Yay! Only one mission!

:D

Your supervisor has illegible handwriting

The only thing I can make out is your name and "emergency branches".

@Mithical actually just a coworker, we work together on some projects, and he made a list of his tasks (quite a few) and my tasks.

I'm responsible for the backend of the project, he's for the front end.

@Mithical lol API

oh, wait, you meant the "ריקים" lol

Anyway, just need to filter out some stuff.

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance ....it doesn't say חירום?

*squint*

@Mithical the kuf is missing a line indeed.

How do you recognize the red ones in the blue handwriting?!

Trust me. Handwritten Cyrillic is much worse.

I think I saw a picture of that once... it was worse, yes.

@Tinkeringbell it's different kind of writing, like upper case and small case letters in English: each got different letters. The one written is used when writing by hand, in red I typed in paint.NET in the set of letters used for printing, mainly in books. Let's see wiki about all of this mess...

one's script, the other's print

oh it's part of the main wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_alphabet

(under "Stylistic variants")

Ahh, kinda makes sense ;) My handwriting doesn't look like the letters on the PC either ;)

Exactly. :D

Well at least he wrote my name clearly.

Wonder if there's free service that can detect hand writing?

Computers have trouble reading print, do you think they'd handle handwriting better? :P

TIL there's no LaTeX symbol for o, O or 0, but there is one for @, astrological signs, card suits, and even a bat.

... or that my mousewriting is unrecognizable.

If you can describe it, instead of drawing it, there is this: amp-what.com/unicode/search/arrow

I love how it shows load more than 250/500/1000/2000/4000 and then jumps all the way to "still not enough? Show all of them"

@Tinkeringbell Hello. I need your help. Can I talk to you?

@Later No.

Same reasons that Art and Rubiksmoose gave you yesterday.

Do as I told you, and use the contact-us link.

@Tinkeringbell I do not want to talk about that unimportant subject.

Lots of useful symbols:

( ҉(

@Tinkeringbell You stated in your comment "If you need any further help with that, you know where to find the chatroom." Right?

@Rob What are those?!

@Later Yes. The chatroom. Not me.

So, ask your question of the room, don't pester mods with it.

I forgot which language that is a character of, or what the symbol is called; but the ^^^^ amp-what should decode it.

ͦ😀ͦ

Hey! Yours has ears :D

Combining lowercase o

Ok.

> We expect community members to treat each other with respect … even when they don't deserve it.

^ What's unclear about this?

tbh, in some cases, that's even more fun than smacking them down :D

I only wanted to remind it.

K. Thanks :)

→ 23 messages moved to Chimney

It seems that I should not ping anybody to not pester them. So, I try to talk without pinging. Can a user completely change their question without an answer, according to the SE guidelines?

Depends. Usually not.

On what?

In cases that a user is Q-banned, this would be taken as abuse to undergo the ban, for example.

So, this heavily upvoted answer is incorrect?

No, that describes the "it depends" nicely

> If there are no answers currently then it doesn't really matter, no one else's answers are invalidated so; meh, not ideal but nothing really wrong with it.

It misses the part where it's frowned upon because the original question may have gotten upvotes that the new one doesn't deserve, and people not being notified of such edits means the person doing these edits is basically gaming the system.

But that's probably because the example used was an off-topic question.

I see also problems arising with potentially invalidated comments, closure or reopen votes, etc. It's far more than not ideal IMO.

Is there any SE guideline in the Help Center or Community FAQ prohibiting a user from changing completely their question without an answer?

IIRC no.

So, the user should not be blamed because of that. Right?

However, it's frowned upon on most sites since that's not the content that people voted on. In almost every situation you're better off just posting a new question.

But not everything that's not explicitely prohibited is OK.

@Later Yes.

meta.stackexchange.com/help/editing

> To clarify the meaning of the post (without changing that meaning)

@Later Well, you might go into a rollback fight.

