@MiG You think they will make humans great again?

@XKCD I don't get it.

@JourneymanGeek I don't have his last name. There are over 26K users. He looked like a nice guy though last time I saw his avatar.

@Boris_yo I can't tell you how he is if I don't remember who he is!

@Boris_yo Prob going both ways, the reason we have the term 'dual use technology'... There'll be amazing medical uses (hopefully affordable for all), and oh, we'll get freaky super soldiers with enhanced strength and intelligence and stuff... I bet it'll be all of the above

@Boris_yo Me neither... If you're not there and you want to let people know, great... why would you feel bad if you work different hours?

@MiG The email was sent to a work email

Also see the alt text

I'm aware?

@MiG @Boris_yo That assumes humans were great to start with

@MiG which would mean checking work email outside work

I think people that respond like that to autoresponders take them way, way too seriously

and some bosses don't realise you have a life outside work

@MiG Well murder yes

I guess it implies office hours and religiously sticking to them

Mild mutilation? I guess

But as someone who gets whatsapps about work outside my very irregular work hours? ....

Yeah, I'm not touching my work email outside work

for the record: I'm aware a lot of people recognise the work environment of the Office TV series, and relate to it, but I guess I work in a different one

@MiG I think folks here and generally on the network kinda realise I'm burnt out and frustrated

and wouldn't mind a anarchist ninja setting boundaries to my boss :D

@JourneymanGeek whatsapps are crossing a boundary... if you send an email outside of office hours whoever is on the other side should not feel obliged to answer them until they are at work... but unless you have a work whatsapp, that will bother you wherever and whenever, and that's a no no

@MiG my whole work comms is mostly through that

including official stuff

fuck that tbh... social stuff great, but work stuff should stay in work platforms, including email

You're new enough that you don't grok my burning hatred of whatsapp

o_O

@MiG I just set up a seperate account for personal use and ended up segregating that

I've pretty much told people off who bother me with work stuff on there, works wonders

@MiG you misunderstand. Its an essential tool we use for official communications

you have a bizarre work place imo

and yeah, in that case I would create a separate whatsapp

I noticed my dual sim phone allows me to install two instances of whatsapp

so if some asshole decides to cross that boundary, I guess I could enact that plan

although chances are far higher I will block them on whatsapp

@MiG You're relatively new here :D

Yes I do!

@MiG That's essentially what I did, work and noisy extended family rooms on one, direct family and friends on another

@JourneymanGeek you know, it's rude to keep pointing that out

@MiG More that I need to remember you haven't heard most of the fun stories

well, that might be what you have in mind, but that's not how it comes across

Work literally runs off roughly 5-6 permanant and dozens of temporary whatsapp rooms

@MiG More a commentary on "God I whine here and elsewhere a lot"

mkay

Apologies if it comes out any other way

That was not the intent, and I see, (in hindsight) it could be taken that way.

no worries

Fundamentally - I work crazy hours, on an understaffed team, and am perpetually exhausted.

I also complain a lot

sounds like my gf... she has to weigh in on things at meetings, and people can see her triply booked agenda but still invite her for more

she comes home exhausted every week day

(Also, any mentions of dogs on my end refers to Ash, my late, very awesome terrier mutt, he was a bit of an SE institution)

also severely understaffed for various reasons, including gross mismanagement the past two years (the responsible guy fortunately got replaced by someone competent very recently)

@MiG mostly petty office politics I suspect

I'm ~7-8 months away from going "Ok, I have enough reserves to manage the short term stuff" and about 12 from just yoloquitting

some of that, but those are pretty much the consequence of 1. really bad strategic decisions and 2. a few unbelievably incompetent coworkers who cost more time than they produce in work

the site she works at lost two huge customers, who because of said mismanagement probably would not want to work with the parent organisation ever again... hundreds of millions of euros involved there

@MiG My co-workers are fine

most of the management is "ok"

the job sucks and bores me to death, A lot of it is makework that could be automated more intellegently than we have and my boss is... kinda a big part of the problem :D

I'm currently interviewing somewhere else, but the number of times I've figured I'd get out and it didn't work out means, I'm basically waiting on a response before being hopeful ._.

@JourneymanGeek most of hers too btw, but there were some... unique specimens...

