The Heap™ – Consultancy ©®

sp_BlitzErik

12:05 AM

TEEHEE

@ypercubeᵀᴹ that's fantastic

Evan Carroll

5:14 AM

Loool Ben Garvey blocked me

Most blog-spammy guy on the Pg side of the fence. Dumb as a brick too.

What will I do without massively incorrect blog posts on Medium?!

medium.com/p/1d984047e7d

medium.com/@TheEvanCarroll/i-know-what-they-are-d7150a034ffc

Paul White

6:58 AM

5

A: Understanding data abstraction levels

Although the definitions of the schemas or levels of representation of the ANSI/SPARC architecture did not reach the desired precision, they are only three, and they are named external, conceptual and internal, respectively. As far as I know, there is no fourth level, because the physical struct...

Tom V

7:14 AM

twitter.com/BrentO/status/975042491320799233?s=09

Somebody is out of razor blades

Paul White

7:29 AM

Perhaps there's a shortage of barbers?

Evan Carroll

Not sure if anyone else wants to nuke the sql-injection tag on this question but it certainly doesn't belong. I've already moved it once: dba.stackexchange.com/q/201560/2639

Paul White

7:51 AM

@EvanCarroll You're right, but the author thinks the tag is appropriate and it's not worth getting into an argument about.

Respect the author's right to be wrong :)

> If there is resistance to your suggestion, even unwarranted and unjustifiable resistance -- just let go and move on. In other words: Do not attempt to force someone to accept an edit. Edits are good; fighting is bad. Ultimately there are moderators to adjudicate in the rare cases where an author's preference might need to be overridden for the benefit of the wider community.

Evan Carroll

No one actually believes that any more, and with good reason. The proof is in the fact that the author can't even delete his own question any more. Hell, the author can't even delete their own answer any more. Both of which are pretty absurd. And in those cases it's merely removing a contribution not actively damaging the utility of the site. But, it's probably not worth arguing over.

I actually think things were better when that policy had weight.

Paul White

Sure they can. Well maybe not delete in all cases, but they can certainly be anonymized, which comes to the ame thing.

@EvanCarroll Which policy exactly are you saying isn't believed any more?

The quote above is by me.

Evan Carroll

ah, then that. that used to be policy.

(on the network)

Paul White

Oh well I can't speak for the whole network. No doubt other places do it wrong :)

I've never had any pushback on dba.se about this, so I would say it is established local policy at least.

Evan Carroll

Certainly, and if they do it wrong and you get suspended (as I did on Ask Ubuntu) then you'll lose the ability to run in an election anywhere for a full year (which is crapola and against prior policy)

Paul White

8:00 AM

Yep. Ah, now I see the context.

Evan Carroll

cool, well, in some cases then we're lucky DBA isn't quite as infested with absurd philosophy and Shog9.

=)

Paul White

DO NOT INVOKE THE SHOG!

Evan Carroll

dude should be in a gulag somewhere being reeducated for the betterment of humanity. VOTE EVAN CARROLL, I'll fix that!

Paul White

ha ha ha

Evan Carroll

Then vs now

Previously @codinghorror "your account will resume as normal. We don’t hold grudges". Today: grudge mysteriously excludes 1 year without being able to run in an election, and you can never ask questions again #StackOverflow #StackExchange

Tweeted by TheEvanCarroll on March 15, 2018 at 7:35 PM

Paul White

8:05 AM

Well if you can't post on meta (SE or SO) I guess the only avenue open to you is Contact Us.
And I know what you're going to say about that so.

Evan Carroll

8:39 AM

Speaking of stupid tags, you should nuke postgresql-performance and make it an alias for performance

MYGz

Greetings.
Is there a way to check query history in ssms 2012 after db server had a restart ?

Paul White

9:01 AM

5

Q: Merge tag:postgresql-performance with tag:query-performance?

