@Tinkeringbell look nasty, hope you're all fine there!
@Rob oh, the blue one. OK.
@Rob might be! Sadly no way to know unless I'll go to her place and ask her to show her tongue. While spending time in jail sounds like interesting experience, I'll pass.
so, just noticed I'm question banned on SO, but I seem to only have a single downovted (under 0) question there, and not sure how to get out of it...(got a couple other one that seem to be in the green side but still at 0 upvote, so i guess it was downvoted -> upvoted)
will formatting the downovted question I did repair this? (the one under 0 upvote)
@NordTheLoftyWizard There is no one magic way to get out of a question ban, except increasing the quality of your posts. I doubt that's something that can be achieved by something as simple as formatting.
@Tinkeringbell so what should i do then? wait 6 months or so like the help center mention it and be able to ask that one question that might or might not be get me out of this "ban"?
@Tinkeringbell yeah no, I understand that. And I'm thankful of your honesty too, just thought it would be more hopeful you know? (as in, different solution beside what the help center mentioned, etc)
at least I can do what @Luuklag mentioned for now and see. if worst push to shove, I guess I'd have to make a meta post, although that might either make me question banned on meta SO or go into downvote hell or something...
@Tinkeringbell I mean, using a sockpuppet for asking question is a bit weird, but I guess I could use that as my very last card or something (if that's the last things to try)
This is gonna sounds weird, but should/could I use the term Ad hominem (I checked the definition to be sure, though I already knew the term before) in a question, so that I don't need to list every possible reason/alternative to some [topic] or such?
I'm asking because it kinda sounds inappropriate to me, but I'm unsure
I mainly want to say that to prevent argument that I already can see coming based on what I'm gonna ask, eg: asking about egg recipe on cooking.SE and you can already guess someone will say something like "did you try checking online" or "do you even know how to make an omelette or other basic eggs based recipe?"
Of course I'm aware it won't prevent those argument from occurring, but it does have the possibility to save time on me and the other person saying those things, if they acknowledge I already know/I'm aware of what they would say
@JourneymanGeek yeah, but I didn't found a shorter term to say what I described above, so it kinda feel just right but maybe too direct. (unless I'm just reading too much into it)
They will of course say that it doesn't change anything, they always say that. Though so far I haven't found a big reason to immediately distrust Prosus (never heard of them before)
I think we'll be working on something for meta to see what questions y'all have. No timeline on that - as you might understand, we weren't able to plan for this since it was kept very quiet internally.
@Catija I would have loved to see the faces of the lawyers and negotiators involved if someone had asked if you could share the meta announcement on the moderator Teams before it is official ;-)
anyway. i'm a bit confused about how SO/SE works in terms of business. does this only affect SO, or SE? are they distinct companies, or does SE own SO, or is SO the company that owns the whole SE network?
This morning, Prosus (PROSY) has announced its intention to acquire Stack Overflow for 1.8 billion dollars. This is tremendously exciting news for our employees, our customers, our community members, and for our shareholders, and I will share a bit more about what it all means.
unless you already know SO is the name of the company i honestly would not be surprised if people think SO is splitting off from the network and was acquired on its own without the rest of us
Please. It feels like there's a lot of assumptions going on here when this is so, so new. There's only so much stuff we can do.
Let us circle up and figure out how we're going to come to the community and do something that's focused on y'all rather than the marketing release that is the Blog.
The fact that there was no mention of the network in the marketing release kinda highlights that the network is treated as an afterthought, though, even when the whole thing is part of a billion dollar deal.
It's worth remembering that the company thinks that "Stack Overflow" = The entire platform. Yeah, it would have been nice if there was a specific statement about the network but in the context of people who write this, there's a definition that isn't the same as the one y'all have.
No, the point is that the term "Stack Overflow" means "the whole network" to the people writing this. In our legal terms, the whole corporation is, after all, called "Stack Overflow", which owns the entire thing.
The omission of a mention of the rest of the network in that blog post does not itself indicate that Prosus, Stack Overflow, Prashanth (the CEO), or anyone else has forgotten or does not care about the rest of the network.
The other thing to consider is that to the public "SO" is probably a familiar name whereas "SE" might raise some confusion as to what it is. Not sure though, I'm not at all sure about how well-known either is in general.
"An exciting day! @spolsky called me and let me know. Today's sale of Stack Overflow, most importantly, lets Stack Overflow continue as an independent site -- and also mints 61 new millionaires." - Jeff Atwood
> "the most important part of this announcement is that Stack Overflow will continue to operate independently, with the exact same team in place that has been operating it, according to the exact same plan and the exact same business practices. Don’t expect to see major changes or awkward “synergies”. The business of Stack Overflow will continue to focus on Reach and Relevance, and Stack Overflow for Teams. The entire company is staying in place: we just have different owners now"
One potential concern which is more applicable to the "oddball" sites like Code Golf/Puzzling is that if Prosus is focussed a lot on learning/education, we're potentially going to get even less attention. I know there's no way to make a judgement either way on this, but its a concern expressed over on Code Golf
@cairdcoinheringaahing let's remind ourselves again that they bought the company called Stack Overflow, not the site called Stack Overflow. The company that got sold will keep the same focus or due to having more funds available smaller sites will benefit as well. I admit most people love to only consider the darker outcome.
Most private equity firms don't take an active role in managing their owned companies. It's extremely rare to see an investment firm take management actions or veto actions of local management - they just own it and sit back and relax as they earn dividends.
That's true. Admittedly, I didn't put much thought into how much that concern would actually make sense, but the fact is our community has felt undersupported for a rather long time and so that was a concern I immediately thought of. But yeah, even if Prosus is a learning site (which it seems like it's more of just an investor), it's probably unlikely to affect SO's distribution of resources, or if anything, improving it with more funds.
I think we'll be working on something for meta to see what questions y'all have. No timeline on that - as you might understand, we weren't able to plan for this since it was kept very quiet internally.
This is starting to look like a good (or at least neutral) change. Do you think they didn't use the phrase "Stack Exchange" simply to avoid confusing people?
It's worth remembering that the company thinks that "Stack Overflow" = The entire platform. Yeah, it would have been nice if there was a specific statement about the network but in the context of people who write this, there's a definition that isn't the same as the one y'all have.
So yeah, that's probably about as official as an answer you're going to get :P whether or not it was done to avoid confusing people can be left up for discussion, after all not mentioning it also creates confusion :P
"'Stack Overflow' = (the name of) The entire platform" is what was meant by that, right? I misunderstood it as meaning "'Stack Overflow' = (the only thing on) The entire platform" earlier.
@user The good thing with that is that all of the low quality questions would be drawn to it, thus keeping the rest of the sites safe. Almost like a rod of sorts.... :P
I know it’s bounties, because of the previous conversation. However Kevin B said they’ll never use the bounty system again, meaning they would have to get 29 downvotes to get to 1k rep. (Or have an answer deleted of spam / rude or abusive)
There's a bunch of asterisks to that, but that's likely true. For instance, if a hypothetical investor in the last round invested at a $2B valuation, they'd have lost money.
There are also equity stakes not represented by that investment: the founders and likely a bunch of the employees also have equity.
