The Nineteenth Byte

DJMcMayhem

6:00 PM

It's accurate, right?

Anonymous

I don't get any output on TIO

Anonymous

@DJMcMayhem I never said it wasn't :P

TrojanByAccident

> Which number does this Befunge code output: <code>9233088751>\#+:#*9-#_$.@</code>

redstarcoder

@Mego reading into it more it seems like it'll probably be too much of a task for the board I'm ordering. Still very excited for the board though

Anonymous

@TrojanByAccident Yeah that beginning bit is important

redstarcoder

6:05 PM

@TrojanByAccident 5

Anonymous

@redstarcoder Why would you lie?

TrojanByAccident

@Mego oh, whoops :P

I assumed it had something to do with syntax highlighting or such

e.e

Kritixi Lithos

@Qwerp-Derp It depends on what you mean by resize a text field. You should be able to specify the size from the text() function

TrojanByAccident

is it 5 or not

FlipTack

Any more feedback for this sandbox post? I'd quite like to post it soonish

TrojanByAccident

6:12 PM

@FlipTack coincidence? The moment I looked at your post, I got an email from rosetta stone :P

FlipTack

spooky

Pavel

I'm a post on /r/conspiracy about this.

brb

DJMcMayhem

Do you think this answer would count as an "undocumented feature" for the best of PPCG nominations?

80

A: Print a Tabula Recta!

Vim, 25 23 bytes :h<_↵jjYZZP25@='Ypx$p'↵ Where ↵ is the Return key. :h<_↵ Open the help section v_b_<_example. jjY Copy the "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz" line. ZZP Close this buffer and paste in ours. 25@=' '↵...

Pavel

Why would it be?

I don't really know Vim, but that seems normal.

Anonymous

I don't think it's much of an undocumented feature

Nathan Merrill

6:16 PM

I really can't believe voters here

DJMcMayhem

It's not a bug, it's just a very obscure feature

Nathan Merrill

9

Q: Should we disallow non-observable requirements?

One of the more recent things to avoid that's coming up a lot is the use of non-observable requirements. The most common incarnations of this are things like "no hardcoding", "implement this algorithm" or "don't use integer types". I find that these are sufficiently problematic that we should thi...

seriously, if you guys go with Martin's answer, you're going to be killing so many questions on this site

Anonymous

It's a completely sideways approach to solving the problem, but it's not really what that category is asking for

Nathan Merrill

I don't think you guys realize the huge ramifications this is going to have

DJMcMayhem

@Mego OK. I think I'll nominate this one instead then:

12

A: Draw an asterisk triangle

Vim, 8 bytes o <Esc><C-V>{r*J Takes input in the readahead buffer, so if input is 15, you would type that and then the code above. This is a silly rule, but seems to be allowed. If you got input in a register like "a, you'd just stick @a in front (10). If you got it from the start file, you'd ...

Anonymous

6:17 PM

@NathanMerrill Patronizing people by saying "you don't understand what you're voting for" is really not the best way to win people over.

Anonymous

@DJMcMayhem I would agree with that one :)

Nathan Merrill

I don't think people have really thought it through :P

Lembik

hi all... anyone ever done any AVX coding? I just want to compute the product of an array of complex numbers as quickly as possible in C.

Nathan Merrill

like I initally thought it would be a good idea

DJMcMayhem

@Mego really, we should just nominate all of his answers, smh

He makes me look bad

Lembik

6:18 PM

So I would like the assembly to use AVX instructions. Any idea how to achieve this without coding in assembly?

Nathan Merrill

but as I continue to think about it, nearly every question has unobservable requirements

the most obvious one is "submissions must be competitive"

Pavel

Also, every restricted source challenge evar

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill That requirement is neither here nor there when it comes to observable requirements. We have a solid definition of what it means to be competitive.

Anonymous

@Pavel Martin's answer doesn't forbid restricted source challenges

Nathan Merrill

what do you mean by "neither here nor there"

and we have a good definition, but it isn't objective

meaning, it requires human judgement

Anonymous

6:22 PM

"neither here nor there" - meaning it's not applicable to the discussion at hand

Nathan Merrill

isn't it a requirement that each question intrinsically has?

