Tavern on the Meta

EmmaBee

00:08

@JourneymanGeek Yay! :D

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee XD. Its nice to see the results of multi year ~~nagging~~ advocacy, even experimentally.

(though what you're working on is one of the two big ones - I consider chat (and meta) on the left bar low hanging fruit in comparison, and one missed out for too long)

No pressure :D

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek Totally get the combination of relief and frustration when long standing requests finally get looked at. Can't say I have all the intel about why its taken so long, but maybe partly related to not wanting to screw it up? As you say, "no pressure" :D

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee lack of interest really

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek "is one of the two big ones" what is the other big one?

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee community hires - specifically the community team on the short term

and that's 'trickier' in a sense since we need to work on a few different blockers on 'both' ends of the problem

EmmaBee

00:21

@JourneymanGeek Interesting. Is that partly because there is a sense that only community hires will advocate for the needs of the community? Not disagreeing with importance (CMs are super critical and they are the best!), but curious what is behind that request for you.

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee Ok, extreme bluntness coming

The company has over the years kind of poisoned the hiring pool within the community - while initially they were fairly enthusiastic about hiring in the community, a mix of passive and active hostility, gatekeeping, changing rules, and fairly repeated rounds of downsizing has made the job a hard sell

Community hires know the 'front end' of the community well, and can engage with the community directly and effectively

Someone like Shog, V2blast or Catija is a force multiplier

and Someone like phillippe or current CMs should have no issue pulling in 'external' talent

I'm kinda one of the last people still in the community who wants the job

(I don't want to be the last one.)

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek Appreciate the bluntness! For some reason when you said community hires, I thought you meant CMs, but I see what you are saying about hiring folks from the community. Thanks for explaining that.

Journeyman Geek

So - if there's an opening for a CM in general, SE can fill it. But I'd like a better relationship between the company and community where, well, we trust the company enough to have a career with it

@EmmaBee historically we had a few devs who were great bridges

Ever had the pleasure of working with Yaakov?

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek Yes! We briefly overlapped after I joined the company. I know he was partly the reason Staging Ground came to be.

Journeyman Geek

He is a great example

But I consider getting the community team to open up an essential first step

Mithical

00:31

@EmmaBee also helped to calm a community crisis in 20...20? through working directly with community members, knowing who to talk to, etc

and bought me a drink but that's less relevant

Journeyman Geek

balpha is another example of a good community hire

(to be clear, an external hire can pick up on these skills quickly - We used to have a PM called Megan who took to meta and the community like a fish to water in the middle of some of the worst crisis' - her old company poached her back sadly. People sometimes interpret community hire advocacy as 'excluding' people on the outside - its more a matter of it just being harder for now.)

Journeyman Geek

00:50

So, big vision - I'd like significant interest and community excitement if anything opens up. And some of those seats being filled by familiar faces ;)

very carefully gets off the soapbox

In other things I'm ~~nagging~~ advotating about...

Apparently my GP lowkey wants my dad to get a dog :D

EmmaBee

01:33

@Mithical Being kind is always relevant. :) Glad to hear he has such a positive legacy! I enjoyed working and talking with him.

@JourneymanGeek We're getting a dog soon! An English lab. Do you have a certain breed in mind for your dad?

Journeyman Geek

02:05

@EmmaBee oh my parents don’t want a dog

I do 😅

I had this absolutely wonderful terrier mutt - though at the moment I would say I would get a westie

When I get another job, and if my hours allow for it it will happen 😀

I can’t get a larger breed cause of my lease rules so I have a approved list

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek adorbs! I've only ever had or been around big-ish dogs, but small dogs look sweet. We had a retriever, a bull mastiff and a pair of boxers at different times growing up. I have some friends who have TWO giant St Bernards who are just so chill and happy. They mostly just sleep and eat a ton!

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee my cousins in India have GSDs. I looooove collies but they very much are not apartment dogs

EmmaBee

02:22

@JourneymanGeek Oh yeah... collies probably need land and space to run. I've never owned a pet while living in an apartment, but I can see how that would be a juggling act with an active dog!

@JourneymanGeek ha, I just noticed your profile looks like a westie!

