The Assembly

12:00 AM

@IvoFlipse What do you mean by that?

@IvoFlipse: Do you have access to the Google Analytics for Super User? Perhaps the Visitor Flow and Time On Site stuff might be interesting to draw conclusions from.

Ivo Flipse

@TomWijsman We don't

Michael Myers

There are some stats in the mod tools, but no GA for us.

Ivo Flipse

@SimonSheehan I mean that on sites as English, Programmers, Tex, Math, SU and a bunch of others, they vote so heavily on each remotely interesting post, that they cancel out any other SE-site that wants to get their share of attention

Simon Sheehan

@IvoFlipse Ahh okay, I see

Ivo Flipse

12:02 AM

Anyway, I'll see you guys in the morning/evening/night Ah whatever!

Simon Sheehan

Cya later @IvoFlipse

Tom Wijsman

@IvoFlipse Yeah, that's what they needed the "vote early; vote often" announcement for.

Purmou

1:09 AM

-2

Q: Is this community intolerant towards controversial questions/discussions?

Since my last question was an obvious flop, I decided to ask it again, but this time in parts and with what I believe to be evidence of specific problems. My first concern lies in my observation that certain types of discussions are frowned upon here on meta for their questioning nature. By this...

Purmou

1:35 AM

can someone please explain what is not constructive about this question?

Sklivvz

I told you in the comments, but you disagreed.

Purmou

because I didn't criticize anyone

i said "i've observed that people close controversial questions on meta. here are some of them. i disagree with this for [reasons]. is this a problem?"

i just voiced an opinion, which seems to be regarded as unconstructive now too. i even asked a legitimate question.

Sklivvz

You are suggesting that the community is intolerant in your title. Some people will think it's a criticism. Trust me.

Purmou

...

with the word "is" and a question mark at the end?

you must be implying that "some people" are visually impaired

the title is literally my asking if the community is intolerant. i never said they were either in the title or in the post itself...

Sklivvz

How can you ever think that taking the community of meta head on will result in anything different from having said community down vote you?

Just sayin'

:-)

Purmou

1:41 AM

because i thought the community of meta consisted of people that were willing to have open discussions about things that may well even upset them.

apparently i was wrong

which is unfortunate

Sklivvz

You just got 12 down votes. Over the whole population of meta that's not a representative sample ;-)

Purmou

fair

Sklivvz

I'm off to bed, see ya!

Purmou

bye

Purmou

1:59 AM

yeah, i won't be coming back to this network, and this time it's final

thank you to those of you (mods and other users) who are understanding and willing to have open discussions

Michael Mrozek

You realize you're rage-quitting like an hour after everything was resolved?

Purmou

i do

and it was pathetic while it went on

and there are still problems which people don't like to acknowledge

Michael Mrozek

This is about meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/124711/…? It's not getting downvoted because people want to cover it up, it's getting downvoted because people are tired of "so wtf guys?"-style questions, especially after the debate is over

Purmou

whatever if I'm ragequitting. there are too many people that just don't get it and think they do

Michael Mrozek

The questions you linked to were all mostly useless; I'm not surprised they got closed

Purmou

2:03 AM

no, it's not

and how is it a "so wtf?" question?

it's a completely legit question that is pretty much unrelated to the past few days

and whatever apparently got resolved

Michael Mrozek

If it's unrelated to the past few days why are 100% of your examples questions from the past few days?

Purmou

cause i didn't look through hundreds of pages of closed questions

Tom Wijsman

@Purmou: Or there are problems which people don't like to exaggerate, it's all in peoples' mind until they back up their claims with enough examples to proof their points; until then, it is all just rant about things that aren't going to affect this network or its content in the long end. We're all here to improve the internet...

Purmou

ohhhhhh right, right

improve the internet

mhm, cool, good luck with that

don't know why i brought this to this room anyways

Tom Wijsman

If you have a ton of people that want to improve something, you can't expect that to go right with many opposing/controversial views.

Purmou

2:05 AM

huh?

and, you guys think that the way people behave has no influence over the content they post on the sites?

people love to think there's nothing wrong, and that's really where this is coming from

and, like i said, whatever. i'm done, you don't have to convince me anymore

Michael Mrozek

Well, you've been extended rage-quitting for like two days and talking about it in multiple chat rooms, so I got the impression you were looking for reasons not to

Tom Wijsman

@Purmou: You're only convincing yourself here, people also love to think that a lot is wrong. But in the end they're just fooling themselves...

Tom Wijsman

2:44 AM

Blog - Stack Exchange: Reputation and Historical Archives

Shog9 on March 05, 2012

If you’ve been around Meta Stack Overflow the past few days, you’ve seen a fair bit of conversation sparked by the recent changes to how reputation is calculated:

To be clear: reputation values are not changing, every action in the system is still worth the same amount. Here’s what will be different:

Your reputation will be correct at all times

Deletions will have a much more immediate effect on reputation, not waiting on a recalc (but reputation sync takes up to 5 minutes on a delete/undelete action; as to not block the user’s response thread, it’s offloaded to a background queue) …

Ninefingers

1:44 PM

@Rory welcome :)

Rory Alsop

@Ninefingers ey up

Ivo Flipse

Good afternoon :)

Rory Alsop

good afternoon - hadn't realised this room existed, till @Ninefingers informed me

useful - a TL with community participation

judging by the transcript it can get a bit heated on occasion

Ninefingers

2:05 PM

@RoryAlsop It's new... so us mods can show off how AMAZINGLY NICE we are :)

Rory Alsop

Yay for us nice folks :-)

Iszi

2:27 PM

Y'know what'd be nice, now that we've got this chat room that's supposed to have a whole bunch of site mods in one place and accessible to the public?