The postgresql-performance is well looked after by an excellent Postgres contributor, but it's just a special case of query-performance applied to a specific RDBMS. I feel that it should be merged, and the information in the Tag Wiki moved to query-performance or other postgres tags as appropria...

ypercubeᵀᴹ

10:40 AM

@EvanCarroll No, it's fine. The author wants to know how to avoid SQL injection among other things

This has nothing to do with SQL Injection. First, every function that gets any parameter unquoted is a target for SQL Injection. Second, it's not clear what the issues you were having that are not addressed in the answers there. Third your design is pretty flawed, which is exactly what I answered with a few days ago If your public facing functions are dropping and recreating tables in unspecified schemas, you have a large footprint for attack. — Evan Carroll 3 hours ago

The comment, ^^^, could be an answer or a part of an answer.

Tom V

@MYGz version?

Sql server not ssms I mean

sp_BlitzErik

12:39 PM

@PaulWhite how long have you been waiting to pounce on that computed column question?

Paul White

@sp_BlitzErik I've had it in my favourites to add an answer for years it seems like. I remember looking at it more than once and thinking it wasn't worth getting into. For some reason I did today.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

I read this:

> ... if the secondary indexes are not explicitly defined as UNIQUE the clustered index key automatically becomes part of the key of each of those.

and it doesn't seem right.

Aren't the clustered key columns added anyway in secondary indexes? Regardless of whether the secondary index is UNIQUE or not?

Paul White

@ypercubeᵀᴹ If the secondary is unique the cluster keys are added as included columns at the leaf level only.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

Ah, yes, right.

Silly me. I should have read the whole answer first.

Paul White

You're welcome to assist parsing the sentence I failed to understand in that answer though.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

12:45 PM

And shake my yper brain ;)

@PaulWhite which one?

Paul White

> That usually are most secondary indexes as usually only indexes created to enforce uniqueness are declared as unique.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

No. Can't make any sense of it.

sp_BlitzErik

@PaulWhite that's a spiffy detail that not many people understand

Paul White

@sp_BlitzErik It's been written about several times (including by Kalen). I'm not certain anyone has done a spectacularly clear job of it. I may simply not have encountered it maybe.

Perhaps you should give it a crack.

sp_BlitzErik

Sounds like that would require dbcc page or ind

Paul White

1:03 PM

@sp_BlitzErik No, and I think that's where people have gone wrong before. One can reach useful conclusions just by looking at the size of the index and the queries it can support.

sp_BlitzErik

@PaulWhite hrm. Okay, you've bullied me into it.

Paul White

1:32 PM

@sp_BlitzErik For example, a non-unique secondary index might support more seek keys than expected, and likewise be able to deliver more ordering.

Anyway you see what I'm getting at I hope.

sp_BlitzErik

@PaulWhite i do, yeah. gonna be fun trying to tell a story about that one. heh.

Paul White

1:56 PM

@sp_BlitzErik Please don't feel obligated. Not all blog ideas work out.

sp_BlitzErik

even if it doesn't, perhaps it'll come in handy somewhere down the line

sql jeopardy, you know

Paul White

yep yep

sp_BlitzErik

the index size difference is tiny, hahaha

at least for 1mm rows

with ints

Paul White

Of course, the point was that indexes with clustering keys at upper levels will be different from an index with the clustering key only at the leaf level.

It's also interesting, maybe, to show that a non-unique index with cluster keys at all levels is exactly the same size as an explicitly unique index with the same keys.

sp_BlitzErik

2:17 PM

i'm starting to see why people just use dbcc commands for this

pastebin.com/V0cdWPAB

Joe Obbish

you could consider using wider data types ;)

sp_BlitzErik

i'm getting there

cool your jets, professional speaking man

Joe Obbish

better?

also, I failed at using zoomit 5/7 times

Paul White

@sp_BlitzErik Make the nuq index not unique CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX ix_nuq_mid then look at the extra non-leaf index pages using sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats.

