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12:00 AM
When it's coming fast, getting six people to open the same post can be hard - it's all scrolling and no one is coordinated. Autoflagging means fewer people have to open the same post and flag it.
 
And peak spam time is one of the quietest times for Charcoal HQ.
 
@Undo For autoflags? I dunno, man - honestly, any nonzero number of FPs for autoflags makes me feel :-/ about the whole thing.
 
then try a zero number for 5 flags
 
Explaining to someone that their valid post jumped to -2 because a trigger-happy user flagged wrongly (and has been reprimanded accordingly) is one thing.
 
@Randal'Thor I'm trying to bound the problem - people here see "no false positives" and say "that's just statistically impossible"
 
12:05 AM
Explaining to someone that their valid post jumped to -6 because a bunch of users' robot thought it was spam ...
 
Suppose I could say "We will delete all spam on your site instantly" (benefit) "with one false positive per decade, on average" (risk)
 
also I'll let you in on a secret: we set up autoflagging so that people who are more likely to be around to retract get picked first
 
ummmm we talked about doing that
 
Core
 
True
 
12:06 AM
(is what I'm referring to)
it's definitely correlated
 
Especially now. I don't have core :P
 
anyways this isn't productive if we're talking about autoflagging in general
 
@quartata No, it totally is. There's a compromise to be had here.
 
@Randal'Thor It's not going to jump to -6... it's going to jump to -3 (which it already does) unless it looks extremely spammy at which point it will jump to -4 unless it looks like there's no possible way it's not spam ... at which point it will jump to -5 ... and will still need someone to judge it and actually manually flag.
 
See, what bugs us (me, at least) is people looking at historical data, seeing one false positive, and declaring that it's fp-prone. The data and how it's presented invites those kinds of conclusions.
 
12:08 AM
@Randal'Thor how often have you had to do this in practice?
 
@Undo we did all this over a year ago and it was fine. people backpedaling (and even claiming we never said we were going to do 3 flags) kinda gets on my nerves is all
 
don't worry about it
 
and yes, I got slammed on SFF for pointing out that we never had an FP for generalizing to the population. so that's a sore spot too
we can't really dispel that though
 
If we could go the other direction - you/meta define some risk threshold, and we see how much benefit we can provide the network at that risk tolerance, get back together and negotiate - I think that'd make everyone here far happier. We like numbers.
 
@Undo Not to mention that the flagging itself adjusts and improves over time... when we get a FP, we adjust and learn... we don't keep doing the same stuff hoping that next time it will be better.
 
12:09 AM
the trouble is that we already have quantified the risk in terms of accuracy. 100% from our data isn't good enough
 
It's probably hard for you guys to step back and see CHQ the way people see it who haven't been so deeply involved.
Imagine you're a mod on some site and you find a bunch of random users getting together to cast coordinated flags on specific posts in order to get them deleted, organising their efforts through a chatroom not associated with that site. When you put it that way, it sounds deeply suspicious, like a voting ring/clique.
 
Definitely.
 
Now I know you guys run a tight ship here, and you're endorsed and overseen by the CMs. But not everyone does.
@Catija -6: three downvotes from users, three auto-downvotes from spam flags.
 
not sure how else to get the word out then, this is our second meta post flexing our muscles about it
 
But does anything, anywhere, say "we learn from past mistakes"?
@Randal'Thor ... um... no. Why are good posts getting manual downvotes? That doesn't make any sense at all.
 
12:13 AM
@Shog9 There's only been one autoflagged FP on my site; I don't remember exactly happened there, but I don't think a disgruntled user was involved. Then there was also a case when someone got blacklisted wrongly (and all their subsequent posts reported), and I had to come here to deal with that.
 
also I'm not sure why we specifically have this stigma but SOCVR gets a pass... Both of us have very strict rules, but I guess us being network wide gets more attention
 
So yeah, not much. I think @terdon had an experience something like that the other day though.
 
