/dev/chat

12:00 AM

i have answers, but when i do reviews there I've had ppl go and downvote my Q&A's b/c I suggested that there A was a comment or to expand on a link

Gilles

@slm SO started out to be the tail end of wikipedia. That lasted all of five minutes, then reputation took over

@slm surprisingly I haven't had much of that. I think (I don't pay all that much attention).

most of my downvotes are on genuinely bad answers, or as revenge when (people thought) I had downvoted a competing answer

slm

@Gilles - yeah I remember listening to the podcast when Joel and Jeff were designing and building it, I didn't get in until much later, still don't know why I didn't participate in the beginning

@Gilles - yeah I still have a hard time downvoting Q's & A's. I think I've downvoted only 12 times at most.

I prefer to work it out via comments

Gilles

@slm downvoting is important. It makes bad stuff float down

it's also an incentive for people to fix their posts

slm

@Gilles - as I've said before when someone DV's me I see it

yeah I've noticed you doing weeding everyday

Gilles

the impact on reputation is negligible but people get on their high horse

slm

12:05 AM

I figure I'm on here so much that I engage more immediately

yeah it's a 5to1 so it isn't gonna break you

as i'm on the site more and more I'll probably gravitate to your line of thinking on DV's

as a tool, I've seen some early Q's where ppl were using them as a weapon so I'm reluctant

on this site no less

terdon

I'm with Gilles on this, voting is important, both up and down.

ChrisDown downvoted an answer of mine the other day and he was completely right, I was speaking nonsense and it should have been downvoted to let people know that it's wrong.

So yes, leave a comment (he did and I fixed it and he retracted his downvote) but we should take pains to vote good things up and bad things down.

slm

This was the Q where someone started downvoting all the other answers that provided an answer: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/74636/…

I spoke with Michael about it

I just checked, I've cast 6 DV

terdon

OK, but that's abusing the system, I think it is important to downvote straight out wrong answers.

I have 11, so I don't suggest you do it all the time :)

slm

right so that was my early run in with the DV so I've taken a more hands on approach to help someone work a bad answer or I've fixed it myself

Gilles

it can be legitimate to downvote all the other answers on a question, if you think they're all wrong

there's no way to distinguish this from downvoting just to make your answer float to the top

Braiam

12:14 AM

unix.stackexchange.com/posts/74636/timeline

slm

oh yeah I get that, I'm not saying it's necessarily bad, during the podcasts Jeff and joel would discuss and I got what they were saying, I just figure I help more by intervening than by DV'ing. I like helping ppl focus an answer

Braiam

@slm be careful "fixing" answers, some people need to learn that they did wrong... as I did with a answer that got downvoted almost inmediatly because I just throw the theory without actually testing...

which is most of the time...

slm

Yes I don't immediately fix, I try to work with the answer to help them develop the ability to do it

Braiam

I do downvote heavily in AU (with comments) because the questions are just so bad, through I vote more on answers that could be harmful or just outright wrong

slm

hang on my kids are calling for me, brb

Gilles

12:19 AM

@Braiam if you edit someone's answer, they get a notification. So if it's a simple mistake that you can fix, go ahead and edit

terdon

I tend to leave comments and then downvote if my concern is not addressed. I will downvote directly if something is both dangerous and wrong.

Braiam

@Gilles I meant when the logic is total wrong or the approach will not result as expected, If it's just a minuscule mistake about a > that should be < I will fix it myself

or if the answer is fresh, just comment it..

slm

12:38 AM

@Braiam - is there a link for timelines on each Q&A?

terdon

Yeah, I'd never seen that either. Perhaps we always need to type $URL/timeline

Braiam

62

Q: List of unlinked pages on Stack Exchange sites

Here is a list of special, unlinked pages (they may be linked in questions and answers) on Stack Exchange sites. Most pages listed here are work in progress. Currently, this list is incomplete. /reputation - show your reputation and where it came from /election - elect moderators /posts/<id>/ti...

slm

So you can see who's voted on you, that seems dangerous

Braiam

well... some of them are short of linked now...

no, you see when they voted and to who, the vote casted to some post is ulmost secret

but then, you can always guess.... :|

slm

I found the reputation one, I like looking at that cuz it shows you how many 200's you've got, plus it's interesting how they've structured the DB, you can see the classification of types of votes and how everything get's a sequential number

Braiam

12:44 AM

> a problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem or by a rule

WOW

slm

what's that from?

Braiam

Catch-22

Catch-22 is a satirical novel by the American author Joseph Heller. He began writing it in 1953, and the novel was first published in 1961. It is set during World War II in 1943 and is frequently cited as one of the great literary works of the twentieth century. It uses a distinctive non-chronological third-person omniscient narration, describing events from different characters' points of view and out of sequence so that the time line develops along with the plot. The novel follows Captain John Yossarian, a U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombardier. Most of the events in the book occur whi...

terdon

was that catch22 @Braiam?

ah, yes it was :)

Brilliant book, great expression

I've never read anything else that manages to be so profoundly thought provoking and hilariously funny at the same time

slm

So on this Q did I not answer the Q and the guy DV'd me? unix.stackexchange.com/posts/91729/timeline

terdon

no

>
Q
+2 -1

anonymous1111
A
+2

goldilocks
A
-1

slm

sorry, bad formatting

slm

12:49 AM

i had to read it in highschool, I have to re-read some books b/c they kind of didn't do anything for me.