Joe Obbish

seemed to be something off with the monitors, other presenters had issues too

sp_BlitzErik

2:30 PM

@PaulWhite doh, copy/paste strikes again

@JoeObbish yeah, it can be weird sometimes. it was giving people seizures at bits.

zoomWOBBLEWOBBLEWOBBLEunzoom

Paul White

@sp_BlitzErik e.g.:

SELECT DDIPS.page_count, DDIPS.index_level, DDIPS.record_count, * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(DB_ID(), OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.uq', N'U'), INDEXPROPERTY(OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.uq', N'U'), N'ix_uq_mid', 'IndexID'), NULL, 'DETAILED') AS DDIPS
SELECT DDIPS.page_count, DDIPS.index_level, DDIPS.record_count, * FROM sys.dm_db_index_physical_stats(DB_ID(), OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.nuq', N'U'), INDEXPROPERTY(OBJECT_ID(N'dbo.nuq', N'U'), N'ix_nuq_mid', 'IndexID'), NULL, 'DETAILED') AS DDIPS

Joe Obbish

Paul called you a DDIPS!

Paul White

Or however you like to write that sort of thing.

sp_BlitzErik

ddips, my arch nemesis

Paul White

@JoeObbish Some of the auto-generated aliases are hilarious.

→ 5 messages moved to stop the merry-go-round

heh heh heh

Joe Obbish

2:35 PM

@PaulWhite not related!

I'm trying to improve a check in sp_blitz

Paul White

Don't care; the move was funny

Joe Obbish

MOD ELECTIONS NOW!

Paul White

Someone give me a time to revolution counter

sp_BlitzErik

Clearance event: THE REV

Paul White

My dreams are haunted by clearance events.

dbfiddle.uk/…

stream aggregate

sp_BlitzErik

2:39 PM

yay?

Paul White

Well a stream aggregate requires input sorted on the grouping keys

sp_BlitzErik

i don't trust your table variables

Paul White

@sp_BlitzErik What table variable?

:)

Joe Obbish

table variables are for suckers and demos

Paul White

And people with tidy minds that don't want their local databases cluttered up.

sp_BlitzErik

2:44 PM

@PaulWhite you're a sneakier sneak than the sneaky sneak from microsoft

Paul White

I sneak the sneaks that the sneaky sneak won't sneak

Also of potential interest: dbfiddle.uk/…

sp_BlitzErik

3:00 PM

oh well stop using xml ;)

@PaulWhite it looks like you've already got a blog post mostly written

Paul White

@sp_BlitzErik Is there a better way to get graphical plans on dbfiddle?

@sp_BlitzErik Hadn't you heard? I've retired!

sp_BlitzErik

@PaulWhite i missed the announcement. link?

Paul White

@sp_BlitzErik Weak joke. Joe says that all the time.

Because he's written like four.

sp_BlitzErik

@PaulWhite i wake up every day with the hope that you've opened your sammy shop and grown appropriate sandwich man facial hair

Paul White

the required level of hipsteryness requires time to acquire

hot2use

3:16 PM

Hi Heap

Paul White

syntax error at position 1; "morning" expected.

Andriy M

> That usually applies to most indexes, as usually indexes are declared as unique only when the requirement is to enforce uniqueness.

That's my reading

Paul White

@AndriyM Makes sense. Go for it.

Andriy M

Done, thank you

hot2use

3:32 PM

That would be Monday morning 4.30 a.m.?

Still Sunday here.

...and a very good morning to you @PaulW

:-P

Paul White

Yep monday is here

morning

hot2use

3:56 PM

Your big advantage: Friday is 12 hours closer. :-)

Paul White

@SeanGallardy-Microsoft That is awesome.

sp_BlitzErik

4:15 PM

@PaulWhite you really do read the transcript

Paul White

@sp_BlitzErik yep sort of comes with the job

Evan Carroll

4:26 PM

@JoeObbish I AGREE. Vote Evan Carroll!!!

