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12:00 PM
@terdon-stopharmingMonica And even if it does... people say there's not enough volunteers to do the work, to keep some bigger sites clean. There's a lot of posts on how these volunteers would like their tools improved, for example. But I can't think of one within 10 seconds that asks for a feature to e.g. get better question quality on SO from a 1-rep user with a question point of view.
@Magisch They'd still have to attribute.
 
and without public Q/A teams could not and would not exist. It's main selling point is how similar it is to public Q/A
 
@Magisch Oh, the content belongs to the authors, sure. But the network belongs to SE and always has.
 
@Tinkeringbell That is a leverage problem
 
It's an interest problem. SE inc simply don't care much about the public Q&A. On the other hand, we care exclusively about the public Q&A. So the company is stuck with these loud, annoying users who keep focusing on the part of their product line that makes the least money for them.
2
 
a curator has investment in the site and can be brought on board to affect change. A 1 rep question asker is statistically likely to never engage with the site again, to never use a vote or any systems, and to never care one iota beyond getting their answer. You have no leverage over unengaged question askers, but you do over curators
 
12:02 PM
@Magisch Oh, it is, probably... But it was a random thought that crossed my mind when I saw messages about volunteer work and participation...
@Magisch Exactly... but you need those 1 rep askers to become engaged...
 
@terdon-stopharmingMonica I'd say thats a perception problem. SE management needs to realize that teams exists by the grace and success of public Q/A, not the other way around
 
Otherwise they'll never grow into curators.
 
nobody would be using teams if the Q/A model wasn't demonstrably working and pre-familiar in public Q/A
 
But you don't see them saying 'if I had X, I could've posted a better question and become a curator'
 
@Magisch I don't think that's true at all. The brand, SO, has been well and truly established. I really don't think that Teams need the public Q&A at all any more.
 
12:04 PM
@Tinkeringbell You never will. it takes a very rare kind of user to take interest in encyclopedic knowledge curation, while having questions you want answers to is something everyone does and has.
 
@Magisch So how did you start?
 
JAD
@terdon-stopharmingMonica now, sure. Will it stay that way if the public Q&A goes?
 
How did anyone in here start becoming a curator?
 
I know a whole bunch of excellent software devs who you could never, not in a trillion years and not with any tooling or community in the world convince to start answering questions and curating. they have simply no interest
 
So sure, a few years ago, the public side was essential but since SE seem to think that part's mission accomplished I really don't think they care much about the public Q&A anymore. And, well, look at them! Do their actions make you feel like they do care?
2
 
12:05 PM
when they have a question, they look for a solution. Somewhere in that chain is "ask on SO" as a tool like any other
 
@JAD Who knows. Maybe. There are professional programmers working today who don't even remember the world before SO.
 
@Tinkeringbell How does wikipedia have editors despite their network of bureaucracy? Some people naturally have an interest in these things
 
They used it while studying in university. These people will always remember it even if it disappears as a public tool tomorrow.
This is why I just don't think there's any point in trying to get the company to do anything at all. They don't care.
 
@Magisch And some people stick around after their first post is a good one, it encourages them. I don't know if I'd be where I am now if my first post would've been crap and no-one helped me fixed the parts that were fixable...
 
What a shame then that increasingly nobody is here to do the fixing
you're more likely to get your question ignored (no votes, no comments, no answer) then closed these days...
 
12:09 PM
@Tinkeringbell My first question was closed as a duplicate to a question that was asking a different question but the answer touched upon that question. I was annoyed about that for about.... five years?
 
most of the unwelcomingness that developed is a symptom of there not being enough people to do the curation, so the ones left have to be efficient with their time: they use interaction-agnostic feedback like downvotes, they use curt, even canned comments.
 
@Magisch And that's where some things fail... if there's not enough volunteers to do that, because the volume increased exponentially more than the amount of volunteers...
So you ask the volunteers what they need, but you can also ask people with questions what would've stopped them from becoming extra volunteers.
 