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill It's impossible to make that requirement objective, but we want it to be a requirement, so we made it as objective as possible.

Nathan Merrill

and I agree, that's the best solution

Kritixi Lithos

@DJMcMayhem That's a really cool answer. It might be better than the quine one.

Anonymous

The way I view it is, if there is a specific meta policy that would conflict with that (general) policy, the specific policy would win.

Nathan Merrill

6:23 PM

but the meta post says that all requirements must be objective

Lembik

no low level code lovers in? :(

maybe I could ask an AVX code code-golf question :)

Anonymous

So if you were of the opinion that requiring serious contenders is in conflict with the policy that all requirements are objective and observable, the more specific policy about serious contenders would take predence over the general policy about objective and observable requirements.

Anonymous

I'm not of that opinion, though, so that conflict doesn't exist to me.

DJMcMayhem

@KritixiLithos definitely. This guy blows my mind all the time

Kritixi Lithos

Goats are smart :P

Nathan Merrill

6:26 PM

I can agree with the "the more specific meta rules", but I don't see how you don't see the conflict :P

Anonymous

The meta post starts out with a reference to our Things To Avoid meta post. To me, it's clear that the policy is meant in regard to requirements that challenge authors add to their challenges, not to our established site policies.

Nathan Merrill

so, if the meta post didn't exist, I couldn't add "Only serious submissions, please"

in response to a bunch of people posting ungolfed submissions

Anonymous

Let's not play the hypothetical game here

Nathan Merrill

sure :)

regardless, I still think we're getting rid of a bunch of fastest-code restricted-complexity, king-of-the-hill, and other challenges here

Anonymous

I disagree. I think any requirement worth having in such a challenge could be stated in a way that is compliant with the proposed policy.

Nathan Merrill

6:32 PM

what about this question:

37

Q: Extending OEIS: Counting Diamond Tilings

I promise, this will be my last challenge about diamong tilings (for a while, anyway). On the bright side, this challenge doesn't have anything to do with ASCII art, and is not a code golf either, so this is actually completely different. So just as a reminder, every hexagon can be titled with t...

fastest-code combinatorics tiling

the best answer produces 1000 answers in 30 seconds

how are you going to stop me from hardcoding those solutions in, and making it faster?

Conor O'Brien

Do we have a challenge for A071159?

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill With the standard loophole that addresses exactly that

Nathan Merrill

right, but that's not objective, and Martin specifically says that he wants to ban that

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill You're right, that is an issue. I've made a comment pointing that out.

Lynn

Heyyy, would you look at that!

4

I hit the big 30k~

redstarcoder

6:38 PM

Congratulations \o/

Anonymous

@Lynn I dunno, it doesn't look that big. Maybe try <h1>.

Nathan Merrill

lol

TuxCopter

LegionMammal978

Question: Why can't sites have a filter that detects en.m.wikipedia.org links and replaces them with regular en.wikipedia.org links?

El'endia Starman

@LegionMammal978 That'd be great.

@TuxCopter .....and...?

TuxCopter

6:47 PM

Look at the right of the image

Nathan Merrill

I mean, I'd love it if every language was written like python

El'endia Starman

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ seems clever?

Nathan Merrill

all we need now is a program that automatically inserts the semicolons and braces so I don't have to write them

Anonymous

>_< Every single one of Timtech's recent TI-BASIC answers use Ans for input, even though it's not an acceptable input method.

Nathan Merrill

@Mego is there a minimum vote count?

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

6:49 PM

> [status-declined]

@Mego yeah, even his old ones

Nathan Merrill

I mean, its highly debated, but its currently at +8

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill +5 and at least twice as many upvotes as downvotes. Just like it says in the question body.

Nathan Merrill

where does it say that?

Anonymous

Err, like it said in the question body before it was edited out for some reason

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@NathanMerrill IMO it shouldn't even need a separate answer, it counts as a REPL

Nathan Merrill

6:50 PM

ah ok :P

Dennis

@Mego That's standard loopholes, not standard I/O.

