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1:24 AM
Really closed the poo woo question?
You guys must love making people angry.
 
I think it was the CEO of StackExchange.
 
Yea, not anyone specific, I mean the general site
 
His profile says he was a co-founder of Stack Overflow.
shrugs
 
Seems from the posts he wreaked havoc today
Some angry folks
 
How so?
I only saw the one question closed.
 
1:27 AM
Multiple questions, there was also the meta about it, right? Not the poo question, the ad one too ya?
Eh, oh well. I got my gold badge today. But I'm actually kinda upset about the question closure thing. I think I might sulk, take my ball and bounce off this site.
 
I think that those who believe that Skeptics.SE needs traffic more than it needs quality are mistaken.
 
Yea, but look what happened to the atheist se.
 
What happened to the atheist SE?
 
I got an email, closed due to lack of activity.
 
Atheismatheism.stackexchange.com

Q&A site for the skeptics of a higher power.

Closed after 94 days in beta.

 
1:32 AM
Yup.
 
I would rather see fewer high quality questions than more low quality questions. Perhaps what it really just comes down to is that Skepticism does not lend itself well to this Q&A format.
 
I think, honestly, it's too cold and formal for a lot of folks, they're thrown off. I understand what folks are going for here. Hope you guys find the right format.
I had a pretty good time while it lasted.
 
I think we're doing pretty well for only being 25 days in.
 
Yea, I hope it keeps up for you guys.
 
 
3 hours later…
4:39 AM
@Dogmafrog Well, I hope you reconsider. I think you've grown into a good poster since your first few questions. I usually enjoy reading your answers now. They're pretty high quality, although a bit US-centric. ;)
 
5:07 AM
Hi @Tim
 
Tim
what's up
 
Do you come here to talk about the question Joel closed?
 
Tim
no
 
insomnia, you?
 
Tim
Not really. I feel your site is losing many users.
 
5:12 AM
How come?
 
Tim
Like I didn't say it.
 
5:54 AM
New here. Find your site quite enjoyable
 
@MonkeyTuesday Thanks!
Great answers, by the way @MonkeyTuesday
 
6:13 AM
I do the best I can. This site has so much potential, just glad to contribute.
I think it's set up quite well. I don't know if it's a function of the moderators or simply reflects the quality of people who choose to respond, but every response seems to be both knowledgeable and courteous. It seems to be a nice example of discussion being able to be held without disrespect. Well done.
 
6:43 AM
@MonkeyTuesday Thanks. It's really appreciated. We work hard to ensure high quality content.
 
 
9 hours later…
3:35 PM
@Ustice - Thanks for improving the link text in my deep biosphere answer
 
4:35 PM
0
Q: Wikipedia as a source

Russell SteenIs wikipedia a valid stand alone source? I'm not approaching this from the "wikipedia is crap" angle. My point is -- Wikipedia changes. Yes, all web pages change, but wikipedia is intended to change. It changes more frequently than other sources, esp. journal references So a link that nicely...

 
5:13 PM
@RussellSteen No problem. When I can't answer questions, I can at least be helpful by gnoming.
 
@Fabian Atheism did one thing right: they had a cool name for their chatroom. How about we steal it back from them and rename this chatroom "Hub of Reason"? Sounds like a match made in heaven.
 
Great going using my idea unattributed there. ;)
Though I think that it could be better.
 
@Ustice You don't believe in copyrights. ;)
 
Well, maybe not.
I believe in permissive copyrights.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
 
5:34 PM
What's this? New icons in chat?
 
It's an illusion. NASA is trying its new deception tech, for when they'll "go to Mars."
 
What new icons?
@anthony137 What new icons?
 
Well, there's a kind of weird melting strawberry or tomato icon in here I haven't seen before.
 
Oh. XD
Sorry, it's a rotten tomato.
 
Ahh.
 
5:47 PM
0
Q: There should be a way to combine answers.

DogmafrogLike if you have two pretty decent answers that don't totally overlap and compliment each other, a moderator should be able to combine them into one, accepted answer, and both users get joint cred. Maybe some way to make the credit proportional, like the main answerer gets 10 pts per up vote and...

 
I made it as my avatar after a quote from King's Quest IV: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow, "One never knows when one might need a rotten tomato."
I see it as a symbol of questioning authority.
 