I'd argue the only real way to get ahold of that problem is to limit the amount of questions that come in
 
Or get people to at least 'curate' their own question in some way, maybe even before it's posted, but perhaps also after...
@Mithical No offense, but you're always a bad example :P
 
;)
It did make me rather reluctant to ask another question after that.
 
12:14 PM
@Mithical Yeah, so it's not too crazy to think that people that do get a 'bad' first impression are hesitant to become volunteers that help others not have that experience ;)
 
My first question was this: stackoverflow.com/questions/32947798/… some 4 years ago, when I was just starting out my apprenticeship
Oh lord I had no idea what I was doing whatsoever
 
@Mithical That's something I hadn't considered before but seems obvious in retrospect: the experience of a new user will be completely different depending on whether the user is coming in as an asker or an answerer.
3
 
Rob
Above PM2Ring gave a link to Jeff's blog, after reading that article I went to check what is new - apparently he's going all electric. The subject of his latest article was that the cost of batteries (the major cost of electric vehicles, especially scooters) had dropped by half in a few years. That led to a video about his latest purchase, a 30 kmh scooter that they're happy with. Thing is, the newest scooters go 3x as fast - so fast that they can spin their tires when you're already
going 30 kmh
 
My first experience with SE was on Super User where I started by answering, not asking. And someone came in and made constructive edits (fixing capitalizations, minor corrections) and I was hooked immediately. The fact that i) the site allowed such edits and ii) some helpful person took the time to fix my post made me love the site.
 
12:21 PM
How do you find your first question/answer?
 
Rob
😋
 
@djsmiley2k-CoW Probably your network profile, see which site you first earned rep on, then sort your site profile q/a's there by activity?
Should get you close :P
 
the crux of the question is what everyone wants the site to be: The best help desk it can be or the best repository it can be
 
@Magisch The best repository, but it needs a good helpdesk to be that?
 
because the latter implies a default-adversarial relationship to askers: they're being asked to justify (sometimes at length) why their question is worth being in the repository
 
12:23 PM
@djsmiley2k-CoW what tink said. I know I first started on Super User, so I can just go to my profile, sort by Newest and go to the last page.
 
@terdon-stopharmingMonica Tink said activity though, not newest... so tink is sorry!
 
for instance, to spin it on your site. I have some interpersonal problems I'd like to ask about, but my questions would be closed there certainly.
Not very welcoming, is it? You can't do anything about it though
 
True. But IPS at least has 'enough' volunteers to a.) Explain why they're off-topic, b.) Suggest edits/improvements in comments c.) Help you out in a Sandbox or chat.

SO can't even do that, if I believe the people I talk with.
 
of course SO can't do that
there are hundreds of thousands of new question askers, and substantially fewer volunteers
 
And that's why I think it's not so bad to not just ask meta for input, but also the people that ask their first question and aren't 'engaged' like some people put it... because they might have ideas on what a good fence holding them back may look like too!
 
12:26 PM
a huge contingent of questions don't even get a passing attention from a volunteer, let alone an answer or useful comment or edit
 
Or how they'd like to be 'caught' when they do fall
 
I think it's an ultimately unsolvable scale problem
 
Rob
@djsmiley2k-CoW Probably this but it's possible that you or someone else deleted an earlier Q|A, so SEDE ...
 
Thanks.
 
meta.stackexchange.com/a/339649/369802 < That one is actually... nice and well thought out?
 
12:34 PM
@djsmiley2k-CoW I just remembered what it was.
 
:O
it was like 10 yrs ago ;D
 
I remembered mine too, but only because I've had conversations about first posts before so I've looked it up a few times.
No way I'd remember it otherwise, my first post was in 2012.
 
Looks like my first two posts were actually two hours and twenty minutes apart. Interesting.
They're from 2014, not 2012, though, so maybe easier to remember :)
 
Hmm. I posted on 2012-02-12, then 2019-02-19 and then came back in August and started participating in earnest.
 
12:56 PM
@Mithical Ah, yeah... just like you shouldn't ask your first question on SO or IPS, SFF is probably not a great choice either :P
 
I've never tried eggnog.
 