Oh

those don't last long

including one bizarrely rude woman who had absolutely no clue about her job, insulted people, lied about a lot and after she quit (probably seconds before she would've gotten fired), came back a few months later to demand her christmas box :D

Oh

I can't talk about the fun stories here

I get the impression that most companies do not check references, so she now appears to be employed elsewhere (probably without having changed an inch)

(work for a contractor for a government agency)

But there was a guy before me who showed up drunk, and once didn't come to work, sending a selfie from an ambulance a few hours later

oh, I'm not gonna throw in a lot of details in the above either, but more because I think that would be rude

@JourneymanGeek :facepalm:

superuser.com/questions/724853/my-windows-pc-hangs-at-startup - someone provided an answer for a WinXP question from 2014 just now :x

\o/

People sometimes try that

and its pretty low effort

Perhaps it got bumped by a bot as well?

hm no

Another low quality answer

I have to admit I occasionally missed a tag, MacOS question for example

@JourneymanGeek Not sure why they would bother tbh

hmm

There's several stratergies to doing SE

lol, you're making it sound like a game

Oh it very much can be

there's users who just chase bounties. I used to have a RSS feed of new questions and ground anything I knew

past 100k tho, eh.

I focus on shiny/interesting

I know of one user (really smart guy) who got 100k on one account, got bored, started a new account and... did it again on another site

So, if you want to understand the psycology of SE, it very much is a game, whether you're going for score, badges or doing it casually

Interesting ecosystem I guess :)

Well - in general

SO has the additional incentive of SO rep having some cachet with some companies

then there's the occational students on an assignment, which can end up doing more harm than good

We also have the trolls of various flavours, some of whom spend a lot of effort trying to get around suspensions cause they absolutely need to ask another question, or just generally troll.

One issue with the structure as it is I have noticed is very strict pigeonholing - there are advantages of course in being able to find stuff back, but it also impedes growth of new users, as they might spend a lot of time asking their burning question, only to find it considered 'off topic' and closed immediately

@MiG something that evolved over time

@JourneymanGeek that's all of the internet tbh

@MiG early SE for example was fairly loose

@JourneymanGeek Of course, but it does have some significant drawbacks

@MiG on the other hand, the narrowness of scope evolved cause we found we needed it for useful content

balancing between "newbie friendliness" and "quality" is... a thing that one one's ever managed perfectly

we overcorrect for the latter to some extent, sure

but that also keeps the 'experts' here

I recall on some forums, back when these were still the predominant thing, there were a few that almost religiously and very formally closed any new thread that had even so much as a shadow of a previous subject (frequently run by older people come to think of it)... Needless to say those stuck to a very small number of active users and eventually folded

Well on MSE that's something of an issue to me

@JourneymanGeek Totally possible, but definitely requires more effort - anything that caters for multiple very different usergroups does

on SU, far too many posts to really do that IMO

@MiG Well - I've seen sites go either way, Serverfault kinda swung between both extremes and it wasn't good :/

@MiG well - Quora is terrible, yahoo answers is mercifully dead and experts exchange... Actually no idea what happened to ot

All the drama aside most of the network is ok other than 'regulars' not really growing

@JourneymanGeek Don't know either, but the hyphen didn't really make the pun go away... Expert Sex Change :D

@MiG it didn't really

but it feels like a really juvanile pun - both in terms of people who're transgender, and a site that's lost relevance, more the former... so...

@JourneymanGeek That's something that as a network really needs a structural approach to, if you never work on opening up to and holding onto new users, all you will see is existing ones get tired and drop out

I'll just spell it out as two words ._.

@JourneymanGeek once again, welcome to the internet :P

@MiG on the other hand, the network's alienated a lot of old users over time

@JourneymanGeek Gotta find a balance really, you will not be able to please all but you can at least try to please most

And there's a core of folks who've convinced themselves that they absolutely need to hold the line there

And I've seen a recent upstart (well, 5 years ago) do the opposite, which is almost exclusively cater to simple users and thereby chasing away those who would want to put in effort

@MiG or pleasing no one ._.

this was a gaming comms platform, but they tried to do the forum thing without any kind of topic retention - so you'd get the same things discussed all over again 6 months later

I'm kinda on the "eh, lets not be TOO focused on dupes" side of things

no idea if it's still around or doing well, trying to remember the name...

@JourneymanGeek best approach imo, even if the question has been asked 5 years ago, there might be a slight change in the question itself, and the world has definitely changed a lot so maybe there are brand new answers out there, and maybe the framing has changed

@MiG well - that's up to OP

and I used to post comments on stuff like that

on every post I closed, which would be nice to do

found it, Duxter - crunchbase.com/organization/duxter

(on meta I have a userscript for that, which I hate but that's entirely for OT)

@JourneymanGeek yeah, noticed a lot of posts get closed without a specific comment that helps the OP... and whether it's justified or not, that's the equivalent of "RTFM", which definitely does not help people stick around

(TBH, I stopped posting cause I've been less active on that kinda direct moderation since)

@MiG in theory the close votes and canned review comments should cover it

I mainly do it cause I like writing comments

@JourneymanGeek I've seen posts get closed without any comment, so unfortunately not all the time

@JourneymanGeek hehe

@MiG in theory ._.