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Stack Overflow Blog: Stack Exchange Moderator Elections Begin

11:12 AM

ted.com/talks/marcel_dicke_why_not_eat_insects.html

where can I get insects?

Posted by Jeff Atwood on December 2nd, 2010

Back in July, we appointed Moderators Pro Tempore for the nascent Stack Exchange 2.0 communities. Leadership is critical to any community’s success, and the bootstrapping of a community often requires those leaders to be appointed before the community is large enough or organized enough to elect them itself.

Our fellow moderators Pro Tempore have been instrumental in keeping their communities tidy and on track through the public beta and beyond. Now that the earliest Stack Exchange 2.0 sites have been fully public for over 60 days, we believe at least some of the communities are ready to take the last important step towards self governance — by electing their own moderators. As we’ve said from the very first days of the Stack Overflow beta: …

11:34 AM

hi @CharlesStewart and @BrianOjeda :)

Hello

if you spot a question that looks iffy to you, feel free to discuss it here :)

Not problem. Will do next time.

Not a problem.***

you can easily edit your posts by pressing the up arrow (like so)

and as you can see above we have some magic links, so when you paste a link in here, it get's rendered in a special way

11:50 AM

I will keep that in mind. I make so many typing mistakes. My username should have been typoknig, but it was taken already.

can't you have duplicate usernames? as it's all about your number really

@Ivo: Hi! ran off to look at the maths.sx election.

I guess you're right. However, I rather have a unique username. I don't want to be mixed up with someone business or issues. No confusion if unique.

I'm here with a vague worry: SU has had some trouble establishing itself, but I'm wondering if it's losing some of the ground it's made. My last 2 questions, which don't seem very obscure to me, have got no answers, and my last 10 questions have got 1 upvote between them. Has the SU hardcore gone off to new SX sites, or what?

I'm not really sure @CharlesStewart

based on traffic, we're doing fine

12:03 PM

I'm wondering if some "civic movement" might be good: get out people to upvote, which will get more people to answer, which will make SU more useful again?

any suggestions to get this going?

other then a blog post and perhaps stimulating it through meta (+ putting that in the banner)

Traffic isn't a surprise: I should think we feature high on Google for all kinds of popular queries.

I can not answer your question. However, little over a week ago have less than 10 rep.

A meta post is maybe a good place to start.

@Brian: Well, that's a good piece of counter-data.

It should be possible to do API queries, to see if there is a trend?

I don't mean any harm.

12:07 PM

@Brian: No, that's good. It probably means I am being inept with my Qs & As or something.

@CharlesStewart I truly suck at asking question, mainly because they end up being so basic, because I filtered out all the crap

it's no fun to answer mine, especially because often I already found the solution

my issue with SU is that we don't have enough accessible Windows/Office questions

Well, I've just earned a nice answer badge while we are typing, so maybe it is all coincidence.

hehe, don't bet on it

@Ivo: Oh! I actually have one I've been meaning to ask for a while...

you got a badge for +10 upvotes on one answer

hmmm who could have upvoted exactly that one answer...

12:10 PM

@Ivo: yes, but the 9th vote was months ago...

well, what I'm trying to do now is to ask any question I have before looking it up

Maybe an upvoting club here on chat?

or just me ;)

@Ivo: No, I'm serious - starting with one bronze badge, an intrepid band of chatters could look through SU to find forgotten gems, and recommend them here for upvoting. Turns a tiresome duty into the kind of meaningless social activity we all love.

One Word question: not a masterpiece, but genuine - superuser.com/questions/217545/…

I try to go through the hottest questions on stackexchange

and upvote anything I feel worthwhile

I was also planning on blogging about questions or answers that were interesting enough

just need to find the time to get started on it...

stackexchange.com/questions/custom

12:20 PM

@Ivo: Looking at recent [tumbleweed] earning questions is another idea.

Also, looking at the oldest "Unanswered" questions.

But someone by themselves can't make so much difference.

Maybe I post something on Meta: a problem statement and some practical suggestions.

crap can't find the upvote query on SEDE

sure, I'll have a look at see if I can feature it

The trouble with encouraging everyone to look at the hottest questions is that hot-but-not-smoking questions get neglected...

so it get's displayed in the banner

@Ivo: Right!

off course, but the hot questions are not necessarily ones with a lot of votes

the algorithm is more sophisticated than that

12:25 PM

@Ivo: Could be the ones attracting a bunch of Google hits.

plus voting on hottest questions, means that a user is likely to see he's getting attention

which is good, he's probably keeping an eye out

upvoting a year old question is... almost pointless if they user isn't very active

@Ivo: I guess that was the idea behind the Electorate badge?

I still want to ask questions that I spot on the Microsoft forums

because they suck there and would be good here

@Ivo: I've seen a few of those. Yes, there seem to be 1.74 E6 Microsoft forums.

I have to go now, but I'll stay in this room, if you have any ideas suggestions, feel free to keep discussing them ;)

12:27 PM

@Ivo: Me too. Will do.

