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Ivo Flipse

11:02

Have you seen our blog yet?

Matt Jenkins

Can't say I have

Ivo Flipse

superuser.blogoverflow.com

well, Jeff (Atwood) wants to switch it to an official domain, because he likes the idea, so the layout will be inline with blog.stackoverflow.com

but I've noted your enthusiastic involvement since you've became a member!

Matt Jenkins

cool, some nice stuff on there

Ivo Flipse

and I wanted to use our new officialness to put you in the spotlight :P

Matt Jenkins

thanks ;)

I do have quite a large amount of knowledge and experience and I do like to share it around.

Ivo Flipse

11:05

let's just say I think we have to cherish when we get new 'rockstar' users that work as hard as you do

Matt Jenkins

Well, I have nothing else to do but sit here waiting for the phone to ring, which is sadly not very often...

Ivo Flipse

well I can assure you, if you gain 2k rep on SU in 14 days, you need some knowledge, because we have a lot of human BS-detectors walking around here

Matt Jenkins

heh

Ivo Flipse

1

Q: Super User Questions of the Week #8

Now we're into week 8 post 8 of the "Top Question" of Super User in the Super User blog. Please post and vote for your favorite question for this week. Please post any question that you feel is of worth and the reason why. Try not to promote your own questions or answers for publicity sake. We...

we try to find a question of the week every week

Matt Jenkins

good idea

Ivo Flipse

11:07

so in case you're really bored, I can set you up an account for the blog, then you can pitch in with writing up something nice

but my main question for now was that I wanted to do a small interview, just as a 'get-to-know-you' post

Matt Jenkins

What sort of things are you looking for on there in particular? reviews? how-to's?

Ivo Flipse

12

Q: The Super User Blog -- now officially blessed!

Great job on the blog! After a call today with Ivo, we decided that the Super User Blog is now sufficiently awesome to be highlighted in the footer! You'll note that the blog link in the Super User footer now points to http://superuser.blogoverflow.com/ And it will correctly update to flag [ne...

discussion featured superuser-blog

emphasis on the last sentence of that post :)

the biggest focus is to put great content on our site in the spotlight

Matt Jenkins

Ooooh, so you could pay for me to review a Cray? ;)

Ivo Flipse

lol, let's just say we have some options

and off course the more we produce, the more likely we can ask companies for stuff to review

Matt Jenkins

Become bigger than Tom's Hardware?

Ivo Flipse

11:11

technically speaking, I think we already have more traffic than them

Matt Jenkins

Across the whole SE system I could well imagine.

Ivo Flipse

Actually with just SU :P

the dots are a rough estimate of tomshardware I believe

Matt Jenkins

so we are roughly equalling TH on 90% Q&A alone?

Once the blog becomes the size of SE then TH will be pushed into oblivion

Ivo Flipse

well I'm sure the guys from TH will manage :)

but it also offers us opportunities to collaborate with more sites, because by now we're becoming the juggernaut, not the other way around

but we would be focusing on stuff that's 'hot' in our community and make sure we inform them about that

we don't have to be the zillionth benchmark blog

I would probably focus more on actually using a product and what problems you might have with it

if only we would ever get popular enough to test an eyefinity setup :P

Matt Jenkins

Trying to forestall any user-level questions?

Ivo Flipse

11:21

well next to testing it, we could perhaps convinces OEMs that we also answer troubleshooting questions about their products

so it's beneficial to let us mess with it and hopefully even keep it

Matt Jenkins

Well, I would imagine we do take quite a lot of support queries away from their tech guys

Ivo Flipse

would you view that as something positive or negative? ;)

Matt Jenkins

Positive whichever way you look at it. It reduces the load on them, so reduces their running costs, which reduces the cost of their products which means we get to play with more of them and learn them more which increases our knowledge which increases the number of people we help which decreases the load on their tech guys which ... ad infinitum (until we rule the world)

Ivo Flipse

hehe, we're clearly not at that point yet

and probably software startups are easier to convince to team-up with, but I'm all ears if you have any suggestions :)

Matt Jenkins

Well, once we get big enough it wouldn't surprise me if some companies approached us with the possibility of out-sourcing their support to us.