@Randal'Thor I ask, because I've had to do it a fair bit. Due entirely to human error. If you saw that list I posted above... Folks misuse spam-flags on SO quite a bit without any assistance.
 
62% right
was surprising
 
API quota rolled over with 7336 requests remaining. Current quota: 19999.
 
12:14 AM
sd poof-force
I'm walking here
 
We're hardly idiots
 
I think part of the problem here is blackstone's formulation
 
@Randal'Thor that's really out of line. I don't think you intended it to be.
 
@ArtOfCode Didn't say you were :-) But a bot has no intelligence.
 
I'm going to delete that comment and give you a second try at it.,
 
12:17 AM
that is, it seems that meta thinks it's better to let 30,000 guilty posts linger than 1 post end up with downvotes
that sounds extreme but it is the philosophical difference
 
The bot itself has no intelligence, no. But the humans running it are quite good at getting it to do what it should be doing.
 
It's valid, though - an insight into how folks can see us.
 
@Shog9 Sorry, that came out way differently from what I intended.
 
It happens
 
maybe autoflagging has made it easier to focus on the posts that get caught in the crossfire
now that the spotlight is no longer on the crap that doesn't get deleted
@Undo I think some pretty vocal users would attest to the literal interpretation of that.
 
12:20 AM
Now... The nominal purpose of this MSE post is to get some consensus on 5-flag auto-flags. But as I see it, the larger purpose is to get past a lot of the bad feelings that have arisen over how this project and folks on various sites have communicated over the past year or so.
To that end, it's going really well and I'd like to continue for another day or two.
 
Me too
 
@Shog9 There are always idiots who can misuse pretty much any bit of the SE system. But hypothetical coordinated idiots all flagging the same post would be a lot more serious - and when an unthinking bot coordinates several people's flags, the effect (until a human steps in to cancel those flags) is pretty much the same.
better? (sorry again)
 
don't think a day or two is enough to hammer this out
 
If it ends with a much larger population of folks on the network able to explain what SD does and how it does it, that'll be a win, even if y'all never move beyond 3 auto-flags.
 
we seem to be losing the PR battle (one that shouldn't be a battle in the first place, not because we're always right but because we should all have the same goal)
 
12:22 AM
@Randal'Thor Calling Smokey a "dumb bot"... is a bit rude to the people who have spent so much time teaching it. Could you be... at least a bit cognizant of where you're speaking?
 
You say part of the purpose of autoflagging is to cover those hours when there aren't enough people here to flag manually. Conversely, that could mean there aren't enough people here to cancel mistaken flags either.
@Catija I'm British - "dumb" doesn't mean "stupid".
 
@Randal'Thor You're also a grammar pedant who knows that isn't the case everywhere.
 
ok back it up
we've all had enough bombs hurled about this for one lifetime
 
@quartata You're throwing out other's opinions because they disagree with your own
 
no? Calling someone a pedant is out of line in this context. I'm assuming some level of good faith because of diamonds but
 
12:25 AM
@quartata He calls himself that all the time. Would you prefer I put it in quotes?
 
@quartata I'm a proud pedant!
 
@Randal'Thor and other mods in here, Shog mentioned something above about improving communication between CHQ and your communities. A yearly (or less) meta post isn't enough. What would help with just the communication front.
 
thanks
we have the RSS feed in a PR
so you can feed that into your mod room
 
Preferably without the associated pokey sticks (unless it's deserved)
 
speaking of which @thesecretmaster is that good to merge yet
 
12:28 AM
@quartata Re PR, I want to come back to this again. You know that you know what you're doing. But if you worded your meta posts more as if you had to convince people that you're not a vote-ring clique, you might get less pushback. Remember, the people you need to convince aren't those like me who already know what you're doing; it's those who've never heard of you and are suspicious of the whole venture.
 
