The Water Cooler

2:07 AM

@panoptical There's only one deleted answer on your leadership question.

But... it doesn't really meet the definition for an answer:

> Maybe you can listen to them and learn from their comments rather than covering your ears and screaming?

It's basically a question...

But, a few people made comments about hypothetical questions... here's some stuff I dug up from meta:

It's not that hypothetical questions aren't allowed here, it's that they tend to lack enough real-world detail to be answerable without answerers speculating and guessing. With more details, hypothetical questions can work. We've discussed it as a chat event and at the same time I've also recommended against people doing this without really knowing what they're doing. In short, including more details helps stifle assumptions, leading to more targeted answers. — jmort253 ♦ 6 mins ago

Chad

2:27 AM

@MonicaCellio 1532ish according to chat log

@panoptical By my reckoning(based on site standards) you got 1 good answer 1 meh answer and 5 bad answers 3 of which are terrible.

1:36 PM

Also, by "solving our problem" you ignore the fact that the hot questions issue has been discussed by site users, moderation, and even community managers at Stack Exchange, which means your answer here could not be a more perfect example of why "solving the problem" types of answers are not good for a question/answer site. It misses that the actual question Chad is asking is not at all fixed by changing the hot questions list and in fact (which is ironic because this answer is problematic and "bad" for the exact same reasons the answer being discussed is). — enderland 1 min ago

2:30 PM

at SO, it's so much easier to handle hot questions. Tens thousands close voters make a difference compared to site like our. This hot question (posted just an hour ago) got 2 close votes in less than 15 minutes, can't imagine anything like that at Workplace: stackoverflow.com/questions/22881465/…

2:40 PM

but why do they upvote answers so less compared to Workplace

Q: My colleagues earn twice more than I do. How can I approach my employer for a fair salary?

3:56 PM

I initially put this on hold as a duplicate:

1

When I got my new job at a new employer, I was a trainee and earned 50% less than my current salary. I can currently estimate that my colleagues earn twice if not more than I do. Our job titles/responsibilities are exactly the same. Our qualifications are exactly the same. However they have one ...

I edited it a little bit to clean it up and asked the asker to take a look at the linked dup. If the linked dup doesn't answer his question, I'm very open to reopening this if needed...

4:43 PM

@enderland I am not a manager. I don't ask managers to treat employees as their slaves. However, the bitter truth is that MOST of the managers in the world strongly believe that all their employees are their slaves. — Anne 36 mins ago

I don't understand this at all, is this person trolling?

Q: Create new "clean" account - recommended?

5:18 PM

@enderland as far as I can tell they just put low quality answers, hoping that slogans will bring them success here "Job hopping is not for aged people(Managers). It is meant for skilled young employees(Doers)." Empty content, just loud words

MSO question (appropriately closed there) that seems more like fit here:

6

I have a Stack Overflow account with 6000+ rep, but it has a lot of stupid questions. It has some answers but not that good... I'll also change the area of programming where I was active, so this reputation will not be really relevant for future contractors... So I was thinking about create a n...

discussion careers user-accounts

^^^ does it make sense to migrate?

Stack Exchange

5:38 PM

0

Q: Disrespect toward users

So I have been seeing a lot of people referring to the masses as 'lemmings' because they upvote answers that are not perfect. This is EXTREMELY disrespectful and should not be tolerated in posts, including in meta. The fact that this is acceptable behavior by 'respected' members here at the wor...

discussion

meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A168+lemming woo hoo I'm politically correct — gnat 1 min ago

7:42 PM

meta.workplace.stackexchange.com/a/2529/2322

why was that deleted? I've voted to undelete

@enderland op deleted it....

@jmort253 I know that, sorry, I'm more referring to that I think it, while I disagree, is a good discussion point on that meta question

@enderland Absolutely... I got what you're saying...

@jmort253 does this comment read as too aggressive?

@PaulDonny an interesting perspective you may wish to consider is to start a new job and immediately start criticizing all existing policies and procedures without fully understanding them. Disrespect goes both ways (not with this post, I am glad you brought this up, because although I have never used "lemmings" to the best of my knowledge it is a good topic to be aware of). It can be equally frustrating and disrespectful for people who have put lots of time and effort into something for others to show up and start telling them how to run things without spending time to understand them first. — enderland 2 mins ago

8:26 PM

@enderland The first line... maybe.... but it's just meta... we're all going to disagree every now and then... as long as we aren't jerks about it.

yeh... if you worded it differently, like saying "Don't you come in here and start criticizing policies... heh.. do that at a new job and let me know how THAT works out for ya!" then yeh, I could see it being an issue.

It's all about choice of words :)

@PaulDonny - It's probably worth considering that choice of words do matter, and it's worth us all trying to be careful in how we do word things so that our message isn't lost. So in short, your advice is to describe the behavior, not the person. — jmort253 ♦ 27 secs ago

A: I received a written warning for my performance, how can I save my job?