Ivo Flipse

11:26

and btw, we might get youtube support (like Gaming has) if we make more video's

Matt Jenkins

Videos are good for reviews and tutorials certainly.

Ivo Flipse

that's my end goal off course, but the team wants to organically get there

well like with showing how to do some UI thing, a video is so much clearer than messing with bullet points

and a side effect off course is that it might attract random youtube crowd too :)

Matt Jenkins

Personally I think we should do a tutorial on how to use Google to find answers to your questions - I have noticed a lot of the questions are answered in the first google result if you know what to put in the search.

Ivo Flipse

well that would be a great one

the other thing I want to organize is that every SE site get's started on this

and your suggestion is great for us, but it's also on-topic for web apps (if you use some nice google-fu!)

cross-fertilization is important for making us more ubiquitous

Matt Jenkins

Absolutely. There are certain grey areas between some of the sites, and the migration facility is great. A global blog split into areas that mirror the SE sites maybe?

Ivo Flipse

11:32

well probably we'll get something like meta, only then with a blog for each site

it's fine if they simply repost the same blog post, though it's probably better if they tailor it to their community

Matt Jenkins

It would be nice to have it integrated into the SE system. Maybe earn the privilege to make blog posts? And how about migrating questions into the blog?

Or when you ask a question it searches the blog as well and tells you of any relevant blog posts that may help you answer your question?

Ivo Flipse

that would help against dupes

we try to highlight the question and/or answer that sparked it, which hopefully leads to some extra upvotes for that user

I think it will be bound to rep somewhat, but initially it will probably just the mods who have publish rights, but we could let users propose blog posts and others edit them and then 'push' them to the site

if you let me know you're preferred username I'll setup your account

Matt Jenkins

Sort of a moderated queue? Let people with enough rep create a post but it won't go live until it's been reviewed by the mods and/or peers?

Ivo Flipse

something like that

we'll have to see how it goes off course

personally, I feel we're like ehow and those other content farms

Matt Jenkins

Of course. These things always take time to get working just right.

We're better than them - we don't have as many adverts in annoying places.

Ivo Flipse

11:38

with the one big difference: if we only write blog posts about popular questions/answers, we know that it's decent content, rather than some SEO crap

that too

Matt Jenkins

yup

You can set me up as 'flibs' if you like.

Ivo Flipse

only thing we need to be careful about is republishing other ones content

Matt Jenkins

Oh yes, all content has to be your own original work, or be fully credited.

Kind of like Wikipedia

Ivo Flipse

indeed

Matt Jenkins

gah - my phone's going mental now with new emails ;)

Ivo Flipse

11:41

I'd prefer to enable original work, so if that means getting some users additional licenses, then that's a no-brainer

Matt Jenkins

It's been a while since I last used WordPress - I'll have to re-familiarise myself with it.

Ivo Flipse

no worries :)

Matt Jenkins

I have to slope off for a bit - it's time for me to hit the kitchen and start preparing food.

Ivo Flipse

no problem, I'll catch you again later, thanks for the chat though!

Matt Jenkins

's ok - I'm usually around most hours of the day or night ;)

Matt Jenkins

12:11

Hey, back from the kitchen now (for a bit)

Ivo Flipse

12:22

lol awesome to see Matt add his answers in real time :)

Matt Jenkins

12:43

:)

Ivo Flipse

I'll wait for some others to have a chance to add some more questions

Matt Jenkins

Yup

Ivo Flipse

we don't have to be all serious :-)

Matt Jenkins

I have a good sense of humour

Ivo Flipse

I noticed, you and you're average sized humor

Matt Jenkins

12:46

That's me ;)

Shame that's not all that's average sized.

I'm talking about my belly here...

Ivo Flipse

fitness.stackexchange.com

Matt Jenkins

urgh

Ivo Flipse

I'm planning on trying to get a blog running there too

Matt Jenkins

I tried doing the fitness thing but it was too exhausting

Ivo Flipse

it's not about the weight lifting fitness

it's about everything related to being or getting fit

Matt Jenkins

12:47

I even joined a gym and got a fitness programme organised but that got boring

Ivo Flipse

you need something that fit's you

Matt Jenkins

Yeah. Most of the things I like doing fitness wise are outdoor and the weather is sh!te at the moment. When the good weather comes again I will be out and about more getting fit.