It's just a reversed gone
Star it and see what happens. ;)
 
1:07 PM
@ShadowThePrincessWizard yes, I know :)
 
I didn't :D This is fun :D
 
@ShadowThePrincessWizard Unicode tricks!
I don't speak any languages that are written right-to-left, is it hard to switch from one to the other when switching between Hebrew and English? Or is it completely natural by now? I mean, is it any harder to switch direction when reading/writing than it is to switch between languages when speaking?
 
Eh, not that hard.
 
@terdon-stopharmingMonica puy
 
JAD
it's something that trips me up when reading anime, that's for sure
 
1:15 PM
@terdon-stopharmingMonica you mean technically? It's just ALT+SHIFT
Direction is up to the software, e.g. to switch the textbox in a browser to be RTL usually CTRL+RIGHT SHIFT works.
 
I use ctrl-shift to switch languages...
 
You're unique
;)
 
@ShadowThePrincessWizard No, I mean in your head. I'm not asking @Mithical since I know they're not a native Hebrew speaker, but you are (I think) so I'm wondering if you find it is more of a cognitive effort to switch between reading English and Hebrew (where you need to switch direction) than it is to switch between speaking them.
 
@terdon-stopharmingMonica oh. Never thought about it. But no, I don't find it difficult in any way. :)
It's just natural.
 
Fair enough. Thanks.
 
1:19 PM
._.
So far today, I've installed a new graphics card and a state of the art wireless NIC... and installed windows 1 and linux... 3x times troubleshooting that and my wired NIC ._.
good day
 
Although I think it has helped my ability to read English backwards or mirrored (e.g. on Puzzling).
 
@Mithical dyslexia helps with that ;p
 
@Mithical Was the direction one of the main hurdles you had to overcome when learning Hebrew?
 
Nope. I've been reading the text for nearly as long as I've been reading English, so that's not the problem, but my vocabulary only started getting a boost when I moved here... although not quite as much as it should have gotten.
 
@terdon-stopharmingMonica Do you easily get confused by 'weirdly formatted' signs? There's been memes about those, while I do find them funny, my brain is usually pretty good about picking out the right 'order' of words... I don't really know if it's comparable to reading directions for languages, but it sort of sounds that way?
 
1:24 PM
@Mithical IIRC, there was a psychology experiment in which they had the subjects glasses (goggles) that inverted everything. People adjusted surprisingly quickly (days, a week or to?). And found it confusing and different when they took the glasses off.
 
@Tinkeringbell Not at all. But I was raised bilingual which also apparently helps. I'm a native speaker of Greek and English which have different alphabets, for example, and I have no trouble at all switching between those. It's only the direction that I've never tried changing and that seems like a more basic aspect of language since it changes what comes "first" and "next".
 
@terdon-stopharmingMonica Oh... yeah, it's still weird to not say one-and-twenty in English :P
 
I knew Tink was from the 1700s.
 
And this is broader than language too, it affects the way we look at things in general. We (you and I, for example) tend to look at anything in a left-to-right, then top-to-bottom direction while someone from Japan will likely look top-to-bottom first and an Arabic or Hebrew speaker will go right-to-left. It's really interesting how many aspects of our interaction with the world language affects.
 
@JourneymanGeek a NIC for a PC? I didn't know that was worthwhile, now motherboards integrate that functionality. What's the advantage?
 
1:32 PM
@Raedwald to have incompatible drivers and other conflicts at several IRQs? He is afterall in support, it is called job security ;)
 
@Raedwald the built in one randomly died ;p
fun issue since I only had it twice in 5 years
for wireless - I'm messing with 802.11ax ones
 
@terdon-stopharmingMonica Except when crossing the street! Then it's right-left-right! :P
 
Rob
It's neither left nor right, it's the direction that you are not looking; 'cuz that's where they get ya from.
 
@Rob England nearly managed to kill me... you usually look left, right, left here when crossing a 'double' street with traffic from both ways. In England, it's the other way round. I remembered though :P
 
1:48 PM
@Tinkeringbell I encountered the same thing here in India, from the USA...except it's much worse here because nobody follows traffic laws.
 
