Software Recommendations

@Undo: Its much more than I'd normally be comfortable with editing, though, I suppose as a low rep user, I can give myself more leeway than I would on SU ;p

This is probably the worst place to share this, but snapfiles.com

worst/best

2:24 AM

lol

o0. I got +4 for that edit. Odd.

Back from a week away from technology.

@JourneymanGeek you submitted two, and I approved both of them ;)

hiya @Oxinabox

@Undo: oops. wasn't my intention XD

I see we have made it into public beta

I missed something when i was editing it initially ><

@Oxinabox: yup

2:26 AM

I see Sam is still around, but I'm yet to chase througha all hist meta posts to see if his issues hav e been fixed

Issues for everyone!

I see we have moderators, too. So far I see a diamond next to Giles, where is the list?

undo too

@oxinabox Users button, moderators tab.

So far just Gilles and I

here softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/users?tab=moderators

2:28 AM

Congratulations. I am very very pleases with having Undo and Gilles as moderators

Thanks @Braiam

Thanks ;)

The plan is to bring up more mods sometime soon, but we don't know when or how many.

Now to chase up on the meta stuff that I hope has been resolved:
* Games
* 1 Rec/Answer

@Oxinabox: the second is going to take some getting used to.

@Oxinabox scroll up to see that games hasn't been resolved

(but eh, there's not THAT many things where I'd say "there's two things I'd recommend unreservedly)

2:30 AM

and the 1 rec/answer thing has about equal votes either way

So we are still stitting undescided?

@Oxinabox: the joys of a semi-democratic process.

I personally am undisided.
On the on hand you should have one answer, and multiple answers means the question was likely trying to get a list.
On the other hand it makes it hard to see community voting on what is the best

@Oxinabox: on the gripping hand, its unlikely someone's going to be able to post 4-5 quality answers meeting a good chunk of the criteria required

Was kinda hoping we could have either SE community managers or the elected mods bring down a discision one way or the other on the 1 rec/answer thing

2:32 AM

;p

I think the voting is a key thing, since it provides the greatest level of quality to the rest of the internet

I honestly don't see any reason multiple recommendations per answer could be a good thing.

so having one quality answer per recommendation makes sense here

And, I'd probably suggest being a bit more relaxed on substancial edits if it adds something

@JourneymanGeek basically the point I've been making all along

If somebody includes three recommendations in their answer, and one or more of them is utter shit, and it still gets upvotes because of the one or two good ones, how do people know which ones are good?

2:33 AM

the "list" thing is a bit of a pointless argument here

recommendations by their very nature are asking for a list

@kalina: I've argued the very same thing

one recommendation per answer is the only way the content we provide remains useful to everybody else

But on the other hand a great answer might say: for example "Both Scilab and octave furfil all your requirements. Use Ocatave if you also need X, or scilab if you would rather have Y" though that does indicate the question was not rpecise enough

@Oxinabox: with the 'checklist' format thats being encouraged, that makes less sense.

True that.

2:36 AM

(which tilts me towards the multiple answer camp further)

@JourneymanGeek You should weigh in on this, then, so we can build up some kind of consensus on this once and for all

Anyway, hi all,
Congrats to the mods
and congrats to the community for getting to public beta.
I

I'll be back later

A: Password manager for Linux and Android

@GnomeSlice two counter examples for you:

7

The easy thing about your criteria is that you don't actually need a matched set. As long as the data file is completely inter-operable, any combination of unrelated apps will work. TL;DR KeepassX 2 + Keepass2Android use the same data format and are the only pair I know of to meet all your crit...

@kalina btw, can @Undo or @Gilles add a screenshot of that answer? it got deleted

A: Android navigation app that provides real time display of current speed?

6

Changing out your entire navigation software stack to get a speedometer readout is like changing out you car because the rear view mirror fell off. The map data and navigation algorithms are far more important than such a tangential issue. However if you decide not to throw the baby out with the...

2:41 AM

@Braiam which one where?

@Braiam which answer?

my answer hasn't been deleted

unless somebody just deleted it

One recommends a pair of unrelated apps, another to particular app at all only a kind of app.

@Undo the one linked in the question

^ Dat one?

yeah... but I see another problem with that one...

IS A FREAKING DUMP!