Hmm... an unconventional choice.
And these days linked more to movie reviews that questioning authority.
s/that/than
 
As in the case of an unpopular mayor standing up to give a speech, only to be pelted with rotten tomatos.
Well, they use the name for a similar reason.
 
nods
 
I guess it is more a symbol of criticism.
This could be a big problem.
4
Q: Should we close questions challenging specific ads?

DJClayworthThis question was closed immediately as not satisfying the site criteria. The single closer (Hi Joel!) expressed the thought that this might be spam, and I certainly considered that too. I think that's unlikely, given that the questioner made no encouraging statements about the product at all. Bu...

Specifically with companies using Skeptics as a launching point for marketing viral videos.
 
5:54 PM
We're not there yet
We'll worry about big city problems when we reach big city status
 
I guess, but we'll have to come up with a way to deal with astro-turfing.
 
I would think it would be harder to do on a Skeptics site.
 
0
Q: Are legal questions on-topic?

anthony137Are specific questions regarding law and the interpretation thereof on topic? I can see it both ways. On the one hand, there are some widespread, but incorrect beliefs about some laws which I think would be good to address. On the other hand, such questions will almost necessarily be regional, an...

 
Great. Why do you guys ask all these tough meta questions the day I slept four hours?
 
It's a special talent of mine.
 
6:07 PM
It is a good question, but I think that those sorts of questions are out of scope.
 
I can see it both ways, so I figured I'd ask beforehand.
 
Questions about the effectiveness of laws would be okay, I think.
For instance,
13
Q: Is the death penalty an effective deterrent?

DogmafrogThere is a lot of clutter from anti-death penalty sites, which makes it hard to find all the research. They often cite statistics like those explained in this website, including the chart below that shows that murder rates in states without the death penalty are lower than those in states with t...

In that case, it isn't a law question, but whether the law is effective.
 
Right.
 
From StackExchance.com: 1.2k visits/day
 
6:22 PM
I think the first of my example questions would be a pretty good fit.
 
We've almost overtaken Home Improvement, which is 8 months old and launched
 
Doesn't call for legal interpretation. Has an objective answer.
 
0
Q: How can users who do not subscribe to scientific journals contribute?

UsticeIn trying to answer several questions, I find that I am often stymied by the fact that most of the specific information on the subjects that I am researching are locked up behind an expensive paywall ($50 for one paper that I was interested in looking at). How can we hope to provide credible answ...

 
I suppose it's more of a snopes-type question.
 
Ya, but also one that would be great for the Laws and Lawyers proposed site.
Though that might be hard to do, since every country/region has different laws.
That is the other problem it questions like that. They are very regionally-based.
 
6:28 PM
Noted.
 
I do hope that the law site works out though.
It's nice to have a resource for simple legal questions like that.
 
True.
 
 
2 hours later…
8:14 PM
@Adam-Davis : Start citing things. You clearly understand some of the topics, and are taking the time to write thorough answers. Take the extra 5 minutes to google citations.
 
You can't @ people who never came here. Leave a comment on one of his posts.
 
ah
Thanks Borror0
Was trying not to clutter up posts with too much meta chat ^.^
 
Heh. I really wish SE had a private message system myself
 
Maybe it never has, but I seem to remember it having one at some point in StackOverflow
 
Hi Russell. Thanks for the bounty on the Atkins question the other day. :)
 
8:21 PM
Welcome! I've been wanting the answer to that question (and the hybrid car one) for the longest
It's nice to have a link I can send someone and go "here, read this, lots of research indicating and answer"
 
It's a good question, and not the answer I was expecting.
 
8:39 PM
@RussellSteen I loved answering the hybrid car question
I knew a lot about the NMH hybrid cars, but your question forced me to research the lithium-ion technology
 
9:01 PM
@Borror0 Yeah, I don't know very much about them. Here in the states, they mostly get less mgh than my diesel, and cost twice as much. So I've never looked into buying one.
 
@RussellSteen I don't own a car and, if I can avoid to ever own one, I'll do just that. I read a lot about it because I was curious of where the technology was at a few years ago.
 
@Borror0 cool :)
 
9:19 PM
So I guess my flag of @Muro was not out of left field. I'm still a little unclear as to exactly when to flag.
 
Flag when you see a major problem with a post.
If you're on the fence, flag. We'd rather waste 30s than let a bad post around.
 