Rob
@Tinkeringbell Four and twenty.
You have to keep looking, there's people whom drive the wrong way and bicyclists.
 
JAD
@Tinkeringbell At least in London it's on all crossings what direction you should look. The dangerous moment is when you think you can do it without consciously thinking about it
 
@JAD Well, you kinda need to look at your feet to see that!
There was much more to see than that :P
 
JAD
well yeah, but I hope you're not busy looking at buildings while crossing streets
 
@Tinkeringbell I live in the UK. Now, both are equally natural which means I freak out when crossing a road anywhere. I never know where to look!
@JAD and they've done it reasonably: just "look right". They did the same thing in Barcelona but it was three or four lines of text. The first time I saw it, I was in the middle of the street, looking back by the time I got to the end. So it actually put me at risk instead of protecting me!
 
1:59 PM
@terdon-stopharmingMonica Well, apparently it's on the crossing in London, so if it's not... do it the other way round? :P
 
Rob
You got to be a goat or Linda Blair to cross the road.
 
(I did see those when I visited London... but they really weren't enough to keep me from being danger)
 
2:13 PM
I had to frequently walk around the blocks in the city of Austin so many times, that I just memorized the traffic patterns and knew when to begin walking.
 
Rob
Impeachment is better than impearment - pears are much too hard and have a stalk that can poke your eye.
 
groan
 
@Tinkeringbell Are you channeling henders?
 
@Magisch Maybe :)
 
2:24 PM
Though that would mean Henders passed on, otherwise you can't really channel, can you? So then, perhaps not.
Nah, this was an 'original' groan, not just some copy-pasted one :P
 
2:41 PM
@GhostCatsaysReinstateMonica I think such a site should be completely separated from the SE network. Use Twitter or something, not another SE site.
 
Notepad++ :P
 
type it into the void, use all the expletives and foul language you want, let your inner demons out. Then, don't post it
works wonders for when you want to scream at the top of your lungs
 
"Please forgive me, I've got demons in my head..." (possible foul language, don't remember)
 
in notepad++ nobody can hear you scream and curse :D
 
@Tinkeringbell yeah, but I don't know which is the "right" way anymore!
 
2:48 PM
@terdon-stopharmingMonica I just check both sides, twice
 
@Magisch For even better cursing, learn to write cursive :P
@JourneymanGeek maniac.
 
@Tinkeringbell oh
 
@JourneymanGeek yep, me too. But yeah, what tink said.
 
There's a reason for that
I'm incapable of telling right and left
 
@JourneymanGeek Left is where your thumb is on the right!
 
2:49 PM
sigh
There's a bit of a story actually
and there's literally a post it on my monitor saying "<--- Right Left --->"
 
I always check both sides crossing the street because I don't trust drivers
 
I suspect its from being born a left hander, and being made to switch
 
When someone decides to take the street rules as a suggestion instead I'm still a smear on the sidewalk
 
@JourneymanGeek Ohhh, that's an interesting theory
 
also contributes to dyslexia according to some
 
2:52 PM
@Magisch Oh man. Never live in a Mediterranean country. Or south American, for that matter.
 
@terdon-stopharmingMonica I've also heard @Sonic advise against India... is there any safe place left? :P
 
Did you consider België?
 
Ehhh... Maybe? :P
 
There is a song in there, somewhere
 
Haha
Yes
 
2:54 PM
Great song too, really!
 
@Mast Too cheery. I'm on a 'life sucks' playlist on Spotify right now, doesn't suit the mood :P
 
@Mithical explain exactly how they are prioritizing building the best Q&A platform they can, and not earn the most money as quick as possible, with specific examples, which sounds impossible at this point, unfortunately. See, I'm not even talking about PR stuff like apologies, defamatory statement retraction, legal misstep fixes, it already doesn't seem possible without any of that. But it's okay, I guess, there was a reason SE was created, then there will be a reason another site will be created
@Magisch just fyi, this is exactly what's been up for a loong time
one of the things I'd like em to do is put their usual "priorities" on pause for 2-3 months and just do what the most upvoted bug reports or feature requests have been asking for for years
I think it would be one of the best things they could do to make it look like they're finally listening to the community's wants
just go down the list, and talk with us about why something can't be done, so we can explore it further and think of a better solution to some UX problem
when was the last time they've done that for significant features, not just cosmetic/technical fixes like missing apostrophes and unclosed braces
 
That part is interesting, but... what would you think about turning it around a bit? Meta shouldn't really 'set' the priority list for a product, unless it's serious bugs that really break the site.