Just fixed @ArtOfCode's changes, waiting for CI
Sorry it took so long, I was fighting with webpacker again (and lost)
 
[ metasmoke ] ci/circleci success on 537ee6a: Your tests passed on CircleCI!
[ metasmoke ] ci/circleci success on 537ee6a: Your tests passed on CircleCI!
 
Now it's past midnight here and I've made enough faux pas for one evening, so I'm dropping out :-)
 
@Randal'Thor So, lemme try to come at this another way.
 
@Randal'Thor Not going to take responsibility for the wording of the meta post. All I can tell you is that we kept it general and flexible because we were concerned if we slightly tweaked our approach we'd get bashed for doing something meta didn't agree too
 
12:29 AM
Should be good to merge now (cc @Undo @quartata)
 
We get folks who contact us all the time. Via email, via meta, via twitter... Who think that the folks who use these sites are just the world's biggest jackasses.
 
@ArtOfCode
 
Little hitlers, out for nothing but to cause the world pain.
And I gotta say, it really hurts to see that.
Because I think these sites and the people who built them are really wonderful.
 
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Username similar to website in answer: How can I check if an Ethereum address is valid? by Balidator on ethereum.SE
 
But... These folks don't see that. They don't see the hours of selfless work, of patient responses and refinement, that've gone into just about everything here.
 
12:31 AM
sd f
(disclosed)
 
All they see are folks telling them that they can't ask big vague questions, they can't vote without demonstrating knowledge, they can't go on for hours about nonsense in the comments, they can't promote their product...
So in effect, there's two Stack Overflows:
- the one we built to help folks share their knowledge that's been wildly, wildly successful
- the one folks think exists to answer questions, that's full of pedantic jackasses
 
[ metasmoke ] ci/circleci success on 6c02632: Your tests passed on CircleCI!
 
oi
he's in the middle of something here
 
And right now, that's where we're at with Smokey, @Rand: there's two Smoke Detectors...
- ...the multi-year project to identify and classify spam involving numerous skilled volunteers and endless painstaking research and care...
- ...the group of bored idiots who want a script to flag for them for TEH BADGES & POINTS
In both cases, the second one doesn't actually exist.
 
all teh badgez and pointz
 
12:35 AM
But it's what folks see, because we've done a shitty job of communicating the one that does exist.
So that's where we need to do better.
Literally nothing else - not opt-out, not opt-in, not endless dashboards and tools and arguments on every site now or in the future - will help without that.
 
Thanks. That was relatable to say the least
 
This MSE featured post is the start of that. Not the end. But hopefully it's a good start.
@Randal'Thor that make sense?
 
\o\ . |o| . /o/ . |o| . \o\ . |o| . /o/ . |o| . \o\ . |o| . /o/ . |o| . \o\ . |o| . /o/ . |o|
 
@Shog9 This is where automated meta posts on a schedule would help a lot.
 
I think part of communicating is tooling - like you were suggesting, perhaps casting a custom flag. There may be other tools we can build, too. But... you're right, people want to talk to people about it like people, not people mindlessly backing the bot. Need to be careful we don't come across like that.
 
12:38 AM
I've spent years being an apologist for human flaggers, who as a rule are often far less predictable and excusable than the folks using SD. I'm often kinda... discouraged... about my ability to help folks see SO for what it really is. But I think for SD y'all are capable at succeeding where I've failed.
 
@ArtOfCode I don't know if this idea has gone anywhere (I haven't been able to read the transcripts), but couldn't room meetings help to actually communication to people what CHQ is and what y'all do?
 
They might do, yeah, but people need to know they're happening
They haven't happened yet because we've been focusing on the meta post, but I'd like to.
 
Yes. SOCVR does these. The trouble with them is that they're on way too strict of an intinerary IMO. We need something more casual.
 
But a small enough number of people that it's not unmanageable
 
@ArtOfCode Sure. There's no silver bullet that'll solve the problem. We need to try to reach people through many different methods.
 