Anonymous

meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/revisions/2447/7

Dennis

That's an old revision.

Anonymous

Why was that edited out? Without that bit, there's no rule on what counts as acceptable

Nathan Merrill

having programmed on the TI-83, using Ans is actually pretty common

Anonymous

6:53 PM

This revision removed that requirement, but I don't see any explanation given for why it was removed

Nathan Merrill

but I would love to make a case only for TI languages, and not all languages in general

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@Mego looks like to me that martin just removed the whole paragraph about adding the CG tag wiki, not really specifically intending to remove the +5/double upvotes

Dennis

@Mego That cutoff was for the standards that made it into the tag wiki, not for what might eventually be considered acceptable.

ninja'd

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

ninja'ed sorta but thanks for confirmation

@Dennis then would it be acceptable to edit the specific sentence/phrase about +5/double upvotes back into the post?

Anonymous

Then we need a rule for determining what is deemed "acceptable" - the +5-and-double rule that was previously used and is used on the loopholes post is a good one

Dennis

6:55 PM

That said, it would be nice to have an objective metric that defines what does and what does not count as an accepted I/O method. +5-and-double might be a bit too demanding though.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

ninja'ed sorta again

Anonymous

Why is it now too demanding when in the past it was the standard?

Anonymous

Again - we use it on the standard loopholes post, why not for acceptable I/O methods as well?

Nathan Merrill

I like +5-and-double

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

it's martin's post ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ maybe ask him?

Nathan Merrill

6:57 PM

it has historical precedent (both on the same question and the other one)

even if it does make Ans invalid :/

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

IMO that counts as a repl sort of output

Dennis

Standard loopholes require an overwhelming majority. So do methods that make it into the tag wiki. I'm not sure the same is true for all defaults.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

and shouldn't be allowed then

LegionMammal978

@Dennis I think I made a Data.SE query for it once, let's see if I can find it

data.stackexchange.com/meta.codegolf/query/459592/…

Nathan Merrill

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ its really the only way to chain programs togetherr

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

6:59 PM

@Dennis well, then in any case the "no Ans as input" still applies then

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill That's not the right way to look at it. The acceptable I/O methods are a whitelist, not a blacklist. It wouldn't make it invalid - it wasn't valid in the first place.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@NathanMerrill define chain?

Nathan Merrill

like, piping input from one program into another

Dennis

Well, it's 24/12 now, so it would be valid by the 5-and-double rule as well.

Nathan Merrill

@Mego right, but if there isn't a standard, I assume "positive votes", which means that its currently valid in my book :P

Anonymous

7:01 PM

That's a problem with any vote-based consensus rule - the validity is subject to change at any time. Answers that were previously valid may become invalid and re-valid again within a few minutes.

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill Assuming is bad. What happened to your crusade for objectivity in site policies? :P

Nathan Merrill

true, but there's no easy way to solve that :P

@Mego but there isn't a policy! what am I supposed to use?

TimmyD

@Dennis The standard I/O is in the code-golf wiki ...

Dennis

I'd argue that answers can never become invalid. If it was valid when it was posted, that's good enough.

Nathan Merrill

ah, good point

Anonymous

7:02 PM

@Dennis And what if it was invalid, but later became valid?

Anonymous

(like what just happened with all of the Ans answers)

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

how fast are we talking?

Dennis

@TimmyD Only the few methods that reached consensus in the first week. There are many other forms of I/O that as also acceptable.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

like, we should mostly nuke-on-sight invalid answers

betseg

awww - i switched to pc and noticed hats are gone ;_;

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

7:03 PM

@TimmyD yeah, but we've stopped updating them there

Anonymous

@Dennis No, he means the post is linked in the wiki

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@betseg yes they've been gone for over 12 hours

redstarcoder

@Dennis even when the question was modified soon after the answer was posted? (frequently observed with new posters)

