2 hands high 4 inches to one hand. He will be the smallest horse I have. he's a darling little thing and let's me pat him now
 
user310756
@yagmoth555 I've seen the snow twice. I can't imagine how you live in it
 
1:22 AM
from my relatively new experience with folks on twitter, nobody is really strong on reading what's actually written; creating shitstorms out of parts of tweets (which are by definition too short to imply a thought) seems to be the national sport
so... I'm not sure what kind of weight I should give to people who will not read more than two sentences before branding someone.
 
user310756
@TelKitty well if it's any help - I don't think the foal is coming yet - I think it may even continue for another couple of weeks. Besides we will have babies around for a while, so hopefully you feel better soon and you can meet them. When this foal is born I'll def come to Syd and see you xox
 
user310756
@Shog9 NZ is sooo incredibly beautiful
 
user310756
anyway I'll be back with more foal spam tomoz :)
 
@FélixGagnon-Grenier mostly true
 
@FélixGagnon-Grenier Twitter was made for...
Noun: fisking (plural fiskings)
  1. A rebuttal to an article or blog made by quoting its content in sections and refuting each section individually.
  2. fisking f, m (definite singular fiskinga or fiskingen, uncountable)
  3. fishing
  4. (in sports) to waiting around the opponents' goal waiting for a pass...
this is by far my favorite onebox
also, hat-tip @Jon for helping me to remember the term
 
1:30 AM
I am whelmed by all the bad pun (voluntarily singular) and real life sports situations involved in that one box.
it's absolutely not clear from that sentence^ that the bad pun is actually originating from me, is it?
 
user315433
@Shog9 Old tires can be used to illustrate What a meta is for.
 
user202362
@YvetteColomb looking forward to see your skinny foal growing into a tall, well fed horse (gives strong sense of satisfaction :D)
 
user315433
2:18 AM
@SmokeDetector gone
 
user202362
2:38 AM
the timing of this diversity in tech thing is interesting - right around when an peddler (amazon) overtakes a true high tech leader (microsoft) in monetary term
 
hey
3:26 AM
oh god so chatty!
(lemme read the transcript ;p)
FR: Instead of a strict up/downvote, we need more reactions to the post.
 
....
ewww
...
actually, not that bad an idea ;p
You should FR that.
 
IMO it'd make voting a lot more noisy
 
hey
trade comment noise with voting noise
 
Right now, voting is super-focused and it works really well as a quality control mechanism. Adding more options would make voting less useful and more chatty
Do we really care about the difference between 👍 and 🎉 when voting?
 
Well not as a vote replacement
stick them under the votes, have 4-5 options, and then have an option to turn them off... oh wait.
trade comment noise for random emoji reaction noise.
 
hey
3:41 AM
too bad there's no "Thanks!" emoji... the "thumbs up" should be enough
 
3:51 AM
Maybe add an optional dialogue when DVing that has canned site-specific DV reasons that get shown to the OP.
like "lacks a MCVE"
 
that's been asked
People are going to react badly to DVs anyway.
 
Hide post score for new OPs unless it goes above a certain threshold.
 
also suggested
but that simply means they don't realise what's wrong with their posts
or that anything is wrong
 
show them the DV reasons, but not the "-3".
 
to me, the hard part is "getting how things work"
for me, it was a week or so of lurking
But ain't nobody got time for that
 
3:54 AM
Actually, I don't think showing negative scores on questions is really useful for anybody except established users.
Votes are useful for comparing answers.
 
As an established user, I don't care that much
 
That too.
 
so might as well suggest they hide it totally
but that still dosen't fix the underlying problem
 
Hide it unless the user explicitly requests the +/- score thing and has the privilege to do so.
It at least fixes the "I feel personally attacked by that number" problem.
 
@bjb568 I would not like that -- it sort of defeats the purpose of having votes if we don't show them
 
3:55 AM
That might be good enough to keep users on the site long enough to be able to read more guidance text.
@NobodyNada What's the purpose of voting on questions?
If it's for determining if it's useful in a list of questions on the homepage or in search, it seems to just be a proxy for view count, number of answers, or sum of votes on positively scored answers.
 
In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.
"What are you doing?", asked Minsky.

"I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe", Sussman replied.

"Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky.

"I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

"Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher.

"So that the room will be empty."

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.
 
@bjb568 The text that appears when you hover over the upvote button is "This question shows research effort; it is useful and clear." The whole point of voting is to indicate to future visitors whether a question is worth looking at.
 
hey
Sure, for new users, when getting downvoted to below 0, replace it with "Uh oh!" instead.
 
If you do not see the downvotes, are the downvotes still not there?
 
@NobodyNada But future visitors don't care about the question, they want their problem solved.
 