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee yup. He was a snauzer crossed with something sneaky . Was sort of a rescue

EmmaBee

02:50

Sorry to ask a noob question, but is @ElementsInSpace a person or a bot? Trying to understand what the responses to SmokeDetector are about (with SmokeDetector being a bot)

Elements In Space

@EmmaBee Haha, I am human.

EmmaBee

@ElementsInSpace human after all! :D

PM 2Ring

@EmmaBee A person. We don't let bots be diamond moderators. ;)

Elements In Space

I’m replying k to these Smoke Detector reports, after going to the linked posts and flagging the spam.

EmmaBee

I see! Are you initiating something by saying 'K" or do you just like to make sure SmokeDetector know its doing a good job.

@ElementsInSpace I seeeee

Elements In Space

02:52

k (for kill) means: Yes this is spam.

Sometimes SD will report posts that aren’t spam. So for these I’ll reply f (for false positive).

EmmaBee

@PM2Ring Ha! I guess I coulda clicked their profile, this is true. The "k"s were so consistent I was thinking for sure a bot. :D

@ElementsInSpace Gotcha! And are spam reports in here because if they were in their own room no one would look at them? Wondering if its by design to use this room for chit chat and spam detection.

Elements In Space

Yeah, something like that. I’m actually camping on the active pages of SeverFault (and Super User) and flagging the posts as soon they are made.

Spevacus

@EmmaBee We do a little bit of both. Reports that haven't been deleted/received false-positive feedback (indicating that the report isn't spam/abusive) after 5 minutes will be fed into here.

PM 2Ring

@EmmaBee Oh, they get looked at in the main room, which is Charcoal. chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/11540/charcoal-hq But if the spam is still alive after a couple of minutes, it gets reported in here.

Spevacus

My understanding of the goal is that it tries to pull in people that are just hanging out to also flag down some spam.

Journeyman Geek

02:57

@EmmaBee smoke detector and charcoal are our de-facto spam removal system, feedback from people here tells it to use (donated) flags to help clean spam, and we periodically clear them out

Spevacus

This particular spam wave is much stronger than they typically are. Normally spam reports just slowly trickle in here from time to time, and it's much less noisy.

Journeyman Geek

→ 75 messages moved to Chimney

@Spevacus ... looks like SU broke them and they're hitting SF

Spevacus

Poor SF.

Journeyman Geek

I wonder if I can talk TPTB into a temporary diamond, and turn the SU tooling to that :D

EmmaBee

Pretty interesting to witness. I am sure sites like Reddit have spam, but I've not seen it managed live. (also ugh, sucks that there is so much! That seems like a lot of [important] work to review)

Journeyman Geek

03:00

@EmmaBee frankly - historically our tooling was good enough, then it wasn't and the community stepped in

I'm not a fan of needing SD, and some aspects of it feel fragile but they do good work, and we'd be in a load of trouble if it didn't exist

@EmmaBee oh, we got hit hard shortly before the moderator strike, and they keep ramping up

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek Oh interesting. What happened that the tooling stopped being good enough?

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee mix of active users dropping out, and increasing volumes

Spevacus

I think some additional rate limits need to be put in place in certain areas. For example, you shouldn't be able to create more than 1 account per period, and the rate limit for asking questions should be 1 per network account per 40 minutes (below a certain rep threshold) instead of 1 per IP per 40 minutes (below a certain rep threshold).

I think at least one of those ideas is codified in a Meta post with status-review, but

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek Ah I see. So previously: good enough tooling and enough human power, now less human power and now not good enough tooling to keep up.

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee ALL our tooling relies on human power

SD 'just' automates human flagging

Which works well when, SD has enough flags

but in this case, for now its sometimes insufficent - there was a MASSIVE spam wave at webapps that resulted in everyone being out of flags

SU manages cause we nuke the spammers, but its time intensive, and we ended up 'enlisting' users and some personal resources to make it possible

PM 2Ring

03:06

The Stack Exchange system software does have some anti-spam components, like SpamRam. But the actual spam killing is done by us, either manually, or semi-automatically with the help of Smoke Detector.

Spevacus

SpamRam is unfortunately, according to Tim who I think made or helped make it, a primarily human-fed system. That is, it's largely reactive after it's gotten some human input, with some exceptions for honeypots that it uses sometimes to snag spammers.

When spammers get smart (IP hopping, multiple accounts, lots of VPN abuse, botnets or w/e) SpamRam can't really keep up.