Nathan Merrill

iff its currently invalid, then deleted, and reopened if it changes

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@redstarcoder not about that kind of invalid

talking about invalid io methods right now

Dennis

7:04 PM

@Mego Technically invalid, but it's a bit pointless to delete something if it could be re-posted verbatim.

redstarcoder

Ah okay, I was trying to read up and understand :) ^^^

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@NathanMerrill yeah, that's what I was about to type

@redstarcoder it's okay

Anonymous

It also complicated flags - how a flag for invalidity is handled depends on when the flag is handled

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

IMO we should just nuke-on-sight/posting time all invalid answers, and then if they later become valid the poster is free to undelete/repost his solution

TimmyD

Mego has it -- The standard I/O thread is linked from the wiki. IMO, that was intending as "Here's the link of acceptable I/O methods. We don't want to update the wiki every time."

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

7:05 PM

Maybe we should have a certain time limit during which it's still valid? to settle on a decision

Anonymous

@TimmyD That's exactly how I viewed it, too

Anonymous

Isn't there a way to see a history of the vote counts on a post?

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

not afair

Nathan Merrill

this is all getting way too complicated. like race conditions

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

ye

Dennis

7:06 PM

@Mego That's rather common though. We get lots of flags that don't longer apply because the post was edited, the answer was already deleted, etc.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@Mego IMO part of the problem is that we're assuming existing answers with high vote counts (up and down) already will suddenly change

after a week or so, I think the voting on a new io/loophole/anything has kind of settled down

Nathan Merrill

dunno. Ans just became valid according to the +5/double rule

Anonymous

@Dennis But that's usually only one shift between validity and invalidity. The fact that the validity could possibly change multiple times while the flag is being handled is a headache.

TrojanByAccident

@NathanMerrill ans?

redstarcoder

@TrojanByAccident TI-BASIC instruction I think

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

7:08 PM

variable representing previous expression in TI-BASIC

Anonymous

@TrojanByAccident If you scroll back through the conversation to see the context, it should become clear what we're discussing

FlipTack

Haha, I love how Dennis now has 3 nominations in "Best Mathematical Insight"

I'll be extremely shocked if he doesn't get it.

TrojanByAccident

@Mego It likely would have taken you less time to write a short explanation than to tell me to look back through the conversation for context

Nathan Merrill

we really should have named it the "Dennis award": To dennis' best answer, or somebody who comes close

5

Anonymous

@NathanMerrill So what if the validity changes daily? Should the post switch between deleted and not every day?

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

7:09 PM

I don't think it's going to change that fast

after a while, it will settle down

Anonymous

@TrojanByAccident Or you could just use the ability you have to scroll back through a conversation to read it without disrupting it by saying "what are you guys talking about?"

FlipTack

Any last suggestions before I post this to main? meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/11185/60919

Anonymous

If you can't be bothered to read a relatively-short conversation, I can't be bothered to summarize it for you.

Nathan Merrill

@Mego reopening an answer is treated the same as posting an answer: if it was correct when posted/reopened, then it is permanently left open

Anonymous

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ Please don't make trivial edits so that you can change your vote.

Gabriel Benamy

7:12 PM

tfw ur the only one who has a nomination against three of Dennis's nominations

and it's a self-nomination at that

Anonymous

And look, it's now back to +23/-13, so it's invalid by the +5-and-double rule.

Anonymous

We really need a better rule, that is less dependent on potentially constantly changing votes

DJMcMayhem

@Mego is it really that bad? meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/revisions/8363/2

@GabrielBenamy it's a category Dennis is particularly good at. Good luck! :P

Anonymous

@DJMcMayhem Yes, it is.

Gabriel Benamy

@DJMcMayhem you could help by nominating some of my other answers :P

Dennis

7:15 PM

@FlipTack Thank you for the nomination, but I think the post would actually have to be from 2016.