So, how about 'this is our roadmap and the things we're working on, we'd like specific feedback focused on this, bugs that turn up while we roll things out, things we can take into account when building something'? A bit like when they decided to redo HNQ and posted a question asking for input on that specific bit of functionality?
There's a load of feature requests out there, but they're also... all over the place. I don't know about SE, but the software I'm working on sees the most progress if we just iterate over specific functionality each time.
 
posting the roadmap would be a start
followed by actually being open to criticism and demonstrating that, e.g. axing things from it that are unpopular
 
3:05 PM
And ask our users what they'd like to see improved on that specific part, or pick up their requests when we actually get to it (and our users understand that that's the case, that they don't really set the priorities).
 
if the management and devs posted their "to-do" list for the next month or two it would be epic for transparency
 
@Magisch I'm not sure we should have influence on the contents of the actual roadmap, just perhaps on the 'how' of the stuff that's being worked on. And I kinda got the impression the 'The Loop' series was a bit like that too...
 
so epic that I'd say it's never going to happen
 
funny thing is - my main issues are with the human/user angle over the roadmap
 
@Tinkeringbell why not? It's for public Q/A. The community of public Q/A should if not decide at least have a say
It's fair to widen the definition of community to include folks outside of meta too, but in general there should be a public and transparent process to work out what should go on the roadmap
 
3:08 PM
@Magisch Perhaps, but then we're back at that blogpost that was shared this morning, about not letting meta decide what you work on... Because it's either just technically not feasible, or asking for a truck instead of a car.
 
I just don't like that the posts which have definitely attracted enough votes to consider them something the community wants management/dev feedback on get ignored, nevermind if they're useful or not, just answer them to that effect then, but answer, don't ignore
which is why I say go down the list of highest voted and post ANYTHING
 
@Tinkeringbell The brass tax this comes down to is that the users need to have more influence on the dev cycle then the devs
just like when I build functionality for work I have some unalienable constraints but I would be monumentally stupid to try and decide what the users should like, and usability testing and feedback is essential to build a working product
 
@Tinkeringbell I'm not happy with the Loop mainly because I can't use it. Maybe if I could use it I'd care less.
 
@user1306322 that's not how it has ever worked
 
But in its current state, it excludes a certain percentage of the userbase, and thus is not a viable solution for anything.
 
3:11 PM
@JourneymanGeek yea, this is why we're here, isn't it?
 
@Mithical Ehhh... A lot of people are using 'the Loop' to mean different things. 'The Loop' is a blog post series. "Through the Loop" is that survey that goes with the blog post.
 
I'm using it to mean the feedback mechanism.
 
Then people are also using the loop to mean any of the proposed feedback loops in that blog post...
 
but there has to be a balance between "the small number of meta users/non devs on non SO sites.. don't matter" vs "making a better hammer for the masses"
 
we've always dealt with a degree of "lack of transparency" but that degree has grown greater and greater and it's reaching 360°
 
3:13 PM
@Magisch Sure. but still, my management decided where the budget goes: Improving data input, improving error handling, refactoring, UI... We can listen to users on all those points (okay, except refactoring, perhaps)... but unless there's a bug that prevents users from using the application at all, it's the job of management to make decisions about priorities, and keep in mind not only users but also business and other constraints (here, that sometimes means laws or regulations on input formats)
 
If my management made decisions that negatively affected my users, they'd hear it from me in the retrospective
 
what I'm proposing is a way to make the community feel no longer ignored, even if the suggestions are not acted upon, they will still be addressed and seen as recognized by staff, which is good enough in my experience for that purpose
 
and if they kept doing that, they would be unsuitable for holding management positions.
Not that I could fire them, but I might quit or look elsewhere. Which puts the amount of departures from SE recently into a new light if you want to see it that way
 
a notch up from that would be if on the suggestions they'd say they just won't do as posted, they'd ask "can you think of a better way to do that?" to allow users to improve those requests in hopes of maybe actually getting things changed for the better in a different way
 
After all, my users (and SE users too) are in essence workers working for the benefit and profit of the company I'm working for.
 