3:58 AM
Does it fix the underlying issues?
 
user202362
 
@bjb568 And voting indicates whether the question is likely to solve their problem
 
Questions don't solve anything, or at least, they aren't meant to.
Voting on answers is a lot more useful for that.
 
are we essentially saying - there's no point in voting on questions?
 
There is... if there's no voting on questions, you're removing the ability of a huge part of a site to earn reputation.
 
4:00 AM
It might still be useful to have voting for a) reputation, b) roomba, c) disputing/declining VLQ flags.
 
They're already penalized, only getting half the rep... taking it away entirely is cruel.
 
If a question gets like +2 or higher score, it'd make sense to unhide the score from OP to show an incentive for asking good questions.
… or unhide it from everyone at that point.
 
I don't really see why it should be limited to +2... I don't completely agree with the "don't show negative numbers" but I think there should be a limit... -2 or -4... if they have no indication that their question is problematic, they will have less incentive to fix it... additionally, when they do start getting upvotes, it will be confusing to them why the score doesn't increase above zero.
 
@Catija I was being hyperboleic
 
4:03 AM
I know.
 
I don't think showing 0 for negatives is good, because it's confusing and wrong. It could be blank or something.
 
Or maybe auto close and lock votes at some point if you want dv mitigation
 
hey
Come to think of it, I guess replacing it with "uh oh!" is a better idea. Like a real child who hasn't learnt how cruel the world is [citation needed], they will be taught with more neutralized emotion than those adults. (a warning indicator from a bad response: "uh oh" vs the real bad response itself: negative score)
 
And the feedback of "you should improve your question" should be in specific guidance text, rather than a number that seems insulting to them. So when a DVer selects a canned reason from a dialogue, a closed-question-like banner appears for only OP, maybe with the ability to check off "I think I've fixed this" to make it go away, potentially to a queue.
 
That said, law of unintended consequences... if someone knows that their DV won't be visible, it may make them more likely to cast it? That's sort of why I mentioned at some point not acting on downvotes past -4, which is enough to get it off the front page.
 
4:05 AM
@hey My sarcasm meter just exploded...
 
I don't think having more DVs is that bad if they're hidden and the OP is likely at 1 rep anyway.
 
I wonder why...
 
hey
and as always, those are only shown to the OP, not other users.
@JourneymanGeek yay? :)
 
@bjb568 It does, actually. If a question is actually improved, more downvotes require more upvotes to actually get the score positive. The pile on downvotes can get pretty bad, I understand.
Here on MSE it can be ... awful.
 
I guess that's true.
 
hey
4:07 AM
And it's easier to explain: you have many "uh oh" questions, too many of them will lead to question ban.
 
Maybe question downvotes should expire after a certain amount of time if the question appears to be well-received after the DV is cast.
It really seems like DV is a soft delete vote since both are saying "I don't want to see this" and both make it less seen.
 
hey
@bjb568 the same for upvotes should expire if it got closed as off-topic.
 
I agree with that.
 
The complication is making it simple to implement... something that might work is something similar to what they do with migrated posts... any post that's negatively scored when it's migrated, is reset to 0... they could do the same thing with closed questions... when the question is reopened, it's reset to 0.
 
That makes sense.
 
4:10 AM
This seems like it could be (from a non-dev perspective) super easy to do.
It also makes closing the question actually helpful to the question.
It stays negative until it's edited and reopened, reopening clears the downvotes.
 
@Catija Sounds reasonable to me
 
hey
uhh... reset to 0? certainly that shouldn't work for meta posts too?
 
No, just main... and probably not MSE.
 
Meta's a whole different story.
 
Though, maybe on MSE... for certain types of questions - support, bug reports.
That would probably take a bit more investigation.
 
4:13 AM
Yeah, it just wouldn't work for when votes are supposed to represent agreement with an opinion.
 
Right. And that's largely only on FR and Discussions.
 
MSE has an odd dynamic
 
I'm sort of scared to post a FR about this ... I know a lot of people really don't like having their votes "invalidated"...
 
Should the reputation from the votes be invalidated too?
 
I'd say the entire voting should be reset (if the net score is negative).... upvotes and down.
That leaves people who already downvoted the ability to downvote again and the same for those who upvoted.
There might be some complications to iron out... say... if a user typically uses all of their votes in a day and one or some were invalidated, would they be able to cast them again or would they still have counted for the day...
Though, I don't think many users use all their votes in a single day.
 
4:23 AM
I think it’s pretty reasonable if it requires 5 CVs + 1 or more DV + 5 reopens + 1 edit = 12 actions and at least 5 people to reset votes.
Night!
 
hey
Stack Exchange re:vote Edition
 
One thing I don't like about displaying negative scores is that often when people see a negative score, their judgment of the question is confounded, and they see it in a more negative light, and thus are more likely to downvote themselves than if they didn't know the score.
In other words, they're less likely to carefully read the post and decide it's worthy of an upvote.
The very same thing goes for positively-scored posts: less likely to carefully read the post and decide it's worthy of a downvote. It's why we get upvoted off-topic questions which go on to become bad audits in the review queues.
 
hey
I don't disagree that displaying negative scores might give an impression of personal attack, but there should be another indicator for the OP that the question has questionable quality.
Not just "0".
 