FlipTack

oh, I forgot that was early january

my bad, I'll roll it back

DJMcMayhem

@Mego that doesn't say anything about trivial edits to change your vote

Anonymous

@DJMcMayhem This does

Anonymous

+9/-51 sends a pretty clear message that making trivial edits to change your vote is not a good thing

Dennis

@NathanMerrill The fun part: I'm planning to post three self-nominations in that category. :P

Nathan Merrill

7:16 PM

lol

Gabriel Benamy

@Dennis time for me to cry

Dennis

@Mego Moderation is never easy. :P

Anonymous

@Dennis True, but we as a community should be doing what we can to make being a moderator less headache-inducing.

Poke

don't really feel like reading the full context but it seems like something needs to be voted valid and stay that way for a set amount of time before it actually becomes valid-for-use

FlipTack

lol, do you think that's that the most downvoted post by Jeff Atwood @Mego

Dennis

7:18 PM

@GabrielBenamy Just because I have more nominations doesn't mean I'm going to win. I didn't win squat last year.

Anonymous

@Poke That's a good idea, but I'm not sure how we're going to implement it

Anonymous

@FlipTack Probably not. Jeff wasn't the most popular person with the community while he was part of SE.

DJMcMayhem

-216

A: Can we have the ability to retract a close vote before it closes?

declining -- you can always cast a reopen vote if the post gets closed. Also note that all close votes automatically expire after two days. (and for that matter reopen votes, or any other vote that attempts to reach a threshold -- otherwise, over an absurdly long period of time, say 10 years, e...

FlipTack

damn

Dennis

@Mego Is the timeline still visible to non-mods?

FlipTack

7:19 PM

personally I like Jeff, he wrote Discourse which is a forum software I use a lot

although I never knew him on SE

DJMcMayhem

Although I disagree with this one much more:

Anonymous

@Dennis I'm not sure. I don't remember how to access it.

DJMcMayhem

-189

A: Show all of my question/answers to me even if they are deleted

Generally when things get deleted, it's for a good reason, and we don't want users to be undeleting them -- there's a reason we require 10k rep to "see" deleted items at all, and only moderators can see deletions in a user's profile.

Nathan Merrill

technically, we have this same problem with every meta post here

I mean, we could have multiple answers that swap being the top answer

Dennis

liking someone != agreeing with everything they say

Anonymous

7:20 PM

@DJMcMayhem Also note that both of those things that Jeff was against are implemented

Dennis

@Mego meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/posts/2447/timeline

DJMcMayhem

@Mego the second one isn't

Anonymous

@DJMcMayhem Yes it is. You can see your own deleted posts, regardless of rep level.

Anonymous

@Dennis I can see that. Is it possible to view that for an answer and not a question?

DJMcMayhem

@Mego chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/240?m=34620525#34620525

Also status-declined

Dennis

7:22 PM

@Mego meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/posts/8580/timeline

Anonymous

Oh. I always thought that was a feature.

Anonymous

I guess I hit the "see deleted posts" rep level before I hit critical mass for deleted posts.

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@Mego ... tha'ts not about making edits to the post isn't okay, those votes (and read the comments) are regarding the fact that edits are needed to chagne your vote

Anonymous

@Dennis Cool. That is very helpful.

New Main Posts

1

Q: Sharing (characters) is Caring!

Consider the following task: Given a positive integer n > 0, output its integer root. The integer root of a number n is the largest value of x where x2 ≤ n, usually expressed with the formula int(sqrt(n)). Examples: 25 -> 5, 24 -> 4, 40 -> 6, 1 -> 1. This task is easy enough on its ow...

code-challenge number arithmetic rosetta-stone

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

7:23 PM

@DJMcMayhem I think that might be part of the link not working also

may not be because he can't see it

Anonymous

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ The votes are saying that a lot of people disagree with that answer. That answer says (among other things) to make a trivial edit if you want to change your vote. Ergo, a lot of people disagree with making trivial edits to change your vote.

Anonymous

I could test out viewing deleted posts on DataBot

DJMcMayhem

No, a lot of people disagree that that should be the only way to change your vote

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

@Mego I don't think you can assume that the majority of people disagree with 1 specific point, when the comments indicate otherwise

the comments make 1 specific point and have almost as many upvotes as the answer does downvotes

and that specific point isn't "don't make trivial edits"

Nathan Merrill

@FlipTack is Ti-BASIC text-based? Each of the words are their own code-point, you don't actually type "A","n","s" for "Ans"

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

7:25 PM

some are, but yeah it's 1 button press

for arbitrary strings it's text based though (obviously)

Nathan Merrill

right :)

Anonymous

I can see this on DataBot, who has 71 rep.