Journeyman Geek

@Spevacus that's vaguely why we're proactive about feeding that, and that other thing on the mod team I'm very active on

@Spevacus Its india mostly, so... probably a shedton of mobile phones and CGN

EmmaBee

@PM2Ring Wow! I had no idea. Is this normally how it works on other sites? Its all hidden from the average person (or at least average person me) didn't realize it was all being done mostly by people.

Spevacus

A SHEDTON LOL

cocomac

@EmmaBee On SE sites? Yup.

Journeyman Geek

03:09

@EmmaBee Well, we're mostly active here. When I ran a forum, I used to have a plugin from stopforumspam that blocked some bad actors, and I used akmiset on WP

Spevacus

@EmmaBee Well... Feel free to ask a trust & safety CM about how much spam they block before it ever hits the network, and I'm sure you'd be surprised. After it hits the network though? Yeah, all community-focused.

EmmaBee

@cocomac Oh I meant on the interwebs at large.

Journeyman Geek

@Spevacus I think the numbers for spamram is in the millions

I THINK I've handled between a 100-300 a day on SU?

EmmaBee

@Spevacus Daaang. I'll have to learn more about this!

Spevacus

Like we complain (we don't really complain but give me some rope here) about how much spam still hits the network but how much spam is prevented that we don't see is so much more.

Journeyman Geek

03:11

@EmmaBee stackoverflow.blog/2020/06/25/… that's a good overview

@Spevacus people complain lol

cocomac

@Spevacus @EmmaBee Some of that info is public - see, for example, these graphs on MSE

Spevacus

I'm sure the efforts to prevent unauthorized access to our data had the side-effect of being a solid attempt at spam prevention change.

Journeyman Geek

I mostly get angry and take it out on spammers :D

(and I've a lot of anger to take out XD)

EmmaBee

"If you put a textbox on the Internet, someone will put spam in it." 🫠

Spevacus

Yeeeeep :)

cocomac

03:11

Unfortunately, yes.

Journeyman Geek

There's also profile spam (and if we actually broke the spammers and they're leaving SU - I might swap our the cannery to deal with that)

We have no tooling for that really

Spevacus

It's largely been recognized as not a problem in the past by the company, i.e. not something to go out of your way to deal with.

I'd... Largely agree, with the exception of NSFW stuff.

Journeyman Geek

@Spevacus I kinda disagree

Spevacus

But I also don't care that much if people hunt it down. I just personally don't feel the need to do so.

Journeyman Geek

Also, I got a room of engaged people. Its good to have them hunt it down, and in the process do other curation tasks

cocomac

03:15

@JourneymanGeek Not sure what you mean? NSFW profiles really should be deleted (by mods, or by CMs if a mod doesn't

Journeyman Geek

@cocomac that profile spam isn't a problem

cocomac

@JourneymanGeek You mean, dump them in chat for a mod to deal with doesn't count as tooling? :) (/s)

Journeyman Geek

@cocomac ooh, that's a loaded question

Its tooling of last resort

Something like SD or the Cannery (my chatroom for reporting spammers on SU) exists because current tooling falls short somewhere IMO

Its an elephant path

Informal, somewhat muddy but will get you where you need to go

cocomac

^

Journeyman Geek

(context - SE gets escort and callgirl spam, occationally with NSFW avas. I clean them up on my sites, and they sort of piled up on MSE after I quit so, I was asking what the current team preferred me to do :D)

Spevacus

03:18

(I said kick rocks)

Journeyman Geek

lol

Spevacus

((I'm joking))

Journeyman Geek

Tink said kick rocks. :D

Spevacus

Oh did she? LOL

Journeyman Geek

I'll probably check in 6-8 months and let you know

Spevacus

03:19

"If you wanna nuke spammers on Meta, ask for your diamond back, dangit"

Journeyman Geek

@Spevacus alas, not till my 'demands' are met :D

Or things are so bad I can't stand back. Y'all are doing fine, and there's no huge fires that need me

well or the third option >_>

Spevacus

@JourneymanGeek Maybe one day...

EmmaBee

Hmm reading through the comments in the blog about the spam detection, this snarky one stood out "Observation: All of this work exists to continue supporting unregistered guest answers, which is arguably an obsolete idea in 2020." Do they have a point or not really? Admittedly I don't know any of the history behind guest answers.

