The Factory Floor

Worldbuilding Meta

00:34

0

A recent question focused on a certain term led to some confusion for those trying to answer it, as the way the term was used in the question made it unclear what the user was asking. The user replied to the comments on their post in a bit of a hostile manner since the term wasn't immediately und...

discussion

bilbo_pingouin

07:17

@Hohmannfan you should get to like histograms... ;-) there it gives the impression of a linear progression between 68 and 96 yo. So about 3-4 users who are 84... ^^"

bilbo_pingouin

08:42

We discussed a few time some webcomics. There is a proposal on Area51 for comics

Hohmannfan

09:31

I am following it now.

overactor

13:39

I just had a look at the stats of our ad running on sci-fi and rpg

Aside from the open bounties ads, it's the best performing ad on both sites.

bilbo_pingouin

how do you do that?

overactor

meta.rpg.stackexchange.com/ads/display/5288

meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/ads/display/5326

There's a link at the end of the body of the questions

14

Q: Community Promotion Ads - 2015

The dawn of a new year, 2015, now approaches, or has already approached, either way it means that it is now time to reset our Community Promotion Ads! What are Community Promotion Ads? Community Promotion Ads are community-vetted advertisements that will show up on the main site, in the right s...

discussion community-ads

bilbo_pingouin

people are designing community specific ads. It might be worth some effort... on our part there...

Worldbuilding Meta

14:16

0

Q: Case Studies - Green's Highest Viewed Questions

What would it take to build a ship capable of crossing the Pacific? About Worldbuilding? This question asks if building a trans-Pacific ship is feasible using only merchants as the shipbuilders. (They die horribly in one way or another.) Off topic? Nope. Idea Generation Not IG since the quest...

discussion

bilbo_pingouin

14:54

@PavelJanicek, your post already made it to the HNQ... :)

Pavel Janicek

Yaaay

In other words I have really interesting dreams

I dreamed about scavenging bottle caps all around Fallout world just to be told by BoS "we don't accept it now"

bilbo_pingouin

hot dreams... er. wait, sorry... ;-)

DaaaahWhoosh

@PavelJanicek I scavenge bottle caps in real life...

Pavel Janicek

Preparing for the apocalypse? :D

DaaaahWhoosh

I guess so... I've also been considering making an NCR trooper costume

not sure why, I just saw the armor and though "I'd like to own that"

Pavel Janicek

15:04

Link to picture please

DaaaahWhoosh

link to wiki page?

Pavel Janicek

Can also work

I already tried to Google that

Sadly, with Fallout I ended on the Fallout 2. Then I either had slow PC or small kids ;)

DaaaahWhoosh

I've been playing it on consoles since 3

Pavel Janicek

Well, I did go with Nintendo Wii :D

And then, NotEnoughMoneyException

DaaaahWhoosh

yeah, that is a very difficult bug to fix

Pavel Janicek

15:15

Especially when you want to have two instances of Kid running ;)

DaaaahWhoosh

oh man, yeah that's gotta be tough on your CPU

Pavel Janicek

It's not that hard. It just means that I am not really playing any games

DaaaahWhoosh

I've got the opposite problem, I've been trying to teach my parents to play video games for years

Pavel Janicek

I would say that Wii could be good start

Mike L.

@DaaaahWhoosh Mine kinda got me started, but these days mum isn't much for them and dad just constantly plays Heroes of Might and Magic IV

Pavel Janicek

15:25

And bear in mind that even solitaire counts as computer game

DaaaahWhoosh

@PavelJanicek Well sure, it counts, but nowadays since I'm off in another city and they're at home just watching TV, I'd like to find something we can play together.

I've been trying to get them to set up Minecraft, but getting a server going apparently takes more than I thought it would

Pavel Janicek

Start with simple games

We have one Wii in our company kitchen, so usual coffee break comes with one match of Wii tennis

It's fun, easy to understand and easy to play variant

Minecraft is quite hard to get into

Pavel Janicek

15:46

Sorry to interrupt you, but I just wanted to tell you that NINTENDO WII IS THE BEST CONSOLE OF ALL TIMES!!!

Uff, now I can move along

bowlturner

OK, I think I answered another question by 'that should never happen', this is how it should be...

actually I think I did it with both the questions I answered this morning...