Anonymous

So yes, you can see your own deleted posts. The links still work.

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Sliding Puzzle - King of the Hill Introducing Sliding Puzzle - King of the Hill Challenge How to Clone the project from GitHub Compile this project and add the .dll to your Project Create a class which extends BasePlayer Implemement all the Methods (See: ExampleCode) Post your code =) Rest...

DJMcMayhem

@Mego weird. Can you see this meta.codegolf.stackexchange.com/a/11216/31716

Anonymous

7:27 PM

@DJMcMayhem Yes

Nathan Merrill

@NewMainPosts ah, there's another non-observable requirement: Multiple versions of the same language are disallowed

FlipTack

@NathanMerrill I'd call that token-based tbh. If you want to write an answer for it, you should transribe it into plaintext and use those characters (i.e, Ans = 3 chars)

Dennis

@Data? Btw, there's an actual sandbox for these things on Mother Meta. Our sandbox for proposed challenges is cluttered enough as it is.

Nathan Merrill

@FlipTack I'm not actually going to post an answer, but I thought you should consider it :)

Anonymous

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ Here's the meta post specifically about not making trivial edits: meta.stackexchange.com/a/214892/307833

FlipTack

7:29 PM

As for the non-observable requirement... not really.

It's fairly obvious what counts as a different language

Anonymous

@Dennis Yeah I realized that after I clicked submit. I meant to use the Meta.SE sandbox, but my tired brain decided to do it on our Sandbox.

FlipTack

Sometimes the lines are blurry, like Matlab/Octave, but must multi-language challenges include the same rule

El'endia Starman

@Dennis: Question that just popped in my head: how do you sandbox stuff for TIO?

Dennis

Re: PPCG sandbox. Would it make sense to "recycle" posts and just edit an old, deleted answer instead of posting a new one?

Nathan Merrill

@FlipTack I think your challenge is on-topic. Just using it as an example for my most recent meta post

Anonymous

7:31 PM

@Dennis I think the ship has sailed for that approach. Recycling old answers would only make it more difficult to use, and it's already difficult enough.

El'endia Starman

@Dennis That seems like a terrible idea, unless you recycle posts that you previously made. That I could perhaps get behind, though might there be an issue with not having the rep/privilege to undelete?

Anonymous

It would only really work if there was a 1-2 answer limit per user. That would keep the total number of answers down, which would help with the extreme mobile lag.

Anonymous

But we are faaaaaar beyond 1 or 2 answers per user. I probably have 40 or so Sandbox answers (though most of them are deleted).

Anonymous

Really, we just need a way to hide the deleted posts. There's no reason why a high-rep user would need to see a deleted post unless they were specifically looking for something, or they were using the moderation tools page (which I recently learned exists).

muddyfish

@Dennis I agree that it would only work if you do it on your own posts. However, I currently have many non-posted challenges sitting there.

It doesn't really work of you sandbox challenges quicker than you post

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

7:34 PM

(just throwing this out there) maybe we should retire the old sandbox and create a new one to clean out some of the old answers?

redstarcoder

Sandbox V2, newer, better, stronger

TrojanByAccident

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ +1

Dennis

@El'endiaStarman All user-supplied code is run in the sandbox_t context (SELinux), which has very limited read permissions, no write permissions at all outside its temporary directories, no network access, no capabilities (e.g., SUID), etc. Furthermore, the parent user has an immutable home directory, doesn't own any files outside it, and rather restricted PAM limits. Finally, all of this takes place on a separate server, so even if something goes wrong, nothing of value will be lost or made public.

Nathan Merrill

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ we used to do it that way, don't remember why we stopped

Anonymous

@muddyfish Exactly. I have several challenges sitting in the Sandbox because they require a lot of work to be ready for main (mostly creating test cases), and I haven't had the time to actually do that work.