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee unregistered users are one of those... traditions of SE that are a little hard to lose out

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek Whats the tradition?

Journeyman Geek

03:23

Digging back into lore - SE was designed in many ways to be the opposite of experts exchange, and we had the site designed to have almost no friction in posting

You didn't need a proper account - so you could get started and stay if you liked the place with no commitment

It makes sense for a more innocent time

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek Is that like when kids grow up and want to be nothing like their parents? :P jk

Journeyman Geek

that said, most spammers do register so...

@EmmaBee Well, you see something you admire fall to pieces :D

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek iiiinteresting.

Journeyman Geek

You either fight to save it, or try to build something better based off the best parts of it

also practically we can turn off anonymous posting/edits on a per site basis with CM assistance

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, I get that. I do really think the origin story and mission is very inspirational. It is a special place here!

Journeyman Geek

03:26

blog.codinghorror.com/whos-your-arch-enemy

also

cocomac

@EmmaBee The proper answer is going to be "poke a CM or someone like Aaron Bertrand to run an internal SQL query to determine what percent of answers removed by red spam flags were posted by unregistered users". Of course, such a query wouldn't answer "well, would spammers adapt", to which the answer is "presumably yes".

Journeyman Geek

blog.codinghorror.com/…

Sorry about throwing you homework :D

@cocomac I mean, at this point, I'm literally going "Oh, that's the editing guy, or oh, that's the guy who has girl avas" so...

Oh and the Kumars

so VERY unscientific but based on fact :D

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek Naw, I appreciate it! But look at me... getting the easy path here, not having to do my own homework!

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee well, SE lore is all over the place

so you'd need to know where to look, and oldtimeyness is useful :D

EmmaBee

@cocomac I guess that means they have also cracked the captcha by now...

Journeyman Geek

03:30

@EmmaBee there's indications a lot of spammers are... humans posting stuff

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek There is also just soooo much!

cocomac

@JourneymanGeek IMO that's a large part of what makes Slate's recent question hard

Journeyman Geek

beta.buildcivitas.com/t/… same spammers as us ... (Jon's a former CM)

@cocomac You don't need to know it all unless you want to understand the reasoning tho

Spevacus

@JourneymanGeek Well, with a lot of stuff around here, you start to think "Damn that's kinda... dumb? Why don't we change that?" and typically the answer is either "We did and it was bad" or "It's... complicated."

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee couple of hundred crappy posts a day? I can do that with a room full of people

@Spevacus yup, hence me talking about it as lore :D

But I can't expect ALL our staff to know a decade and half of history over multiple on and offsite platforms ._.

or even most of them

Spevacus

03:34

the lore is deep — Jeff Atwood Feb 6 at 3:59

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek I think the reeeeeal deep dive history might not be important to the average user, but it is really useful for someone who works at the company. IMO understanding the history helps us grasp the origins, learn from past experiences, and avoid repeating mistakes.

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee Well yes, but its also not appreciated by lots of folks

Everyone wants a clean slate (no pun intended), unburdened by the mistakes of the past

But we're living in a world coloured by those decisions

for extra fun, there's bits of lore that only affect parts of the network

cocomac

@JourneymanGeek I guess, but if we want to (reasonably) avoid Meta aggressively throwing said rationale at an unsuspecting staff member, it's somewhat necessary. Can't put it here (sorry everyone else), but I do feel this message and the three below it address that quite well chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/67398143

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek Seems that comes up in many facets of life! It seems to not be something we all want to do - look to and deal with our past.

@cocomac I can't view that. 'Page not found'

Journeyman Geek

@cocomac in context its less "you don't need to know" than "its ok you don't know this... yet"

I won't complain if everyone had someone they can ask "wait, what the heck happened on <date>" and either get an answer, or get pointed at someone who does

BUT that's a hard ask for now

Also I would rather ramp people up than infodump

I am soooo bad with infodumping ._.

cocomac

03:48

@EmmaBee That error message... should be better, and I wish it was (although a counterargument goes "GitHub does the same thing"). Here, it means, "You're trying to access a message in a private room you don't have access to".