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

@JoeObbish Where can I ~~down~~ Vote

Evan Carroll

Quick he wants to downvote me, pull a Microsoft Connect and merge the downvote into the thread "SQL Server is a real database". Then lose all vote-history. Add a button to facebook share it!

sp_BlitzErik

weird question: could a server have cpus installed that run at different speeds?

like socket 1: 2.8ghz, socket 2: 3.1ghz?

Joe Obbish

you mean base clock speed?

sp_BlitzErik

yeah

Joe Obbish

4:41 PM

good question

sp_BlitzErik

i was adding the cpu speed check to blitz, and i'm only checking cpu 0

then i was like... maybe...

but i gotta bail there, that's some next level bad idea

Joe Obbish

what if you affinitize away cpu 0 using OS affinity?

sp_BlitzErik

then you're not running blitz

Paul White

5:00 PM

@sp_BlitzErik I rather suspect it is up to the motherboard. @Sean might know for sure.

sp_BlitzErik

@PaulWhite that would have been my guess too, but i'm not sure and don't have anything to begin to test it on.

would it be a viable question for serverfault?

Paul White

I can never remember their scope. Check their FAQ.

Super User would take it.

Not much is off-topic there.

sp_BlitzErik

> To improve the chances of your question staying open and getting an answer, make sure that it is about managing information technology systems in a business environment. If your question concerns personal equipment, try asking on Super User instead. Here are some additional tips:

this isn't about personal equipment

Paul White

everything is about personal equipment

sp_BlitzErik

your mom

Interjection: your mom

(pejorative, US, Britain, slang) A general purpose insult, often used to comedic effect due to becoming stale.
Conrad: I am not sure if this phrase is commonly used...
Dominic: Your mom is commonly used.
2004, Napoleon Dynamite
Deb: Well, isn't anyone else here trying to earn money for college?
Kip: Your mom goes to college.

Paul White

5:07 PM

Oh I see. Well go ahead then.

sp_BlitzErik

i'll chicken out

bbl

Paul White

bok-erk!

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

@EvanCarroll Curious, why would you care about votes?

@sp_BlitzErik Generally, no, but if speedstep is enabled for an Intel board, then it's possible to run higher on one socket

Paul White

The biggest loss from the Connect debacle is the information in comments from Microsoft people.

2

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

<closed won't fix> Got your comments here

Paul White

5:18 PM

Plus I also can't find a damned thing any more.

Joe Obbish

@PaulWhite I'd be happy to picket with you at the pass summit

Paul White

And, while I'm at it, the new interface for submission is painful.

Joe Obbish

we can do it right by the microsoft sql clinic

Paul White

That might actually motivate me

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

@JoeObbish Perfect, I won't be at that one

Joe Obbish

5:19 PM

@SeanGallardy-Microsoft but you will be

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

But bonus points to whomever makes a cardboard cutout of me and takes me around with people to take pictures

Joe Obbish

your face will be on one of the picket signs

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

@JoeObbish <in burns voice> Exccccccelent.

Joe Obbish

@PaulWhite have you submitted anything yet?

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

Say you're picketing because I wasn't allowed to come

Joe Obbish

5:21 PM

well you're not banned, right?

Paul White

@JoeObbish No I retired from speaking, didn't you hear?

Joe Obbish

@PaulWhite for UserVoice

Paul White

@JoeObbish Oh. Yeah two today.

Joe Obbish

@PaulWhite yes, I did hear. It's very sad. A tragic loss to the community

@PaulWhite link?

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

@PaulWhite I did not.. did you make a post about it that I missed?

Paul White

5:22 PM

@JoeObbish feedback.azure.com/forums/908035-sql-server/suggestions/… and feedback.azure.com/forums/908035-sql-server/suggestions/…

@SeanGallardy-Microsoft It's a joke. Joe accuses me of being retired all the time.

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

/facepalm you got me

Paul White

@JoeObbish Nothing too exciting, I just wanted to try it out.

@SeanGallardy-Microsoft Don't feel bad, my socket just runs faster than yours.

