Conversation started Mar 19, 2014 at 15:13.
Monica Cellio
Monica Cellio
Mar 19, 2014 15:13
I know there's a big long thing with the hot-questions list and I probably don't have all the backstory, but: are people here really coordinating voting on other sites' questions, regardless of merit, as a way of pushing them onto the list so ours will drop off? If people are voting on things that deserve those votes then fine, but some of what I've seen here makes me think maybe that's not all that's going on. Am I misunderstanding?
CMW
CMW
Mar 19, 2014 15:38
"How to deal with know-it-all's?": Just let us be! — CMW 7 hours ago
Chad
Chad
@CMW yeah i liked that commetn
CMW
CMW
:D
Chad
Chad
Mar 19, 2014 16:15
@MonicaCellio Just StackOverflows
The SO mods and users do not realize the damage that the hot list does to sites like us when bad questions get on the hot list. So yes the idea is to make them feel some of our pain in hopes that they will someday agree that the hotlist needs to be fixed
gnat
gnat
Mar 19, 2014 16:28
@MonicaCellio no way, we merely share hot SO questions - all fully legitimate and even encouraged things. Given that this seems to be -17 priority for Stack Overflow, it is really hard to imagine what harm could be there. And, if you take into account that the higher SO questions are up in the list, the less attention and damage is directed at Workplace questions, this seem to bring nothing but benefits doesn't it
@Shog9 I feel fine about having regular 3-4 SO questions there, as long as these are close enough to top to relieve smaller sites of carrying that crappy weight alone — gnat Feb 27 at 16:31
3
A: Prevent specific sites from being overrepresented in the hot questions list

gnatIt was bad Old system was designed so that it tended to inaccurately favor questions from sites that differ much from Stack Overflow, particularly smaller and ones of conceptual / subjective-ish nature (for example, Programmers and Workplace). Compared to SO, smaller sites have much less power ...

^^^ plus, no chat conspiracy here, all stuff is publicly discussed at MSO, in a fairly visible question (it is even currently bountied)
to me, another "facet" of this is helping SE team to roll their experiments with hot list algorithm:
great experiment! To help in testing, I plan to visit Stack Overflow questions in the hot list and actively vote up posts I like. This way will let SE team study how effective it works against "lemming effect" using familiar material (instead of obscure questions at smaller sites like Programmers, Workplace, Math, Code Golf, UX) — gnat Feb 4 at 5:48
this probably smells a bit of Italian strike...
Work-to-rule
Work-to-rule is an industrial action in which employees do no more than the minimum required by the rules of their contract, and precisely follow safety or other regulations in order to cause a slowdown, rather than to serve their purposes. Such an action is considered less disruptive than a strike or lockout; and just obeying the rules is less susceptible to disciplinary action. Notable examples have included nurses refusing to answer telephones and police officers refusing to issue citations. Refusal to work overtime, travel on duty or sign up to other tasks requiring employee assent ar...
hot questions are advertised to us, we are encouraged to visit these and vote. We do just that
Monica Cellio
Monica Cellio
Mar 19, 2014 16:44
@gnat thanks for explaining that. I'd seen some of this on MSO but it sort of sounded like folks were targeting new questions that weren't yet hot, as a way to make them hot, and that felt fishy. Glad I misunderstood that. I do urge people to vote honestly; don't vote just because something is hot, only if it deserves that vote. But the hot list is a fine place to start looking for things to vote on. (That's a general "you", to be clear, not gnat in particular.)
@gnat I was, uh, getting that sort of vibe from the discussions in here, yeah...
gnat
gnat
@MonicaCellio well I for one do my best to keep this as legitimate and non-conspirative as it gets. We do only what is officially encouraged. As soon as I smell anything slippery, I'll drop off. I like playing fair
Monica Cellio
Monica Cellio
@gnat thanks. And it looks like the SE folks are aware, so if they have a problem they can say so. Playing fair is essential.
gnat
gnat
@MonicaCellio the day they say they have a problem with that will likely be happiest in my life. Their prior acknowledgement of a similar issue has led to quite a positive shift...
Feb 26 at 7:49, by gnat
FWIW, here's timeline 1) PHP question sticks - Jan 24-29 2) Anatomy question, Tim admits "it's something that we should probably address" - Jan 27...
Feb 26 at 7:49, by gnat
3) point that reordering has no performance cost brought to Tim's attention - Jan 27 4) "shuffle" testing begins - Feb 1
^^^ to us, above meant that our downvotes to low quality answers at least stopped being obscured by sympathy upvotes from totally unmanageable amounts of passers by...
Feb 3 at 10:02, by gnat
trying to imagine how "new reality" feels like for lemming answerers. As usual, they click the sidebar. As usual, they drop their zero effort "meh" answers into the hot question. As usual, they expect a warm wave of similar answers and sympathy upvotes... Oops! Instead, they meet a hard cold surface. "Hello, we've got quality norms here, your post doesn't fit. No, there are no more lemmings around to help you ignore this..." What a disappointment
Monica Cellio
Monica Cellio
Mar 19, 2014 17:00
@gnat also, things are pretty much always in flux -- algorithms get tuned, features get evaluated, UI changes... so they have to try things out to find out if they work, and if they don't we still lived through a period of "not working", but it's not forever.
gnat
gnat
@MonicaCellio yup, that's right
 
Conversation ended Mar 19, 2014 at 17:01.