Dennis

7:37 PM

@El'endiaStarman Yes, I meant your own answers. I currently have 27 deleted sandbox posts, so when I have a new idea, I could edit and undelete one of those. Even low-rep users should be able to undelete their recently deleted answers, provided they did delete them themselves.

Anonymous

16

A: How should sandbox retirement be handled (if at all)?

Proposal for the handling of retired sandboxes - Don't! I suggest to stop retiring sandboxes and keep using a single one. Sandboxes should be sorted by activity, because even at 50 or 100 answers, they are too big to find the active ones when sorting by votes. Assuming everyone does that, we can...

Nathan Merrill

@Dennis that's clever. The biggest disadvantage is the sandbox bot won't catch it

Anonymous

> Doorknob requested feedback from an SE dev whether some large number of answers on a single question will cause technical problems. The answer is that there is no limit we are likely to reach and due to pagination, load times won't be affected either.

Anonymous

Hahahaha. This is clearly before the mobile app.

Dennis

@NathanMerrill That's fixed with a single chat post though.

Nathan Merrill

7:38 PM

ah, but then I get yelled for self-advertising posts /sarc :P

Anonymous

The bot is so much more convenient though (even if it is slow)

Anonymous

I don't think there are any problems with the Sandbox that would be solved by recycling posts, and it would introduce new problems as well. It's not worth the effort.

Nathan Merrill

actually, now that I think about it, I'd rather just post it myself than wait for the bot

comments would be a problem

but not to Dennis...

Anonymous

Plus, new users probably won't follow that rule anyway, so it's moot

Nathan Merrill

oh, making it a rule I think is a bad idea

Anonymous

7:40 PM

Rule/suggestion/whatever

Dennis

@Mego I'm not sure waiting up to an hour for a bot to post something (after that hour has passed, I might not even be online anymore) is more convenient that copy-pasting a link into chat.

Downgoat

@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ maybe we should make a website dedicated to Sandbox posts in which we could make old posts decay away to avoid clutter

Dennis

@NathanMerrill Yes, comments would be rather problematic.

muddyfish

@Downgoat I'd rather not have non-posted challenges decay

Dennis

Didn't consider that.

Anonymous

7:41 PM

@Dennis Waiting an hour is extremely rare. The delay is almost always 15 minutes or less.

Nathan Merrill

@Dennis would it be a problem if I did recycle a deleted post if I flagged the comments for deletion?

I think that's a rather trivial problem to flag a post for

Downgoat

@muddyfish By decay I don't mean delete

muddyfish

@Downgoat what else would you mean?

Dennis

@NathanMerrill Meta flags usually take some time before they get handled. We have to actually visit the meta site to see them.

Anonymous

As far as I'm concerned, if people are using the Sandbox, I'm happy. It has its problems, sure, but like I said earlier, I don't think any would actually be solved by recycling old posts, and that will just cause more problems.

Anonymous

7:43 PM

@Dennis That's kind of terrible design

Nathan Merrill

I think the problem of deleted posts is a bigger problem than decayed posts on the Sandbox

Anonymous

Also shame on the mods for not visiting meta enough /s

Nathan Merrill

especially because I like going back and reading decayed posts to see if they are worth revivng. You can't do that for already-posted ones

muddyfish

@NathanMerrill Is it possible for mods to perma-delete posted answers?

Dennis

@Mego I don't disagree. I visit meta every time there's a new meta question (for these, we do get notifications), but that's simply not comparable to my ~~obsession~~ vigilance on main.

Nathan Merrill

7:45 PM

notification for each new meta post? that's rather clever

El'endia Starman

@Dennis You don't get a link on the main site dashboard? I remember there being one. (No Meta flags on C.SE at the moment, so I can't really check.)

Nathan Merrill

remind me to never make an SE clone: I'd never get all the details right

Dennis

@NathanMerrill Meta question. Answers don't create notifications.

Nathan Merrill

yet another detail :P

Dennis

@El'endiaStarman Nope. The dashboards are complete separate. Iirc I even had to accept two moderator agreements.