It seems that the link talks about how other people can edit a post.

The "Common reason for edits" is mentioned after the pronoun "you", which is explicitly distinguished from "the original author" in the guideline . Right?

The common reasons can still apply to both you and the question author, there's no mention of 'common reasons you should edit someone else's post'.

If that was the meaning of that section I think it would have been explicitly stated as such.

Yeah, perhaps 'questions on stack exchange should be real questions' is a good principle to apply here too. Why are you asking, what are you trying to achieve, what's your goal/motive?

What are we helping you with? There's been several people telling you to not change your question to be an entirely different one.

So if that was the question, it has an answer now.

@Later You're effectively rendering any posts, comments, and votes obsolete. That's not cool.

There's a reason they're called guidelines. It's not a rulebook to find loopholes and workarounds in, it's simply further guidance after people apply their common sense.

People get Q-banned because "your multiple low quality questions are wasting people's time". If someone does this to a lot of their own posts, it should be dealt with as vandalism

In the first paragraph containing "Common Reasons for edits", it is explicitly stated that "edits are expected to be substantial". However, "being substantial" is not necessary for tha original author's edit. So, the "Common reasons for edits" must be related to other people, not to the original author.

Yes.

Again, it's not a rulebook. You can't do it and say "but the rules don't say I can't! I demand to see a lawyer"

Just use your common sense. As mentioned before, not everything that's not explicitely prohibited means that it's OK to do.

@Later Ah, now we're looping back to math.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/31722/… and meta.stackexchange.com/questions/348470/…... I think we can safely say then that this topic was explained to you several times before.

@Tinkeringbell Whoa, Mod Magix™

It's a sometimes usefull skill to remember who you're dealing with ;)

—Clint Eastwood

I also remember that we were recently dealing about these nitpicks :)

I'm always dealing with nitpicks shrug

Advantage I can see the deleted post at Meta SE

I believe that the guidelines is not a rule book, but they must be enough for any user wanting to contribute.

For what it's worth @Later my comment about finding the chatroom was for if you needed help editing your post into shape, not for moving the question here.

@Later Again: Common sense.

@Later Why would this question occur to any user with honest intentions? Wouldn't they realize they'd be invalidating all the answers etc.?

I mean, sure, if you posted a question, then entirely changed it two minutes later, nothing probably happens.

@Later Nah. They must be enough for any user that wants and can contribute. Harsh truth is that a site for questions and answer is never going to be accessible to anyone that merely wants to have it accessible to them.

Sorry, I rarely find honesty on the SE.

I don't know how to respond to that.

I think we've circled back enough for now. Let's move on.

If it's such a dreary place, why not find something more enjoyable to do with your time?

Contributing to SE is not a must in life

Gonna watch something enjoyable. BBL

Because of some honesty here.

@πάνταῥεῖ made a very important point here: chat.meta.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/8417431#8417431 If someone is banned from posting new questions they are encouraged to edit their existing poor questions to make them more acceptable. However, they should not completely replace the old question with a totally different question. That's attempting to work around the question ban, and on the sites I frequent the mods have a very dim view of such behaviour.

@rene Where do you propose we go?

Back in our cages probably :)

Blegh. Cages. Overrated, if you ask me.

I propose we go somewhere sunny, with lots of food.

You know what, skip the food.

Just the sun.

@Tinkeringbell Sounds good to me. It's officially winter now in Australia, and we've been getting lots of rain here in Sydney. Allegedly, it will be sunny tomorrow, but there's more rain predicted for the following days.

We could use more rain here, we haven't even hit summer yet and we're already 17cm short on water.

On the other hand last week was all rainy days and so less walking after work... and it shows on the scale :(

I shouldn't complain about the rain. After all the fires we had ladt summer, we don't want a dry winter.

While reading a recent question asking about undeletion of comments meta.stackexchange.com/q/348798/334566 I had a radical idea. It would not be feasible to put into practice, but it's kinda fun to think about.

