The Water Cooler

2:05 AM

-5

Q: What is so offensive about the question, "Why do Democrats want to deny women the right to defend themselves from college rapists?"

This question was deleted, with no notice as to why. It seemed perfectly reasonable. The gist of the question was that Democrats in Colorado want women with Concealed Carry permits to leave their guns off campus. Please explain the rationale for deleting this question.

^^^ @YannisRizos: You can't make this stuff up!

Jim

12:21 PM

@BenBrocka based on the numbers, that doesn't seem quite accurate

unless it's during a short time frame

Chad

1:01 PM

@BenBrocka What is interesting is my helpful flag count for comments still goes up

@YannisRizos You are a horribly biased liberal... I am guessing that in greece your are kinda far right :p

Ben Brocka

@Chad Weird, those might be handled separately?

@Jim It shouuuuld be frozen in time when the ban occured, but if comment flags are still validated after the ban that would screw the numbers all up

But it's always been a weird-ass system, so I'm looking forward to the new system

Which is still kinda weird but short-term only, includes feedback, and if it's not enough you can always suspend, so it seems all-around better to me.

enderland

-1

Q: Convincing a clueless boss to not interfere?

What are some ways I can go about convincing my boss that she should let her employees, myself included, make major decisions as a group because she does not have any knowledge of the kind of work we do? While my boss is good at keeping everyone happy she has no technical skills with the technol...

work-environment management

this feels like a huge rant

Chad

@enderland looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

Ben Brocka

@Chad Probably a witch

Wait no that's based on weight

Jim

1:32 PM

@BenBrocka What I meant was that one of the flagbanned users has helpful > 2x declined

and it appears the comment flag counter has not increased at all (except for flags cast)

Ben Brocka

1:46 PM

shrug it was always a messed up system. Very hard to get the right people actually banned, and the first (almost only) time I've ever seen it kick in I had to ask if there was a way to remove the ban (there isn't)

Chad

2:40 PM

I love being an outlier... but it makes it hard to argue there should not be exceptions for outliers.

enderland

@Chad wipe them out. ALL OF THEM

Chad

@enderland Yes kill them all.... ohh wait!

enderland

it worked in star wars amirite

Chad

@BenBrocka What is ironic is I got the hellban by trying to provoke the mods into being the dicks we needed them to be. But it was all done quietly so though I succeeded in provoking I did not become the example I hoped I would be

5

Q: Convincing a technically inexperienced boss to not interfere?

My boss does a few things very well, such as keeping her team happy. Unfortunately, she is not quite as strong with the technical skills relating to the technologies we work with. Her inexperience in these matters quite often interferes with our ability to work on and progress with projects. T...

work-environment management

This is now a question that is different for programmers vs others because what other field ends up consistantly with managers that have no idea how to do the work of the people they are in charge of

enderland

engineering, sometimes

Chad

2:50 PM

You would never do that to an engineering design group

enderland

hte problem isnt' when someone has no idea

it's when they have no idea, yet, think they do

Chad

good point

Ever go through the repository trying to figure out when the code went off the rails and find out it was exactly who you figured it would be that drove it off?

Ben Brocka

0

A: How aggressively should we flag comments?

In my opinion, here are the following comments that should be nuked: Spam/offensive stuff: duh +1 great question/answer: Yes, we can see the votes. These are only okay if the comment otherwise has substance. If it's useless without the +1 it's still useless with it (same for -1) Fix X! Okay, I ...

Purge the comments in holy fire

enderland

If a whole discussion needs to be purged (like a 20 message long back and forth) just flag one comment in the thread with a custom flag saying "these should all be burned because of X (except for Y comment because Z)" which makes burning multiple comments much easier

I was going to ask about that

Chad

I think comments should only be visible to the OP of the question/answerer/@target since comments are for improvements is q/a's not discussion

that would solve the problem

You would only see those comments actually meant for you

enderland

2:59 PM

this works only assuming all questions/answers are good enough to NOT attract quite a bit of "this sucks fix it please" (except nicer) comments ;)

Chad

Works even better for that.

No one to see and flag those comments but the OP

and give the OP the ability to delete comments on their q.a

enderland

well except they will get dozens of them if the q is bad

sinc eeveryone will go "oh I should comment instead of randomly downvoting" (maybe optimistic :)

Chad

That is a good thing

You can just delete all the comments if you do not want to hear them

Ben Brocka

@Chad Sometimes others can come along and edit to clarify, guided by a comment

My problem with comments isn't so much that other people see them, it's that people see them after they're no longer relevant (or that they were never relevant)

Chad

@BenBrocka My problem is I feel compelled to correct morons... then if feel guilty about it, then I read the comment and feel compelled to correct them again!

enderland

3:03 PM

@Chad just don't feed trolls.... :)

Chad

@enderland but its so hard when they are so stupid...

enderland

wow all my outlook rules just got deactivated and cleared.

thanks micro$oft

enderland

3:20 PM

irony:

just got

Deputy: Raised 80 helpful flags.