Anonymous

7:47 PM

It wouldn't be too hard for a regular user to set up notifications from the RSS feed

LegionMammal978

Anyone here know Pyth?

Dennis

Barely.

muddyfish

@LegionMammal978 kind of

LegionMammal978

Would s@Q2 be the shortest integer square root program?

Nathan Merrill

Pyth used to be all the rage here

until Jelly

Anonymous

7:48 PM

And then Seriously and Jelly started stomping it :P

FlipTack

@Mego are you on here? stackoverflow.blog/2017/01/say-farewell-to-winter-bash-2016/…

scroll to "The Hatter"

Nathan Merrill

yeah, then Seriously came around

El'endia Starman

Nathan Merrill

and people realized you should make your own language, not shorten an existing one

Anonymous

@FlipTack Yep, that's me

FlipTack

7:49 PM

famous!

Anonymous

That's my profile card from PPCG

El'endia Starman

Grr. Why is the image zoomed in? Anyway, I made a Meta flag to demonstrate.

muddyfish

@LegionMammal978 I think so

Dennis

@El'endiaStarman And now I wonder how I have been a mod for 15 months without noticing that...

El'endia Starman

@Dennis I don't think the feature is that old.

Plus, it's easy to miss.

FlipTack

7:51 PM

@El'endiaStarman Why did someone flag "Too many owner edits"? Is that a legit reason to flag?

Dennis

Well, it took me years to notice that the OP's username always has a blue background in comments, so...

2

@FlipTack That's an automatic flag, raised by the Community user.

Community has a habit of flagging lots of stuff for no good reason. :P

Anonymous

@FlipTack What Dennis said - lots of owner edits can mean vandalizing

Anonymous

Community really loves raising VLQ autoflags on PPCG

2

El'endia Starman

@FlipTack The (auto) indicates that Community raised the flag. That particular flag gets raised after at least 20 edits.

Nathan Merrill

do we have a post on "We're not a Q&A site" about all of the auto-flagging?

Dennis

7:53 PM

Our sandbox has 125 flags. The vast majority was raised by Community.

El'endia Starman

@Dennis Oh boy, that's inexcusable! ;)

Dennis

@NathanMerrill If we don't, there should be one. Too many edits and too many answers flags are just noise on PPCG.

Anonymous

@Dennis I'm colorblind and I saw that immediately! :P

muddyfish

@Dennis suspend the entire community to stop the flags

Anonymous

@muddyfish Don't give him ideas

Dennis

7:55 PM

Can't. Community is a mod.

Anonymous

No he means suspend everyone

muddyfish

@Mego I'm just waiting to be suspended now

DJMcMayhem

I thought you can suspend mods?

El'endia Starman

@DJMcMayhem Nope.

Though I did once consider trying.

muddyfish

@El'endiaStarman what's the error message?

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

7:55 PM

@NathanMerrill idk either I wasn't here

Nathan Merrill

found it:

40

A: We're not a Q&A site. But what should be done about it?

Modify the trigger for low quality posts Occasionally, very short answers to code-golf competitions written without explanations will end up in the low quality posts queue on the ground that they are too short and are mostly composed of a code block (I just reviewed one, minutes ago). Sure addin...

El'endia Starman

@muddyfish No idea.

Jul 31 '16 at 21:17, by El'endia Starman

@Dennis I have in the past briefly considered trying to suspend Jeff Atwood.

Dennis

@DJMcMayhem Moderators can't suspend other moderators. A community manager would have to revoke their mod status first.

quartata

I somehow have managed to ignite my sandwich.

19

Eᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏ Iʀᴋ

ah

@quartata nice

pics?

quartata

7:57 PM

I got it out, thankfully only the top got burnt.

New Sandboxed Posts

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Challenges

Nibbles Nostalgia People from my generation certainly know what is the Nibbles game! The challenge is to write a game that is a one line, one level Nibbles game using only the line buffer. Rules: You must output to one or both of stderr/stdout Line Width is 80 chars Snake will always begin a...