Make it so that the user's icon in the room list can expand into a mini profile on mouse-over, that includes a list of the sites where that user is a mod.

Rory Alsop

2:40 PM

@Iszi I think it does if you click it

Ivo Flipse

@Iszi Indeed, we all have our info filled in

Iszi

Oh, there it is.

Mouse-over would be cooler, but thanks!

I'd expect clicking to do something more functional, like pre-populate an at-mention.

Also, it seems that the "xyz moderator" bits are not a part of the feature. It's something the users have put in their own profile by choice.

Or, someone else has done it manually for them.

@IvoFlipse's profile says "Super User & Fitness moderator!"
@Ninefingers' says "Crypto Moderator"
@RoryAlsop's says Moderator on security.stackexchange.com"

Rory Alsop

Everyone should have it - mods are encouraged to sort it sooner rather than later

Ivo Flipse

@Iszi We just copied each other, but the team told us to fill it in

@Iszi Go suggest it on MSO if you think they should

Iszi

My proposal is to have it as a function of the system, rather than the user option.

It'll also help add some uniformity.

Oh, look! I just became moderator of my own fictitious SE!

2

@BenBrocka has no mention of his sites.

Of course, this would sort-of end up tying in with the age old question of whether SEI employees should have special labels - since they're technically moderators of all and (mostly) none at the same time.

Ivo Flipse

2:55 PM

@Iszi Some mods didn't get the memo :)

Ben Brocka

@Iszi Huh?

Rory Alsop

Fixed mine @Iszi - have gone with the format @Ivo and @Nine have used

@BenBrocka If you click on your user name at the left, you can edit your chat user info

to include Moderator of x site

to make it easy for other folks in chat to understand your focus

Ben Brocka

Oh, didn't even know about the chat About field

Ninefingers

3:31 PM

@BenBrocka Nor did I until I become a mod.

I didn't even know we were supposed to have them, I just copied everyone else.

Iszi

4:35 PM

@BenBrocka Neither did I. I thought, if there was such a field at all, it would be populated from my parent site profile.

Flagged this for migration. It's not getting any real activity on Super User, so could someone move it over to Stack Overflow please?

1

Q: How should I use a batch script to create other scripts?

I'm creating a script that I want to be dual-purpose: The script will use user-input options to execute commands to change some settings. This part is nearly done. The script is collecting the user's choices into local environment variables via SETLOCAL/ENDLOCAL and SET /P, and calling the...

windows batch-file

Ivo Flipse

@MichaelMyers do you guys want @Iszi's question?

sbi

5:26 PM

Good evening.

I have been reading around here a bit, and I want to ask what "TL" stands for. I mean what it literally stands for, I have an idea what it is used for.

Anyone?

sehe

Hi all. What a marvelous idea, just saying hello :)

Ivo Flipse

@sbi Teacher's Lounge, its a hidden chatroom for all the moderators

sbi

@IvoFlipse Ah, thanks.

Michael Myers

Which limits it to a mere 300 people or so.

sbi

Mhmm. This room didn't plink at me when I was mentioned. Might be FF acting up.

@IvoFlipse I bet that 95% of all C++ books are either crap or totally outdated. And when I say "crap", I am not talking of shitty layout, or bad writing style, I am talking about actual factual errors. And glaring ones. There probably was not a single year in which even half a dozen good C++ books were published, but there are dozens of really bad ones every year. So, IMO, it does make sense to list the few good ones.

Michael Myers

5:32 PM

@IvoFlipse Sure.

Iszi

@IvoFlipse Done

1

Q: Give moderators per-site "badges" in chat

This isn't for "badges" in the "achievements" sense as it is commonly seen here. This is for the "identification" type of badge. This idea occcured to me when I first visited The Assembly. Since this is a chat room specifically created for users of all StackExchange sites to have easy access a...

feature-request chat moderators

Ivo Flipse

@sbi I think I said later on that it would help to narrow the question down, for instance by aiming at a specific branch, like computer vision, or rather ambiguous the level of expertise (someone who has already read the C++ Programming Language)

However, I still think SO should just get a blog and have people post their reviews there

sbi

@IvoFlipse Yeah, I think I saw that. I still disagree, though. Anyway, I think I have made my opinion know here and elsewhere, no need to reiterate it now. :)

@IvoFlipse You can't close questions as dupes of a blog posting.

Ivo Flipse

@sbi You don't have to close it as a dupe evil-grin

sbi

@IvoFlipse But then it wouldn't point those who come at the duplicated one as efficiently.