Pavel Janicek

hopefully it was not my question about the bottle caps

bowlturner

@PavelJanicek No, that was @bilbo_pingouin and I just upvoted his answer! :)

bowlturner

16:02

OK @SerbanTanasa you got answer 700!

Tim B

16:18

i need to write more answers I think, silver and gold tag badges need a stupid number of answers

200 more score on science based is easy enough but 101 answers will take some time

I don't think anyone has a gold tag badge yet?

James

@DaaaahWhoosh Realms may be the way to go, you have to pay but you don't have to manage the server

@TimB I have a couple bronze thats it

bowlturner

@TimB no, a couple are getting close in upvotes, and I think I'm leading in questions answered.

Serban Tanasa

@bowlturner, thanks! Sorry for rolling back, I modified it a bit to make it clearer what I meant

bowlturner

@SerbanTanasa I was wondering if you just felt you had to do all the editing on your posts! :)

Serban Tanasa

No, no. It was that I meant to say "growing towards a Dyson sphere, not already one"

bowlturner

16:28

I didn't think it was 'unclear' more like you had extraneous words that didn't add to the question

Serban Tanasa

it was unclear in the original format

bowlturner

yes that is more clear

Serban Tanasa

I have a more, um, verbose style

bowlturner

Not a problem. I tend to be too terse

Serban Tanasa

as the chrysalis slowly opens towards the morning sun, so do my words slowly converge towards the point

bowlturner

16:29

It added the change to my Refiner badge, but I expect it will remove it later when it catches up.

Serban Tanasa

oh, I see now

:)

the "and" removal didn't make grammatical sense, for instance.

in the first sentence

bowlturner

@SerbanTanasa you have no idea how many times I write an answer, read answers that follow mine that get upvoted and think "that's what I said" but not as verbose and obvious

right

Tim B

the two highest rated answers on that powering nanobots question are basically each half my answer but expanded upon

bowlturner

I'm very good at finding extra words that don't need to be used in other peoples writing...

@TimB isn't that a great feeling! :(

Tim B

Well, they did go into rather more detail so I don't really mind

but it is a bit "bah" :)

bowlturner

16:33

Sometimes I think my answers are the 'baseline' and everyone else feels the need to do 'better' and often they do...

DaaaahWhoosh

@bowlturner You're like the advance recon, everybody else moves in based on your reports

bowlturner

But now and then I do that. I see an answer that is in the right vein, but I fill it out more

@DaaaahWhoosh that at least sounds better!

I'm still hoping to get some attention on my answer to the question that basically asks." We went on a picnic to a far flung island in the lake and discovered there weren't picnic baskets waiting for us. What do we do? Just seems like poor planning to me.

Serban Tanasa

hahaha

yeah, it seems odd to go to the trouble of sending a trillion-dollar ship to an uninhabitable world

do these people not have space telescopes

bowlturner

especially with no back up plan

Worldbuilding Meta

1

Q: Fortnightly Topic Challenge #27: History

Now begins our Twenty Seventh topic challenge! Topic: history Dates: 15 Feb - 29 Feb Proposed by: While the history of a world isn't always directly relevant to the story, it can add flavor and extra realism to the setting. You can use the history of a world to figure out how it will evo...

discussion challenge

Serban Tanasa

16:42

but still, it may have gotten wiped out by a massive asteroid, etc

James

So...would a question asking "What is a good process for developing historical persons" be on topic?

Serban Tanasa

the world still there, but rendered useless for the nextthousand years

bowlturner

Well I have extreme doubts we'd send a ship to land and directly colonize a planet with the expectations they HAVE to have the planet to survive. They made the whole trip over there, they can think through some worst case scenarios and have back up options like find a moon or asteroid

@James depending on how you put it together.

James

@bowlturner It would be another of my "Lets define a process" questions

bowlturner

@James we might already have one of those.

James

16:53

I don't recall a creating great people question but its always possible.

Serban Tanasa

Like the delicate petals of the amaryllis opening under the morning dew to reveal their true splendor to the unsuspecting world, so did Worldbuilding Stackexchange grow into a popular stack, now boasting four thousand nine hundred and fifty three questions (0 unanswered)!