12:43 AM
like with the SOCVR meeting you have to submit a question ahead of time as a GH issue. It's only really for internal use I feel
this needs to be open to all like a Town Hall, but also moderated like a Town Hall which is rough
since we're not CMs
 
There was talk of asking 2 non-CHQ mods to moderate?
 
Maybe a secret here is that not all concerns need to be addressed. When someone responds to a meta post, we don't have to convince every person. Consider everything, don't engage everything.
 
Ooh. We can call them "Charcoal Fireplace Chats" hahahaha
no gas grillers allowed
 
@Undo I think that's how you make people feel like CHQ is just defending their bot and will do whatever they want without regard for any objections... etc etc
 
New Chat room : The Grill
 
12:45 AM
Charcoal Grill, duh
face palm
 
@Undo And all concerns can't be addressed, but that doesn't mean it's not worth trying.
 
@Catija even better
 
The roasting room.
where we roast all the haters
 
go ahead and grill us, we'll sort things out
@WELZ now now
 
@WELZ I think you have it backwards... we're supposed to be listening to them, not mocking them.
 
12:47 AM
> in order to listen... you have to mock (said no one ever)
 
@thesecretmaster That's how we come off when we answer concerns with numbers, though.
Because... for some reason, the numbers all support us.
 
<drops back in>
@Shog9 Yeah, it does. I think your analogy is a good one: the "good" and "bad" views of SD just like "good" and "bad" views of SO. Of course, the people who already hold, or are predisposed to hold, the "bad" view are the hardest to convince. If you can bring them round to the "good" view, that's a real victory.
 
@Undo It's like we've spent the last three years making that happen. And it's a little inconvenient when you can't tell the truth without seeming partial.
 
We'll have to think about the format more. I kinda like the idea of first muting the room (gallery + write access) to let someone present a question, we'll give a succinct answer, then we open it up for comments
 
Really really going this time. Goodnight all :-)
 
12:49 AM
night :)
 
@WELZ stop. stop. no politics. not here.
 
@quartata So... like the Tavern...
If we wanted to shut the mods up, we'd have to get a CM and do it on MSE.
 
I don't know if that's how they do it but yeah sure whatever
 
Or, if we can trust the mods to shut up, we can do it here.
 
12:50 AM
@Undo I think that when people are seeing the numbers and aren't saying "Wow, I now have total faith in CHQ", they can still have valid concerns. Everything isn't numbers, and PR especially isn't numbers.
 
Tell you what
give me a bit here and then I can try and make a mock one
 
For the town hall chats, they'd put the room in timeout for three minutes and talk about stuff, then they'd open it to questions.
 
I think we can do this where it's regimented but not ornery
 
format.rss
well that's convenient
 
@Catija and the room wouldn't explode?
 
12:52 AM
@Catija You could also make a bot that's an RO that'll delete all messages posted in that 3 minute period not by users x, y, and z.
 
@thesecretmaster too much effort
 
@WELZ Well, it was MSE... so the turnout was sort of hit and miss.
 
@Undo Doesn't every mime-type have a format.something?
 
@thesecretmaster this is kinda what I'm writing right now. basically I want to set it up so people get in a line to present their questions
 
@thesecretmaster Nah, I think we can trust the mods to be quiet if it's not their turn.
 
12:52 AM
@thesecretmaster sounds like he's volunteering @ArtOfCode
 
first we answer with a quick response, then the room opens up for anyone
then once that's over we go to the next
not sure whether the person themselves should state the question in chat or the bot says it
 
We'd talked about this before and even picked people to manage it...
 
Maybe there should be Charcoal Chat, so that SD reports and other related stuff doesn't get bumped in.
 
Yes. Can't be here.
 
12:54 AM
Hence "The Grill"...
 
Yep. Definitely The Grill.
 
