@yossarian, i replied to your question on MWA. I wasn't entirely sure whether to reply there or on MFC, but i figured MWA was better.

@rchern, thanks.

I'll take a look.

i think the perspective of a non-mod would be very useful. hoping someone else chimes in

I agree.

I think it's interesting that you put the onus on the community not voting enough to get rep up rather than on the benchmarks being too high for the amount of voting that takes place.

I agree, I don't know that it's necessarily the community's "fault" (for lack of a better term) that they don't vote enough. For example, if there's a question about a very specific topic that not a lot of people know about, that's not very likely to draw a lot of votes on answers just because the number of registered users isn't high enough that there's a lot of people with that specific knowledge

[deep breath] sorry for the run on. as an example i was thinking of this question cooking.stackexchange.com/q/7894

I can see your point, but I'm not sure that we have the user base to match SO levels of rep yet, or even come close. We're larger than the typical beta community but nowhere near SO or ServerFault levels yet and 10,000 seems like a lot of rep on this site

Perhaps it's just a function of time. But right now I don't know that we're ready for SO levels of rep requirement. Just my 2 cents.

I asked something similar to this at the very beginning of the beta, as then no one had enough rep to do anything and we didn't have any mods, but things just seemed to work themselves out and it wasn't really an issue

hopefully it'll be the same now

@sam - good point, I do remember that Meta question and it did seem to work itself out, you're right

Mostly I'm just sad that I'm going to lose access to Mod tools, though Aaron feels people aren't using them, I refresh them every hour or so looking for close/reopens, flags, and generally popular questions

vote to close I can earn back quickly, but going from 2600 to 10,000 rep is quite daunting

yeah I know what you mean. I think some sliding scale is just a lot of effort to go to, and having fixed targets gives you something to aim for

I agree, I don't necessarily know what the best solution is. But here's my take on it:

looking at the other ~2,000 rep users, we've all been members 2-3 months to achieve that

Also, if there was a sliding scale based on community size or traffic, can you imagine how frustrating it would be to be 20 rep short of a benchmark and then it changes, and you get close again, and it changes again.

dropping the outliers like hobodave and michael, that seems to be a pretty consistent rate

at that rate, to get to 10,000, it's going to be almost a year before most of us can use the mod tools

well, 8 months to a year

I think a good solution would be to grandfather in abilities through the change to beta, and maybe have them expire in 6 months.

@yoss - oh, yeah, i'm not suggesting a sliding scale, that would be more trouble than its worth

But that's a dev thing, so I doubt it will happen for our community.

@yossarian - that's a great idea, but yeah, i don't see them doing it

the more i think about it, the more i think that's a perfect suggestion (grandfathering for 6 months or some other limited amount of time).

yeah I like it too, but I'm not holding my breath

My product manager fu strikes again. Hi-ya!

But yes, I don't think there's any chance of it for cooking, web apps, or any of the other soon to be graduates. But maybe longer term...

they're toying around with having rep levels determine beta status instead of flat 90 days

the community needs to be self-serving.

so once x users > y rep then beta is over?

i like it!

not sure

or something slightly more complicated than that I presume

but it seems like a decent benchmark

yeah

i generally like the idea of decisions based on the community itself and not an arbitrary timeframe

means that the more active and 'quality' the community is the quicker it gets out of beta

Yeah, i think that sounds like a great idea if set up with the right metrics (x users over y, total rep of community over z, etc)

rep levels are part of being a graduated site. i get their point for not having an interim level. it'd be another beta+ level basically.