@bowlturner translation: Def. hittin' 5k Q soon

bowlturner

you forgot the 'Woot!'

James

So i just made an edit to history

let me know what you think, I have essentially made history a tag for made up histories, and mentioned that alternate-history should be used for earth but different and timeperiod should be used for real world histories

bowlturner

I think that invalidates half the questions it is tagged for now.

ah

James

(the time period one could be, ancient-history, medieval, renaissance etc

@bowlturner I agree, if you all think its a decent idea I was planning to go through and do some question editing...that or just go with it from now forward...thoughts?

Serban Tanasa

17:00

ah, sorry I missed the Law-as-Program question. too late to answer now

bowlturner

I think you'll have to constantly update tags if you really want 'history' to be only made up stuff

James

@bowlturner we can't change the name of a tag can we...?

bowlturner

@James yes, I think mods can do it, but if you change every instance you can change it that way

@SerbanTanasa which question is that?

Serban Tanasa

35

Q: Could the law be implemented as a computer program?

The laws would be defined in code written in a programming language. Maybe it would be in two parts, the actual rules and then a library that could run them (like how a form validation library is separate to the actual rules that a developer can write), but that's not important. Some of the bene...

government law computers

@James, History should be able to cover the history of a dwarven clan as well as Napoleon's successful conquest of Persia

I mean, we have alternate-history, but I think history is meant to deal with setting, whereas in alternate history, the change in historical fact is the main focus

bowlturner

Someone upvoted my answer to the lost picnic and then someone else felt it was unwarrented and downvoted it. While the title asks one question the body asks something more specific. I still say they way the question is framed it means very poor planning for the trip.

I'm leaning toward @SerbanTanasa point. I think you might want a different tag for 'made up world history' if you want that.

Serban Tanasa

17:08

@bowlturner, I had upvoted

bowlturner

ah, thanks. Well someone disagreed with you! likely the OP. but you never know.

Serban Tanasa

haha, someone just downvoted my Happy Petz

plus an upvote and downvote on an old question about mechanical computers

James

I feel like our history tags are convoluted and redundant...

bowlturner

The happy pets, could simply be someone offended of that thought of people not apex and pets of someone else...

@James that could be, but you don't want to make things worse by arbitrarily changing one of them...

If we come up with a better scheme, you'll get help

James

@bowlturner Arbitrary means without reason, I had a reason! :p

ok...so I will go ahead and roll that change back...if I can and open a meta discussion.

bowlturner

17:12

Well I didn't use random! ;p~

I think any tag that has more than ~50 questions should be more than 1 persons decision (in general) If it's a good idea, it will get implemented and you'll have others backing you.

James

ar·bi·trar·y
ˈärbəˌtrerē/
adjective
based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
"his mealtimes were entirely arbitrary"

Serban Tanasa

@james My pets tag needs editing :)

bowlturner

@James ok but random does sound worse! ;)

James

lol arbitrary is a good word

ok I changed the tag back...gonna open up a meta post.

Serban Tanasa

btw, was it possible to nominate someone else during the nomination phase?

or did you have to nominate yourself

speaking of random

bowlturner

17:18

I think you could nominate anyone. But no one did

Serban Tanasa

oh, ok

James

@bowlturner Yeah we only had self nominations this time around.

bowlturner

@James I thought about waiting to see if anyone would nominate me, but couldn't wait any more than 24 hours! :)

James

@bowlturner I had the same problem.

bowlturner

@James and see, if I'm running I don't really want to put up other qualified candidates!

at least not more than spots available!

James

17:29

@bowlturner Well after 24 hours pretty much anyone I would have nominated was up and running already anyway.

Undo

Okay, I might not be able to be here at 1 to run the results. If anyone here is interested, they can set up and run github.com/undo1/electionbot :)

James

off to lunch, see you all later.

bilbo_pingouin

@Undo what does your bot do?

Undo

@bilbo_pingouin Runs OpenSTV on the ballot file, posts results to chat.

Meant to be run right after the election ends.

Worldbuilding Meta

0

Q: What shall we do with the history tags?