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee I feel like a chat diamond might be useful for you :D

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek Part of the challenge might be that in the company, Teams are often focused on specific features, so they might not see the value in understanding how everything connects. I won't speak for others, but I can see that being A reason to not go to deep into the lore, if they can't connect it back to their focus area.

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee for someone who has never been in the company, I am probably as aware of that as anyone can be

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek Maybe! But I am enjoying earning having to work my way up the ladder like the common folk! :D

Journeyman Geek

at the same time, I can share with people who want to know, but my ability to communicate with staff is very much limited

@EmmaBee oh more for visibility of features and such

EmmaBee

03:51

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, perhaps. I can check on that and see what's possible.

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee or the equivilent for an 'internal' or dev instance of chat if there's such a thing

cocomac

@JourneymanGeek I suggested that @EmmaBee go try and get a full diamond internally.

@EmmaBee The problem is (and I won't say much more on that room as it's, well, private), this isn't something you'll get access to by working your way up any time soon unless you take the "I'm staff so I'd like it approach", and that goes for a number of private rooms.

Journeyman Geek

@cocomac I can't really directly approach that without lifting the veil but ... :D

EmmaBee

@cocomac Hmm yeah, that makes sense. I think I am already at an unfair advantage.

Journeyman Geek

I'm aware there's hurt and discomfort on both sides. As a community member though, and considering my agendas, I am working on one side first but reaching out to folks if they want to

at the same time, I'm not sure of folks comfort levels of deep lore dumps and "this is how it was in the old days"

cocomac

03:55

@JourneymanGeek I don't think that's really a secret, but if you think I posted anything over the line, of course feel free to delete it. Not trying to leak anything or imply anything that isn't already public info.

EmmaBee

@JourneymanGeek Yeah, I think as a UX researcher, my job is a little more about trying to understand things holistically, so I just naturally seek this information out a bit more.

Spevacus

@JourneymanGeek At least on Meta I'm trying to play both sides, and that's really, really hard.

I really, really want to empower the voices of Meta. They matter. Obviously I think that. Our feedback is important. Why else would I continue to post here and try to make a difference? But I know that the company's felt pretty scathingly hurt by some of the stuff Meta has said and done. Ironically, it's a lot like the unfriendliness problem on Stack Overflow.

3

Something that a friend of mine recently told me, who had only used SO a couple times, was that... He's got a negative view of SO because of his personal experiences with his own posts, rather than a positive view because of just how much knowledge SO has given him. In other words, he too easily judges SO based on how many times he's had skin in the game and came out mangled, rather than how many times he's come to SO as a reader and come out educated.

I found that introspection on his part really informative.

EmmaBee

@Spevacus I think as humans, negative experiences can affect us more and more intensely than positive. Like if you have a string of positives and one or two really difficult experiences, you're probably going to remember the difficult experience more.

Journeyman Geek

@Spevacus As I see it though, the company as as well

I try to encourage the good parts (like what's happening now) but awareness and acceptance of the past means avoiding new mistakes

EmmaBee

Peak–end rule

The peak–end rule is a psychological heuristic in which people judge an experience largely based on how they felt at its peak (i.e., its most intense point) and at its end, rather than based on the total sum or average of every moment of the experience. The effect occurs regardless of whether the experience is pleasant or unpleasant. To the heuristic, other information aside from that of the peak and end of the experience is not lost, but it is not used. This includes net pleasantness or unpleasantness and how long the experience lasted. The peak–end rule is thereby a specific form of the more...

Spevacus

04:04

@EmmaBee Ooh, very neat. Thanks for this, gonna save that one.

Journeyman Geek

I mean, practically my quitting as a meta mod was significantly cause I saw the company's actions as a threat to the community and its own staff, and I kinda wanted the freedom to ... well

If I mess up, or cross the line, its nice to know someone can suspend me :D

Spevacus

Walk the plank!

Journeyman Geek

(and honestly, cleaning up the company's messes when we lost people who were supporting us effectively was stressful)

Spevacus

I'm thankful that the biggest thing I've had to be around for was the AI answer bot thing, and more recently the community AMA.

Journeyman Geek

AMA went... well IMO

I'm feeling a little hopeful for the first time in a long time

and the biggest complaint was the sound

Spevacus

04:07

Overall it was good. There were a few... Less than ideal answers that got posted to the question collection post but they weren't really a dumpster fire.