2:44 AM

I'll crop it down and put it in.

@Caleb I suppose for apps that are very similar, like those speedometers, posting them in a group makes sense.

Q: What should our /about contain?

@Shog9 meta.softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/questions/617/… (feel free to migrate to MSO, I posted it here since I saw the need here and not on most other sites)

Shog9

oof.

Stack Exchange

1

I've taken a first go at the customizable parts of the very first page users are supposed to read on the site — the tour page (formerly known as /about), based on the guidelines we've established so far. We can customize two sections: “Ask about…” and “Don't ask about…”. Here's the current conte...

discussion about-page

3

Q: Allow moderators to customize the first line of the editable parts of /about

I took a first go at filling the moderator-editable parts of /about. It seems to me that the “Ask about…” section doesn't really work as a bullet point list of topics. What I'd like to write is Ask questions that define both … a purpose — a task to accomplish, a user story some obj...

feature-request about-page moderator-tools

Q: What should our documentation contain?

2

This is one of those seven essential meta questions of every beta and I feel it's going to result in a lot of discussion. Unlike other Stack Exchange sites, much of our documentation is probably going to be quite unique. Here is what superuser.com's documentation looks like for reference: Sup...

discussion faq-proposed

It actually resulted in no discussion at all, but go figure

2:50 AM

@kalina it did: the question and answer guidelines (well, there was hardly any discussion about them, presumably because I tried to summarize what we'd discussed in other threads)

@Caleb But what if your Android recommendation is top notch, but your Linux one sucks?

@Gilles those actually existed before I made that post

On this site, I don't see many scope issues to resolve this way. There's hardware (looks like no, but since it's implied by the site name, I doubt it's worth mentioning prominently), games (still under discussion), websites (still under discussion)

get the feature comparisons thing in "don't ask", with a link to its related meta post, though

@Gilles: And hardware has much shorter 'current' lifecycles than software.

2:52 AM

and anyway the big list of on-topic/off-topic format is messy

which is a biggie for us

@kalina how many feature comparison questions have we had?

a few

I imagine we'll get more, but I suspect we'll get more super low quality questions than feature requests

@Braiam duly added

who else thinks that those meta-Q require the featured tag?

(since all the four slots are filled with some of our rules, we like to move some participation to shaping the site too)

3:07 AM

@Braiam I think the mod nominations have to stay featured until we have mods. The mod announcement, a bit longer.

I guess the ground rules are subsumed by the questions and answers quality guidelines, which are now faq

@Gilles I was talking more about the things that we still need more discussion to flesh out

what would you like to see featured now?

now the active list is a mess, but the "multiple recommendation per answers" one

whoops, wrong room.

@GnomeSlice I was about to point that out :/

we need to flesh out that

and the moderating answers

so people knows when to flag, when to vote, etc...

@GnomeSlice is not bad

3:19 AM

@Braiam What?

Oh, the video?

ah, the games one @Gilles

@Braiam: I suspect thats one of those things that unfortunately is going to need a firm decision made

there, I answered another Q in the network wide hotlist

3:53 AM

softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/1431

not sure about this one, is this really what we need to say?

No links to ios (which should be prefered most of the time)?

Should we use iphone and ipad, or ios+smartphone and [tag:ios+tag:tablet]? I get the feeling that like on SO, the device-specific tags are overused and most questions in fact apply generically to any iOS device. — Gilles 1 min ago

@Gilles Not sure, both would work.

I'm leaning toward [ios]+[smartphone/tablet], but it's up to you.

@Gilles I remember the discussion was that some software didn't work in ipad or some didn't on iphone or some idevice...

Among the existing iphone-app and ipad-app questions, which ones really need that tag and which ones should actually have only ios?

@Braiam yes, but that's a minority

For example, when people ask for Ubuntu software, we mostly retag to linux, because there's very little Linux software that doesn't run on all distros

4:08 AM

I don't like the classification per device rather than per OS, when the ipad/iphone/iwhatever becomes too broad for ios then we make a separated tag... (that was my plan initially)

Undo says that it matters but right now isn't necessary to have more tags

also the iphone/ipad tags give the impression that we allow brand tags

4:21 AM

@Braiam: though, arn't there apps that are specific to ios tablets and phones?