What if the display of votes (negative) is held for the first day or so the question is up... eventually it shows up but not initially? Maybe if it's put on hold and isn't edited and stays closed, then the scores are revealed?
A notification "Your question is being downvoted, please review our how to ask page and see if any improvements can be made"?
Meh... maybe I'll come up with somethign while I"m sleeping.
 
hey
@Catija that might give the OP a heart attack when they see -8 after it got closed.
the notification is at least a great idea
and 'nite :)
 
user315433
5:16 AM
Aug 4 '14 at 17:21, by Shog9
A lesson hard-learned during my time with SE has been that it is near-impossible to solve large behavioral problems by attacking them head-on. You have to convince a few people that there's a better way, and they'll do the same for a few more, and eventually you have enough believers to actually make a dent in it.
 
user315433
Or you can write a virtue-signaling blogpost with photos of figurines.
 
user202362
but don't do it with all male figurines because that's sexist </trollololo>
 
user202362
must not think ... burger quoting a boiled potato ... must not think ... burger quoting a boiled potato ...
 
5:51 AM
@jadarnel27 as usual, I drag you here in dark brown times... so, what's up? ;)
@hichris123 I'm not so sure. Hope you're right.
 
I like the hidden feature of my new Bose headphones. Just put the two earpieces together and squeeze, and they'll blow cold air out through the holes underneath.
 
@SonicWizard whaaaaat?
 
They're "around-ear" style, so there's quite a bit of space inside them, and the cushions on the edges are malleable. There are also air holes at the bottom to allow air to escape, so that pressure changes don't affect it. When you squeeze the two earpieces together, air rushes out of the holes, producing a nice cooling effect.
 
I wonder if that's any good/bad for the drivers
 
5:58 AM
No, the drivers are positioned far back and away from the cushions.
I suggest searching up the specs: Bose QuietComfort 25
 
-1 no link ^
@πάνταῥεῖ I replied. :)
 
//lmgtfy Bose QuietComfort 25
 
Omega ain't here...
 
flags as offensive
 
6:03 AM
"Ain't" ain't offensive here in Texas
Speaking of inclusivity:
Tone matters quite a bit. To be honest, I don't really like the blunt tone of the low-quality comments. I usually prefer to use something like this:
Welcome to Travel Stack Exchange! The "Answer" box is intended only for answers to the question asked; other comments and questions posted as answers are subject to removal. If you have a new question, please post it using the "Ask Question" button above, and please search the site before asking a new question. — gparyani 1 min ago
(Why won't my full-form link to the comment onebox? I had to use the shorter /posts/comments link to get it to onebox.)
 
The stock/review queue ones?
 
The hit rate on this type of comment is much higher, and I actually get responses from users asking what to do.
@JourneymanGeek Yep.
 
Ah, I'm not a fan
Its a reasonable idea, but I have issues with how its implemented
 
A lot of users don't realize that they're posting an answer...they think they're just posting a "reply", because they're used to regular discussion forums and notice a big text box at the bottom.
 
yup, and that's kind of why a lot of new people have issues with SE
 
6:12 AM
Yes
 
(By the way, I've had strong feelings about inclusivity long before the big recent push towards it. I've just kept them bottled up because the few times I've made statements about it, I've been shot down.)
 
Its not what you say, its how you say it ?
The really hard part of trying to strike a balance where you're putting across an arguement that we're doing something wrong, while not actually accusing someone of doing something wrong.
 
I speak my mind.
The fact is, you did something wrong.
And here's why.
(just a template)
 
on the contrary - its more effective to focus on the action and result
No one likes being told they're wrong
or they suck at foo
 
1
Q: "Stack Overflow Isn't Very Welcoming" especially [...] marginalized groups?

PatrickIn today's blog post "Stack overflow isn't very welcoming" Jay Hanlon writes: Too many people experience Stack Overflow as a hostile or elitist place, especially newer coders, women, people of color, and others in marginalized groups. I can perfectly understand why newer coders might feel ...

 
hey
6:18 AM
@SonicWizard I remember that some QuietComfort lines don't work on iPhone, or at least that's what I got from a deleted MSE post.
 
