@rene And Stack Apps post received another random downvote with no explanation. Can you please explain what it is you actually suggest I do here?

As far as I can see, these are my options:

1.Add a placeholder answer to prevent roombaing. This is a somewhat common practice on meta sites and not too dissimilar from placeholder questions on Stack Apps.

2.Let it roomba, and then repost. In addition to being annoying for me and breaking the bot temporarily, and potentially happening almost every month, reposting the same deleted post doesn’t exactly seems awesome, rule wise.

3.Let it roomba, and ask mods to undelete. This involves having to bother mods, and having the bot break, every single week. Very annoying for everyone.

4.Too bad. My bot is permanently broken all work on it wasted.

Is there some other good option I’m missing…or are you just going to say “too bad, you’re bot goes in the trash”. Because that doesn’t seem very fair.

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog I've seen nothing that indicates that Stack Apps is considered a "meta site" from the POV of the Roomba. However, I don't recall trying to check to see if it is, or not. Roomba Forecaster assumes that "meta site" in "isn't on a meta site" means per-site meta's and MSE. The actual test that Roomba Forecaster uses to determine if it's a meta site is const isMeta = /(?:^|\.)meta\./.test(window.location.hostname);

In general, Stack Apps is special. For some things it's assumed to be it's own meta site. For other things it's assumed that MSE is the meta site for Stack Apps.

If there's something that indicates Stack Apps is a "meta site" for the Roomba, then Roomba Forecaster can be changed.

@Starship is your placeholder literally a placeholder?

I feel like (in theory) you could use the main post for describing your tool (even if private) and use an 'answer' as something else. Then its a matter of votes to avoid the roomba

@Starship Maybe I'm missing something, but if you're just looking for NLN comments, why is write access needed? (vs. just an API key). If you're not autoflagging right now (and I wouldn't suggest doing so, but that's separate), shouldn't just a key be enough?

@JourneymanGeek No, the post is an actual running app. (Its output is not public due to staff request.)

I mean "this is a placeholder" vs "this is an app running in a private chatroom by request. It does <thing>

> It's in its own post to have an application key, so that you can use it more than 300 times per day

@JourneymanGeek It clearly states the latter.

ah ok

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hm. Its quiet today

Noise

@JourneymanGeek in space, no one can hear you bark

@starball Sad but true. Man did go to space in the pawprints of a dog, and what did the get for it? Not a squeeky ball, not a treat, but a slow death, alone in the cold of space, alone in the heavens :(

@JourneymanGeek thanks. my day is ruined

YW :D

0_0

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog that is simply wrong. I have over 20 api-keys all with 10,000 calls per day, the majority of which have no Stack Apps post, see also stackapps.com/questions/8971/i-only-need-a-key-what-do-i-do / cc @Starship

Post an answer where you share the stats on # of comments, # of NLN comments, # of false positives, # of comments flagged by you, # of helpful flags. I would declare that a useful answer and that should prevent roomba-ing and might even help to turn the sentiment on your question a bit.

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@rene @Glorfindel Can you please detail why a specific post was necessary in that case, if it wasn't simply because a key with 10,000 queries was required? I'm getting conflicting information as to the purpose of having a separate post.

@Feeds Did they mix up the graphics for those first two rows, or is that part of the joke?

@Feeds Surely an Empiricist has observed the sun.

@ElementsInSpace Actually that one probably is a joke.

@ElementsInSpace Those top two rows though. How’d they mess that up? Did no one at all proofread the table?

Fixed.

@ShadowWizzard oh! get well soon.

@ElementsInSpace I bet what happened is that originally the first two rows were in the other order. They got switched at the last minute, but they forgot to switch the images.

And as for the apparent inclusion of the eighth planet’s moon, that’s just bad penmanship.

@rene Ok, seems good. Thank you. I'll work on that answer sometime tonight.

