@RhysW @enderland On the subject of whether bad questions should get answers: I screwed up recently by posting an answer on a bad question on History.SE. Although the community closed the question, it was then brought up on Meta, "discussed" and re-opened. That's not good and I've deleted my answer today, to give the community there the opportunity to discuss the question on its own merits.
I'm not saying "don't look at the answers at all", but an answer, however good it might be, doesn't do much to make a question better. It might be worth considering good answers when deleting questions, but not really when closing them.
Should this question be re-opened on the grounds that it is asking about an area of history, and it was given a successful answer?
The situation is a question that was a bit off-topic (too technical, I think. Maybe better for another site). Someone answered it, though.
The general case:
Sh...
@RhysW btw, you got the reverse vote time limit wrong. It's 5 minutes (or so) after you voted, and that's to account for mistakes and edits within the edit grace period (edits in the first 5 minutes don't generate revisions). After that 5 minute window your vote is locked until there's an edit. If there's an edit, you can change your vote at any time after that.
Earlier this morning I reversed a vote I casted about a year and a half ago. Hey, better late than never ;)
@RhysW Are you absolutely certain it was after the edit? And was the edit in our out the edit grace period? If it was, that would explain it, edits within the grace period don't generate revisions, from the system's perspective is like there were no edits at all.
Edit was about 3 days after my vote, thats how its always been for me across all sites, after x amount of time ive never been able to change a vote, even after edits outside of the grace period
i thought that was default SE behaviour
@enderland I see it more as 'How do i tell my manager a bus is about to hit me'
To help deal with the "tactical downvoting" problem, we have radically reduced the window for undoing votes.
There is now only the very briefest of windows where you can undo a vote. (edit: this was increased to 5 minutes)
After that, the vote is permanently "locked in", until the post is edite...
Well, that happens and I'm not so sure that's a problem. If you bothered to post an answer, that probably means you weren't particularly satisfied with the existing answers and your downvote might be completely honest and not an attempt to push your answer higher up.
I do, its unfair to game the system knowing that some people will only read as far as the top answer, but theres no solution so no point in my grumbling
I tend to always read the first 3 or 4 answers (depending on their length), but yeah I think most people won't read past the second one. However a very good solution to that problem is keep questions specific enough so they don't require more than a couple of answers.
@YannisRizos true but its not always the questions fault. Sometimes you get people like beth, and jmac who give fantastic answers that cover 5-6 different angles. but when they dont answer you end up with people who only cover 1 potential angle so 5 - 6 are needed to cover them all
That is the questions' fault. A lot of our top contributors may write fantastic answers that cover a variety of angles but 1) we can't count on them always having the time or the energy to do that, 2) we can't expect them to answer all the questions.
Which brings us back to the discussion about how good answers don't legitimize poor questions.
@YannisRizos i think were talking about different things
what i mean is some answers dont think about things from more than one point of view, but if there are multiple places to do it from then we end up with one answer per view
there is no way the question can get around that, its just less experienced answerers
@YannisRizos i disagree, just because the person asking it currently only needs one point of view, doesnt mean that all the people who want to know in the future will want that same point of view
and they cant ask the question again because it will be marked as duplicate
@YannisRizos oh no i dont agree with crap answers, i will still downvote them
but sometimes there is more than one good way to tackle a problem
@YannisRizos i should clarify, by point of view, i dont mean opinion, i mean a good, well worded, high quality answer that provides an alternate solution to the problem
Sure. And when that happens, we'll either be lucky and the first couple of answers will cover all the ways sufficiently, or... we won't, and we'll end up with quite a few answers no one will ever actually read.
That, however, is not a problem that we can solve. You can never tell who will be the first or second to answer, and unfortunately the first couple of answers set the tone for the rest.
@RhysW Don't get too paranoid with tactical downvoting. Most people who would think to do that, are too concerned about their precious rep to spend points downvoting answers.
@SpikyBlue Don't. Having a diamond next to your username is surprisingly restrictive. There are quite a few things you can't do as a moderator that you can do as a user. An easy example is voting to close when you are not absolutely certain. It certainly has its perks, but for the most part being a moderator isn't really different than being a 10K (4K on betas) user.
Something I had no idea about, as I only had 8K on Programmers when I was elected. I'm not so sure I'd bother with the election now that I have more rep than I have use for... Also, with the diamond I had to give up my favourite activity on the site (trolling people ;)
Yes, there are a lot of things that moderators can do that 10K+ users can't, but other than handling flags you don't really need to use the extra powers that much. Handling flags is the main thing that separates mods and regular users, almost everything else is probably something you really don't want to have to do often (suspensions, account deletions etc).
