The Whiteboard

6:03 PM

Does anyone actually have any other serious contenders? The only possible other consideration that I think can of is "Software Development". I think that "Software Engineering" is more in-your-face about expectations.

Robert Harvey

Which is why I prefer that one.

The only other one that I can think of that might work is Software Development Life Cycle. Because that's literally what our site is about.

Thomas Owens

That's so long, though.

Robert Harvey

SDLC won't work.

You gotta admit... It has a certain ring to it. A cadence.

overexchange

Hai

Robert Harvey

>_<

overexchange

6:06 PM

I am moving to CANADA in July.

Thomas Owens

I almost want to ping Ana and be like "everyone agrees on the new site name - can you guys start now?"

CANADA or canada?

Or Canada?

Or Canadia, eh?

@ThomasOwens She'll ask us if we've vetted the scope sufficiently. That's why she wants to talk again in a month.

overexchange

6:07 PM

with permanent resident status

Thomas Owens

@RobertHarvey I think the scope is fine. I do like your idea of more wikipedia links.

Ampt

@RobertHarvey I've concluded that the scope is great, where do I sign?

Robert Harvey

@overexchange Are you the same overexchange that always asks those pedantic design questions?

Thomas Owens

And dropping software licensing. Copyright is totally on-topic on Law.

Aaron Hall

How much attention should we pay to scope? Do they want us to consider anything?

overexchange

6:09 PM

@RobertHarvey yes

Robert Harvey

@AaronHall Ana wants it to be four bullet points.

Aaron Hall

I agree with @ThomasOwens on that.

Robert Harvey

I don't think anyone reasonably thinks that we should keep Software Licensing questions. Especially since Open Source can answer those now, much better than we can.

Aaron Hall

Licensing is too tangential and requires too much IANAL prefaces.

Robert Harvey

Indeed.

Aaron Hall

6:11 PM

Although "I work at Google, is it fair use to implement this function using the same name and arguments that Java does?" in my opinion, should get a "yes" from us.

Robert Harvey

@ThomasOwens Have you seen this?

52

Q: Usability issues for first-time Stack Exchange users - a micro-study

I come from lands afar, also known as Hardware Recommendations Stack Exchange. Over there, we have a serious problem with first-time Stack Exchange users coming along and asking off-topic questions - to the extent that 50% of incoming questions are closed. We've had a few attempts at solving this...

Aaron Hall

Everyone and their brother was saying, "Java is open source" ever since I was looking into languages at the turn of the millenium.

Thomas Owens

@AaronHall OpenJDK is GPLv2 + Classpath Exception.

Oracle Java JDK is not.

Aaron Hall

I don't know the difference between the two above things.

I do know what GPL is.

Robert Harvey

@ThomasOwens That post provides a great deal of insight into why new users behave the way they do. It also highlights some of Hardware Recommendation's pain points, which are remarkably similar to ours.

Aaron Hall

6:35 PM

I've been saying you need an opt-out wizard for new questioners forever. As an SO veteran, I'd opt-in - I'd probably ask more questions if I felt more confident they wouldn't be seemingly arbitrarily declared off-topic. — Aaron Hall 1 min ago

I have found that self-answering questions gets my questions a better average response, but that takes much longer, and I discard half of my material anyways.

Robert Harvey

6:52 PM

What is an "opt out wizard?"

Ixrec

I couldn't make any sense out of that comment either

Robert Harvey

151

A: Make it easier to close job shop "gimme teh codez" questions

To riff on Shog9's answer, what if we didn't look at close votes as the way to stop terrible questions like this? What else could we do? James presented an interesting proposal on Meta.SE last year: what if we automatically closed any question that got below a net score of -5? Give something lik...

A: Place questions with X net downvotes on hold automatically

This is an interesting proposal... In particular, it's interesting because the stated goal is not to hide lackluster questions (which has been proposed before, and which is partially supported already), but rather to prevent them from being answered - in other words, it suggests the use of closin...

And with that, I'd better go and get some real work done.