So I was sifting through tags today and what I will refer to as the history section seems like a mess to me...ok maybe that is too harsh, but I still think we can make it better. :) We have: history alternate-history and then a whole host of era specific tags ancient-history medieval renai...

discussion tags

Tim B

17:39

for pro tem you could nominate each other. For this you nominate yourself

I think the official results normally only take 5 or 10 minutes to happen so you'd have to be super-keen to worry about the bot :)

Tim B

19:21

hmm, it's going to be another 8 days until all the case studies are posted. Do we want to accelerate to one per day?

James

@TimB we could, we haven't been getting a ton of feedback as it is though.

Tim B

Yeah, I'm going to respond either today or tomorrow

probably tomorrow now

James

@TimB I am behind as well, going to try to look at a couple today.

bilbo_pingouin

well that's the problem, with 10 volunteers, that's 50 questions to look in details... that needs a bit a of time

Monica Cellio

19:45

Maybe from now on each person should post 3 questions instead of 5, and try to select among the popular ones for ones that aren't 100% clear? We want edge cases to refine the scope, not no-brainers.

bilbo_pingouin

@MonicaCellio we discussed yesterday (IIRC), the problem is that choosing, means biasing.

Green

@MonicaCellio Seconded.

bilbo_pingouin

and it's also good to see good questions, as a comparison

Monica Cellio

Yes choice means some bias, but if our goal is to be scientific, not self-promotional, can't we count on people to choose interesting cases to discuss? We want ones that end up being both on- and off-topic, and we want things that are interesting enough to talk about. And I'm still recommending sticking to your top few -- maybe choose 3 of the top 7-8, something like that?

Samuel

Why not choose a few and then have someone else write the review?

bilbo_pingouin

19:51

I thought the idea was that everyone should write their own reviews?

Samuel

I'm just suggesting anti-bias methods.

bilbo_pingouin

the problem is choosing amongst your questions... is intrinsically biased... people tend to be more lenient with their own production

Monica Cellio

I'm willing to let someone else choose when it's my turn in the hot seat. Anybody else up for that?

ElectionBot

Unofficial results: Winners are Tim B, HDE 226868, Monica Cellio, and Serban Tanasa.

7

OpenSTV version 1.7 (OpenSTV.org)

Suggested donation for using OpenSTV for an election is $50.  Please go to
OpenSTV.org/donate to donate via PayPal, Google Checkout, or
Amazon Payments.

Certified election reports are also available.  Please go to
openstv.org/certified-reports for more information.

Loading ballots from file votes.blt.
Ballot file contains 10 candidates and 309 ballots.
No candidates have withdrawn.
Ballot file contains 309 non-empty ballots.

James

20:13

@MonicaCellio bwahahahahaha, errr I mean sure happy to help

Monica Cellio

@James that's the spirit!

James

Well since I don't have to be on my, want to be a mod best behavior I can let out my inner super villain a bit more now.

4

Worldbuilding Meta

8

Q: 2016 Community Moderator Election Results

Worldbuilding's first moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the 4 new moderators are: They will become you moderator team shortly. Please thank them for volunteering! Also, please join me in thanking Vincent and Michael Kjörling who served as moderators ...

discussion featured election

3

James

and for the record I lied about the other candidates being illiterate. Except for @bowlturner ...that was true.

bowlturner

@James "I lied yesterday, but today I speak true..."

James

20:24

@bowlturner This is why it's fun to mess with you. Well played.

bowlturner

;)

James

oh and for the record I got more first round votes than you.

bowlturner

but I came in 5th!

in the end...

James

@bowlturner Oh you totally pulled ahead.

bowlturner

I was catching Serban but he started WAY to far ahead...

bilbo_pingouin

20:30

@bowlturner you probably had more second and third choices vote... but he had quite a lot of first votes

bowlturner

Exactly. I wasn't even first choice for myself! :)

Samuel

Do mods have the same time limitations on changing their votes on questions/answers?

Keen

Congrats @MonicaCellio (and the other folk, but I've interacted with Monica before) :3

HDE 226868

@Samuel Yes, last time I checked.

Monica Cellio

@Samuel yes. Voting rules are the same for everybody.

@Keen thanks. There was no combination among the ten on the ballot that would have been bad; we had an abundance of good choices.

HDE 226868

20:35

@Keen Thanks.

Keen

@MonicaCellio Always a nice 'problem' to have.