Yeah, it's just a little weird to have a community that can't really use all the self policing tools that are available. Cooking can at least technically close a question without a mod.

and we've already added a beta+ with the no vanity url til SF size half-rule

yes, well lets not get in to that rather contentious subject.

hehe

ha!

btw, does anyone know how to make a link in comments with normal text?

negative, i've wondered the same myself actually

[WebApps](http://webapps.stackexchange.com)

that syntax works everywhere...posts, comments, chat

nice, thanks!

why didn't it work in chat just now?

i wrapped it in `s for inline code

Is any of this stuff documented somewhere?

there's a markdown post on MSO iirc?

cool

@yossarian, in case you haven't searched yet, i found these: Text Formatting MSO Thread and Formatting Sandbox

@stephennmcdonald you can edit you last post, rather then correct afterwards

just hit the up arrow soon after you have posted

nice! learn something new every day, thanks :)

there you go!

np

@Stephen, Nice! Thanks.

@stephennmcdonald now you need to tell me why my com wrapped managed dll will load in a native MMC snapin the first time the app is installed but after the machine is rebooted it won't load anymore

BTW, I notice that after typing an @, the chat box helps me by showing who is in the chat room, with a sort of auto-complete option. Is there a way to get it to select one of the users it's suggesting?

@sam, Hey now, this is the frying pan! Watch it. ;)

does it not narrow them down the more you type?

sorry, my work frustrations boiling over

@Sam: Ha! I actually understood all of that, but have absolutely no answer for you :)

it does narrow them down, but I have to keep typing, I can't figure out how to say, "yup, that's the one i want, do that one."

and I'm just joking @SamHolder.

I know

Ah, looks like I can select the suggestion with my mouse. Is there no keyboard short cut to make a selection though?

@yossarian: it doesn't look like you can do it with the keyboard only, but you can click the name

lame

feature req!

dagnabit, my auto-steal-from-yossarian script must have activated itself again

/me wonders if /me works in here

nope

interesting, the second /me is coming up in a different font - any idea why?

firebug says it got a code tag wrapped around it

yeah I ` surrounded it

ah, gotcha

thought maybe it tried to recognize it as something because of the slash :)

@stephen, haha.

y'all need to learn to use chat (;

use tab completion (;

(and if there's more than one choice, hit tab multiple times to cycle through)

oh wow someone is using this

hehehe i tracked down @yossarian in here (:

yes @rchern we do. But there's no documentation anywhere!

(that I've found)

@hobodave, Stephen and I procrastinated a good bit of yesterday afternoon here.

lucky

I spent 7 hours tracking down an obscure bug

ouch...did you eventually find it?

that sounds way less fun.

@yossarian, read through the faq

@rchen - tab completion! genius, why didn't i think of that

yea I found it

wow, i didn't even know chat had an FAQ :) but now that you linked to it, i see it plain as day in the corner

it was annoyingly stupid too

I hate Python now

haha, yeah I'm pretty lucky that I don't have to use it, I know a few people that feel that way about it too

I didn't know there was an faq either. I'm bad at reading.

(:

incidentally, yes.

ahh that explains the backwards smileys

;)

haha, nice

ya know, as many times as my smileys which are not backwards!!! are talked about in the Tavern, i'm not sure anyone has asked if i'm left handed

it the only explanation as far as I'm concerned, and they are backwards as the wink just doesn't work left handed style.

they're totally backwards.

;) <--- looks like someone winking

(;

(; <--- doesn't

the eye is going down at the wrong side

:)

maybe it's an asian smiley face?

(sorry)

(: <-- althought that is ok

q:

D: <-- big smile isn't puite the same.

quite

hmm. there must be other that do work that way round though

or new ones...

the "backwards" way allows for a much bigger smile

C:

but it still looks backwards to me :)

Ɑ:

haha. touche

how did you do that? You're like some sort of chat room voodoo person.

Marketing meeting. yuck. I'm out.

¿Que?

i think he meant the "capital lowercase a" - it looks like an "a" with a font increase but is probably a special character :)

I was just being silly :)

lol

just saw this on cooking

Congrats, you've gained the privilege to create tag synonyms and 4 other privileges learn more

yeah I got one of those too

ha!

every time i see "que" by itself, all i can think of is that one family guy episode

"no, just that sentence and this one explaining it."

back in a bit, gotta go talk to creative about what parts of their vision are realistic on the web

lol I remember that