@JourneymanGeek Yes.

(so, would splitting them to ios / tablet and ios / phone tags make sense?)

Not every app is universal

erm

so.. what @Undo said @Gilles said...

App Store (iOS)

The App Store is a digital distribution platform for mobile apps on iOS, developed and maintained by Apple Inc. The service allows users to browse and download applications that were developed with Apple's iOS SDK. The apps can be downloaded directly to an iOS device, or onto a personal computer via iTunes. Applications in the App Store are targeted at iOS devices, including iPhones and iPads, and may make use of specific attributes of those devices, such as motion sensors for game controls and cameras for online video calling. Apps may be downloaded for free or for a set cost, and t...

Only about half the apps in the app store work on an iPad

that's less than I thought

so maybe ipad and iphone should be considered different platforms after all

but in that case, we shouldn't have ios

4:23 AM

Not all ipad apps work on iPhone, and not all iPhone apps work on iPad

But many apps are supported on both.

@GnomeSlice yes but that's not the point. The question is which one is the common case.

dammed apple

@Gilles I was just providing information.

@Gilles I'm still leaning torwards that all iSomething just use the iOS tag and be done, seems a bit of unnecessary complication from our side due how apple (devs) does stuff

Q: Do any other similar communities exist?

4:44 AM

ithingy

Stack Exchange

7:01 AM

0

In terms of deciding how we should manage this community, we should consider if there are any other similar communities out there and how they manage themselves. So are there any other communities that exist online either solely for the purpose of recommending software or as one of its major func...

discussion

7:57 AM

@GnomeSlice srsly? If I or anybody starts recommending software that sucks (and there is something that doesn't suck applicable to the use case that should have been recommended) , you should downvote the post without hesitation no matter what good stuff it is paired with. What kind of expert answer would do that?

@GnomeSlice That's because the basic unit of an answer is not "a piece of software" but "a solution". While the latter will typically involve a piece of software that needs to be acquired, such common cases do not define what makes an answer.

4

@Caleb: eh, I think that separation is what the root of most disagreements here so far is ;p

@Gilles Even though technically lots of apps don't work on one or the other, I suggest we start with just ios and only split it when the need becomes apparent. The body of questions will usually make it clear if one or more formats is a requirement and the area of expertise/interest is identical. (at least until proved otherwise)

@JourneymanGeek Yup.

(and something we need to work out sooner rather than later)

and eh. thats embarassing. Licecap may work on wine.

Angelo Neuschitzer

10:08 AM

Whoa, seems I've missed a lot :) Damn and this WE I won't have time to be here much, looks like I need to catch up monday...

Nick Wilde

I'm used to my weekends being if anything worse than my weeks in terms of busy busy busy

I don't know why I'm awake right now - 2:10am here and I got up at 6:10 am

Angelo Neuschitzer

@NickWilde Then maybe you should go fetch some sleep :) Productivity gets drastically reduced when one is tired...

Nick Wilde

@AngeloNeuschitzer yeah I should but I just finally got to my computer which I hadn't even seen since around 5pm and I usually am on hours ago to chat with my girlfriend so now I'm chatting for just a short bit and of course she was busy so had to do something till she was not busy

a very good thing that she is a nightowl like me

and productivey no it be good no sleep - dilbert.com/2014-02-18

Dew

Nick wilde, son of oscar wilde

Nick Wilde

10:24 AM

@Dew Unfortunately no relation to that bard

not even 6th cousin 3 times removed

11:34 AM

this is way too many extraneous hoops to jump through esp for a beta site with low activity, & the focus of the young/small group should be on quality answers instead of question contents... ie avoid the common trap of many other se sites, micromanagement — vzn 7 hours ago

I've been awake less than 30 seconds so I can't answer thhat just yet

2:26 PM

Yay! @Gilles we got reinforcements! Welcome @JourneymanGeek!

XD

Soon, still waiting on my NGPs ;p

Q: Should we allow minimal (link-only) 'responses' to questions?

2:54 PM

There we are

Stack Exchange

0

Related discussions: What is required for an answer to be high quality? How are we going to moderate answers? The listed related discussions show that answers should contain more than a link to the software and a general description. I understand that's an important requirement to assure th...

discussion answers answer-quality

@StackExchange I think we said a big "NO"

I should probably pound out an answer to that.

being the one that nuked his answer :P

through truth be told, I would blame the Q @Undo

A: Should we allow minimal (link-only) 'responses' to questions?