Journeyman Geek

I don't expect perfect, I expect good enough :D

Spevacus

I'd say they hit good enough with it. I hope they do another one sometime in the next year or so, especially after they start iterating on whatever they have planned.

Journeyman Geek

(admittedly I'm anxious over everything happening and going to happen but GOOD ANXIOUS, not what fresh hell anxious)

@Spevacus if they succeed even partially on everything promised we'll be in a much better place

EmmaBee

@Spevacus Was the AMA one of the not great things? I thought maybe it went okay, but have no point of reference. (except yes, the sound issue)

Spevacus

@EmmaBee Ah, I realize what I said may have come off as though the AMA was not great. I just meant I had to use more mod tools on the AI answer bot announcement posts and the AMA announcement than anything else so far.

Journeyman Geek

04:10

lol

@EmmaBee Very popular and Very unpopular things are a lot of work :D

Spevacus

It's an impossible dance to both enshrine community opinion and ensure lines aren't crossed when it comes to Meta mod stuff.

EmmaBee

@Spevacus Oh no, it's fine it were not great! I was just trying to understand. I appreciate y'alls honesty, and I am also sorry it's been a bit of a roller coaster. Can't say I fully understand it all, but I am also feeling hopeful about the future.

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee As a former MSE mod... moderating the site is a ... special kind of hard

Spevacus

The only standout problem I had with the AMA, barring a couple answers from Prashanth I won't harp on, were the audio issues, which... Eh. Stuff happens. And if you guys have another one I'm sure it won't repeat.

Journeyman Geek

Best understood when you're in the middle of a dramastorm trying to balance everyone's interests :D

Spevacus

04:12

I was very pleasantly surprised that some of the harder questions were earnestly answered.

Journeyman Geek

@Spevacus Its nice to have moments of "wait, REALLY?" in a good way :D

EmmaBee

@Spevacus Especially given Skype seems like it has finally kicked the bucket. :P

Journeyman Geek

F

@EmmaBee we used it a lot for mod/CM chats and... it actually worked ok

Spevacus

Also, I really hope one big takeaway from the AMA is that a lot of staff members, the CEO included, read a lot of Meta. A seriously considerable amount.

EmmaBee

I don't use it anymore, but I do have fond memories of Skype so I am sad to see it go.

Journeyman Geek

04:14

... wait no

cocomac

Eyes the questions around Prashanth's social media use

Journeyman Geek

We used zoom

lol

EmmaBee

@Spevacus Yes, we have Meta feeds into our Slack channels :D

Spevacus

@cocomac Wellllllllllllllll

:^)

Journeyman Geek

@cocomac which ... I think the community was very reasonable about

cocomac

04:15

No offense intended, but I'm glad I wasn't the one making the call to delete comments by the CEO...

EmmaBee

@cocomac Ah, the worry that the company wants to turn this into a social media platform?

@cocomac did someone? Ha! I didn't know that.

Journeyman Geek

@EmmaBee ah, context here is a user* was asking about the CEO following some rightish folks on X

and Twitter has a bit of a history here and is a sore spot

Spevacus

@EmmaBee Heh, yeah, we deleted a couple that were flagged. Fun stuff.

Journeyman Geek

* said user is a former employee, and well, unhappy with the direction SE"s taken

Spevacus

So long as the flag makes sense... Well, CEO or not, comments are temporary. ;)

Journeyman Geek

04:17

@Spevacus I'd say here though you're trusted to do it, and a CM or the CEO can have a polite word, or a flag asking you to reconsider if need be :D

EmmaBee

@Spevacus ahh okay, I missed that!

Spevacus

They were pretty forgettable comments/were obsolete. Not like we were moderating against the CEO or anything.

cocomac

@EmmaBee To put it neutrally: No, this was about someone noticing that the CEO follows some rather right-leaning politicians on social media and, effectively, calling him out on it. And it was directly following what Elon Musk did at the inauguration. This was also around the time of the (possibly deleted?) post on MSO around social media links on SE, also following the thing about Elon Musk. So... tensions were high.

Spevacus

The MSO post was deleted and then later undeleted by mods I think.

EmmaBee

I see, I see. I was hoping it was something about the easy problem of not wanting too many emojis on the site. :P We are certainly continuing to steadily and increasingly live in interesting times.

cocomac

04:21

@Spevacus Found it, I forgot - it was undeleted - meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/432737/… - not all the comments are... tactful.