How do you read this then?

terdon

Anyway that , means the Question has +2 and -1, and was asked by anonymous, goldilock's answer has +2 and yours has -1

no info on who voted, just on who got voted

@slm I read it back in high school too though it was by choice and it blew my mind, you should retry it.

slm

OK that seems better to me, it seem dangerous that it was showing me who did the voting which I thought was intentionally not accessible in the system, wisely so

i'll have to re-read, but then that means less U&L

terdon

@slm yeah, not even mods can see that, it would be weird to have something so easily accessible, this was originally a network for Uber Geeks

slm

Alright fellas the kids and wife are calling for me to leave the laptop

night

terdon

night

AsheeshR

3:12 AM

Could somebody tag this with chromium-os? chrome-os is not the correct tag.

slm

3:31 AM

@AsheeshR - tag what?

@AsheeshR - nevermind, missed the "this" link. Retagged it.

Braiam

and a new tag has born, cogratz @slm is a boy~ :D

slm

kinda surprised that wasn't here already

there are chrome-os tagged questions, should we change them?

Braiam

3:52 AM

umm... I found some questions that could be changed other that is ok and 2 that definitively has nothing to do with chrome/ium-os

slm

I'm fixing things now

AsheeshR

5:22 AM

Surprisingly, the entire network doesnt have a Chromium-OS tag. — AsheeshR 2 days ago

This is now the only chromium-os tag in the entire network.

slm

cool, i also added chrome-book, there was already chrome-os and chrubuntu

slm

4:09 PM

trolley sighting: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/91904/…

this user: unix.stackexchange.com/users/47724/allah-akbar

Mat

Looks like he deleted his own question... strange.

slm

He's testing to see if we're watching him

He's done that before

He's a pretty stubborn guy, doesn't get the message that it's pointless

@Mat - I wouldn't be surprised if the other account that posted this question is his too, USER: unix.stackexchange.com/users/47727/prasad. Q: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/91908/…

The first Q was a distraction to get this one through

Braiam

4:26 PM

yeah, everyone fall for that trap but ME!

Mat

Could be but I don't think so. I've never seen such a short question from that guy, and the English doesn't match. Our troll actually speaks pretty good English when he tries, that post was from someone with a bit more difficulties with the language.

slm

yeah I answered it anyway but it seemed suss.

I"m overly suss now

terdon

I'm with @Mat on this one, it looks ok (horrible question of course) but I don't think it's the troll

Annoyingly, his question on electrical engineering was fine

0

Q: How to convert a 10-Watt solar panel into 3v & 3 amp?

The device I use requires about 3v and 3amps. Based on my Google research, I found out that in order to get 3V and 3Amps from a solar panel, the solar panel needs to be at least 9 Watts. So let's say i purchase a solar panel that outputs 10 watts. Can i simply find an adapter cord, cut it's t...

voltage solar-cell watts amps

slm

4:46 PM

I don't get what his angle is, that seems like a perfectly valid Q. I flagged it just to let the mods know.

terdon

I think that one was probably an honest Q, he actually wanted a reply

slm

But then why use the Allah acct.

he should have an actual real acct. that he never spams from...dunno

terdon

You're looking for sense where none is to be found I think.

Braiam

6:26 PM

@terdon philosophical, ain't ya?

terdon

Heh, I try :)

slm

8:44 PM

What do we do with this guys Q? unix.stackexchange.com/questions/91890/…

He's edited it but I see nothing new in the edit that makes me think it's not a duplicate still.

terdon

I've voted to reopen, he's tried nohup and disown which are the suggestions offered in the dupe and they don't work for some reason

Gilles

@slm it wasn't a duplicate in the first place

his problem isn't that the program is killed when the terminal goes away

he needs xvfb, surely we have a duplicate for that

found it:

4

Q: How can I run Firefox on Linux headlessly (i.e. without requiring libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0)?

I’ve got Dreamhost shared hosting, and I’m trying to run Firefox 3.0 on it headlessly for use with Selenium. When I try to run it (~/local/bin/firefox/firefox), I get the following error message: error while loading shared libraries: libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such ...

firefox gtk headless

1

Q: SVN "not a working copy"

Ok ... so I wanted to upload something to an SVN server. How hard can that be? Well, turns out I've been using windumb for too long. First I am supposed to "clone" the folder to my computer, using svn co --username USERNAME URL Alright, so I cd ~/.../0.SVN svn co --username USERNAME URL an...

svn

is there any generic method for debugging when svn tells you “OPTIONS from blah: HTTP response code”?

slm

9:45 PM

@Gilles Thanks Gilles, my mistake, it looked like that one was the culprit

@terdon - I'll vote to reopen it.

@Gilles - I see it's a graphical application that he was trying to background, didn't get that from the original Q.

Gilles

@slm he hadn't stated it originally, but he had stated that the usual method didn't work

slm

11:35 PM

@Gilles Yeah I know he hadn't mentioned it originally, I told him we needed more info ~5 hours ago, and then 4 hours ago he added more info to his Q regarding the X, that was the missing piece of info.

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