Make comments automatically self-destruct after 48 hours, unless you pay to make them permanent. Eg, 1 rep point pays for 10 permanent comments.

I suppose if a permanent comment gets deleted, you get a refund, unless the comment is spam or abusive.

Eh. There's some comments that should only go if the question goes, but that people probably don't want to 'pay' for.

Then there's stuff that people will pay for that's not spam or abusive but also not a good comment :P

Given that the latter category already gets plenty of 'Why was my glorious joke deleted' 'Why can't I have an opinion', I think it shouldn't have an added layer of "I paid for this, why can I still not have it?!"

@Tinkeringbell Good point. I think that people may be less inclined to pay in order to post low value comments. So they'd still post them, but they'd mostly disappear in a couple of days. But of course, I could be totally wrong. :)

Ok. I followed the instruction, and edited my post.

@PM2Ring The problem I've seen so far with comment moderation is that what you and I think about as low quality comments is seen by others as the most important comment ever ;)

@Tinkeringbell Once again, that's a fair point. But maybe things would be different if we had a different culture regarding comments, where most comments were temporary.

Perhaps :)

@Later I am not sure what specific instruction you're referring to. In fact you did exactly the opposite of what you've been advised here. Why not simply asking that as a new question? The hope to get your question undeleted seems quite futile for me.

@πάνταῥεῖ Because they already did, and it was closed/deleted as it was said the new post was made to avoid the downvotes and duplicate closure of the first one, and it was practically a duplicate.

Because the moderator, Tinkeringbell, does not allow me.

meta.stackexchange.com/questions/348921/… < see there, @πάνταῥεῖ

Ah, I remember.

I do not know why my post should be marked as duplicate, heavily downvoted, closed and deleted while some duplicate posts should be heavily upvoted.

Because some duplicates are useful and others not, and hovering over the vote button says you vote according to usefulness.

and btw 7 upvotes is in no way heavily upvoted on a site the magnitude of MSE

That is, if I post another "Thank you Shog9" post, it will be heavily upvoted?

It would probably be closed as a duplicate.

But, the moderator here said another thing.

> Because some duplicates are useful and others not, and hovering over the vote button says you vote according to usefulness

Do you acrually believe that another "Thank you Shog9" post would be considered useful?

@πάνταῥεῖ Thank you shog every day of the year

365 shogs should be enough

I myself do not (actually, the first one was off-topics and should have been closed), but the moderator claimed another thing.

@Later Then if someone posts another duplicate thank you shog, you can downvote it for not being useful! That's how votes work, aren't they great?!

You don't even have to let us know: votes are anonymous :D

thank you shog is never not useful

The interesting point is: This post is an exact duplicate of this post, to which is referred on that post, while the latter was closed because it is duplicate and the former stayed open.

Let us speak honestly for a moment (You can delete this comment and its responses then). If my post had been created by a popular user, for example shog9 (with exactly the same content), then it would have been heavily upvoted, as you know well.

Nah, we'd probably ask Shog if he'd have lost his mind for posting a post like that, after the answers he got on math meta, and why he would still be going on and on and on about it weeks later.

MSE isn't the place to get an answer to contradict math.se so you can run back and tell everyone 'look, I was right, and you're all wrong, now listen to me'.

@Tinker Could you handle those please: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/349196/… meta.stackexchange.com/questions/349196/…

I posted my question here because it was related to any SE sites, not because of getting a favorable answer (I knew that almost all high rep users have the same way of thinking, on any SE sites). Also, please note that I never wanted to prove anything on the Meta math, as you read my post carefully; I only wanted some clarification to be included in the Help Center. Please do not accuse me of things which do not really exist; If you want to know something about my concern, you can easily ask me.

We already asked you.

And I already answered you.

@πάνταῥεῖ no need for a mod, we delete those ourselves, usually.

Also, you linked twice to the same question...

