The Bikeshed

1:00 PM

@overactor any suggestion for improving this or what is your opinion?

@AbhiBeckert I've just found an interaction between you and Jenna from yesterday... do flag things like that, if they come up.

This one, if anyone wants to read it before I get rid of the lot

overactor

@Pandya One way you take it is asking a more factual question

What percentage of funding for Open Source projects comes from donations?

A tiny bit boring, but definitely objectively answerable

If no answer exists, it might some day

this question could be proof that people want to know and might ideally encourage a study.

@ArtOfCode Can you ping people who were never in chat?

ArtOfCode

@overactor I can

Ah, feels good to get the mod tools out for some exercise.

overactor

Don't you have to superping with like @@name ?

Pandya

@overactor thanks for giving your opinion. However, I wouldn't like to ask "What percentage of funding for Open Source projects comes from donations?" (may) I want to stuck with current question. If it is too broad, then leave it closed.

ArtOfCode

1:09 PM

@overactor Aye, but it looks like a normal ping :)

overactor

@Pandya "What's the importance of X" is incredibly hard to answer though.

You have to define what for you constitutes to important.

ArtOfCode

@overactor Why, anyway? Was there someone you wanted to talk to?

overactor

No, I was just marveling at your power

2

ArtOfCode

@overactor So much power... I'm drunk on it, having just issued my first suspension.

overactor

Though on second thought, could you get Jon Skeet in here? I'm having a little trouble with programming.

:)

ArtOfCode

1:14 PM

Pretty sure I looked up his ID a few days ago xD

Yeah, 11757

overactor

Do you mean to say that you didn't know it by heart?

Fraid so

shamefur dispray

Shameful spelling ;)

@ArtOfCode more like shameful racism.

ArtOfCode

1:17 PM

Ah, well I don't know these meme things

Ooh a flag

overactor

I hope no one flagged my racism

ArtOfCode

No, a main site flag

Martijn

imgur.com/gallery/Zvet0

ArtOfCode

One that I can't actually do anything about

overactor

An Italian, a Scotsman, and a Chinese fellow were hired at a construction site. The foreman pointed out a huge pile of sand and told the Italian guy, "You're in charge of sweeping." To the Scotsman he said, "You're in charge of shoveling." And to the Chinese guy, "You're in charge of supplies."
He then said, "Now, I have to leave for a little while. I expect you guys to make a dent in that there pile."
The foreman went away for a of couple hours, and, when he returned, the pile of sand was untouched. He asked the Italian, "Why didn't you sweep any of it?" The Italian replied, "I no hava no …

ArtOfCode

1:22 PM

Heh

overactor

what was the flag?

ArtOfCode

@Martijn What would you like me to do with this?

Martijn

@ArtOfCode there is not Vote to Close Utter Bollocks(tm)

ArtOfCode

@Martijn There isn't for me either... it's a valid question, even if the scenario is unlikely

Martijn

IMO It has no value. IMO It has anti-value. That means it should go IMO

ArtOfCode

1:23 PM

Ah, but why doesn't it have value?

overactor

@Martijn, I've got to side with ArtOfCode, it's not a very good question, so I down voted it, but it is a valid question.

Martijn

Because it's a nonsense question. It's along the lines of "what color woodchucks should I use for the GPL"

or rather: My client commissioned me to make GPL licensed giraffes. What color should the woodchucks be?

ArtOfCode

I don't see the parallel

Martijn

It's not a question that can be answered because the scenario doesn't exist

It holds no value for visitors

it holds no value for askers

ArtOfCode

Clearly it can though, because it's got valid answers

The question is essentially asking "how can I show business partners the value of their investment"

overactor

1:29 PM

Holds no value is a typical reason to down vote

Martijn

The premise of the question is that the business partners have already funded enough to hire "many developers". There is no reason anymore in showing business partners the value of their investment.

ArtOfCode

Apart from further co-operation. If you want more money in the future, it's probably wise to be on good terms with previous investors, and part of doing that is showing that that giving you money is worthwhile.