I'll refrain from re-litigating that though

Spevacus

Yeah I status-reviewed a far more neutral, albeit old-ish, post that made sense here meta.stackexchange.com/q/391139

The ability to just add generic social media links instead of explicitly supporting specific social media links is a really logical way to approach this and scales well.

cocomac

Oh yeah, I remember flagging about that. At least in theory, it made it into the Community Asks sprint, which is quite nice

Journeyman Geek

04:57

→ 50 messages moved to Chimney

Journeyman Geek

05:14

→ 23 messages moved to Chimney

Journeyman Geek

05:50

→ 22 messages moved to Chimney

balpha

07:08

@ShadowWizzard Global inbox notifications. I'm working on moving the unread counts (like the little red "1" when you have a comment, answer, or chat reply) to a different storage model.

@ElementsInSpace that's what a bot would say

Elements In Space

@balpha 01111001 01100101 01110011

balpha

01100010 01110101 01110011 01110100 01100101 01100100

Elements In Space

07:29

00100001

balpha

1101100000111110 1101110100010110

Elements In Space

@balpha 🤖

Journeyman Geek

08:06

→ 11 messages moved to Chimney

→ 27 messages moved to Chimney

Elements In Space

11111010000010100

user152859

08:58

This new chat banner is very, ah, intrusive. No way to move it to be on top and less intimidating? @balpha (Also, how long will it stay? Any point asking in organized way via feature request, or is it only for day or two?)

user152859

@balpha ah, nice. No changes in design, I assume? (Also, for me it's not little red "1", it's big red "8675". ;))

balpha

@ShadowWizzard I don't know, I'm not working on that. For the first time in forever we have an actual team working on chat 😅

but you can just click the x to get rid of it

@ShadowWizzard No, it's just about where we store those numbers. Right now they're only in redis, we're moving them to SQL so they survive the cutover to the cloud

user152859

@balpha oh wow, that's great news I guess, but whole team mean, well, more complex to have things done. When it's only one it saves time sometimes. But yeah, chat finally getting the attention it deserves, and hopefully this would lead to lots of long needed love aka bug fixing and new features, without making it into something else.

balpha

@ShadowWizzard dang, you're not lying -- you know there's a "mark all as read" button, right? 😁

user152859

@balpha ah, I see.

Elements In Space

09:07

They are already red.

user152859

@balpha I pressed it by mistake once and lost over 1000 unread count... I cried for 6-8 hours over that.

user152859

:-D

user152859

I have some odd quirks, that's one of them. ;)

Journeyman Geek

Lol

balpha

@ShadowWizzard Well, I'll only be backfilling inbox messages that are 60 days old or younger, so that number will probably go down. Sorry if I'm making you cry again 😁

user152859

09:09

I also don't dismiss banners, I still have the cookie banner.

user152859

@balpha omg... I'd cry for 6-8 days over such a loss... but at least I'll have someone to blame other than myself, this time. :P

Mithical

@balpha noooo, that'll ruin Smokey's inbox :(

user152859

O.M.G

user152859

dies

balpha

you know, I would do anything for Smokey, but I won't do that

("that" being "special casing it for this" 😅)

user152859

09:18

@balpha Just manually update the count after the migration. One small query. ;0)

Journeyman Geek

not inbox but...

balpha

FWIW the numbers will come back to the old value if you get a new inbox message between during the transition period. So as long as you get pinged, neither @ShadowWizzard nor @SmokeDetector will have to cry

user152859

@JourneymanGeek yeah I had it until @nicael caused it to reset, since then I clear it on spot. ;)

Journeyman Geek

@balpha you could ping em :D

user152859

@balpha yay!

Journeyman Geek

09:31

(that said, aibo is mostly for testing, RO squatting and the occational flagging, and all that was association rep bonuses I think)

nicael

@JourneymanGeek goblet of green fire

@JourneymanGeek oh look, a design bug! why that number is not centered relative to goblet 👺

Journeyman Geek

09:47

@nicael cause most normal people wouldn't let their rep add up so much :D

ꓢPArcheon

soooooo... I know this is more of a SO rant but...

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/…

once upon a time, MSDN docs used to link to the return type class page for a function / method.