Oh absolutely

0

I'm the one that deleted your answer. Here's a screenshot of it for those that can't see it anymore: There are two things wrong with it, which I'll explain here: First, it's link-only. We can't allow link-only answers here. We simply can't. Think about it: If we do, how are we going to ident...

3:45 PM

anyone else thinks he is asking for a perfect fit of Matlab?

Heh, when I saw scientific-computing I misread it as scientific-something :P

and thought, "why the heck do we have such a tag?!?"

@Braiam a big, FAT NO

@JourneymanGeek FAT CONGRATS :)

;p

So the "usual minimum crew" is complete now. Curiously looking forward whether it gets extended soon :)

4:03 PM

the only bad thing there is the Q/A ratio

yap answer rate still low

does questions on hold add to rate?

nope

kk

> There are several services that allow you to monitor sites without feeds.

DANGER! MS. ROBISON! DANGER!

5:00 PM

Yuck Do we want application specific tags like notepad++? Just have the tag-wiki edit in the queue.

I've searched on meta, but didn't see that discussed yet (I was sure we did, must have used the wrong search terms).

So before raising this as a duplicate on Meta again: Any hints?

@Izzy If the question is about a plugin for Notepad++, sure

Oh, congrats @JourneymanGeek!

Q: Should tags for specific software products be permitted?

7

I've just encountered the tag lightroom. The question using it makes pretty clear what it stands for: Alternative to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom? My point here is: Should we support tags for a specific product? Or should we rather remove them from their questions, so they get cleaned up by the aut...

discussion tags

and

3

A: Too narrow tags: What to do with them?

REMOVED Only 1 question used it, removed the tag from it as "being meta" bootable is a little strange. If the question is for a specific OS: that's bootable by definition. Other software is not "bootable" at all. Explanation: Behind that stands a misunderstanding, at least in most cases. Pe...

related to tagging In my opinion its way to narrow as tag I mean notepad++ tag

@danijelc I knew I saw it! Wrong search terms, as predicted. Thanks! checking

kk

5:15 PM

@Gilles Thanks! @danijelc just gave the link to your answer there :)

OK then, going to approve the tag-wiki :)

Btw: Anybody here using the SE app on Android?

@Izzy Yep. Why?

I got stuck in "level 1". Nice blue background, spinning circle.

3 hours, nothing.

Did you try force-closing it and trying it again?

Was on mobile data, had just downloaded the app (so data connection is there).

why doesn't the notepad wiki says anything about it's usage?

5:18 PM

@hichris123 Nah. Came home, and connected to WiFi → immediate load. So it didn't work on mobile data, but on WiFi.

Huh. Do you have Sprint, by chance?

Then tapped a question to read, stuck again (this time on WiFi). OK, will try the FC.

@hichris123 We don't have Sprint in Germany :) E-Plus here.

@Braiam Add it?

@Izzy * didn't read your profile page. Extra exclusions and conditions may apply. :P

@hichris123 LOL

I just wondered: It showed the list. It did a refresh fine, and showed new/updated topics. But as soon as I tap one, all I see is "Loading question..."

Wait a sec.

I had that happen to me yesterday!

And I'm in the States...

Nah, not happening anymore...

5:28 PM

Yuck FC in fact solved it. Thanks!

Now I just hope it will work on mobile data as well. When I have WiFi, I usually sit at my computer (and don't use the mobile app :)

anyone sees something meaningful in having a video tag if we have media-player (all kind of media, including videos), video-editing and video-conferencing (?)?

5:57 PM

@Braiam I asked the same a few days ago about the "music" tag, and was told it should stay.

As for video, there might be aspects not (yet?) covered by other tags, such as streaming and recording.

VLQ answer alert

@Undo Already dealt with :)

Except it should be immediately closed. Should I have VTC'd it along with my comment?

The question is closed, right?

yes

the answer should be deleted with a comment, but on a closed question that I suspect isn't going to be reopened, we might as well wait for the question's deletion

Ooops... You're talking about another one (I should have followed the link first...)