Martijn

@overactor the reason for me to want to see it closed rather than downvoted is that it has now become the venue of namecalling and antigonism. If it weren't, I'd say let it stand and gather dust.

but it's become a battleground for unrelated matters

I'm clearly not convincing anyone though, and I'm happy to admit my views on it don't carry consensus. We don't always have to agree, as long as we can live with the outcome

and I can definitely live with the outcome no action

ArtOfCode

@Martijn It had one argument on it, which I've cleaned up, which was caused by a user with history of being disruptive

I wouldn't really call it a battleground

Martijn

sorry, external jargon shining through from me

ArtOfCode

1:33 PM

@Martijn Thanks for that - occasionally I come across someone who finds it hard to accept that he's not the one with the hammer.

Martijn

two users treating it as a battleground

ArtOfCode

Refreshing to find someone who can :)

overactor

Two is not a pattern yet

maybe a lock would be in order if it keeps happening

ArtOfCode

Certainly would be

Martijn

as I said, bringing in external jargon, ignore the battleground remark

Zizouz212

1:40 PM

Hi!

ArtOfCode

Hey Ziz

Zizouz212

Let me see what's happened...

overactor

Hiya

Zizouz212

@overactor But what are you trying to get accomplish there? (I've actually thought of things like that, fine more like what is unattractive about the site, but it clearly never materialized)

@overactor Hey, I waited for 3 reopen votes - I didn't reopen right away!

overactor

@Zizouz212 Read on, I discussed that with Martijn

@Zizouz212 Nah you're right, it was okay

I was just remarking that it seems like we don't quite know what to do with that one

Zizouz212

1:50 PM

So the Programmers Post I've been ordered to talk about?

overactor

Do you think it still needs to be featured?

honest question

Zizouz212

Yeah, I kind of do

It's a big thing on Programmers part to actually going to consider making these kinds of questions off-topic and sending them to us, and quite frankly, this community is part of the discussion

And, no offence @Martijn, but the community keeps taking it from a general standpoint - they have equal status in the discussions

And yes, the migrations have to be done by mods, so there won't be any crap

overactor

Well, then we'll keep it featured

Zizouz212

I might take it off though, it really isn't getting much attention...

overactor

130 views is not bad

keep it on for a while

Martijn

1:55 PM

I'm still not 100% sure what you want to learn from that question, or want to accomplish with it Ziz

Zizouz212

@Martijn No offence, but it looks like your answer is really general: yeah, you can migrate, but don't migrate crap is really all you say

I guess you could look at my answer, and it's sort of an overview of what I want

Martijn

@Zizouz212 your question is rather general as well.

overactor

drawing attention to something is a valid reason to post a meta question sometimes

Zizouz212

@Martijn I've tried to elaborate... But you always know how that goes

Martijn

@Zizouz212 I don't really understand your discouragement point either. I don't understand what, in practice, you are proposing either Programmers or we do

Zizouz212

2:01 PM

Great. Again, I don't get my point across

Bascially, what do you this site to do, what do you want programmers to do - scope wise, migrations, or anything

Martijn

Ah, I can answer that. I don't want this site to make any changes (within this context), and want Programmers to flag those questions that are on-topic here, but not there, for migration, and possibly alert the asker of our existance for questions that are on topic on either site, but they feel might get a better answer here.

but I don't think that's anything I didn't say in my answer

Pandya

Hello everyone, I want to discuss something:

Consider a software user has no knowledge about how software works and can be modified, In other words source-code is not-useful for him/her. S/he don't want to became developer or so on.. If S/he is not interested in learning how software works, how to modify from source-code, forks, tweak etc. In brief source-code and freedom relevant with it has no matter to him/her. Then I think only freedom (0) and (3) as defined for [Free Software](http://gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) is things to consider for him/her. Am I right?

Note: Fix typo error yourself while reading my above message, Also remember : My speaking language isn't English.

Martijn

2:20 PM

Warning: Opinions abound!

Zizouz212

-_-

Martijn

In the first paragraphs you say only freedoms 0 and 3 may be things to consider for them, but in the second paragraphs you say it seems meaningless

ArtOfCode

@Ziz I think I'd recommend you delete this... the other is now on +8, so that one's just extra bulk to keep up to date.

Zizouz212

Oh yes, sure! I forgot about that

If I revise it with those suggestions, maybe I'll repost :D

Martijn

IMO, the latter is right; it may seem meaningless, but the user reaps benefits of other people doing things with freedoms 1 and 2

ArtOfCode

2:22 PM

If you revise it, post it on the thread here first, wait for it to get to +6

Zizouz212

@bjb568 I saw that!