3:16 PM
@Magisch That's... not really what I was getting at, my management still does decide positively towards the users.
 
doesn't sound unreasonable, right? but for some reason we're not even there yet
 
@Tinkeringbell My management also knows that perception is just as important as reality, and will scrupulously avoid demoralizing the users, as they are the profit-generating machine.
 
@user1306322 Okay... but if they'd ask that right now, I'd think they're working on it, or have plans of working on it... what if they're not? You're only creating more 'feedback' that isn't getting any 'visible' results
 
but this is just like customer support 101 stuff - "thank you for your feedback, do you have any suggestions on how we may improve?" or "unfortunately we can't help you with this issue, is there anything else (or any other way) we can help you with?" - they don't ask that frequently enough imo
@Tinkeringbell of course we're going to need to see some results
 
people hate insincerity, that would go down like a lead baloon @user1306322
 
3:19 PM
@user1306322 so, then better to do what I first suggested, about asking for feedback once something is on the roadmap?
 
it can't be just "we recently posted on 200 feature requests that have been ignored for ages that we're not gonna act on any of them"
 
Also.. never say never.
So yeah, I'd rather not see that :P
 
What is the purpose of this exercise
 
I'm not sure :D
 
@Magisch I just gave the most basic examples I could think of, there's gotta be some PR person who can think of more appropriate phrasing so it wouldn't sound like "corporate talk"
 
3:21 PM
Are you conducting an academic exploration into how user feedback works or is this just spitballing
@user1306322 It feels like in the service of not upsetting people they're upsetting them more
 
@Magisch I thought we were just spitballing... because Mith asked about that one thing SE could do to make things better?
 
If you're not going to listen to meta because it doesn't represent the cultural values you want and because of business constraints, why not just say it?
What good comes from lying?
 
@Magisch eh, not everyone is hostile to, or ignores meta
a few prominant folks are
and I see them in the comments when they mess up and someone decides to be helpful
 
@Magisch Actually, getting a more concrete message that MSE is still valued but also explains how it could do better (like giving focused feedback, and using it to ask for that)... doesn't sound too bad to me.
 
@Tinkeringbell that gets a bit tricky, and winning back meta's probably going to ... be a while
 
3:24 PM
I think the usefulness of meta is a function of how one uses meta, like how useful the internet is only limited by your ability to make use of it
 
and need certain things they're not really willing to do
 
@user1306322 That's a good way of putting it :)
 
there are very high signal-to-noise ratio posts like basically any bug post, almost no nonsense or off-topic comments
I like seeing them a lot, they're like the janitor who keeps mopping during any apocalyptic event
 
@user1306322 that's positive though
we need those
 
3:26 PM
really gives you a baseline to ground yourself in this reality
Peter Mortensen with those constant Active Readings, still don't know what that means, sorry Peter
 
Means he read through the thing carefully and fixed stuff ;p
 
I'm glad someone does
 
He's kinda legendary
even was on the podcast
 
@user1306322 Active reading is a way of reading, where you actually interact with the content :P So he's just making edits while reading stuff, so it sticks better, if I understand correctly ;)
> Try these techniques to make your reading active

Underline or highlight key words and phrases as you read. When you return to it later on, you can easily see which points you identified as important. Be selective - too much highlighting won't help.
Make annotations in the margin to summarise points, raise questions, challenge what you've read, jot down examples and so on. You can do this in printed books or etexts. This takes more thought than highlighting, so you'll probably remember the content better. (Use sticky notes if you don't want to mark the text.)
 
by any chance did he post any fixes to the transcript later? :p
I think I actually saw his edit suggestions in blog comment section
that man is an international treasure
maybe a changelog of fixed bugs and improvements would be a good motivator for everyone
I guess we kinda have a very visible repository of problems to get depressed about but not a repository of good stuff that's done to look at and be reassured and proud of
github does this via commit heatmaps
we could have a "fixed bugs" heatmap page or something
test
hmm apparently hitting ctrl+shitf+x toggles right-to-left in firefox
so this is how I've been accidentally doing it every couple of years
@Mithical ctrl-shift gang represent!
 