Chad

3:31 PM

Im jealous

Yannis Rizos

3:54 PM

It'll be a year in beta tomorrow.

Although I already said it's too early for this, perhaps it would make sense to celebrate the milestone with a "where should we focus on, SE?" Meta post @Chad.

Chad

@YannisRizos I think we kind of already have the answer:

3

A: How can we diversify our community?

Wow, there's a ton of comments and stuff for me to respond to! When I mentioned that PM and The Workplace have a lot in common, I was alluding to PM's reality and what I realize now to be The Workplace's perceived problems of being software-oriented. I believe enderland and Yannis have the rig...

become ruthless in our intolarance of bad questions and answers, Down vote everything, and ship all our bad questions off to programmers

I have noticed programmers does seem to suffer from a lack of questions about slapping your boss

Ben Brocka

Should I slap my boss before or after compiling?

Chad

Repeatedly durring

this will provide an incentive to provide faster machines to reduce compile time :)

Ben Brocka

What if the build breaks?

Chad

quit

enderland

4:01 PM

and burn the buliding down

Ben Brocka

I believe you have my stapler

Yannis Rizos

Ben Brocka

Looks like Programmers needs to step it's game up

3

Chad

ahh my problem seems to be a lack of reputation to see them not their lack of existence :p

Yannis Rizos

...although he's probably talking metaphorically, but still...

Ben Brocka

4:04 PM

Alternately slap it's game up

enderland

3

A: How can we diversify our community?

Wow, there's a ton of comments and stuff for me to respond to! When I mentioned that PM and The Workplace have a lot in common, I was alluding to PM's reality and what I realize now to be The Workplace's perceived problems of being software-oriented. I believe enderland and Yannis have the rig...

errr

@Chad already linked this

Chad

I have a great question to cross post: How do I convince my boss that his blind adherence to standards is hurting my productivity?

enderland

my computer at work is part of my problem

Yannis Rizos

@Chad I'm pretty sure we have a dupe of that (either open, or closed as NC after it got tons of crap answers that were getting upvoted which left us with no choice but to pull the plug, why the hell do people upvote crap all the time??? /rant)

3

Chad

Can we get an amen my brothers and sisters

Jim

4:14 PM

Important career advice from Director Wolfdog:

Money is very important, because you can make nests out of it during the winter months and it smells like every single person who has ever handled it. Delicious. Get a raise instantly by watching this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02c1at396fM

@enderland Greatest Slaps would be a great name for that page

2

Chad

@Jim That reminds me of far to many answers here

Chad

6:33 PM

I would like to tilt at windmills and have them move out of my way. How can I make this happen?

Ben Brocka

7:26 PM

yearling badges for everyone

enderland

7:43 PM

... except me

Yannis Rizos

Happy birthday workplacers!

5

@enderland noob ;P

2

Chad

Where is the cake? I heard there was cake...

Jim

One year stats

@enderland and me...missed the private beta

I did get Tag Editor today though!

Chad

8:01 PM

Id like to see 100+ 2k rep users but otherwise I think we have some pretty impressive stats from a51

competitive with money that is finally graduating after only 3 short years and a few long months

Ben Brocka

@Chad re: raduating I'm mostly concerned about 3k rep, the people who will be able to cast close votes

Most of our regular closers are over 3k though I think

huh just a bit more rep and I'll be at 3k too

Jim

8:36 PM

Currently we've got one 20k+, 3 more 10k+ (with Chad and enderland approaching), 27 3k+, and a bunch over 2k

so closures and editing would be no problem if we graduated immediately

deletions/highrep stuff would be limited, but mods would expand that userbase

I think we are really well on track

then again I have no idea how they actually make graduation decisions

normalocity

It's not as simple as getting everything to say "Excellent"?

Yannis Rizos

@normalocity No, and frankly the stats have proven to be pretty useless.

Travel.SE is the more recent graduation (afaik), and the Workplace has better stats than they currently have, except visits/day.

Which doesn't mean don't look at the stats every now and then, just don't fixate on them. Workplace is certainly in the right direction, but we'll get there when we get there.

And - although that's nothing more than a guess - I think we've passed the "no the site isn't working at all, we'll have to close it" point, so... we really don't have much to worry about. That said "nothing to worry" != "stop trying to get better".

normalocity

9:13 PM

is there also a minimum amount of time you must be a site before graduation, and if so what is that length of time?

90 days? 1 year?

Ben Brocka

@normalocity theoretically 90 days, in reality most sites' beta periods last vastly longer

gnat

9:47 PM

@Jim I think 489 avid users is too little to graduate. These indicate amount of users who make site stable, with regular visits, regular voting, regular questions and answers. Not that I am suggesting to pump up this number inorganically, just pointing out the growth direction

Yannis Rizos

10:15 PM

@gnat Travel graduated with 427 avid users (less actually, it has 427 avid users now). That said, what you say makes sense, looking at a dumb number alone doesn't really help grok the site. Yes, we have 489 users with 200+ rep, but that doesn't really mean anything if half of them haven't logged in the site for months (for example).