@C.S.Cameron As a retiree for almost 3 years now I have found that involvement in AU / moderation / answers / questions can fill some time and also be very rewarding.

I have used the strike downtime to get my old school irssi setup renovated. I have a shell account with Blinkenshell and I run irssi there on screen for 'always on' access to #Blinkenshell, #abcde, #slrn (which I own), and #am-members. Good to see it all runs so nicely and even better now I have fixed the condig up properly :)

Anyone still on IRC? (I will keep quiet about my Usenet account!)

That's a name I have not heard in a very long time :D

I used to have a bouncer

@JourneymanGeekOnStrike Some loyal users out there still. Blinkenshell is interesting: it has been going for a long time by a Swedish guy with a server in his basement

Yeah, but most of the communities I was on are gone :D

@JourneymanGeekOnStrike Good point. And Freenode died a while back too

Also back then it was IRC

I have like things spread out over 4-5 different systems now ._.

@JourneymanGeekOnStrike I still find this we based chat awkward and I am not all that impressed by Discord. IRC has a learning curve though and some pretty elitist users and of course has been slowly dying for a while

@andrew.46-OnStrike this is probably still my favourite chat system these days

But it has a club feel about it and great flexibility in use

Also, I lost the xchat config that followed me through 3 forks :D

@JourneymanGeekOnStrike I think X-Chat is gone too??? Replaced by Hex-Chat I think

lol

Ya, went from xchat to the silverx fork to xchat-wdk, which became hexchat

Well, I never actually knew that :). I settled in irssi a while back, in part because it always seemed like the perfect set: irssi for IRC, mutt for mail and slrn for Usenet.

(and both the latter were windows forks )

so slightly ironic that hexchat became the main fork

@JourneymanGeekOnStrike And @ArturMeinild found a classic AI abuser yesterday, with an offensive username: askubuntu.com/users/1709294/fku?tab=answers&sort=newest

sigh

@JourneymanGeekOnStrike Exactly...

So three answers. All AI. None of them actually too useful. Question is trivial to diagnose for a human and request some clarification in comments.

A trifecta :(

@vidarlo And you have seen Artur's find: askubuntu.com/users/1709294/fku?tab=answers&sort=newest

Nice

Why did anyone think this was a good idea?

There will be a massive cleanup if the strike negotiations end successfully

If not there won't be a SO any more

It should be evident to SE Inc that they are destroying the site by now

@vidarlo One of those answerers has gone an an AI spree: askubuntu.com/users/1709293/hmp?tab=answers&sort=newest

I've noticed that a lot of AI users tend to be three letter usernames

I'd guess spam bots that are laying a base for spam

attempt to build rep up to ~1k and then start introducing spam links

So this is the wave that we were all holding back when we were enforcing a pretty rigid policy.

The only change I would make to that policy would be more of a warning period without initial suspension. But otherwise we were doing ok.

sure

I found the suspension harsh

@vidarlo Yes, and that could have been softened as the policy and the situation matured.

yep

most important is to delete the crud

I personally had some blow back from some of the suspensions, and some were reversed after discussion. But I went in pretty hard on every level of user: trying to be fair to all. It was a difficult time but AU was kept mostly clean.

yep. Others didn't do suspensions I noticed

For instance security.se tended to delete and shout at first offenders

and suspend at ~third offence

@vidarlo Generous :)

SO went in hard and fast

yeh

but SO has huge volume

Security has ... nothing?

But frustratingly these were niceties that could have matured in our own policy dammit.

yeh

Security.se has low level of user involvement in moderation for the amount of traffic it has, almost all is handled by moderators it seems

The plan was always to adjust as the situation matured. But this is out of our hands now

Yes. And different sites - different scales

One set of measures doesn't fit all

SU and MSE was one year, immediately :D

@vidarlo And I believe the Stack Overflow, Inc. CEO is giving a public address end of this month on SO and AI

@JourneymanGeekOnStrike that's harsh

@JourneymanGeekOnStrike Whoa, hard core!

@andrew.46-OnStrike "Replacing user involvement in moderation with AI"?

@vidarlo I'm not a fan of people dumping garbage on my home :D

Actually that wouldn't surprise me at this stage.

@vidarlo You know I wonder I wonder if that is a distant aim

@andrew.46-OnStrike Have AI ask the question, AI answer the question and AI moderate it?

@vidarlo I think he will very much ignore the strike, or try to spin it positively

@JourneymanGeekOnStrike You know I suspended a very high profile AU user for AI abuse for 7 days and I worried about it for over a week? I would have been in Hospital for a 1 year suspension...

@andrew.46-OnStrike My community trusts me to do the nice thing

And.. we didn't have one appeal I was aware of

Not one "I'm sorry" or even "What's Chatgpt?"

@vidarlo Bots talking to bots

@JourneymanGeekOnStrike We had a few 'Sorry', a few 'I didn't know' and a few 'They were my own words' but the majority there was no communication back...

yup

I think they were trying their luck

Exactly

@JourneymanGeekOnStrike would a high-rep user on SU land 1 year on first offence?

There's this phrase I've been hearing a lot lately... which ends with "find out" :D

@vidarlo good question

I never had to find out

But I'd hope a high rep user would know better

PART of why it was always a year was cause it was either new, or otherwise inactive users, and the answers were garbage

IF it was a currently active user in otherwise good standing suddenly posting chatgpt stuff - I'd be more inclined towards a shorter suspension and fact finding

funny thing is on pets, we mostly warned, and ... they never came back either

Zanna picked it up early in the piece: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/63737880

:(

Yeh. I'm surprised at the length of this

The length means habits are changed. I don't visit AU and serverfault daily any more

Too depressing, see you all tomorrow evening (my time)

@vidarlo SO inc is very agile about breaking things about the community and then the company panics and decides to be careful when its too late

Nothing new about that