2:57 PM

hello all

hija and byja

I'm hitting the showers :P

lol

3:21 PM

morning/afternoon/evening folks

aloha @Sathya :)

good day is fine ;)

@CharlesStewart welcome to my world :-)

darn I have to go shopping

@IvoFlipse :-D

your world? you life in another world than I do @Sathya?

Sinterklaas

| |- | |- | |- | |- | |- | |- | |} Sinterklaas is a traditional Winter holiday figure in the Netherlands, Belgium, Aruba, Suriname and Netherlands Antilles; he is celebrated annually on Saint Nicholas' eve (5 December) or, in Belgium, on the morning of 6 December. The feast celebrates the name day of Saint Nicholas, patron saint of Amsterdam, children and sailors. He is the basis of the mythical holiday figure of Santa Claus in the United States. Sinterklaas is his usual name. The more formal name is Sint Nicolaas or Sint Nikolaas. He is also known as Goedheiligman or simply Sint []. The ...

we have our version of Santa coming in this weekend

so ttyl

3:24 PM

@IvoFlipse what kinda query you looking at

@IvoFlipse it was wrt:

3 hours ago, by Charles Stewart

I'm here with a vague worry: SU has had some trouble establishing itself, but I'm wondering if it's losing some of the ground it's made. My last 2 questions, which don't seem very obscure to me, have got no answers, and my last 10 questions have got 1 upvote between them. Has the SU hardcore gone off to new SX sites, or what?

the last but one line, really.

One of the problems is that fairly high number of questions which get migrated from SO get lost here, since the OP abandons it.

/anyway

@IvoFlipse see ya.

4:37 PM

yeah SO is not a particularly good neighbor for us

query? to see if they have left? I guess you should look at the frequency of answers over time relative to the rep for high rep users

@IvoFlipse not sure I got that

check how much questions the top 1% of the site have answered over each month for the last year. If you see a rapid decline at a certain point, you know we must have screwed something up

Q: Before using the "Western Digital Elements 2TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive"

why on EARTH can't WD put up a pdf containing detailed specs

I'm trying to find WDBAAU0020HBK specs

No thank you clippy.

for

0

I have 3 questions. Just purchased the Western Digital Elements 2TB USB 2.0 Desktop External Hard Drive. After reading all the information on the internet, it seems like it is usually a 4K sector size Advanced Format drive. It says "p/n:WDBAAU0020HBK-01" on the enclosure; HD Tune, SIW etc say ...

@IvoFlipse hmm. the top folks hardly ask questions, I guess.

because they suck at customer support

lemme try to find

4:45 PM

one of the highest viewed questions is about a WD drive

I meant answer

yes the mydrive-cd thingy

Q: How do I remove a MyBook's "WD SmartWare" virtual CD from my desktop?

20

I recently got a Western Digital MyBook external hard drive to enable Time Machine. It has it's software installed on a "virtual CD" called "WD SmartWare" which shows up on the desktop any time the drive is plugged in. Since I will use this virtual drive only very rarely, how can I hide it from...

osx external-harddrive desktop optical-drive mybook

200k views...

5:37 PM

Hey guys.... How y'all doin?

fine

that's good.... @IvoFlipse

How's your dog program goin?

haven't done much yet

as I've been reading a book on project management

lol

and think I'm going to read another book on Python after it

5:40 PM

That's a lot of readin

that's what you get when you're self employed, you have lot's of time if you have no clients/projects :P

but it's better to read then to keep messing around not knowing how to do something

That's for sure...

though I'm going to read my next book on the ipad

so chat and google reader don't distract me as much :P

Ya but I bet you'll still be distracted.... darn those angry birds!

multi-tasking sucks on the ipad

so when I'm reading on the couch, i'm reading

5:44 PM

That's true...

but I have to make a pick

especially since some of the books are really thick

man Internet explorer is so much slower than chrome

you're forced to use it?

I needed IE9 to fix Chrome this morning

nasty bug with 2D graphics and Lastpass

only for a few sites... all work related

Ew...

downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/12/02/…

how nice two of my favorite extensions merge

5:50 PM

oh wow

though I didn't need the crossbrowser bookmarks after Chrome took care of it

i don't sync really anything when it comes to browsers... or passwords. I really need too though... I keep forgetting random passwords

lastpass rules

@KronoS lastpass ftw.

and you can export it and put it into keypass if you want it on your desktop/dropbox/usb

google should just buy them :P

5:56 PM

@IvoFlipse you use Mac for your python stuff ? Or Windows ?

Windows

I only own an iPad

Well time to go and prep some more for the dif eq test...

later fellas

good luck :)

thanks i need it... last test i got a 47

@KronoS all the best

@IvoFlipse what IDE do you use ?