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

@PaulWhite ... and your phone.. which runs all of Azure

Paul White

ha ha yeah

Joe Obbish

is this one of yours? feedback.azure.com/forums/908035-sql-server/suggestions/…

Paul White

5:28 PM

@JoeObbish Yes, transferred.

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

@PaulWhite You can always email me if you have the ID of the old connect item, I can look them up, for now

Paul White

@SeanGallardy-Microsoft Yes thank you. I have (ab)used your services a couple of times already.

You might like to help Umachandar out as well :)

Joe Obbish

@PaulWhite I'd vote for it, but there's no way to to view the repro now...

Evan Carroll

@SeanGallardy-Microsoft Because I need to be a moderator so I can liberate my people against the oppressive reigns of Shog9 and his army of tyrannical puppet lords.

Joe Obbish

@SeanGallardy-Microsoft it's sad that we weren't emailed a list of our connect items by ID or name

Paul White

5:30 PM

@JoeObbish Sucks eh. No way to edit it in either.

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

@PaulWhite What if I were a masochist?

Evan Carroll

#EndSOfiefdom

Joe Obbish

I searched my email and was able to find some of them, but only the ones which had a comment on them

Paul White

@SeanGallardy-Microsoft Ooo good point

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

@EvanCarroll I thought Socialists didn't need votes - they just rule by tyrant.

@JoeObbish That I can get behind

Joe Obbish

5:32 PM

I think that I found most of my old ones

Paul White

@JoeObbish That would assume the move was in any way organized.

Hm it seems I'm crosser about this than I realized.

Joe Obbish

you should be

I had only submitted 8 tickets or so after all

I just searched for the exact text of an old one

wasn't on first page

600 results

also it's kind of weird how you can see who voted for your items

Evan Carroll

@SeanGallardy-Microsoft When you define "economy democracy" as a tyranny, sure. lulz

Subjecting the economy to democratic consent, tyranny.

Allowing rich capitalists to run the show, FREEDOM.

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

@EvanCarroll You're right everyone is equal... equally living in the dirt with nothing.. but hey at least they equally have nothing.

Paul White

@JoeObbish Really?

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

5:37 PM

:cough: every socialist nation :cough:

@JoeObbish I am also new to this information

Joe Obbish

hm, it may only be indirect

feedback.azure.com/users/749595439-erik-darling

Erik voted for mine because we're best friends

I suppose that starting from a connect item and getting a list would require quite a bit of searching, but I bet someone could do it

Evan Carroll

Lulz. "Living in the dirt" is the most intellectually dishonest way to analyze economy.

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

Says you, with no bias at all...

Joe Obbish

to be honest

Evan Carroll

Ask the folks living in banana republics.

How well has CAPITALISM in America served you.

Joe Obbish

5:40 PM

looking at things that people have voted for is a much better search mechanism than the provided one

which is sad

Paul White

Oct 18 '17 at 22:38, by sp_BlitzErik

"voting-ring-activate"

ypercubeᵀᴹ

I had visited 2 former socialist states. It may have been just my personal impression but it wasn't the "poverty" or scarcity of certain items that bugged people as the restrictions on freedom of expression and movement.
I mean they could live with not being able to do a bubble bath every day but the oppression of the police state was something that affected evryone

Paul White

mmm bananas

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

@JoeObbish I probably could in TFS... if I were incentivized enough ;)

Joe Obbish

TFS?

Paul White

5:44 PM

yesterday, by Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

@sp_BlitzErik Hey, what… What can I get for, uh… $275 and a yogurt lite rewards card?

@JoeObbish An ancient form of source control I believe

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

@PaulWhite about 27 minutes of whatever you want and a free yogurt

Paul White

@SeanGallardy-Microsoft Don't ask me I have nothing, Joe's the guy for unsolicited gifts.

in stop the merry-go-round, yesterday, by Paul White

@SQL_Kiwi WAIT WHAT @JORRISS DID YOU STEAL COOKIES THAT WERE MEANT FOR ME?