@Spevacus two old-style dups bumped

@bobble One gone one fixed

@Spevacus then here's another! meta.stackexchange.com/questions/71356/…

@Spevacus Actually, if you really want to...there are many thousands of them:meta.stackexchange.com/…

@Starship Established practice generally waits for them to get bumped organically before we fix the notice. Otherwise we'd be bumping an absolute boatload for no other reason than to make it look prettier.

It’s Friday! Hope everyone has something fun (or relaxing) planned for the weekend. :)

It's Pi day so I made a small chocolate pie. Eating it counts as fun, doesn't it? :P

What I have planned can kill a mortal. I assume. I've heard people die in their sleep all the time, so I have very dangerous plans.

@Tinkeringbell ahh I totally forgot about that and I think you just helped me solidify a Friday night plan. There is a pie place I have been meaning to check out. :)

@VLAZ Going to eat ALL the pies, i presume?

@EmmaBee you should thank one of the cooking mods, who reminded me :P

@VLAZ Ooooh, same!

@VLAZ Ohh I get it now. Sleeping is really the best thing ever, so I fully approve (and hope to see you alive in the AM) :D

Weekend sleeping can last until the PM :P

True for some! I am not a sleeper-in type person. My brain doesn't care if its the weekend or how late we went to bed, I always wake up roughly the same time.

Oh, same. But I just roll over and start again :P

Growing up in a noisy mornings household, I got good at that

OMG pi day! Can't believe I almost forgot. I have a frozen apple pie in the freezer and was waiting for the right occasion to bake it.

@ShadowWizzard Its an interesting phenomenon and I also wonder where it comes from. Makes for long quiet mornings when everyone else is still sleeping, which I found awfully boring as a kid, but I appreciate the quiet mornings now.

TIL about this ^ What are these events and who typically attends them?

Oh, wait. It just links me back here. Ha! I thought there's some alternate universe where happy hour happens :D

asking about happy hour is practically like an initiation step now for curious people :P

chat.meta.stackexchange.com/search?q=happy+hour&room=89

for practical purposes, my understanding is "it's basically nothing"

at least for that event in particular

maybe some people use events, but not in the rooms I frequent.

@EmmaBee is your primary research focus right now chat? and do you know (and can you share) how long will that last for? no particular reason for asking. just curious

@starball lol I see that now! But it does grab the attention, so maybe it should be made into something. Not sure what it would be... maybe it launches you into a game room (like those silly drawing games) that changes each time.

@EmmaBee there are some people I'd like to play games with, but I don't know if they want to, and I'd want to do over voice call. discord would support that

@starball Chat is one aspect of research I am doing, but we are a tiny team, so we move around quite a bit. I have a few other things I am working on. I think research will last a while, as it will take time to figure out all the things!

@EmmaBee kewl

there are a few games people play in chat though. you can ask @ShadowWizzard about the Word Association Game in his room.

or he might have mentioned it already

@starball Any reason you ask?

lol I just read again, "no particular reason"

@EmmaBee yeah sorry I edited that part in afterwards

I guess I'm just curious about what the company is looking to improve on

@starball Makes sense. We're exploring how people use chat (and how they may want to use chat), what they hope to do, and any obstacles they face, including mod tooling challenges, and trying to get this from multiple perspectives. So the meta post is one type of feedback, and we also want to learn from folks who visit the site, but are not on meta. No set timeline as of now... we’re gathering insights to guide improvements

@EmmaBee Happy Hour was an event made by Shog9 at a time when people were feeling quite gloomy. Don't remember exactly why but it was probably Monicagate or something back at 2019

It's become sort of a memorial. No one attends it but no one is inclined to take it down either

@M.A.R. Thanks for explaining! Was there an activity or something people would do? Or would it just draw more folks to chat?

@EmmaBee when people did do something in happy hour, which was probably only the first few times, chat regulars just came and hung out a bit, nothing out of the ordinary

People have made good use of events elsewhere. It's just that "Happy Hour" isn't very representative of what chat events used to be.

The reason no one has taken it down yet might be that it's one of the last memories of fun in this serious, serious place. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it

@M.A.R. Hopefully we can bring back some of that fun again!