Chat of Things

Also "the fair use of a copyrighted work [...] for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright." under US law @Ghanima

Ghanima

@anonymous2 no, it's the combination of "fair use" and "benevolent overlord" that troubles me

2

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 Oh, yes. I remember now.

@Ghanima Hmm, good point..

Aurora0001

That post that we flagged as plagiarism got deleted anyway because it seems that SE consider it too much of a copyright violation

Ghanima

@Aurora0001 who's the deletion user?

SE staff?

Aurora0001

3:24 PM

Robert Cartaino

Ghanima

ok

Aurora0001

So it seems that it's pretty much official word that quoting only is too far

anonymous2

Hmm, 17 out of 112 messages starred in this room posted by me. 39 out of 112 starred by me. Not very good stats. ;)

Aurora0001

18/113

Ghanima

do we all have to participate in this dck waving contest?

anonymous2

3:32 PM

@Ghanima Aggaawhat?

The Winterbash or the starring?

Ghanima

contesting about the starring stats

anyways, where are those numbers ;)

Winterbash is not going to happen here I'd guess

Aurora0001

@Ghanima I was talking about @anonymous2's stats, which I had bumped up by 1 :P

@Ghanima I doubt so too, we won't be public when Winterbash starts

Ghanima

I think it should start anytime soon now

Aurora0001

And all the other Stacks have already had a meta post about it asking whether they want to join

@Ghanima winterbash2016.stackexchange.com

375.8 kiloseconds

Ghanima

end of the week, more or less

anonymous2

3:36 PM

13

Q: Winter Bash opt-in fails on private beta sites

Clicking the "I Love Hats"-button on a site in private beta shows the "An error occurred while joining - please try again" message. Dev tools show this response from the server: {"ErrorMessage":"failed to opt in to winter bash"}

Aurora0001

@anonymous2 such a shame

If only there was an "ask lots of good questions" hat to encourage everyone

Ghanima

looks like I am less funny too, give more stars than I get

Aurora0001

Can't be bothered to count

but there are 2 pages under 'Starred by me'

and only 1 page of 'Posted by me'

I like to think that means 'Unsung Hero of Chat'

In reality it's more like 'please shut up now' :P

Ghanima

and there goes another badge that does not exist

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 26 posted by you, and starred by you there are...

37.

Lol, just kidding, I can't figure out. :)

No, no, don't star that! It's not true!

Aurora0001

3:41 PM

You were going to get a star for your dedication

but... nope

Ghanima

it's strange that we all give more than we receive, must be a black hole in here or something

Aurora0001

@Ghanima it doesn't count multiple stars for one post though

anonymous2

@Ghanima It's a general principle on SE. Same thing with votes.

@Aurora0001 Good point.

Aurora0001

@anonymous2 rep cannot be created or destroyed... except for upvotes, downvotes, spam/offensive flags, suggested edits, tag wiki edits...

Still bounties (usually) respect the conservation of rep principle

Unless you forget to award it or no-one answers

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 That's true.

Ghanima

3:46 PM

such a sad place, I really like the principle of conservation. This place just treats rep like fiat money and there's inflation like hell.

Aurora0001

@Ghanima who would get the first lot of rep though?

maybe it could be like bitcoin

mine the rep until it runs out

Ghanima

we kindof mine for rep

put in effort to get the rep

Aurora0001

That's true

Instead of computational power we put in thought power

Ghanima

it's not that much unlike bitcoin, of course rep is open ended

Aurora0001

In a rep-conserved world though, wouldn't upvotes cost you?

And downvotes would steal rep?

"Your post was so good I took 2 rep from you!"

Imagine asking a bad question on Stack Overflow...

anonymous2

3:49 PM

@Aurora0001 Yuck, I don't want to...

Aurora0001

"You're currently in debt of 30 rep. Would you like to purchase a rep pack (tm)?"