Tweeted by BrentO on March 17, 2018 at 4:40 PM in reply to SQL_Kiwi

Joe Obbish

Sean is allergic to everything so that won't work

Paul White

Send him a raw cow

Joe Obbish

Wisconsin has good beef

Sean Gallardy - Microsoft

5:46 PM

@PaulWhite Bison or Elk would work

Joe Obbish

I've never had good elk

Paul White

I read that as Bison or Erik first time around

Evan Carroll

6:03 PM

@ypercubeᵀᴹ I think that's a very valid criticism, and you can clearly make that argument and it'd be perfectly sound. The USSR wasn't my ideal form of government, either just to be perfectly clear. And I pick and choose which policies of theirs I will defend and decree as indefensible -- I do the same thing with United States.

Paul White

6:23 PM

and Postgres

Evan Carroll

Exactly, PostgreSQL is better but both times it wasn't I said it!

Paul White

I know :)

Evan Carroll

I need to get back to telling @SeanGallardy-Microsoft's secrets.

I've been scrubbing up on my skillzzzzzz

3 months ago, on a scale of 1 to 10, I was only an 11. And, now I'm north of 12.

Paul White

Well that sounds like progress

Evan Carroll

6:41 PM

having lots of fun, this was also on my to-do list for years.

I'm getting to the point where my todo list for technology is pretty small. =( Write a kernel driver, contribute to hackage, understand threads.

Evan Carroll

6:55 PM

Why can't we reward experience to good answers without waiting 2+ days =(

That's poop.

Shog9 must hate philanthropy.

answer deserves mad upvotes: dba.stackexchange.com/a/201606/2639

Paul White

@EvanCarroll It is annoying.

Evan Carroll

Can't even give these unicorn points away when I want!

Paul White

19

A: Should the 24-hour timeout apply to bounties awarded for "exemplary answer"?

The bounty system is specifically made to draw attention to a question and rub people the right way into answering it. The reason there is a period in which the bounty cannot be awarded is to allow people to spend some time into providing a great answer -- which sometimes requires some thought an...

@Evan FWIW SQL Server has pre-execution (estimated), live progress (during execution), and post-execution (actual) plans.
Pre-execution plans **never** execute anything.

As I read it, the waiting period for bounty rewards is because people would abuse it otherwise.

People are why we can't have nice things.

Evan Carroll

7:12 PM

I don't think that's at all a valid or reason or that the chosen answer there addresses the question.

If you're already satisfied with the answer, you've marked it as chosen. By marking it as chosen you've already discouraged future contributions (how often do questions with a chosen answer get further input before they rot and become inaccurate)? The foundation of that answer is about the bounty system functioning as further incentive to get an answer. But the bounty system permits awarding a bounty to an exemplary answer too. The goal there is different, they're not one in the same.

So long as the incentive is permitted, it doesn't make sense to make you wait in giving it.

Paul White

I didn't say I agreed with it.

The real reason is probably closer to lack of dev time, and not wanting to revisit the havoc that bounty awards already cause on the system in subtle ways.

2

Evan Carroll

Yep, agree fully. And, that may very well be valid.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

For what it's worth, when I offer a bounty for an exemplary answer, I often wait for more than 24 hours. It gives more exposure time to the question and the answer and it usually attracts a few more upvotes. The question doesn't appear in Bouty questions once you award the bounty.

That said, it still annoys me too, that I can'r award the bounty immeduiaely!

Paul White

Honestly it's horrible.

88

Q: Changes to bounty rules: removal of double rep-retention, blocking of owner deletion

Adam Lear has been digging into the circumstances behind this feature request, and determined that the behavior described there is likely an oversight: it should not be possible for a bounty to remain both awarded and refunded when a question is deleted. Reputation removed from those who've awa...

discussion reputation bounty deleted-questions

This bug was only addressed very recently.

One can go mad tracing bounty problems.

@ypercubeᵀᴹ There is always the argument that an answer that looks awesome might turn out not to be so awesome after all, and a better answer turn up in that 2 day period.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@PaulWhite yes, I guess that could happen

Evan Carroll

7:19 PM

I don't believe that's unintentional on the part of the Stack Exchange, I see malice there.