@SpikyBlue I think the best part about being a mod is working very closely with other people that are as dedicated to the site as you are, your fellow mods and SE employees. And that doesn't have anything to do with the extra powers.
@YannisRizos Maybe im just strange then, because those things seem appealing to me, i'd like to help improve the site quality for all those that use it, if that's what it takes then so be it. You get a much larger influence as a mod, experienced users may spot it as just a diamond, but then, experienced users arent the ones who need guidance. New users, or so i have seen, instantly change their response if a mod explains something compared to 'just another user'
Two of the related arguments made by people who oppose same-sex marriage (especially those who do it on the basis of "marriage is for raising kids"):
The slippery slope argument. Usually goes "if you let two guys marry, why not 2 siblings?"
A similar but opposite direction policy argument: "You...
There are various definitions of decent effort when it comes to moderation, there isn't a bare minimum or anything like that. And we all take breaks every now and then.
Oh ofc dont get me wrong, i dont expect 100% devotion, but you know what i mean, you cant just get it and do nothing, so he must spend a lot of time helping SE!
That said, right now on both sites we all do more or less the same amount of work. We had a very inactive moderator on Programmers, but he stepped down recently. I know that on some other sites there have been issues in the past with moderators not pulling their weight, but I have no idea on specifics.
@SpikyBlue Well, ideally a moderator should be doing as little as possible. Our job is to intervene when something bad is happening, if nothing bad is happening then... great!
in flags there is the 'other' option which allows a description, have you ever had any ridiculous or outlandish things put in them that you just look at and go 'What?'
At least once per week. The more common weird flags are from new users who completely misunderstand what flags are for or how SE works (stuff like: "I found my answer, please close this thread now"). Then there are a few that are absolutely incomprehensible. And every now and then we get an insult or two. Stuff like "fu evil nazi mod y u close this".
@ChrisF please feel free to decline my flag with the message "Would you mind explaining..." - that's a silly error (clicked flag instead of comment), sorry for inconvenience
@ThomasOwens I guess you are around since you dealt with my flag that has been submitted about 20 minutes ago. 2-3 minutes ago i submitted a flag with garbage message instead of raising concern about the link-only answer - sorry for inconvenience
@gnat I came very close to casting the most moronic flag of all time the first week I was a mod. Don't remember exactly what the flag was about, but it was something silly. A second before I pressed submit I suddenly realized I was... a mod and didn't really need to flag.
@YannisRizos but most of my flags are a pleasure to work with aren't they? :)
> please consider either deep cleanup or deletion of the question: except for post ID 3025 (accepted answer), all(!) seven answers that aren't deleted look like blatant bare opinions that don't even attempt on providing an explanation and context; and the problem presented in question doesn't look salvageable: "want to keep abreast of changes and interesting language features", I just can not imagine how this could be turned constructive without radically changing the meaning
When was that btw? Sounds like a very poor question...
Ah, found it. And it seems I handled it, I should have remember it, it's fairly recent. The weird part here is that it doesn't have an accepted answer @gnat.
@Chad well the trick is to pick stuff that has least chances to be declined. Thing worth keeping in mind is mods typically (99.999% cases) are expected to judge by formal occurrences, diving into content isn't for flagging. IIRC I have a handful helpful flags involving content judgement but...
...all these were carefully backed up by references to chat / post comments, giving mods an easy way to discuss details if needed
as a rule I flag only when I can formally back up the stuff, without referring to contents
@Chad I somewhat want to ask a comprehensive question on "what should I do if my boss doesn't seem to support my career development?" since we get a million questions similar to this
@enderland that is a good alternative though i would much prefer a pinging system, even if its an opt in kind of thing
@enderland An alternative could even be to have a new moderator power, for those with Diamonds, to clear off negative votes if it is significantly improved. Then have a new flag so we can request it where needed.
I'm starting on a new team that is going to handle outside-of-release software development, prototyping new technologies for a team of developers, as well as developing tools for our support teams. The name my managers have been using for the role is "The Bench", but that evokes images of the pla...
@enderland question for you, how and when do you use downvotes? everyone seems to use them differently which leads to alot of imbalance in how the site is used
generally the way it happens is "someone came up with a name initially for (team) or (project) and by the time people take it seriously enough to name, it's already stuck around"
Today has been my least productive days, for the last 3 weeks. And one of those weeks i was off ill, the other i was on holiday... in one of those annoying 'limbo' moments between being busy
I had an operation some time ago and now I have small screws in my shoulder which will not be removed anymore. When I decided to fly for vacation, I supposed that these will may bring me into trouble at the airport when going through the metal detector.