3:49 PM
@Tinkeringbell I'd love this. It's something I've been telling SE to do for probably close to a year. Their communication with their userbase shows a massive disconnect.
 
@Magisch I don't think that's true, I think the majority is actually on the better side of both progress and political correctness, and not in a limited US-centric way that the staff seems to be, but yea they're not going to risk giving up the control in this way, so it's only a theory we can entertain, at least on this site
honestly if they just read all the proposed solutions, even the bad ones, the signal to noise ratio is so high they could just pick random items from top 5 and get better results than what they're doing on their own
 
@user1306322 it's a very vulgar word in . . . Vietnamese
Viet Cong soldiers yelled "Active Reading!" before an ambush
Which made an ambush kinda pointless, hmm
@ShadowThePrincessWizard (/¯◡ ‿ ◡)/¯ ~ ┻━┻
@JourneymanGeek Keep up the good work man! . . . dog!
<3
 
3
A: Are SE donations happening this year?

Robert CartainoYes! the 11th annual Stack Overflow Gives Back is underway and we will be making the same charitable donations as in as previous years. There were some scheduling conflicts early on so I'm getting started a bit later than usual, but the emails inviting Moderators to make their charity selections ...

 
Although I have no idea what it is you're keeping up or if I would endorse it
 
the tail, keep it high
 
3:59 PM
@user1306322 well lemme guess, "how much could 0.015 % of the userbase donate anyway?" Cleanly wiped off the list of where to look for
 
idk dat gofundme could be used to gauge average raisable amount...
 
Not bad for a 0.015 percent
Or maybe it was a rounding error, it's actually 0.0152 percent. It makes all the difference you know
Anyway, I have no idea what I'm saying, having woken up from a nap
 
so you're saying u r WOKE
I just heard the phase "woke culture" the other day...
I thought it was just a word to use in memes about babies who don't sleep at night
 
haha
that's one way to read it I guess
I don't suppose you jive any jifts to jirls?
 
4:03 PM
In fact, the expression on the face is frigging priceless. I should save it for later
 
I'm not good at reading certain animal faces, and now I'm thinking if I just said something animalist...
 
@user1306322 Not dressed in red
 
I know what a cat is feeling when I look at it, but idk anything about what a dog is thinking
 
@M.A.R. I can look like that too! If I comb my hair a certain way XD
 
I guess I'm not a dog person because it's hard for me to empathize with dogs
cats are my jam tho
but… not in a literal way…
(Alf flashbacks)
 
4:06 PM
In the roadblock sense of course
The closest I will get to having a pet is my pills
 
I just keep imagining the most horrific readings and I gotta stop
do your pills express a wide range of emotions such that you can empathize with them?
 
@user1306322 cat jam sounds quite vile
 
now that you said it I can envision it on the store shelf next to goose liver patè
 
@user1306322 no but they're round and cute
That's the whole purpose
 
are there any stats on who reads the blog posts among the users and how it affects anything?
(I don't think enough people listen to podcasts to even consider them)
I've been re-reading some meta discussions lately
I think we need to change how up/downvote buttons look like on Meta and what the hover text says in order to fix the eternal September problem with what the votes mean on meta
I'm veeeeery tired of "but it's always been that way!"
it's been flawed that way from day one
unfortunately there is almost zero chance it's going to change ever
funny how I keep saying this about different long-time issues, huh
 
4:25 PM
34
Q: Can we change the mouse over text for voting on meta?

terdon - stop harming MonicaDespite the fact that votes mean something different on meta, or at least can mean something different on meta, the mouse over text when hovering over the up/down vote buttons on meta sites is the same as in the main sites: We all know we get an inordinate amount ...