9:44 PM

-1

Your boss is just making things harder for you so you'll eventually get fed up and quit. The perception here is your boss's (and your) integrity are in question, and for both (whatever the reality - right, wrong, indifferent) to make a turn for the better is a tall order. Even if things do get ...

^^^ @jmort253 isn't it about time to protect the question polluted like that? Checking my flags I see there's at least one deleted answer already. And one or two with mod notice

^^^ @enderland would you mind taking a look? Question is 2 days old, past SE-wide timeout for 15Kers to protect (IIRC last time we spoke you mentioned you dislike to use Shog's trick with immediate protection)

10:03 PM

@gnat It's protected now...

10:23 PM

@JoeStrazzere - Context does matter, so I can see how it can be taken the wrong way. Let's all make it a point to pay attention to how we say things, as that's just as important as what we say, especially when the goal is to persuade others to take a specific course of action. — jmort253 ♦ 1 min ago

I seriously wasn't trying to troll with that question

@PaulDonny No, I don't think you were. In fact, we've had a few meta posts lately addressing these issues. So as a community this is something we all should pay attention to as we continue to move forward.

@jmort253 Yeah. I don't think it is bad at all right now but taking steps to prevent it in the future and being more cautious would be beneficial I think.

That is just my opinion that I tend to always feel free to spread everywhere:P

@PaulDonny Opinions aren't bad; just unsubstantiated ones.

Even unsubstantiated ones are not always bad. It's just bad when you refuse to admit you were wrong or to budge IMO

Blog - Stack Exchange: Good Subjective, Bad Subjective

10:37 PM

I try to look at everything as its own post.... but that doesn't scale very well...

To some extent there has to be clear guidelines on what is and isn't acceptable.

This blog post talks a lot about these problems, and why Stack Exchange initially chose to focus on more technical topics:

Robert Cartaino on September 29, 2010

Stack Exchange is about questions with objective, factual answers. We’ve been crystal clear about this for as long as I can remember, even back to the earliest, pre-beta days of Stack Overflow. It’s right there in the standard Stack Exchange FAQ:

What kind of questions should I not ask here?

Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered!

Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why? …

> Most forums and chat rooms have a scale problem. As in, they don’t. The more people that join the discussion, the more noise each of those connections bring. So the forums get progressively noisier and noisier, and suddenly one day … you stop learning.

Before Stack Overflow, I remember searching for problems I was facing (I'm a software dev) and I'd come to a forum where there was a question that matched my search.

So I thought... ok awesome... something in here might help....

can't seem to find the Java forums thread I was looking for

but there's an example that perfectly mirrors my experience back then.

Pages and pages of "sir ples cn you email me the code too" and people posting things that didn't really answer the question or solve the problem.

and after going through dozens of pages, you'd find at the end that none of them solve the problem.

That's affectionately known as "forum noise"

and the more information there is, the longer it takes for someone to determine if that information will help them or not. Hence, the support for the Q&A format...

Yeah

I agree 100% and have been there several times with multiple different forums. Read 20 pages in a forum looking for the answer to 1 simple, stupid question and it's not there

@PaulDonny I found Stack Overflow by accident really....

it just started showing up alongside all the Expert Exchange (and forums)

and naturally I found myself clicking on the Stack Overflow links....

looking back on it, I understand why.... I could tell in a matter of minutes if A) the content returned from that link was the same problem I was facing, and B) if the solutions presented was what I was looking for....

and if not, I moved on quickly to another link.

Yeah, kind of the same. I started needing to develop a lot more a couple of months ago and every time I had a question SO answered it

It's what the Java forums could be if they could go back through and delete all of the stuff that didn't work and then just leave the one remaining answer.

The other thing I noticed about Stack Overflow was that people edited things....

I remember there were times (in 2007) when I found a post from, let's say, 2002 or 2003, that had some nasty spelling, grammatical errors that made it hard to understand the solution....

Forums are like random snapshots of the Internet, forever stuck in time, with all their ugliness presented to the world, that is, until Larry Ellison buys your company and deletes it all.... (many of these bad forum links on Java's forums are deleted...)

So the question is, how does a non-technical site also overcome these same forum problems....

Yeah, I try and be active in the Software Quality Assurance SE but the grammar is extremely poor and the posts tend to be extremely specific

10:54 PM

I'd like to think that most posts aren't perfect the first time around....

heh... on Google Groups there have been times I've been looking for the edit button...

Mostly on my own posts...

The editing... that's really key here... it's what really makes this a lasting resource

Yeah, I honestly appreciate when someone edits mine. The way I look at SO is that if I make the core of a decent answer but leave off details and you see that it is better for everyone if it is added in

workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/22216/… What can be done with that?

@PaulDonny How to get motivated when people are irrational? Well, I think there's a problem here to be solved, just... that as the question is sort of vague.

It sounds like maybe focusing on one issue, like the relieving letter, the notice period, etc, or a combination of those while taking a more objective tone would likely be better.

Or perhaps a real example.

Like a real problem that's either happening or about to happen.