Ghanima

@Aurora0001 don't get SE stuff started on that idea

Aurora0001

I can't believe people actually suggested it though

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 "You can take out our premium rep loan, with only a 5% interest compounded daily."

Let's put a feature request on meta.SE!

Ghanima

we would have to find exchange rates for rep of different branches. I suggest 4.7 Rep_Worldbuilding = 1 Rep_IoT

2

anonymous2

3:51 PM

It probably wouldn't get downvotes until it was implemented...

Aurora0001

-8

Q: Buying close votes

Ever since having stepped over the 3k reputation limit required to participate in casting close votes I actively "enjoyed" that privilege. Lately, however, I seem to quickly cap the daily vote limit and wander around the site, actually looking for answerable questions and helplessly getting stuck...

discussion vote-to-close voting-limits

imagine that

Or even better, my suggestion plus this

-22

Q: Payed-for extra downvotes

You know, sometimes, just sometimes, I feel like some answer or question is deserving of an extra downvote. So wouldn't it be groovy if SO voting worked like a real-world democracy, where you can bribe for and buy extra votes? We already have the bounty system for the opposite case, for answers ...

feature-request status-declined down-votes

Ghanima

again, such a sad place, no matter what crazy idea you have, it's been posted already

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 status-declined.

I think it should have been status-rejected.

Aurora0001

status-declined-with-prejudice

or status-hahahahaha-no

2

anonymous2

@Ghanima 6-8 weeks.

Ghanima

3:58 PM

@anonymous2 hahahaha-no

now for something completely different

considering meta.iot.stackexchange.com/a/108/54 and a few other posts discussing site-scope withouth comming to a conclusion, how do we go about this, oh great Aurora?

anonymous2

@Ghanima, if your desire was that the Most Excellent Aurora would condescend to respond to your humble question, you ought to have phrased your request in less haughty terms.
"Oh Most Excellent Aurora, dane to respond to the plea of your most humble servant Ghanima. How, Your Excellence, in your most excellent opinion, dost thou deem best to view..."

2

Aurora0001

@Ghanima I'm just writing a question about machine learning in IoT to test how that's received

0

Q: Is it possible to run and train a neural network on an 8-bit microcontroller?

I've recently read about neural networks in constrained environments (in particular, A Neural Network Implementation on an Inexpensive Eight Bit Microcontroller) and their applications to IoT devices (e.g. regression for predicting things based on sensor inputs, etc). This seems ideal for simple...

smart-home microcontroller machine-learning

Ninja edit because part of my question text disappeared

Ghanima

@anonymous2 yeah, that's what I meant

Aurora0001

Anyway @Ghanima, my opinion is that we need a few more days/weeks before we can firmly say what works and doesn't work here

I can easily say what I think is obviously off-topic / unwanted

wait what

why did that go bold then disappear

Ghanima

yeah, I guess, but we need more experts to diversify our question topics

Aurora0001

4:10 PM

@Ghanima yeah, the issue is IoT could fail like Gadgets SE did if we don't get the experts in

Apparently they had lots of specific questions that no-one knew the answer to

e.g. "How do I make my Nokia 4450 do ______"

And unanswered questions lead to people giving up and going somewhere else

Honestly a lot of people don't care if you crush them with downvotes as long as they get some response

I was reading an interesting study about that the other day though

Ghanima

@Aurora0001 yeah, but in private beta you would expect the experts to come up with questions they can (and do) answer

Aurora0001

Apparently users who receive a strong negative response are much more likely to stay than someone who is just ignored

@Ghanima perhaps that's a good meta topic; experts should be encouraged to share things they needed to know in the past but figured out

there's no shame in self-answers at all

Ghanima

@Aurora0001 interesting, you have that study at hand? I am pretty sure my fellow moderators at RPi will be interested to learn more about that ;)

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 Doesn't surprise me. A basic need of every human being is attention.

That's why kids bang on the table long after their parents tell them to stop.

We'd rather have negative attention than none at all.