So I asked my doctor and at the hospital i...
@JBKing - I am very strongly of the opinion that questions which are not appropriate fits for this site should be closed before answered (I have no problems with comments "answering" them)
@SpikyBlue SE decided to change the scope after it left beta (against the community's wishes), and there is still a lot of confusion about the site's scope and what's acceptable or not
And they have a > 50% closed/deleted/downvoted below 0 rate
@enderland I wouldn't be quite that blatant; I would post something more like "this post has been improved since the downvotes, is it fixed yet?" rather than just "upvote plox"
@Rachel I think you are assuming disagreement means we do not value what you say. That is not true at all. If we did not value it we would just ignore it.
I have both an MBA and PMP certification. One component of the PMP certification is the ability to add the letters "PMP" after your name. The MBA is a degree, and I thought that adding "MBA" after my name might seem kind of a reach. Since that time, numerous people who I respect (including som...
@Chad Naahh I meant I didn't post much. I think I had less than 10 meta posts (although honestly I haven't checked in a while). I don't mind disagreement, and sometimes people have even made me change my mind with their arguments :)
@SpikyBlue It was a forum and now it's a Q&A site. A very vocal minority didn't like the change. I don't disagree that the change was drastic and perhaps a bit unfair, and perhaps the original site should have been closed. That said I certainly don't want to go back to a site where people felt free to post questions like "do you fart in the cubicle?", and I'm very happy I'm spotting more and more references to the site as a serious soft. dev. Q&A and not as a self help forum.
@SpikyBlue Yes, and it deeply scared the site and the community. It was SE's first experiment in a subjective site, and it failed horribly. But, it was either the change or closing the site, so...
@SpikyBlue SO was never subjective. It was far more relaxed in the good old days, but when subjective questions started becoming more than a curiousity, SE decided to move them into a new site. Thus, Programmers was born.
@SpikyBlue The early days of SO? No, not at all (although I was only a lurker back then). It's just that although everyone loves "not constructive" questions (yes, even @Chad, although he'll never admit it), no one actually cares enough to put the effort to maintain and curate them. And more often than not they turn into big balls of mud, however interesting or useful they might be.
I just don't want to see the Workplace go down the same path, where it gets so bad that SE steps in with a hammer and says "Your site scope is now X, deal with it". I'd prefer to have the community work its way towards finding their own middle ground between "subjective" and "constructive" instead of having it handed down from above :)
some of the not constructive ones masquerade as constructive ones sometimes, catches out those unfamiliar with the site and they end up perpetuating more of those types of question
@SpikyBlue Yes. I wasn't participating on the site, just browsing every now and then for the latest joke post. I only got involved after the switch, I wasn't really eager to participate in what seemed little more than yet another forum. Not that this was a bad thing or not fun occasionally.
@enderland all the other sites have topic experts who can tell when im blagging it, its hard to be a topic expert on something as diverse as the workplace
@enderland ah right ok! i didnt bother, first job i never had to interview for, second job they were only caring really about personality as they wanted people who were a good fit for the team to train up
@SpikyBlue oh I do too, I more want to be able to reference a question when everyone and their mother (@Rachel apparently? lol) asks about "my boss doesn't help me what do i do with career dev"
@enderland i will approach the core question, rather than your phrasing, so that its general enough to apply to anything linked to it, as that is this questions purpose
I'm not sure how to make this question more clear that I'm not talking about a simple question, but rather a much more involved question which kinda is like - "how can I pursue career development even if my manager doesn't seem to care"
Should this question be re-opened on the grounds that it is asking about an area of history, and it was given a successful answer?
The situation is a question that was a bit off-topic (too technical, I think. Maybe better for another site). Someone answered it, though.
The general case:
Sh...
To help deal with the "tactical downvoting" problem, we have radically reduced the window for undoing votes.
There is now only the very briefest of windows where you can undo a vote. (edit: this was increased to 5 minutes)
After that, the vote is permanently "locked in", until the post is edite...
Two of the related arguments made by people who oppose same-sex marriage (especially those who do it on the basis of "marriage is for raising kids"):
The slippery slope argument. Usually goes "if you let two guys marry, why not 2 siblings?"
A similar but opposite direction policy argument: "You...
I have both an MBA and PMP certification. One component of the PMP certification is the ability to add the letters "PMP" after your name. The MBA is a degree, and I thought that adding "MBA" after my name might seem kind of a reach. Since that time, numerous people who I respect (including som...
The Water Cooler
The Water Cooler