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance You're right. Tinkeringbell does that often though.

Sure, but without pings. ;)

(says the one who ping everyone ;))

2nd question was meant to be this link: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/349198/…

@πάνταῥεῖ meh, not even closed yet...

That's what Tinker often does: Close and delete single handedly :)

@Rob nothing for rubber then? :(

@Tinkeringbell well, sometimes a site policy contradicts what turns out to be network wide policy, it can happen. So we should let people try, though usually you're correct and the staff won't act against specific site's policy. (I didn't delve into the specific case here.)

@πάνταῥεῖ @ShadowKeepsSocialDistance I'll get them when they're there and I'm there too, so usually no need to ping. This is the same user though, which makes it marginally interesting enough for a ping ;)

That was my reasoning. I usually don't ping :)

Of course the supercorrect option in such cases is still a flag ;)

short official channels ;-)

@Tinkeringbell no SMS?

Oof, no :P

WhatsApp?

My phone is mostly on silent anyways ;)

Whatsapp works, sure :P

yay!

writing a script that will send WhatsApp message to @Tink for every flag posted

Didn't Glorfindel already make such a thing once? Or at least something similar for SmokeDetector + a smartwatch? :P

Fits him to do it, yeah. :D

Are you stalked by Glorfindel :/?

meta.stackexchange.com/a/318926/369802 Found it!

True story: once wrote code that made actual "beep" sound from the server whenever there was Internal Error in the website.

LOL, was the server under your desk?

Coworkers made sure to kill the code in less than a day..... :P

@rene nah, in a safe in a corner. Still loud enough to irritate everyone except me. :P

That is why SRE's wear ear protection when in the server room, due to all the beeping servers ...

lol

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance .... actually

ONE of our monitoring software has audible alerts as an option

its useful

Not when it beeps every second.... ;)

Also, had to dig in the logs to see details, it's not like it showed the error/stack trace when beeping.

Well, no audible notes. But sometimes popup notes from our CI server go wild.

heh

@πάνταῥεῖ and edible notes?

Paper can be tasty.

No, just as small screen popups.

Like this one?

You call that small?

Well, we have TeamCity. Just a small popup with a link to the failed build.

They even fade out themselves.

That post about the swag has reminded me that I still haven't gotten my swag from the stuff-a-way

Time to exercise my 4 monthly tradition of responding to the meta post about it

I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought up such a sensitive issue!

apologize to jnat, he got the ping about it :D

The ping isn't as bad as not having a good response back to you :\

I really don't wanna scrap this and tell y'all "ok, we finally have a definitive answer, which is you won't get anything"

And also don't wanna just send you stickers or whatever

but also haven't seen any movement that hints towards what we originally had in mind being feasible any time soon, so... :\

Give @Magi a diamond instead. ;)

@Tinkeringbell compared to other popups? Yes.

:D

I'll just continue my 4 monthly tradition and ask again in october :D

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance alas, my chance for that has passed

@Magisch I lost ehhhh

2 elections before I got a diamond (as a pro tem)

I've lost more then that, and more clearly

@JNat I mean, you say in your own words, you have no indication it will ever happen, so its best to just say that

@Magisch I get that, but it's not the outcome I wanted... I'll try to get a final answer in the next two weeks, I guess — it's also not fair for me to leave y'all hanging just because I'm holding on to hope

sometimes you try your best and make no mistakes and still fail

wise words.

So, I keep seeing this image shared:

Does anyone know where the solar flare comes from? I've seen some evidence for the rest being planned, but I've seen nothing about solar flares in the news...

source for the alien invasion?

Also for the asteroid?

@JohnDvorak Dutch news article this week about extraterrestial life :P

@Magisch nah, mean as compensation for not getting swag. ;)

@JohnDvorak Another news article about a giant asteroid passing close to earth, and being watched by scientists ;)

Oh, yeah, that one.