0
Q: If you are sure a user is vote-bombing you unfairly is there anything you can do about it?

Kit SundeI recently voted down a user that likes to make unfounded claims or answers questions with monologues about something else (as I've mentioned to him in the comments). Then I discovered I had 4 down-votes in a very short timespan on questions and answers which the community thought was good, and t...

 
9:58 PM
Was reading the faq (about something I'll mention in a moment) and just wanted to mention that the use of the term "woo" is rather confusing
Sorry the faq discussion on meta
The topic that led me to that was the idea that we should add good/bad answer guideliens
 
@RussellSteen We deliberately removed the word woo for the actual FAQ for this reason.
 
@Borror0 cool
 
@RussellSteen There is no mention of "woo" anymore in the FAQ
 
I wasn't actually sure if we were editing the FAQ ourselves at this point
 
@RussellSteen We mods can edit it, if you have any suggestions, just post them on meta
 
9:59 PM
@Fabian - thx
 
In fact, since we have a large amount of non-native English speakers we decided to stay away from uncommon terms, in the FAQ. Fabian had me remove veracity. /shake fist
 
We can edit the top part, but not the rest, just to avoid confusion
 
13 questions in the last day. Nice.
 
got it and @Borror0 -- most of the people i know in the states don't know "veracity". people won't pull a dictionary to read the faq (if they read it at all)
 
Although I suppose 3 of them got closed.
 
10:05 PM
@RussellSteen I know, but I love the word. I didn't put up a fight, but I was sad.
 
4 by my count, not sure what, if anything a 25% close rate means
other than that we have active mods ;)
 
Now I'm reminded of that scene from the West Wing. "II know what it means. But if people don't know what it means..."
 
@anthony137 The traffic stats look even nicer
 
@RussellSteen Some got reopened, some are actually migrated to other sites (where they were well received)
 
Fabian: Borror0 noted them earlier. :)
 
10:07 PM
@Sklivvz -- Yeah, i noticed that with the physics one. Took me a second to figure out why i was on the physics SE
 
All points out that this will be our second highest traffic day ever
 
pretty good since the other was probably just driven by eistein question traffic
 
today is driven by the moon question, it's the hottest question in the stackexchange network
 
@Sklivvz We're really often in the top questions on SE, similar to Programmers.SE
 
linkbait site
 
10:17 PM
Damn. 37 upvotes. Way to go Sklivvz
 
@anthony137 That's way beyond the daily rep-limit anyway
 
122
A: Did you ever switch from one programming language to another?

SklivvzI started in Basic need speed Then Assembly need sanity Then Pascal need gui Then Delphi need work Then Perl need fun Then ActionScript need objects Then C# I skipped a few (php, COBOL, C, C++, Java) for clarity.

 
My most random, heavily upvoted answer was on SuperUser
29
A: Most secure browser

FabianI would argue that the most important metric for browser security is the amount of exploitable bugs (and their severity) and the time they stay unpatched. You can find some statistics about that e.g. on the Secunia website (Statistics for IE8) The encryption algorithms are usually not the weak p...

And that Kinect laser question on Gaming.SE
 
it's now 30 (totally deservedly)
 
My best-voted answer is only at 14.
 
10:21 PM
@Sklivvz It's CW anyway
 
Granted, I've been on StackExchange for about a week.
 
@anthony137 For higher numbers you need very popular questions, that is just not something that you can achieve easily
 
i also have a +71 and a +59
 
My other one is this here
28
A: Anyone else experiencing vision problems from Xbox Kinect laser?

FabianThe Kinect is classified as a class 1 laser device (Review from Anandtech), which means the maximum emitted power of the laser is <25 μW. This amount of power, according to current knowledge, is safe. It should not be able to cause lasting damage, it doesn't necessarily mean it is not cap...

 
Oh, I'm not lamenting it. Much.
This display is making me feel a bit ... unmanly, though. :P
 
10:24 PM
You just have to be there at the right moment
 
@Fabian Already debunking myths :-)
 
@Sklivvz I corrected that answer so many times
It's probably close to CW now
 
I've had a lot of joy at the beginnings of stackoverflow
no rep cap
i was one of the twenty users for some months
 
BTW, Class I eye safety requires safe operation in the presence of a single point of failure.
 
Gaming.SE is very nice if you're playing certain popular games, then it is easy to gain reputation
 
10:25 PM
eg. a short to ground or power, or one node to another.
 

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