Paul White

Of course you do :)

Anyway, the long and short of it is that is the way it is, and it really isn't going to change unless someone buys SE and orders the work doing.

Evan Carroll

Anyone who behaves in such a fashion, should be immediately banned. And, if you want to weight the costs of not getting a refund when a bounty is award and a question later deleted, and the cost of losing the ability to delete a question -- we're in a game that lacks any proportionality.

Wanting to host content against the authors will so you can monetize on it, as Stack Exchange does, is not merely because they also want to work around an "extremely rare" edge case.

Paul White

Oh the double-rep thing? Yeah probably. I don't care to re-read that Q & A it hurt my brain enough first time around.

@EvanCarroll Banned? But these people might make good moderators!

Too soon?

Evan Carroll

#NeverTooSoon

Paul White

Words to live by

Evan Carroll

7:24 PM

Always! If I can dish it, I gotta take it. lol

Not being able to delete a contribution just makes novices embarrassed when they ask stupid questions, and it removes the ability to settle a dispute by bowing out of it.

It would also be great if people got to shop around their questions a little a better.

Out of all the problems with this site, community division is the biggest one. BTW, I agree with you about SuperUser, the perma-dumping ground

Ask a question on SuperUser or Ask Ubuntu, get a stupid answer because the communities are stupid. What if the question was solid and you want to honestly take it to a different community? How do you do that the right way?

I've asked now multiple times about that, and there is no way to handle it anymore.

Previously, you'd delete the question on the site with the stupid community, and repost it. And that was totally ok, no hurt feelings -- wouldn't have to be dramatic about it.

Now it's a Moral Panic.

The solution is to permit duplicate content on every site, but that's just because the only thing Stack Exchange cares about is google spam, and not a well organized or effective community.

I've probably shopped around 20 of my own questions here. Lol!

dba.stackexchange.com downvotes them because they're self-answered, I take them right to the stackoverflow.com post them there they help thousands of people and I skip drama and tension here. All is good.

Paul White

I only dislike lazy multi-site copy/paste posts. If someone customizes a question even a little bit for dba.se I won't close/delete it myself. Equally, where some time has elapsed on the other site without a good answer, that's OK, though it is good if the OP can delete the duplicate.

Never mind that most cross-site dupes we see here are either off-topic or crap as well.

Evan Carroll

Yep, that's all I'm saying in that case specifically, the op should be able to delete the duplicate and should be encouraged to. It's their mess. They need only have one good question on either site, and even if they're forced to have duplicate questions -- you'd want them to both be as good as possible (with the necessary information) meaning identical

This site to our moderators merits, is run much better than most of the others.

3

Paul White

Another consideration is that migration is just as much of a mess as bounties, probably more. The SE model was never really set up for it, or cross-site dupes, and it shows.

Evan Carroll

Yep, I agree fully. But there are easy fixes for it.

It's a dev-time question.

Paul White

Yes and they're all working on Teams.

Having wasted 100 man years on Documentation.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

7:36 PM

and some woman years as well ;)

Paul White

I do have sympathy for people for people who answer in good faith, and would lose rep if the Q were deleted.

@ypercubeᵀᴹ Don't you start. I've had it up to here today with people telling me what I can and can't say.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

I was only joking.

Paul White

I know, so was I.

It wasn't apparent I guess, but I'm so rarely serious.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

The whole politically correct speech is not too common in Greece, mostly because the language is quite different.

Paul White

It's becoming really pervasive and really starting to impact on the whole concept of free speech.

Do not get me started :)

Evan Carroll

7:39 PM

@PaulWhite Yea, I can see that too. It's a split. If you're nice and if your answer is valid, I can't see deleting the question as being a real problem.

As in, it happening.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

We have feminine and masculine forms of words, so you won't find many that object to "god", "reason", "wheel" being masculine (in form) but "chair", "liberty", "wisdom" feminine.