Though I do admit that one was scheduled for september 14th.

right

Perhaps that one needs a source too then. Do you think Skeptics could help? ;)

Or maybe they just got invasion and asteroid mixed up.

Easy mistake.

Apparently, the sun just came out of a long period of relative calm. Maybe that's relevant?

forbes.com/sites/jamiecartereurope/2020/05/29/…

@Tinkeringbell maybe this? news.sky.com/story/…

More likely just a joke though.

> Astronomers say the sun could be about to enter a period of extreme magnetic activity

@terdon Blegh, adblocker blockers...

@terdon I saw something about solar phases counteracting part of climate change

If that shifts, we're in for a bad time

@terdon You were taking this seriously?

XD

in unrelated news, India is breaking heat records this year

@terdon joke spiked with facts... ;)

@Tinkeringbell You need a better adblocker

... or a blocker blocker blocker.

Block the bloke

@JohnDvorak I really should install a pi hole someday.

Or that

But dad is the one that needs to order the network cable, I'm not going to do everything for him.

@Tinkeringbell ahh the joys of being the household tech person

I have both pihole and an adblocker but had no issue with that site.

Are ads falling through the hole in the pi?

Might be the pihole then, or the adblocker ;) I have Chrome and the default google adblocker...

Anyway, try this one @Tinkeringbell:outline.com/FZgULh

Nice!

Yeah, that outline.com thing is really useful.

@Tinkeringbell Oh, I need to put GeenStijl back in my news feed?

@rene nu.nl

srsly?

@rene nu.nl/wetenschap/6055860/… ;) Don't worry.

But if we're doing leaked calendars and stuff, adding a little layer of conspiracy theory about how that article is only priming us to know they're out there isn't too far-fetched? :P

:D

@Tinkeringbell I am pretty sure I have an adblocker blocker blocker userscript

I've heard rumors of such things existing. ;)

I never used adblocker.

You're insane.

How do you watch Youtube videos?!

Carefully.

The most annoying thing is that when reading news, I see tons of underwear ads.

github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer

That's awesome ^

Saw, to be accurate. Turns out that clicking the "x" and choosing "I don't want to see this kind of ad" helps. ;)

hasn't been updated in years 0_0

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance yikes

@JourneymanGeek 1836 open issues

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance Or you simply delete all ads

@Magisch nah... it doesn't bother me enough. Yet?

It wouldn't bother you at all if you had an adblocker ;)

I have a feeling this one is a familiar user..... who deleted the account and came back.... :/

If that's the case their question is obvious trolling, but... meh. Can't be sure.

Trolls are surprisingly common here. Not that they're not handled, just that people get REALLY angry at downvotes :/

Yup, result of having reputation on a meta site.

So the downvotes actually bite.

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance maybe

but that's one of those tricky things where I like the status quo ;D

Most of the time, it appears to be people who are angry at the downvotes they got on other sites.

@Spevacus then they get downvotes here too, their question is closed, and they just lose it.

True.

My son kick chairs and walls when angry.

@Spevacus or figure they can go over the heads of the mods on the other sites and it fails, hard

Easy have the head float.

Can't go over a floating head. :P

@JourneymanGeek It's like they think you guys don't speak to each other. :)

IKR?

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance Bareback only - these are the extent of rubber offered: 💆✏️🕳️🏒

@Rob So you say LaTeX isn't safe?

With the alternative being sheep's intestine, what is the implication of that (other than no benefit for the sheep)?

This whole discussion leads me back to early thought I had few weeks ago when government ordered everyone to wear a mask: why don't the government give masks for free? It's not very cheap, and for some people it's money they just don't have.

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance My understanding is that good quality masks don't prevent one from becoming infected, for the majority they increase the risk due to face touching; what they do is reduce the risk to others, but not a lot.

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance Reusable, and stylish bankrobber styled, masks are ~$4 each; that's fairly cheap:

@Rob well about same here, but most choose one-time masks, not reusable. We can get pack of 50 for $20 or so. And considering one need three masks per day in average, it's not trivial amount of money.