Feeds

pinging @balpha once more

ꓢPArcheon

now I get this piece of trash telling me that the return type is Microsoft.Graph.PowerShell.Models.IMicrosoftGraphPermission ....

do you think that returns any result on google?

not at all.

How am I supposed to know this class members?

Coffe grounds divination? Sacrificing a black roster in a desecrated church at night?

Elements In Space

@ꓢPArcheon I think you need a Haruspex.

Journeyman Geek

10:05

@��PArcheon Mock chicken entrails

Chicken

☕

Journeyman Geek

ꓢPArcheon

@ElementsInSpace Few know that the Verceto's Diary exists ant it wasn't made by a crazy Arabian man but by a crazy Italian one. Even fever know the thing has an English edition available.

Elements In Space

@ꓢPArcheon Is that the Facebook logo (λόγος)? (near the middle, blue).

user152859

BTW, I think some people here might be interested to know that Prashanth (Chandrasekar) joined this chat room and had a friendly chat with some users, he's still pingable there and, well, might keep interacting.

user152859

10:21

Prashanth Chandrasekar chatting with us mortals :)

10 hours ago, 49 minutes total – 124 messages, 6 users, 7 stars

Bookmarked 10 secs ago by Shadow Wizzard

user152859

gtg, cya!

balpha

@ShadowWizzard I just realized a way to tweak the backfill that increases the chance of people like you and Smokey keeping your ridiculous unread counts. You're welcome 😁

Elements In Space

user152859

@balpha awesome! I owe you one. Or actually more. Much more, by now. :D

ꓢPArcheon

@ElementsInSpace the guy made a kickstarter for the project years ago. Now you can find him on facebook too.

The only issue, while the English version DOES exist, he mostly advertises the Italian one.

Elements In Space

10:38

Allora!

balpha

@Mithical Turns out Smokey is just number two (of all the inboxes that got migrated on my first test run). stackoverflow.com/users/6817005/natty takes the crown with over 430k

Mithical

→ 86 messages moved to Chimney

@balpha makes sense, Natty requires a ping for feedback while Smokey has other methods these days

ꓢPArcheon

@balpha any chance you could hide that counter just for Shadow next April, 1st?

ꓢPArcheon

10:58

I think you guys may want to blatantly and shamefully advertise this one

10

Q: Refund helpful high-priority flags

I propose that high-priority flags, particularly spam flags, be refunded as soon as they are deemed helpful. For instance, on sites like Server Fault, which see less frequent activity, obvious spam posts can remain visible for longer than they should. By refunding helpful spam flags, we could kee...

it may be your big chance to fix the issue.

user152859

11:49

@balpha oh, and what's my rank with my meager 8k? ;(

user152859

@ꓢPArcheon nooooooooo

balpha

@ShadowWizzard you're the number one human (at least among the ~30k accounts that got handled in my first test run)

user152859

@balpha oh my. I'm so happy.

user152859

:-D

user152859

#1 is always good. :-D

user152859

11:55

/sidelooks on @ꓢPA

user152859

/hides

balpha

I've stopped the migration because I need to fix an issue with the moderator inbox. Once that's deployed, I'll start over. I'll give you an update once I have more data, I'm pretty sure you won't be number 1 at the end. Sorry 😅

Journeyman Geek

(My fault)

Elements In Space

Feb 4 at 14:38, by Elements In Space

> Repeating words in answer - 'sushi'*1178

@JourneymanGeek I like those ones^

ꓢPArcheon

@ElementsInSpace This one?

balpha

12:08

@JourneymanGeek Stop taking credit for my hand-crafted artisanal bugs!

Journeyman Geek

I mean, I triggered it :D

ꓢPArcheon

balpha

true

ꓢPArcheon

@balpha You talk bugs, coincidentally I just rewatched the Haruhi episode about the Giant Space Cricket from Nowhere. Weird coincidence.

.... and thinking of it, when I am bored, drama comes on Meta.

Elements In Space

@ꓢPArcheon Close, but that’s only 364 grains.

Petəíŕd the Wizard

12:14

@balpha hey, me too plz? ;)

balpha

@PetəíŕdtheWizard Yeah this applies to everyone who visits SE at least once while it's in data migration mode (let's say, over the next couple of days).

Petəíŕd the Wizard

yay

Prashanth Chandrasekar chatting with us mortals :)

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