The Town Hall - 2014-12-31

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3:15 AM

Thanks to @AnnonomusPenguin for getting things rolling on the parts of the help center that we can modify. Please jump in and help make our tour, on-topic list, etc less generic.

I know there's a holiday-season slump across SE, but I'm still concerned about our traffic. :-( And yes, this question was prompted by our site:

10

Q: Chicken and egg: how do I attract experts to a young site that doesn't yet have much expert content?

I'm a member of a new online community that I'd like to see flourish. We're past the initial private building stage and are open to the public, but there's not a lot of public looking at us yet. In order to grow and gain traction we need to increase our user base, in particular by attracting ex...

content-curation site-growth promotion

(I still want to know how Beer is pulling the kind of traffic they're getting! How do we get some of that?)

Annonomus Penguin

3:32 AM

@MonicaCellio change our site scope

Could you image how mad the CMs would be?

> You already asked for a new name. NOW YOU WANT A NEW SCOPE AND ANOTHER NEW NAME?!?!?!?!?

@MonicaCellio kinda funny comparing those to similar questions were on meta. When rep was on the line, we have a few VERY LONG answers. Meta? Like two paragraphs.

@AnnonomusPenguin I think our scope is actually ok; it's just that we didn't build the starting community we needed on Area 51 and we haven't figured out how to bring them here now.

Annonomus Penguin

@MonicaCellio I was joking :)

@AnnonomusPenguin I hoped so. :-)

Annonomus Penguin

@MonicaCellio Pops might have a meltdown ;)

@AnnonomusPenguin ha, true!

Annonomus Penguin

3:35 AM

@MonicaCellio I've often wondered about what a community blog would do for our site.

@AnnonomusPenguin yeah, don't do that. Keep Pops happy and unmelted.

Annonomus Penguin

Generally good advice ^^^

@AnnonomusPenguin yeah. I wish they hadn't declined all future blogs. :-(

Annonomus Penguin

They did?

I don't remember that >:(

Yeah, a few weeks ago IIRC, on MSE. Hang on; lemme look.

Annonomus Penguin

3:37 AM

lololollllll

Look at Pop's hat:

Pops ♦, East Coast, United States

101 7

23

Q: We're no longer starting new individual site Community Blogs - here's why

We've learned a lot by creating these per-site blogs for any site which asked for them. However, we at Stack Exchange have not been doing enough to make blogs work - neither for the contributors nor for the communities that are associated with them. On our network, any site will have generated s...

discussion blog-overflow

@AnnonomusPenguin laugh

I guess hats don't onebox.

If you want to see something really wild, though, look at this guy: judaism.stackexchange.com/users/4794/yez

Annonomus Penguin

@MonicaCellio that's only one hat probably

Just images

I think I'm going to Photoshop my hat onto me. Not the weapon though.

@AnnonomusPenguin well yes, one gravatar that is, in turn, the result of piling on hats. I think he started with the base + one hat, took a screenshot, made that his gravatar, added another hat, took a screen shot... and iterated until done.

@AnnonomusPenguin yeah I like the hat with that one, but can't get the weapon to show up in a good place with the controls.

Annonomus Penguin

@MonicaCellio might have to change my profile picture to a blank image + make it as large as possible. Take it on mSE with the new big profile. Add Photoshop!

Or see if the image on the Winterbash page meets your needs; it already has a white background.

Plus I think I heard those are SVGs? If you can find your way to the actual image file you could make it any size you need.

(I have not done any digging around in page source to find the images.)

Annonomus Penguin

3:52 AM

WTF?

I just earned 28 hats in 10 seconds

Wait, what? Was it 28 Chameleons?

Did you update your profile network-wide?

Annonomus Penguin

@MonicaCellio Oh

@MonicaCellio photo thing

Found SVG though!

Cool! So now you can manipulate to your heart's content. :-)

Annonomus Penguin

@MonicaCellio but it's not a link

How do I download it :/

found it!

Oh! Hmm, I'm not sure. I don't actually know much about SVGs. But isn't it a blob of XML? Can you do something with that?

@AnnonomusPenguin oh, do tell!