Pandya

2:45 PM

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, 7 mins ago, by inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Correction: I want to say freedoms 0 and 2 are important for them, And 1 and 3 seems meaningless as I explained

Martijn

In my experience, the FSF has always been bad at giving pragmatic answers to pragmatic users (and endusers are rarely interested in the overall benefits of free software, just what it means to them that product x has license y), but asking them what their take on it is is interesting nonetheless

Pandya

@Martijn what about discussing this with GNU/FSF/RMS?

Martijn

GNU/RMS =~= FSF

The FSF is the organisation founded by RMS to (among other things) develop and promote GNU

Pandya

@Martijn I knew

Martijn

So there is my opinion: asking them may be interesting to see what their take on it is. But from seeing their usual statements, they have difficulty expressing what the value of free software is in terms that appeal to Joe Sixpack

Pandya

2:59 PM

@Martijn OK. I will and inform you on this topic if they reply.

good-bye

Martijn

\o

I had another patch to Scala accepted :D \o/

just a documentation patch, but still \o/

ArtOfCode

Congrats

Martijn

thanks :D

@Zizouz212 I'm not getting the reason why we have to wait for the site name to change before we can change the banner text. Is this something that comes directly from SE staff, or what's the deal?

ArtOfCode

@Martijn Both actions have to be done by SE. There's no particular order they have to be done in, but neither have been done yet

Martijn

"Hey guys, I've marked this as status-deferred so you know that we will do it sometime. These fields are populated by variables which the SE dev team can change, but we need to wait for the site name to change so that everything is structured correctly and we don't miss the what bits and what nots"

^ I don't understand this

ArtOfCode

3:07 PM

@Martijn Ah, I see. Where's that?

Zizouz212

We need to wait for the site-name to change so that we structure the site vars accordingly :)

Martijn

@Martijn I'm not a dev! I have no clue, sorry :/ — Zizouz212 ♦ 6 mins ago

wait, that's not the right paste

ArtOfCode

Same post.

Martijn

yes

ArtOfCode

I'm guessing because it'll be easier to come up with something that fits when we have the site name in place? There're no technical limitations to why it can't be done now, but it might indeed be sensible to wait.

Zizouz212

3:09 PM

@ArtOfCode I think you talked to Robert about that?

Martijn

I'm willing to accept a lot of things that are beyond my control. I'm fine with something like "it's just a variable change, but there is a build involved as well, and changing it twice is too much effort for us" is fine by me (well, not fine, but definitely acceptable)

ArtOfCode

@Zizouz212 I did?

Martijn

but "we can't change it because there are variables involved" sounds like nonsense to me

Zizouz212

Yep, I think up at Open Science

Regardless, it's a dev thing to do

ArtOfCode

Oh yeah, quick comment which never got noticed :D

@Martijn That's probably the SE answer

Martijn

3:13 PM

The first or the second? Because the first is reasonable. The second is not. Like I said, I'm happy with an answer that says it's too much effort to change it twice for whatever reason (and community management <-> dev interaction is also effort, I totally understand that)

ArtOfCode

The first

Martijn

that would be good to have as an edit to the question then

ArtOfCode

When we've got the name change decided, we'll ask whatever CM is overseeing it to change the prompt at the same time

Zizouz212

Another issue is that changing the variable with also change other things on the site

Yeah, it makes sense to do it all at the same time anyway

Out of curiosity, anything I can add to this?

0

A: 10 Million Questions - Let's Share Some Stories That the Number Doesn't Convey

Is Storing Graphics objects a good idea? Yes, I am definitely nominating this. Being a horrible Java programmer that has high hopes in building some awesome that never works, I was about to do something really stupid. Yes, really, really, really, realllllllly stupid. I learned Java in my Grade...

ArtOfCode

Edit made

Martijn

3:18 PM

Just to explain: I'm not actively trying to be difficult, but it can be frustrating not to understand something, and not being able to get to the source of things.

ArtOfCode

That's cool, I get that - I was on your end of things not so long ago

Martijn

About that question, I've always found answers that explain to me that I'm doing it wrong(tm)(r) to be the most valuable

often (not always, but often) the correct answer to "how to do X" seems to be "don't do X. Do Y instead, because [...]"