Ivo Flipse

5:40 PM

103

Q: Using the Stack engine for the blog – a long-term idea for maintaining a healthy blogging culture

What's the current status? Let's say this first: The Super User blog is a great idea, and we've had enormous success with it. We've had a lot of diverse contributions, inspired by our Question of the Week posts on Meta, and several regular writers. Even more so, Stack Exchange has launched a num...

discussion feature-request blog blog-overflow

If they'd implement it like that, perhaps it could even be 'migrated' of a sort

I'm sure Google will do its job of indexing us like crazy

However, this is all speculation until the team actually does something with it :P

sbi

@IvoFlipse Yeah, that might be a good target to move questions to some don't like at the main site.

Anyway, I do need to leave now. It's 7pm here, and I have packing to do and a plane to catch at 7am tomorrow morning. I might drop in another day, though, when I'm back in a week.

See you.

Ivo Flipse

Goodbye

studiohack

5:55 PM

This is an interesting concept...

Ivo Flipse

@studiohack What is?

studiohack

@IvoFlipse this room

Chris Jester-Young

6:41 PM

testing mods

Hahaha, so the "foobar mods" thing doesn't work here. I expected as much. ;-)

Michael Myers

Superpings should still work though

Chris Jester-Young

:-D

Michael Mrozek

7:03 PM

Time to go CRAZY!

Michael Myers

There aren't as many people here to troll, so it's less satisfying.

Ivo Flipse

Thanks to @Rebecca this room suddenly has a purpose :P

Michael Mrozek

@MichaelMyers The wacky waving inflatable arm-flailing tube man disagrees

Ivo Flipse

7:27 PM

Anyone in CS.SE private beta?

Michael Myers

The one that's completely different from compsci or scicomp or cstheory?

Ninefingers

@IvoFlipse Yep, what's up?

Michael Myers

Wait, is there a compsci?

Ivo Flipse

I'd like an invite, just so I can peak what you guys are up to :P

Ninefingers

Ivo Flipse

7:29 PM

@MichaelMyers what's compsci? I guess ^^ one

Michael Myers

Nope, I guess not.

scicomp is Computational Science, naturally.

Ninefingers

@IvoFlipse Got an email (on profile?)

Michael Myers

Ninefingers

Or TL, when they're done in there?

@IvoFlipse Done on the invite.

Ivo Flipse

Got it, thanks

Come to think of it, I just saw that Coursera has posted some content for algo-class, I might try and ask some questions based on what the lectures bring up

Ninefingers

9:16 PM

Blog - Stack Exchange: The New Stack Exchange Beta Theme

Robert Cartaino on March 06, 2012

I wanted to give you a quick look at the new Stack Exchange Beta theme. Yes, we are retiring the familiar “Sketchy” theme and rolling out a more-polished and finished design for the beta sites.

Raise the curtain, cue the trumpet fanfare…

Alas, poor Sketchy…

Over the course of the next few weeks, we will be rolling out the new Stack Exchange Beta theme to all the sites still in beta.

At first glance, the new beta theme looks like an unembellished version of any graduated site: Finished, but without any particular “beta” theme, per se. But that’s sort of the point. …

Heads up if you're on a beta and it changes colour.

user2334

@Ninefingers Curses, StackMobile is broken. Can't vicariously use private beta sites anymore.

Ninefingers

@MarkTrapp Is it that stackmobile is broken, or have they decided to fix that little workaround...?

user2334

@Ninefingers Doesn't work for any site, including launched and public betas. Gets an API error

user2334

So there's a possibility that they did fix the private beta loophole, that'd be in addition to any problems Stack Mobile is having presently

Ninefingers

@MarkTrapp Ahh, sounds like stackmobile is the problem then.

George Edison

9:30 PM

Did I hear that Stack Mobile is still down?

Oh, it's back up now.

It's been doing that a lot lately - somehow or another, it manages to trigger the API throttle.

user2334

@GeorgeEdison Sweet, thanks!

George Edison

I'll have to look into why it keeps triggering the throttle - that's no good.

Ivo Flipse

@MarkTrapp Where do you want in then?

user2334

93 minutes into CS's private beta and not a single "What are your favorite books on X?" question. Nonplussed.

4

user2334

@IvoFlipse I don't want in to anywhere. I want to throw peanuts from the nosebleeds in a read-only fashion

Michael Myers

9:42 PM

11

Q: How does branch prediction work?

In most modern CPUs, the processor guesses whether a conditional jump will be taken and feeds the instructions from that branch into the pipeline. That speeds up execution when the prediction is correct but requires resetting the pipeline at the cost of many cycles. How does the CPU make the pr...

cpu-pipelines compilers computer-architecture

Yay, oneboxing still works.

Gilles

9:54 PM

@MarkTrapp last I tried, StackMobile updated its list of sites once every 24 hours, so it didn't catch new sites until the next day

user2334

@Gilles It's there now. Was an unrelated issue

Ivo Flipse

10:43 PM

btw @Ninefingers: crypto-class.org is launching in 2 weeks I believe and Udacity will have one starting in April

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