Paul White

They sort of fixed that a bit with the whole keeping rep thing if >= 3 and visible for 90 (?) days but it's a hack.

@ypercubeᵀᴹ Ah of course.

ypercubeᵀᴹ

We couldn't possibly change so many integrated parts of the language

"language / tongue" is feminine by the way

Paul White

If I had my way we'd go back to -5 for an answer downvote. Downvotes are so ineffective.

One up vote by a muppet undoes 5 carefully considered down votes by sensible people.

How can that be right? :-p

Evan Carroll

=) I'm inclined to agree, and no one would be disadvantaged more from changing that then me!

Paul White

7:44 PM

You do get your share of down votes eh

Evan Carroll

I got metric fuck tons of em'.

But, in fairness, I wouldn't be deincentivized more with -5 than -2 or whatever.

Paul White

As of now, a user can contribute fairly terrible answers and still quite quickly get to rep levels where they can do real damage.

@EvanCarroll Yeah but some people might. Also make it -10 for a gold badge holder etc.

The 2k barrier for unreviewed edits is a headache.

Ask me how much I enjoy reviewing bad reviewers as well. Total waste of time.

Evan Carroll

Meh, there is no good way to solve that, and that's a waste of real development time. I've been going on for about an hour of ways I've felt I've had a negative impact on the community and what tools I would want to do better, and those requests fall on deaf ears and there is no answer for them (because of a lack of time to address technical inadequacies.) I think manufacturing a system to deter negative behavior will always be a bad way to spend time.

@PaulWhite -10 for a gold badge holder would mean I would almost certainly lose my gold badge, which I worked hard for. I'm not sure how that would make the network better though.

Paul White

I should just go full tyrant and ban everyone I don't like. Or invent an SE replacement.

@EvanCarroll It probably wouldn't. I make dumb suggestions all the time.

When I've done my time as mod, I will enjoy the extra time available for actually answering.

Evan Carroll

Fair enough. It's always better to spend your time planting carrots when you've got idle pastures.

There should be a special badge for asking a question with negative rep, and self-answering with positive rep

Like maverickofone

-1

Q: Solving "Gaps and Islands" with row_number() and dense_rank()?

How does one solve the islands part of gaps-and-islands with dense_rank() and row_number(). I've seen this now a few times and I'm wondering if someone could explain it, Let's use something like this for example data (example uses PostgreSQL), CREATE TABLE foo AS SELECT x AS id, trunc(random(...

sql postgresql window-functions gaps-and-islands rank

Tom V

8:05 PM

@ypercubeᵀᴹ obviously

Women talk more

In Flanders sanseveria are called 'women tongues' being pointy and all

I love those plants by the way.

Even I don't manage to waste them

ypercubeᵀᴹ

@TomV nice!

In Greek, the same word (γλώσσα) means both language and tongue (and a kind of fish, plaice as google translate informs me)

Tom V

Vrouwentongen

Sansevieria trifasciata is een plant die wordt toegepast als kamerplant, een die minimale zorgen vereist. De plant wordt meestal kortweg Sansevieria (ook Sanseveria) genoemd, en in Vlaanderen meestal 'vrouwentongen'. De sansevieria was jarenlang de populairste kamerplant in Vlaanderen. Toen het Simplisties Verbond voor een aflevering naar Vlaanderen trok, spraken Van Kooten en De Bie op voorhand (zogezegd) af dat hun sympathisanten als herkenningsteken een sansevieria voor het raam zouden zetten. Toen ze in Vlaanderen toekwamen, werden ze "begroet" door vensters en zelfs appartementsblokken vol...

@ypercubeᵀᴹ Yep in dutch too, "tong" is a fish

Evan Carroll

We call them "Mother in Law's Tongue" in the US and A

In Turkey they call them Prophet's Sword

Tom V

@EvanCarroll That's even better

TIL

hot2use

10:03 PM

Good night

Evan Carroll

10:51 PM