Samuel

I was just considering the new moderators and recalled some spiteful downvoting. But I guess the new position doesn't allow the correction of that.

bilbo_pingouin

@bowlturner I do admit that I voted for myself. I was too afraid not to get any vote otherwise ;)

Monica Cellio

@Keen indeed. Large field, way more good candidates than slots, and everybody was unfailingly polite and mature. Awesome job, everybody!

@bilbo_pingouin I assume that all candidates voted for themselves, and usually but not always in the first position.

bowlturner

@bilbo_pingouin I voted for myself 2nd.

James

20:37

@MonicaCellio Man I was going for bitter, rude and self-centered.

Monica Cellio

@James sorry, let me amend that. Everybody was unfailingly polite and mature except for James, who tried to be bitter, rude, and self-centered, though he didn't really manage to pull it off. Better luck next time, James. :-)

bowlturner

OK everyone, back to work. I still need an upvote today! chop chop. Review queue is clean!

James

@MonicaCellio Thank you for clarifying :) :p

Hohmannfan

Oh! seems like I have missed the results. Who was number four?

bowlturner

Serban

Hohmannfan

20:49

Congrats, @HDE226868, @TimB, @SerbanTanasa and @MonicaCellio

Serban Tanasa

@Hohmannfan, thanks!

Monica Cellio

@Hohmannfan thanks!

Hohmannfan

Well, either you four are going to guide us into a new level of quality and perfection, or the apocalypse of the world is in progress. Both actions would be good and on-topic on WB

Keen

@Hohmannfan Why not both?

HDE 226868

21:14

@MonicaCellio That can work for my post. One of my top five is closed, anyway.

@Hohmannfan Thanks.

Hohmannfan

21:24

3

Monica Cellio

@Hohmannfan cool!

But since the whole community helps us create our dreams, maybe you want a border of lots of smaller avatars?

Hohmannfan

The rest of the evening spent on collecting profile pictures

Monica Cellio

Which is faster, collecting them or writing a script to collect them? :-)

Hohmannfan

Takes about the same time I think.

But scripting is more fun

bowlturner

except the script can be reused!

bilbo_pingouin

21:29

I think it really depends on what you do.

if you want to take the 100 top WB users, I think the script will be faster

;)

Monica Cellio

But then we can have feature creep. You are going to lay them out in an aesthetically pleasing manner, right? :-)

bilbo_pingouin

or you use those shadow format where you reproduce one photo from plenty of small one...

that would be fun to see the 4 mods made from all users ;)

Hohmannfan

wait a minute, 3?

James

4 mods :)

bilbo_pingouin

what are you talking about? :D

HDE 226868

21:39

@bilbo_pingouin For a presentation, my group tried making the Mona Lisa out of a couple of Renaissance works of art (don't ask). It turned out to be easier to do it physically, by hand, than on a computer.

bilbo_pingouin

there are some software to do it for you...

and that was the last time I checked, which was like 10 years ago

HDE 226868

Yeah, but we were under time pressure, and none of us knew how to work it, or download it on the school computers.

bilbo_pingouin

fair enough. But I'm sure it's possible to find something...

and anyway, Hohmannfan was considering to spend a whole evening on it! ;-)

bowlturner

21:55

BTW can 50 people just try and fix their questions for reopen votes? Ya, that would be great...

HDE 226868

22:11

@James If you're still interested, I ran the numbers for a $[2:1](2)$ resonance for the moons and found the system to be unstable, but it seems that a higher resonance (like $[9:1](2)$) should be stable for most eccentricities.

Theocles of Saturn

why are you always attacking my questions bowlturner?

bowlturner

@TheoclesofSaturn I'm not attacking and the changes you made to the last question made it much better.

I thought I gave you a good answer on that one two.

James

@HDE226868 I have to run right now but absolutely.

bowlturner

And what ever it may feel like, it isn't personal.

But now I have to vamoose. Got to stop at Menard's and pick up some replacement parts for a trailer...

James

@bowlturner Enjoy...save big money.

Theocles of Saturn

22:21

well , thanks i guess @ bowlturner

Tim B

23:57

@TheoclesofSaturn I'm not aware of the specifics there but I'm fairly sure any comments on the questions are meant to improve them not to attack them :)

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