Aurora0001

@Ghanima arxiv.org/pdf/1405.1429v1.pdf

Ghanima

4:13 PM

@Aurora0001 nice question though, oh Most Excellent Aurora

Aurora0001

"Not only do authors of negatively-evaluated content
contribute more, but also their future posts are of
lower quality, and are perceived by the community as
such. Moreover, these authors are more likely to subsequently
evaluate their fellow users negatively, percolating
these effects through the community. In contrast,
positive feedback does not carry similar effects, and neither
encourages rewarded authors to write more, nor improves
the quality of their posts."

Ghanima

thanks, @goldilocks might enjoy that

Aurora0001

@Ghanima thanks, it's a good test for the overlap with AI and Cross Validated

Ghanima

@Aurora0001 lure 'em experts here!

anonymous2

"Overall, punished users not only change their posting behavior, but also their voting behavior by becoming more likely to evaluate their fellow users negatively. Such behavior can percolate the detrimental effects of negative feedback through the community."

I've observed that before.

Great read.

Aurora0001

4:15 PM

It contradicts what the Stack Exchange consensus seems to be in a lot of cases

Bad posts get swamped with downvotes, close votes, etc.

Good posts often get ignored

So in a way we're promoting bad content

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 Well, you don't want to give negative feedback on the good posts, either. That is, unless we implement your voting regime. ;)

@Aurora0001 And positive feedback is better than negative, as well.

Ghanima

sorry I had to downvote you, buddy, but downvotes are on sale right now!

Aurora0001

@anonymous2 if the study is to be believed, upvotes don't do a lot of good sadly

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 Just from personal experience, I would disagree.

Aurora0001

However, I wonder if that's just because upvoted content is already good

anonymous2

4:18 PM

I've been on a lot of stacks and left a lot of stacks.

The thing that drew me to mech.SE was a positive response on a so-so post.

Ghanima

@anonymous2 yeah, I am waiting for this to happen on RPi yet

anonymous2

The thing that drove me away from unknown.SE was a negative response on several posts that were good, just not referenced as strongly as the existing users wanted.

Aurora0001

I think first impressions are everything on a lot of sites

Nullarbor (the user who left after the comments) had one bad experience which was enough to make him leave.

And that's what we need to avoid

Ghanima

but then again he also acted pretty thin-skinned, sorry that we couldn't resolve this though

Aurora0001

@Ghanima that's a flaw all round the SE network though; you're expected to accept and deal with criticism in a way that other sites don't

Although if you respond well, you end up with much better questions than other sites

Ghanima

4:25 PM

@Aurora0001 I still think that SE is the Ponyhof of the internet, there's so many places that are much worse in terms of "criticism"

Aurora0001

@Ghanima that's true, and the majority of the criticism on SE (especially here on IoT at the moment) is constructive, unlike other sites

It would be quite interesting to repeat some of the calculations made in that paper for Stack Exchange to see if they still apply

Ghanima

you are into this kind of science or just reading this up for fun

Aurora0001

@Ghanima not particularly into it but I found it on reddit

I do like stats though, but I think my computer would explode if I tried to parse the data dumps for SE sites

Also, poking around the 1k tools, looks like one answer was deleted just because it was wrong which is unusual

Maybe it was NAA flagged

This is slightly concerning...

Close percentage: 32.00 %

Ghanima

that doesn't seem right

Aurora0001

4:40 PM

14 too broad

7 off-topic

2 custom off-topic

5 unclear what you're asking

1 duplicate

Ghanima

hmm

:(

Aurora0001

3 primarily opinion based

Ghanima

maybe we should investigate how to improve them

Aurora0001

Doesn't seem to count reopened questions though

Ghanima

but I am off for now, oh Magnificent

Aurora0001

4:41 PM

8 out of 32 reopened

@Ghanima bye

Ghanima

cy later

Aurora0001

Remember your daily Aurora worship

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 I will not bow. I would rather be thrown in the fiery furnace than worship the penguin.