Zizouz212

@ArtOfCode @Martijn Any thoughts to this? meta.stackoverflow.com/a/303053/4293417

ArtOfCode

Hmmm... interesting

Also, swag

I'm in

Zizouz212

Vote up :)

Martijn

3:28 PM

@Zizouz212 I would clean up the language a little, emphasis through repetition rarely works as intended. Other than that, it seems fine(tm) though I don't think it will get anywhere near to topvoted. Not because it's bad or anything (it isn't) but because I suspect there be stronger examples out there that will be submitted

I might want to consider submitting the answer to stackoverflow.com/questions/31876372/what-is-reification

ArtOfCode

Ah well, not a competition

Martijn

that helped me crazy amounts

Zizouz212

Alright. Thanks :) I'll clean it up a little

@Martijn Say hello to a gold badge :)

Martijn

I didn't have that one yet :D

Be sure to vote up (some of) the answers as well. They're actually rediculously good

Zizouz212

I know

ArtOfCode

3:43 PM

0

A: 10 Million Questions - Let's Share Some Stories That the Number Doesn't Convey

Why does this string extension method not throw an exception? And I thought I was decent with C#. May 11, and I came across a problem while developing a chat server/client pair. It seemed that its solution required finding every index of a substring within a string. Of course, C#'s string.Index...

Zizouz212

Upvoted :)

Martijn

4:28 PM

how awesome is it that we have Glenn Randers-Pehrson as a user?

ArtOfCode

@Martijn Is it? I think I'm missing something

Zizouz212

Who is that?

Martijn

w3.org/TR/PNG/#F-Relationship

Zizouz212

Wowwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!

ArtOfCode

Ah, the PNG speccer, now I remember

Yeah OK that's pretty awesome

Meta Data

5:45 PM

0

Q: Is on-topic humor appropriate?

I've just posted an answer that includes a link to an XKCD cartoon that is closely related to the topic. Is it appropriate to include such humor in an answer?

0

Q: Revisiting major FLOSS announcements

In the question Would major FLOSS announcements be on topic?, it was decided that they aren't. However, the top answer also suggests that Meta might be a better venue for such things: Another note: while debating this with myself, I've come up with the notion that Meta might be a slightly bet...

discussion

bjb568

6:44 PM

@Zizouz212 :o

Zizouz212

:D

Martijn

9:12 PM

So, odd question. I saw opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/1675/… was recently migrated here

Which I think is good, and on topic for here

Zizouz212

Yep

I kind of pushed for it, and there are three others which I'm trying to get

Martijn

but are we actually equipped to provide quality answers to that?

Zizouz212

You can let it be

Martijn

This is the first time that I see a question and think "I actually have not the faintest idea"

Mnementh

This already has good answers, so no worries :-)

Zizouz212

9:13 PM

The answer there is fine, we're only accepting the good stuff, and rejecting/deleting anything else

Martijn

\o @Mnementh

Mnementh

OpenScience did all the work and we get the Google-hits out of it ;-)

Zizouz212

You peeps are evil

Martijn

true. And this is a really good question and answer. It just led to the sudden fear that if this is on topic here (and I believe it should be), can such questions if asked here expect a good answer.

and if not, what can we do about that

Zizouz212

Well, we do have one user so...

Martijn

9:15 PM

:D

HDE 226868

9:33 PM

I can change the wording on the question if it's really necessary, though I'm not positive about how to do that just yet.

Zizouz212

Where?

@HDE226868 Honestly, the wording on the question is fine.

HDE 226868

@Zizouz212

21 mins ago, by Martijn

but are we actually equipped to provide quality answers to that?

I hadn't written it from an Open Source perspective, so I wasn't actually focusing on the Creative Commons bit as much. Somehow.

Zizouz212

Creative Commons is in scope, it looks fine. I wouldn't worry about it

I'll get rid of the naysayers for you :)

Urban Planning!

area51.stackexchange.com/error?aspxerrorpath=/proposals/88933/…

Martijn

10:05 PM

@HDE226868 the question is absolutely fine as it is

I just hope that if we get more like that, we have enough people to answer them

Meta Data

0

Q: Q&A migrated here from Open Science private beta is 404-ing

Following the failed beta of Open Science, several Q&As were migrated to other suitable SE sites. One of my Answers was migrated to Open Source, but when visiting this Q&A I see a page not found 404. Is there a problem with the migration or is this intentional? either way I'm just checking.

support migration

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