See y'all later.

gnat

7:23 PM

34

Q: Pre-fill question-box with text for new users (A/B study proposal)

Problem statement Many new users are unaware of how to formulate a good question, particularly for the technical sites like Stack Overflow, Super User (OK, all of SE). This leads to many new questions being: Closed Downvoted Deleted In addition, it leads to a fair bit of community work tryin...

feature-request questions asking-questions new-users

^^^ that's wizard I guess. Opt-out probably meaning they can turn it off if they want

Simon Forsberg

7:44 PM

@AaronHall Using Machine Learning to classify comments is tricky business.

Aaron Hall

8:04 PM

wizard: Looks like you're writing a question! Let me walk you through how to write a good one. opt-out - no thanks, I've got this.

Ixrec

wizard: are you sure? your last question was immediately downvoted and got one of gnat's canned comments

Aaron Hall

designinginterfaces.com/patterns/wizard

@Ixrec In that case, opt-out is disallowed.

Jörg W Mittag

-2

Q: Can you use comments in popular programming languages and then reduce brook's law, communication issues between developers?

3. Can you use comments in popular programming languages and then reduce brook's law, communication issues between developers? Is there any higher level, popular programming language like Java or Python where you can add comments to the code, like I guess you can in Visual Basic for application...

development-process comments speed brookslaw

Aaron Hall

@RobertHarvey interesting idea, but an on-topic new question could be downvoted without being close-worthy. I wanted downvoted questions to count towards close votes (lowering the threshold), but not immediately close.

Jörg W Mittag

From what I can gather from that rambling, the question is: "Are there any popular languages besides VBA which have comments?" Srsly?

Ixrec

8:09 PM

that's significantly worse than the question I read it as and VTC'd

Jörg W Mittag

The entire rest of the question is basically just a justification for why the OP asks about the existence of comments in the first place. Oh, there's a side question in there: "if there are other languages which have comments, how much does that impact performance?"

Ixrec

none of that is what I thought it was, rofl

Thomas Owens

Google wins trial against Oracle as jury finds Android is “fair use”

Ixrec

which just adds the "unclear" close reason onto all the rest of it

Jörg W Mittag

That was my choice :-D

Aaron Hall

8:20 PM

0

A: Place questions with X net downvotes on hold automatically

Place questions with X net downvotes on hold automatically? In the past I have proposed in chat to lower the threshhold for closing negatively scored questions. This proposal may be the extreme of what I suggest, or perhaps taking it to a logical conclusion. I think it would be consistent to...

Basically, I suggest this:

Score     Close Votes required to Close/Put on Hold
  0       5
 -1       5
 -2       4
 -3       4
 -4       3
 -5       3
 -6       2
 -7       2
 -8       2
 -9       2

Shog seemed interested in symmetry, so I also suggest this:

Score     Reopen Votes required to Reopen
  0       5
  1       5
  2       4
  3       4
  4       3
  5       3
  6       2
  7       2
  8       2
  9       2
...

Ixrec

if the goal is to increase the number of bad questions that get closed so only good ones stay open, making reopening easier seems like the wrong move

Aaron Hall

Shog/SO wants to close more and reopen more.

It will give us what we want, small concession if we fix and reopen more too.

Ixrec

ok then

Aaron Hall

f'in Backspace on IE....

tab tab tab backspace and I leave the room.

75

Q: Why does backspace go back a page? This behavior is so frustrating!

When using a browser, like Firefox, I appreciate that I can easily navigate my tab history with Alt+← (for back) and Alt+→ (for forward.) That makes perfectly good sense to me, and I've used that keyboard shortcut for the longest time. I frequently do text input in web pages. On some pages (but ...

keyboard-shortcuts browser default

I wonder if any mods or other voters will see my suggestion and take it seriously.

Duga

8:36 PM

Sounds like you want Programmers.StackExchange? This isn't really a question about a specific programming problem, algorithm, or coding technique... — Barry 6 secs ago

Ixrec

I had no idea alt+left/right did that, I've always used backspace for going back...