@Gilles / @Undo not quite my area of knowledge (the topic of the Q, I mean), but shouldn't things like Web booking engine working with Opera PMS "be gone"? The criteria are, hm, not really existing ("should be X, or not" is a self-destructing one).

6:19 PM

looks

Basically all that's left is "alternative to X".

I just VTC'd as "too broad".

I'm in favor of closing it. @Gilles?

I'm still rather afraid to use that binding vote :P

@Undo You don't believe how much I understand you!

That's one of those things which kept me from accepting nomination at Android Enthusiasts last year.

We should probably figure out our custom off-topic reasons, too.

As the warning was spoken 16h ago, we might give him one more day to receive that "notification". As I threw in my vote, the Q should be in the review queue soon.

@Undo Definitely! #1 could be taken from our "canned comments" list.

6:25 PM

@Undo that one isn't crap, but not great either. It's borderline, which is why I didn't want to close it with my sole vote.

> This question lacks sufficient information to be properly answered. Please see What is required for a question to contain "enough information"? for how to improve it, so it might be re-opened.

He's right that he doesn't need to define what a property management system is: anyone who can answer would know that as a matter of course.

@Gilles And I'm afraid, anyone who doesn't could not answer it either.

It's enough as a purpose, but he still needs to specify his requirements

my last comment summarize my point of view

btw, as it's phrased it might be converted into a list since the requirements aren't requirements but more like "describe the product that you think will work"

6:30 PM

Yeah. And he made it a bullet-list. But a pointless one: "open source or not" → obsolete. "self-hosted or (not)" → yupp. "do they...or not?" → what a requirement!

seems he didn’t really understood meta post bout questions quality

@Izzy the android app has a long litany of unresolved issues relating to connectivity. If you have solid Wi-Fi it's all right but mobile data (esp if you often bswitch speeds or roam in sketchy service areas) is almost a no go at this point.

@Caleb Thanks – then it's "not just me". And with that, the app is rather pointless (to me). I need it when not being at my desk. Apart from that: the "feed" nicely informs me of new answers to my "starred questions" :)

Btw: the app was just updated yesterday...

7:28 PM

It updates multiple times a week. And there is progress but connectivity bugs abound.

Ahoy.

@Caleb OK, thanks. I'll keep watching it. If it bugs me too much, I'll simply ignore it for a while, and check again later. In case you hear they've got it fixed, a note is always welcome, though :)

Hiho :)

@Izzy How's it going?

@GnomeSlice Working on the cans :)

@Izzy Cans? Tell me that doesn't mean what I think it does.

7:32 PM

(checking through Q&As, watching out for "common mistakes" always requiring the almost same comments, and then adding the corresponding comment to my list for canned comments

Ah, canned comments.

I've got a nice little script running here, so I then only have to hit "comment" → "auto", pick the fitting "canned one", insert, save, done :)

@GnomeSlice Yupp. See here for screenshots and more details: What are our canned comments?

Original script from StackApps, made a few enhancements :)

Today's Listening

8:45 PM

this answer is doggy softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/a/1538/226

@Braiam Yup. So is the question.

Should we nuke this?

@Undo 2 days wait is 2 days too late...

seen 5 hours ago...

Whoosh goes the fire.

@Undo Love that button.

8:51 PM

Fun button, it is.

Oooh I can comment on deleted stuff!

@Undo It has a nice feeling of finality–like you actually solved something. Of course as often as not that is the beginning of the process as meta-blowback is going to be a way of life esp early on here, but it still has the feeling.

yup :D

softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/a/1526/46 is next on the delete list.

@Undo Yes, but keep in mind the OP can't reply so you create a frustrating one way feedback loop.

Yes, but it's useful for just saying, "deleting because x and y", right?

And meta is the other half of the loop.

@Caleb ;)

8:55 PM

They can still edit and flag, so I sometimes drop a final comment when deleting saying if they ever come back and [edit] the post to fix the <issue sited for deletion> to flag for a mod to review and possibly re-instate.

good strategy.

Tip: [edit] always makes a link to edit the post that you commented on so they have no excuse for not finding it.

so... anyone knows what should be done with this Q?

It's an alternatives question, right?

not directly... but he wants flash without Adobe