5:58 PM

Python(x,y) because it has all the scientific libraries built-in

I couldn't figure out how to make Eclipse work the way I wanted

@IvoFlipse ah ok

Spyder Interactive Scientific Development Environment

I think that's the IDE

but really it sucks and I should invest some time into getting Eclipse working

if only because it's easier to setup Mercurial (or whatever version control I setup)

give pyscripter a shot

btw, look at this.

blog.fortinet.com/all-your-drives-are-belong-to-us

that looks like Eclipse (well I guess anything can look like it)

auch that's nasty

I could also make a dual boot with Ubuntu

and run Python there

howdy all

6:05 PM

aloha

@IvoFlipse or use a VM?

well a VM would ruin the performance

good point

depends what you're doing thou' I guess

unless I end up writing a decent application, with a GUI + database and such, then it would probably be more manageable

well I'm getting Sandy Bridge in a month or two

I figure that performance won't be an issue then

yeah, I'd hope it'd be much less of an issue

6:07 PM

but with a real application, I could make it run on a select number of measurements

in which case performance won't be so much of an issue

hmm, well can't you do that with the current scripts? although, I guess doing that may as well be as part of the wider application construction rather than duplicating effort

I make it run on a couple of measurements yes, but indeed I would be solving the wrong problem :P

the reason I have to do it over and over again, is because the results are never stored :P

ah, hence the DB bits

didn't you ask a SO question about saving the results to text files?

I'm currently processing the data over and over again still, though I limit it to a couple of measurements

yeah, but the RAW data = 16 Mb, which is basically just the array. So loading it in itself isn't going to win me anything

@DMA57361 Howdy

6:12 PM

@IvoFlipse ah I see

and because the results are still changing, I'm not sure what I would win at this moment :P

@Sathya hello

basically, I need to plan more o.O

100 rep away from hitting 4 figures in SO :-D

I have more rep then you :P

6:18 PM

hurrah... ~16hrs to go until I have all my test results :/

hehe, you're parallel processing algorithm?

yeah, well 3 algorithms

@DMA57361 parallel processing algo ? o_0

one is done and dusted, written up and everything, the other two are taking a little longer...

@IvoFlipse well I ask boring questions :/

6:20 PM

@Sathya Uni module (shockingly titled "Parallel Computing" ;)

@DMA57361 ah! what a shocker!

that might be it

Q: Bulk Insert into Oracle database: Which is better: FOR Cursor loop or a simple Select ?

1

Which would be a better option for bulk insert into an Oracle database ? A FOR Cursor loop like DECLARE CURSOR C1 IS SELECT * FROM FOO; BEGIN FOR C1_REC IN C1 LOOP INSERT INTO BAR(A, B, C) VALUES(C1.A, C1.B, C1...

sql oracle

^^ this seemingly simple question has got 12k views o_0

and only 2 upvotes :-\

2! :P

yeah.

6:22 PM

and you magically gained like 60 rep!

top

whoops, wrong window :/

was meant to go into PuTTY... :P

@IvoFlipse I noticed that o_0

@DMA57361 LMAO

btw, why not htop ?

-bash: htop: command not found

apparently

@DMA57361 hmm gotta install it I guess

plus, I'm not really a Linux guy, so I've never heard of htop...

@Sathya it's the Uni's cluster - so probably unlikely to happen

6:28 PM

@DMA57361 ah ok.

^^ that's how htop looks

yeah, was looking it up :)

it's more colourful

but I just wanted to check no one else was using that node before I fired something else up

ah ok

man that looks painful to my eyes

ah, now the tree view would be handy

6:33 PM

I've found it slow to find the right bash instances to kill to stop my running scripts...

you can search through top right

Facebook's full stack pt 1 facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/the-full-stack-part-i/…

Netflix's tech blog. techblog.netflix.com

h/o, still reading the first link ;P

what's full stack about?

@IvoFlipse it's blocked here

instapaper to the rescue!

instapaper.com/m?u=http://www.facebook.com/notes/…

lol

but what is the article about?

I'm reading it, I just feel like I'm missing something

6:47 PM

@Sathya oh dear... :)

@IvoFlipse and I agree; it just doesn't seem to really get round to making a point...

@DMA57361 yeah

well he's got a point: design your system based on the data it has to put through

but am I supposed to learn anything from this

or is he just showing off his programming math skills :P

7:07 PM

hmmm, I seem to have received a minor bit of serial upvoting on SO - +65rep, all of which happened 42mins ago

guilty!

@IvoFlipse did the same fer me

lol

I have to spend my votes

might as well spend them in a good way ;)

lol, unless the automagic cheat preventor™ spots you

7:09 PM

haven't had any complaints yet

fair enough

plus I do upvote accepted answers and ones that are close to getting badges ;)

and if any of the mods see it's me, I don't think they'll prosecute me :P

ah, diplomatic immunity is it? :P

meaning: I know I can't overdo myself so there's no need

8:51 PM

feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/M-lszOuP9qA

why doesn't Twitter or Google do this

just create some ranked list based on what get's talked about most

that surely must be interesting right?

interesting indeed

A: Capslock Verifier AutoHotKey

9:08 PM

grr stupid catcha.

0

state := GetKeyState("CapsLock", "T") if state MsgBox CapsLock is Enabled else MsgBox CapsLock is Disabled