@hey Screenshot please?
 
hey
@SonicWizard Oh, apparently it's on-topic and not deleted: meta.stackexchange.com/q/309294/241919
 
@hey Bose QuietComfort 35 is wireless. The issue they're having is Bluetooth connectivity. Mine's QC25, which is purely wired.
 
hey
that explains...
 
user202362
I wonder what's the percentage of 'busy but useless' people in the whole population. I know I am not one of them because I am hardly busy ...
 
hey
6:24 AM
(meanwhile, how many more meta posts will spawn from the latest blog?)
 
Lots
see 3 already?
 
hey
2 on MSO, 1 on MSE?
 
2 on MSE
One good, one too broad.
In my opinion, everything has offensive connotations in some random corner of the world.
 
ah that question ;p
I don't even know where to start
 
In fact, Disney characters in Disneyland are forbidden from pointing with one finger, because it's offensive in some cultures.
 
6:31 AM
I don't like hard rules on stuff like that when common decency and sense is what works best
 
hey
Question: can IPS.SE solve inclusion problem?
 
@hey Questions about interactions between SE users are explicitly off-topic there.
 
heh, primarily cause someone tried that ;p
 
hey
Just a general "inclusion" problem... but then, I remember we have a dying site focuses specifically on SE sites and the like...
 
@hey heh
We have other ways to talk about problems on SE sites ;p
 
user315433
6:41 AM
Judging from mera, our first step toward inclusive SE is to start prepending titles with tags. Can't beat them, join them.
 
hey
and appending titles with statuses like [SOLVED!]
 
heh
y'all are clearly not taking any of this seriously
 
hey
wow, that statement offended me ;p
 
I don't get the problem about non english speakers. It's a purely self inflicted issue. If you work in tech, you need to speak fluent english to function anyways. Any issues resulting from not speaking english are foremost corrected by learning to speak english first. I haven't seen a single job posting for a tech position here that doesn't list "strong fluent written and spoken english skills" as key requirement.
 
@user5389107 funny thing...
 
6:47 AM
It seems to me like trying to be more inclusive towards people who can't speak english is a wasted effort since these people are bound to either drop out of tech or learn proper english soon enough.
 
when I was a new user, I quite literally had someone complain that my contributions were good but my english was terrible
I worked at it over time.
Now I just have people following me around correcting my its and it's.
somewhat poor english is fixable if the content itself is good
And see? You can complain SE's horrible to people with bad english
OR you can sit down for 5 minutes and fix a post a day.
 
hey
True dat. As long as the post is understandable, language skill doesn't seem like an issue. However, language comprehension is also a skill, and while certain users might understand it, others might not... (cue "unclear" flag)
 
Which is fine! That's what closevotes are for.
 
the real world of tech is horrible to people with bad english
that isn't going to change at all, the only way to fit in is to learn english.
 
See, that's roughly the attitude that makes SE feel unfriendly.
"I'll put that baby out in the snow. If it dies its weak"
 
6:51 AM
You will run into roadblocks every step of the way unless you work on your english
 
a funny thing is this is literally something that came up on my site.
and got me annoyed
 
@user5389107 Name a programming language whose primary keywords and library are in a language other than English.
 
Someone was getting harangued in the same sort of language for having bad english
but but
it was a 5 minute fix
 
Plus, users earned rep from your mistakes
 
> Rudeness and belittling language are not okay. Your tone should match the way you'd talk in person with someone you respect and whom you want to respect you. If you don't have time to say something politely, just leave it for someone who does.
 
hey
6:54 AM
@SonicWizard LOLCODE, brainf*ck, and the rest of esoteric programming languages
 
@SonicWizard so they did ;p
I mean, that sort of thing is literally on the Be Nice page.
 
@hey The former is still English to the core. The latter is in no language.
 
@SonicWizard ASM ;p
 
hey
Oh hey, ModiScript :O
 
or various dialects of it
 
6:56 AM
Still English. add, mul, lea, mov, etc.
Name a programming language where the main libraries and keywords are in French.
 
@JourneymanGeek It's also a disservice to do it otherwise
 
hey
@SonicWizard Microsoft Excel
 
I'm immensely glad SO is so hostile to newbies. I'm glad I was told in no uncertain terms to shape up or ship out. I'm glad because it enabled me to work on my failings and stopped me from ingraining bad habits
 
That's not a programming language.
 
Letting people get away with things we know the job market won't is a massive disservice
@SonicWizard MS Access has a translation mode where you can use VBA keywords in other languages
 
6:58 AM
@user5389107 but what does it hurt to go "Oh, your question could use a few edits" and help out the user?
To me SE has two main goals.
 
The point is, are there very many such languages?
 
The one that its meant to build up a knowledge base on a subject is important
but its also a way to help others get better at a specific subject
 
Yes and not making you debug or search first is going to ingrain that which in turn makes you borderline unemployable
 
I mean, I think I CAN HAZ CODEZ folks should be handled appropriately
hah
 
SO has adopted a culture of closing a certain type of question from the answer
 

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