@Undo if they're used to them, they'll eat if skin and all! So do sheep! I've hand fed them to both :) It's fun - it feels so nice when sheep nuzzle your hand
 
Metasmoke deploying
 
d'awhhh
 
YAY
ROs: Anyone object to testing the RSS in this room (as a ticker, not posts)?
 
12:55 AM
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer: What is the best way to compute trending topics or tags? by rolandanna on stackoverflow.com
 
ew tickers
but yeah sure
 
tpu- by K.Dᴀᴠɪs
 
Why not another room?
Add a site to it, then we can easily comment & point to it on answers to that meta post
 
If we do a town hall chat, we need to (a) collect questions beforehand, (b) specify designated people to answer them in that first 3-minute response so that we don't fall over each other
 
@Undo OK
 
12:56 AM
@Shog9 you've had a tremendous influence on shaping the site - not to be underestimated. There will always be people who are contrary/oppositional and then there's the ones who continually fail to understand
 
@ArtOfCode I think it's a good idea, but it seems like a high-effort way to start. Starting with some simple stat posts might be the best ROI
 
I'd also wonder if it'd be worth doing the first hour formatted like that, and having a second optional hour for more freeform discussion.
@Undo Yeah, agreed
 
Then - once things are a little less explosive - think about chats.
 
@ArtOfCode and the third hour for direct war?
 
1:00 AM
@WELZ Profanity only, and ideally some projectile warfare.
 
Lol!
 
@ArtOfCode ouch... that's long. Half hours to start?
 
@Catija I don't think we'll get enough in. Recall that the March 1 discussion ended up lasting 5 hours...
 
Mashed potato cannon at the ready!
 
@ArtOfCode My plan is that the bot will collect them from a little Bottle app as the chat goes on (with a time limit obviously), mute the room and post them, one designated person answers quickly (this may take some outside coordination), then x amount of time for free form discussion before moving on
I think that's a good compromise between structure and easy-to-ask
 
1:02 AM
I think that's overkill for what we want, but eh. Implementation details.
 
@ArtOfCode there's nothing saying that it has to stop after an hour but I think 30 minutes of planned content is sufficient.
 
shrug we can try
 
Lots of people will be at work...
 
We will have renowned speakers from across the globe. (who sit at their desks all day and control online forums :P) [crawls into corner]
 
@ArtOfCode I'm bored and I can do it fast so
 
1:05 AM
@quartata This reminds me -- do I owe you any ChatX changes?
 
I'll write it then do a mock one to test the waters
We can tweak it later
@thesecretmaster no you're all clear for now
 
I may want some EM integration but I suspect I'd do that myself if we need it
we probably won't -- I'm already deferring posting the messages, and it needs to be in order anyways so threads are better suited
cause critical regions
 
(why do the interesting conversations always happen when I'm asleep? i can't always be awake until 3)
 
@Mithrandir tell me about it - I'm in the opposite time zone
 
1:09 AM
It's 3AM here now, I woke up because notifications and phone buzzing and decided to peek in
 
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected: Difference between Steam and Fog / Mist by bol on physics.SE
tpu- by K.Dᴀᴠɪs
 
@SmokeDetector still alive folks
 
Huh. Where'd everyone go? That's been alive for 10 minutes now...
 
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, blacklisted user: Difference between Steam and Fog / Mist by bol on physics.SE
 
1:23 AM
oooooooooooor not
 
Nope. We only autoflag the first time
Otherwise we'd cast too many
 
we didn't autoflag at all the first time.
sd k
@ArtOfCode @Catija any update on US bound stickers?
 
should be with Catija by tomorrow
a couple of Europe people have got theirs
 
Stickers Tip: Make sure to put it on from one side at a time and sorta press down and drag, otherwise you'll end up with air bubbles.
their stickers (in particular) will create air pockets if you don't
 
It appears that !!/scan made a second post in metasmoke
 
1:28 AM
indeed
 
That is not intended behavior, is it?
Because have double posts can skew stats.
 
intended as long as it doesn't autoflag it second time round
 
it's still there !
 