50 for 20!!!! they are giving them away.

Well our national intelligence agency (the infamous "Mossad") was able to flood Israel with masks.... pulling favors all around the world, they brought many millions of masks early into the crisis.

So there was never a shortage, hence the sane prices.

@Rob so reusable mask cost almost the same as disposable mask?? Now that's insane. :(

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance The US government, when ordering over half a billion masks, pays 50¢ to a buck each - Source: cnn.com/2020/04/07/politics/masks-contract-n95/index.html

Why? More resusable stuff should have the same prices as disposable stuff (with the disposable stuff being more expensive). Would probably cut down on a lot of waste.

> "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." - Captain Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation

> Making mistakes is human. Automating them is DevOps.

Using DevOps at my workplace now. It's pretty neat. :)

@Tinkeringbell reusable masks (at least here) are hand made, requiring lots of effort, so they cost more.

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance Yeah, and I'm saying make the disposable stuff just as expensive to avoid waste ;)

Buy a bra and stick that on yer face, or diapers

the state gives away 25k or so masks in this county a week

Some go the whole 9 yards, wearing everything just short of the maximum (Astronaut suit):

@Rob Putin beats them all.

Who putin Putin that?

:D

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance Some of the further out ideas:

I like the unicorn.

I've seen a lady in a full plague doctor suit. My favorite so far.

Looks friendly, fun, and not so threathening as the yellow suits!

The plague doctor suits are awesome

🚽

🦠💨

Blue-thingy-wind?

Plague Doctor

Ah.

yeah, that's gross.

Remember that some folks live with severely immunocompromised people. This isn't just paranoia, you cannot know what they need to protect from.

So maybe you go out to buy groceries because your spouse has no immune system, so you take every precaution you possibly can...

If someone would do that while dressed as a unicorn, I might let them do so for me ;)

@ShadowKeepsSocialDistance ours did

Twice

In the response to "Should I downvote", it is explicitly stated here that

> Try to remember that beginners are still learning terminology, and even the simplest of answers might be eluding them simply because they did not know what to search for. There could also be language barriers at play.

It also states:

> It's difficult to describe the subtleties that differentiate struggling from clearer patterns of abusing the privilege to ask questions; use your best judgement and try to assume the best in people. But if the questions are unclear and the asker is either unable or unwilling to provide clarity, then they aren't useful additions to the site.

while my first Meta post has been wrongly marked as duplicate, heavily downvoted, closed, and deleted; its author also has been heavily blamed.

πάνταῥεῖ: That quote is not about beginners' posts.

I can't spot any heavy blaming there. Also, you're not really a beginner.

@Later last warning: Drop it. (same goes for you @πάνταῥεῖ)

I am not a beginner?! That was my first Meta post.

You might have missed my earlier message?

Good evening folks. If an RO requests someone drop something, its a clear sign it should be ;)

when is a request not a request

wrong protocol?

RO's demanding things now?

Riot!

How can I delete this room? It's not needed anymore. Can a mod do that for me, if I am not allowed to do that myself?

@ArtOfCode Where can I ask to regain my SmokeDetector privileges?

there is no room, only zuuuuul

Woah, that was weird.

@Spevacus speak softly, and bit ankles

It just... poofed before my eyes.

tastes like tofurky

@JourneymanGeek ty

@JourneymanGeek speaks quietly... Riot in the streets, my friends... The Room Owners are pulling rank.

@Spevacus technically I am, And I am the law. Vaguely

I don't actually remember if I'm still an RO here :D

checks

Yes.

(I never removed it from root access because ... tradition ;D )

@Spevacus Good dupe finding.

@πάνταῥεῖ Cheers. That view-source tag only had 10 other questions, one of which was that dupe. I think I'll try and draft an excerpt and wiki for it...

Good idea.