Ivo Flipse

I have the same problem

but I decided to man up and wear double layers of clothes and just go out

if it's only for 20-30 mins, I can stand some rain

Matt Jenkins

But that's 20-30 minutes you could spend answering questions on here... :P

Ivo Flipse

in my case time I should have been working

I'm also self-employed, but trying to learn Python

should have been reading all this time :P

Matt Jenkins

12:51

heh

I looked at python once

I still have the scars to prove it

Ivo Flipse

lol, it's easier than c++

Matt Jenkins

It reminded me too much of Cobol

with its strict indentation and such

Ivo Flipse

it makes the code readable though :P

unless you only use a command line, in which case you'll get stick of pressing space

Matt Jenkins

I have had no need to use it though so I haven't really looked into it much. I know it's a very powerful language and a lot of people swear by it

But for most script-based stuff I use either Perl or PHP (or shell scripting if it's simple stuff)

Ivo Flipse

well I'm slightly worried about it's limitations for making powerful GUIs

Matt Jenkins

13:01

Just use Qt?

Ivo Flipse

yeah, but I'm a Windows user by heart, so I'm not used to shell stuff

poor documentation and more aimed at c++ than python

Ivo Flipse

14:48

@KronoS have a look: docs.google.com/document/d/…

Rebecca Chernoff

15:01

@ThomasMcDonald, when you're about, we need to get an export of blog.SU. The SE2.0 sites will be a multi-site setup, but blog.SU needs to be separate.

Ivo Flipse

what do you mean by multi-site?

because of the domain stuff?

we're not superuser.stackexchange.com?

KronoS

15:56

WOOO HOOO! We're gonna be an official blog now!

@IvoFlipse those questions were awesome! who did you interview?

Matt Jenkins

<<<---- me

(lurking in the corner)

KronoS

@MattJenkins howdy! you gonna join in on the blog efforts

Ivo Flipse

I want more interviews, we can just schedule them to be released on a certain day

Matt Jenkins

Apparantly I am ;)

KronoS

@IvoFlipse well QOtW is supposed to be on mondays

Ivo Flipse

16:00

we can interview John T, our top user, Harry MC, our bounty hunter, Chris F, our network generalist

KronoS

Why don't we try to have an interview every two weeks? on a wednesday?

we'll make the QOtW a weekly thing on Mondays

Ivo Flipse

we could do that :)

KronoS

and then I was thinking that we could do a Top question/answer of the quarter and that's where we give out prizes

Rebecca Chernoff

@IvoFlipse multi-site from what I can tell means that there's just 1 install of wordpress, but I can map folders on the server to different blogs. So blog.cooking.se and blog.photo.se can be the same wordpress install. And yes, blog.su needs to be separate because it isn't blog.su.se

KronoS

BTW @MattJenkins you've been an amazing addition to the SU site. thanks for your expertise

Matt Jenkins

16:03

You're welcome. Glad I can spread the love and the knowledge around.

Ivo Flipse

I guess it would be far too much pain (now) to get every blog a theme based on the site's and personally I think it's enough if they look like the SO one

sadly, I have to go for now, but we'll get back to it soon enough

KronoS

@IvoFlipse cya... I'm just working on other blog posts

user30

16:33

@RebeccaChernoff Can do, but I would have thought it could be mapped alright.

user30

blog.superuser.com

user30

If everyone's okay I'm going to export the blog as is now.

user30

@KronoS you're not editing atm are you?

user30

@RebeccaChernoff Did you want me to upload this somewhere?

KronoS

no @ThomasMcDonald

well I am on a local copy

user30

16:39

I'm not sure how well that will work with the change of XML-RPC address.