1 more flag...
 
@thesecretmaster unless someone downvoted
poof
 
1:30 AM
Ah
 
1:40 AM
I forgot how much of a pain SE OAuth is...
maybe I don't need that
can't use OpenID after july 1st eh? So I have to do it this way
 
Ah darn it. OpenID not being supported will break all my chat bots :(
 
Ok, so I'm reading about this awesome anti-spam bot, but I'm not finding the install/download link. Am I just stupid?
 
Makes me rethink their real reason for discontinuing it...
@GrantGarrison There's no installation, it all runs server side.
 
@GrantGarrison There is none... it's running in this room.
!!/alive
 
@Mithrandir Watching this endless list of new questions never gets boring
 
1:49 AM
So you just flag anything it says?
Or is there an automatic system?
 
@thesecretmaster Oh... Uh oh. That will break us too....
Uhhhh
 
Well, time to update chatx
 
@Undo @ArtOfCode You know CE better than I do, no OpenID will be a big problem right?
 
@GrantGarrison I would read through some of this training
 
@GrantGarrison No, we don't just robotically flag.
Every post is reviewed by humans.
 
1:51 AM
@quartata I don't know how CE works, actually. Just that it usually does
 
 
@quartata no
 
I believe it'll break. I stole that bit from ChatX, IIRC
 
are you sure
 
@Mithrandir and/or dogs
 
1:52 AM
openid.stackexchange.com is staying
 
last time I had an account with no OpenID login it didn't work
 
@ArtOfCode that's not what I saw
 
@ArtOfCode that's not what it sounds like. Sounds like we can't have any OpenID logins.
 
Looks like it'll be deprecated soon
 
@ArtOfCode "deprecate openid.stackexchange.com "
 
1:52 AM
Pretty sure we and all of SOBotics are screwed
SEDE will also break
 
@WELZ ok
 
in Nuclear Experiments, Feb 23 at 22:07, by SmokeDetector
Goodbye, cruel world
 
hahahaha
 
@Nick_Craver Does that mean https://openid.stackexchange.com is going to die? I should probably start migrating accounts off it if so...
 
1:53 AM
@quartata I'm thinking they may not have considered ths....
 
> July - End support for logging in via OpenID and deprecate openid.stackexchange.com (note: only 0.2% of authorized sites in the last year have been non-Stack Exchange sites. Running some additional analysis and will update when we have more info.)
 
@ArtOfCode ...really? their new meta post sounds nothing like this
they even said that SEDE would break actually
 
And regardless you won't be able to log in to chat with your SE openid
 
@WELZ They're here. :D Will pull stuff together and get them out tomorrow or Thursday.
 
yeah ok we're boned, Tim Post's answer even says so
 
1:56 AM
I sent Nick another tweet
 
This is kind of a nuisance
@JeremyBanks you around?
 
Nick's kinda out of town right now. If this is going to break stuff, please make sure you write an answer on that meta post so we can plan accordingly.
 
@Shog9 problem is we don't know if it's going to break stuff
 
Anonymous
@quartata sort of.
 
@ArtOfCode oh?
 
1:58 AM
I'll fix ChatX, and maybe someone with python skillz can fix ChatExchange
 
ChatExchange logs in by logging into openid.stackexchange.com and using that cookie to log into an SE site. Is that a flow that's going to break or not? We don't know.
 
@ArtOfCode assume "yes" and answer accordingly
 
@Shog9 copy, answer incoming
 
Wait a minute... log in with stack exchange posts to openid.stackexchange.com/affiliate/form/login/submit
 
1:59 AM
@GrantGarrison autoflagging is only on posts that have a greater than 99.75% positive spam rate
 
Something smells funny
 
New metasmoke user 'Grant Garrison' created
 
@thesecretmaster yeah, that will change
 
@GrantGarrison Though, the default setup is set to 100%
 

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