Aurora0001

@anonymous2 "smart" penguin (tm)

I'm definitely not just an intelligent chatbot

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 I forgot, you can kick-mute. You can also delete messages.

Well, not delete technically, just move to a junk box.

Aurora0001

4:49 PM

@anonymous2 essentially it's delete, but no-one wants to call it that

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 Yes, that's why I called it delete at the first.

Aurora0001

still, I suppose "moving" things does keep a trail in case anyone did want it.

anonymous2

Yes, it does.

Aurora0001

Let's test

hmm, what's the name of the room to dump them in?

anonymous2

Try this out.

← 1 message moved from Things

@Aurora0001 Just drop it in Things.

Aurora0001

4:52 PM

→ 1 message moved to Trash

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 That's where I've always dumped them.

Except the one I just moved into IoT room.

Aurora0001

→ 1 message moved to "Smart" Bin

You would think Stack Exchange's meta bot would be a bit quicker, seeing as it's all on the same server and could just push notifications instead

But no, instead it uses an RSS feed that gets updated slowly

then polled slowly

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 Good point. I guess it doesn't make any difference from their perspective, as meta posts aren't high priority as far as how fast you see them.

Aurora0001

@anonymous2 that's true

anonymous2

@Aurora0001, say, did you get notified about this? Just curious.

Aurora0001

5:07 PM

Nope, nothing at all

thanks though

anonymous2

Not on SE, either?

Aurora0001

Nothing at all

you get inbox notifications if someone @pings you

IoT meta

0

Q: There's no shame in self-answering!

I was recently discussing self-answers in the IoT chat with Ghanima, and I think it's a good idea to bring this to everyone's attention: if you've recently encountered a problem and found your own solution (especially a problem that made you think, "surely someone else had this problem!"), asking...

discussion self-answers

Aurora0001

(or if a moderator uses the fancy @@ syntax to ping you even if you're not in a room)

But us mere mortals don't get that

@IoTmeta thanks bot

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 Well, I wouldn't be surprised to see you as one of the pro-tems...

That is, if you're planning on trying.

Aurora0001

5:09 PM

@anonymous2 maybe, hadn't really thought about it to be honest.

anonymous2

I've already got a good guess as to who they're going to be, but we'll just have to wait and see.

Aurora0001

@anonymous2 you could be a good pro tem though too from what I've seen so far

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 Lol. Would like the job, but my participation on this site is a bit low.

Aurora0001

@anonymous2 honestly I don't think it's all about participation on the main site really

If I was picking I'd much rather have someone who would happily spend 30 minutes clearing out the queues

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 Funny, but that's probably what I like most about SE.

Anyhow, we'll see.

Aurora0001

5:12 PM

plus you're always around on chat

@anonymous2 it's a shame too that you're not able to review a lot because of the rep requirement

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 I've got the first posts and late answers now.

Aurora0001

@anonymous2 they're quite hard in my experience to get right though

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 Yes, and it's a bit more critical at this stage in the site's development.

Absolutely love the meta post, btw.

Would +5 it if I could. :)

Aurora0001

@anonymous2 couldn't resist the xkcd opportunity

Makes a change from the usual monotony of meta I suppose

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 What's worse than the cartoon you shared is when the thread is marked [Solved].

Aurora0001

5:17 PM

@anonymous2 "I found the solution guys, thanks!"

Then locked by moderator

Did you write that comment before reading this or after? Seems like we both thought alike!

anonymous2

@Aurora0001 Actually, before. I saw the star on my chat page and went over right after posting the comment. :)

Aurora0001

@anonymous2 thought so, since you starred just after posting

I see you know the pain of that situation too

It's truly terrible for more obscure programming problems

At least SO tends to have some answer, even if it doesn't work very well

Plus there's the rep motivation of self-answering

anonymous2

Lunch time! See you around...

@Aurora0001 Good point.

Aurora0001

5:48 PM

Yeah, see you later

Also I didn't realise the 1k tools let you view how anyone reviewed

that's quite useful

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