 
mouseover text is not enough
it needs to be immediately obvious that these votes are not the same votes as on main sites, without ANY user interaction, just from a printed out screenshot on a black and white sheet of paper
I'm not a UXician but I know that much
absolute mad lad proposition: what if we displayed a plaque to all "new contributors" which appeared when their post on meta gets negative score which says "Don't be discouraged about downvotes! Unlike the main site, votes on Meta can mean <…>"
Yeah , , honestly I'm a little tired of saying "Uhhh oooon Meta, downvotes are different. Yadayadayada be happy dont be sad." It should be obnoxious too. Like once you open your post a huge javascript-screen blinks saying "here... downvotes are different. downvotes are better." — Adel Mar 27 '14 at 19:58
it's all been said and done before, I can just open up a random post and all my thoughts are already there
190
Q: Change upvote/downvote tooltip on meta sites

tshepangSince voting on meta sites mean something different on the main sites, can you change the tooltip as well: This question is useful and clear --> I agree This question is unclear or not useful --> I disagree This answer is useful --> I agree This answer is not useful --> I disagree ...or somet...

last time someone edited the tag it was Jeff Atwood in 2011
look at the answer scores though
I don't like how people read the question as is, vote on their initial feelings and move on
 
4:44 PM
meh
 
not meh
if it was meh, I wouldn't be here lol
I like it when people think of a way to address the underlying problem and propose different solutions
not just downvote and be gone
 
Why bother fixing a system that's being ignored/replaced
 
I'm using these systems
not just on this site
I want to know how to fix them so I can fix them somewhere else
and if I can fix them here too, even better
votes being too general is a big one for any type of site with voting
changing how people interact with suggestions from others is also a big topic of discussion in many fields
solving technical problems is easy, solving human problems is much harder, and I can't do it on my own
 
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 
lately I'm kinda thinking a generational shift is required to just stop old problems ingrained in the old community
"we've always done it this way" mentality is too strong, I can't influence enough people to change things fast enough here
 
4:53 PM
Changes don't necessarily fix things
The reality here is this is a business
not a community run community
 
I know and I choose to ignore that
 
In other words, convincing the community a change needs to happen is useless
 
we've been ignoring it for a long time and I still find it useful for my purposes
no, not the entire community
I don't want "old" people in my "new" community
 
you need to convince the people actually able to make such a change. The meta crowd is being ignored... so you'll need to convince a different crowd.
 
forward thinking people will respond to forward thoughts
 
4:55 PM
@user1306322 This requires investment from SE to actually make a difference.
 
and if they have a place to move forward to, they will
@fbueckert I was talking about users, not the company but it's an interesting thought
 
I don't think there's enough trust left in SE to be willing to trust any changes they make.
 
The problem is that you can convince everyone and it still won't matter. It's not the users you need to convince, it's the company.
 
@user1306322 I distrust any suggestion that downvotes alone need attention.
 
@terdon-stopharmingMonica basically what animuson is saying in his answer is that users should post full comments explaining why they downvote, providing useful and actionable information on how to improve the content. So we should be instead talking about how we can make it easy for users to do so. We are not, however. I'd like to start that conversation, though.
 
4:56 PM
wait, where did animuson say that?
 
in his answer 5 years ago
 
link?
 
I replied to that onebox but here's the link again: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/227015/…
 
@user1306322 That makes the commenter a target, which will lead to attacks, toxicity, and further hostility.
All for attempting to help the poster.
 
@fbueckert then make it an option to prevent that
 
4:58 PM
@user1306322 Are you willing to include that requirement for upvotes?
 
by leaving anonymous canned responses via some selectable responses perhaps?
also, have you heard about "reactions"?
 
Why should only criticism be held to a higher bar?
 
I think you are misinterpreting that answer.
 
Reactions are a release valve, not quality feedback.
 
various social media have them, they're small icons expressing different emotions, pictograms, short text messages, etc
they could be made into useful responses though
anonymous too
would make it easier to use them
 

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