Rebecca Chernoff

@ThomasMcDonald shrugs I'm told because of the current web server setup, blog.SU needs to get trilogy treatment. Just the messenger on that one.

user30

@RebeccaChernoff Fair enough. I'll send this over in an email, with some notes etc.

user30

17:00

@RebeccaChernoff I managed to send it with no subject, mostly because I wasn't paying enough attention. :)

Rebecca Chernoff

received, thanks (:

Rebecca Chernoff

22:31

pokes @IvoFlipse and @KronoS with a sharp stick q: Either of ya here?

KronoS

@RebeccaChernoff OUCH!

Rebecca Chernoff

(;

Try to log in to blog.su...can you get in?

KronoS

what's my user and pass... same as other? @RebeccaChernoff

Rebecca Chernoff

@ThomasMcDonald gave me an export that I imported, so yeah, should be. (:

KronoS

Doesn't work for me... went to reset as well and no username was found for that...

I'm guessing it didn't transfer over the users and pass

Rebecca Chernoff

22:37

The users are there, but I guess not the passwords.

KronoS

:(

can you reset?

Rebecca Chernoff

Looks like it just transferred over names, but not emails or passwords

KronoS

do you need my email?

Rebecca Chernoff

I can pull your email from your SU account...then you can change if you want?

KronoS

That's fine

Rebecca Chernoff

22:42

Ok, try now using your ip as your password lol

Creative password ftw q:

KronoS

Worked!

Rebecca Chernoff

\o/

and then there was the xml-rpc setting we toggled - that was for Windows Live Writer I think? I presume you can create a draft to test that?

KronoS

appears to be working

Rebecca Chernoff

Ah, cool. We weren't sure if the firewall would be nice. (:

KronoS

yep worked just fine. Was able to pull up old ones, and upload a new test one

Rebecca Chernoff

22:52

Hmm, last modified is see is yesterday

Ah, trashed. (:

Do me a favor and poke around and see if you see anything that needs attention before we officially bless this?

Ivo Flipse

23:09

the markdown looks messed up, but for the rest it looks pretty good @RebeccaChernoff

Rebecca Chernoff

example?

Ivo Flipse

blog.superuser.com/2011/02/11/…

but it's because of the bullet points, it adds indents that look really bad

oh and I can't login

Rebecca Chernoff

I have to setup your account, sec.

Ivo Flipse

np :)

Rebecca Chernoff

pass = ip (:

If you figure out a css change for bullets we could probably do that. (:

Ivo Flipse

23:17

it's working

I suck at CSS or websites in general, so I can't propose anything :P

I'm a user ;-)

interesting, I can't view drafts, which probably means I have contributor status or something like that

Rebecca Chernoff

Everyone's an author. I dunno what the different roles are. q:

KronoS

I should be an editor... I believe

Rebecca Chernoff

Ah, editor?

changed (:

KronoS

Ya that way I can mod comments and stufff... also add users

oh thanks!

Ivo Flipse

we all have to be (at least the current 'users') because else you can only propose and perhaps edit

Rebecca Chernoff

23:29

codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities#Summary_of_Roles

Ivo Flipse

I don't have to be admin, that's for WP guys like @ThomasMcDonald

KronoS

Ya I don't think I need to be an admin either... unless @ThomasMcDonald thinks I should be

Ivo Flipse

can you imagine @RebeccaChernoff? me? not wanted to be an overlord somewhere?

Rebecca Chernoff

Yeah, I'm still trying to pick my jaw up off the floor. q:

Are you feeling alright?

Ivo Flipse

no, I should go to bed

and when I wake up, I'll be a mod on fitness!

Rebecca Chernoff

23:33

o:

KronoS

@IvoFlipse like mod mod? or mod tools?

Ivo Flipse

already have the latter, I want to delete stuff :P

I mean come on: Choosing a chair for good posture

KronoS

Ya I saw that

Rebecca Chernoff

I just got a new office chair. Bye bye crappy chair I've had for 6 years

KronoS

Lol... My office chair is a plastic outside chair at the moment... with a 'butt' pad

oh the joys of college life

Rebecca Chernoff

23:43

I think the bullet points look fine, what's wrong with them?

KronoS

@RebeccaChernoff 0_o "bullets"

Rebecca Chernoff

>_<

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