Annonomus Penguin

3:56 AM

@MonicaCellio So choose a hat, make it big enough to go off the sides of the profile picture box

Then you can click a corner of the image into a new tab (at least in chrome). Finally, you can do a CTRL + S to save it

Cool, thanks!

Annonomus Penguin

New hat is live!

meta.stackexchange.com/users/190823/…

Nice!

Annonomus Penguin

@MonicaCellio nested hats now haha :)

4:11 AM

laugh You and YeZ need to meet each other. :-)

4:31 AM

So that the transcript won't be completely incomprehensible in a few days:

user image

Annonomus Penguin

4:42 AM

@MonicaCellio but no context is the best context!

@AnnonomusPenguin there is merit in that.

Annonomus Penguin

Since we're providing context, more context here:

user image

Don't forget Community!

user image

Community wants YOU to give it a hat!

Annonomus Penguin

@Seth oh I just realized the moderators on moderators thing still continues.

Community on Community Building!

Ah, I hadn't noticed what Community was wearing here. On Mi Yodeya she wears Gelt. :-)

Annonomus Penguin

4:46 AM

Both the user and the actual Community. GAH

Arduino... nothing.

CB... nothing.

Oops, just noticed that Community was naked on Workplace. Fixed now.

And... Writers and Worldbuilding taken care of. That completes my tour.

Good time zone, all.

5:28 AM

@AnnonomusPenguin eh?

13 hours later…

6:27 PM

I can't think of any part of your elaboration that would directly conflict with the earlier question or its existing answers, except for the "moderators" scope which obviously went hand-in-hand with the evolution of the site's own scope. Is there a compelling reason not to edit the existing question (and perhaps throw a bounty on it) instead? — AirThomas 12 mins ago

@AirThomas (who apparently won't receive that ping, oops): the older question is a near-one-liner asked in the first days of the site. No offense to the author, as that often happens on new betas, but I think my question shows considerably more effort, and the "you need content to get experts but experts to get content" angle is new. The old question can be answered by just saying "advertise!"; I think mine is more nuanced.

If others disagree and close mine then eh, ok, but I don't really feel like rewriting the existing one to match my needs when that would be a 95% replacement.

I think both questions are valuable and mine is a little more specialized and focused. If it gets closed or merged then we'll only have the more-general, generic question, which does not encourage the kinds of answers I am looking for to my question.

By the way, did you notice how much more detailed one of the answers to my question is? That's something I want to encourage!

@Monia I did notice the answers, but not until after I commented on your question from the review queue.

I see your point, but aside from the verbosity, they really are nearly the same question. They could even be dupe-closed in the reverse direction, if the answers to the newer one are better.

I doubt bluefeet would mind, as it's clearly a "seed" question and they seem to share the same motivation

And in the interest of full disclosure, I have an interest in voting to close things this week because of the evil temptation that is Winter Hats ;)

@AirThomas ? the only hat for closing requires you to vote to reopen afterwards

@MonicaCellio I voted to leave open. The earlier question is too broad to be helpful as a duplicate of yours.

6:45 PM

@Gilles Yes, but it doesn't require the question to actually be reopened.

The bigger obstacle is that I'd have to edit it, and Monica's posts don't generally want for editing.

Anyway the hat's not important.

@AirThomas a dupe-close in the other direction might make sense. That's not the norm but it's also not unheard-of. As you say, it was a seed question and I doubt bluefeet would mind.

@AirThomas aw shucks. Thanks.

7:07 PM

Maybe a little wordy at times, but I suffer from a touch of logorrhea myself from time to time, so I do, so I do. :P

a random Andy appears in chat and grumbles that vacation is almost over

7:18 PM

@AirThomas I don't always have time to make it shorter. :-) (Though it's funny; in my professional role I'm oft commended for being concise yet informative and precise.)

@Andy does the concept of randomness require that we have at least two available Andys? You don't seem very random to me. :-)

RFC 1149.5 specifies 4 as the standard IEEE-vetted random number.

I think that explains it perfectly

It just needs a new function name

getRandomAndy

getRandy

suggestive eyebrows

7:37 PM

@AirThomas there you go!

8:15 PM

@AirThomas challenge accepted

4

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