The Whiteboard

1:00 PM

There are a bunch of questions tagged health that all seem to adress issues that aren't unique to programmers, but could apply equally well to every other person working on a computer all day. Should I continue flagging them individually or is there a better way to deal with this?

I saw the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiatve, however, I don't think there is a strong enough case that the tag itself had to go.

Should I maybe edit the health tag's wiki page to inform people not to post such questions (similar to the book tag). I could use the Tag Editor badge.

Yannis Rizos

1:25 PM

@PersonalNexus Preferably, you could create a list of health related tags, by looking at which other tags are used on health questions and post a cleanup proposal for all of them. I honestly don't see any way of salvaging them, but others might. The tag may not need to die asap, but since there are high voted proposals already we won't deal with it soon (probably).

@PersonalNexus Furthermore please don't edit it's tag wiki, there are some weird side effects when a tag with a tag wiki is killed. I'm not sure what happens, just remember reading about it somewhere, but for the time being don't edit the tag wiki.

PersonalNexus

@YannisRizos Wilco

Yannis Rizos

@PersonalNexus I've done some stupid edits on our popular tags' wikis (as a user), check them out and see if you can do a better work than I did (hint: I've copy pasted from Wikipedia a lot).

@PersonalNexus And thanks for all the great edits! :)

PersonalNexus

@YannisRizos Don't mention it. I have actually become a bit more daring in my editing, after observing how you guys do it. Like this one post today I originally just wanted to flag because it was kind of difficult to parse because of the way the OP had phrased it, but instead I chose to edit and rewrite some of it, hopefully making it useful for others.

Yannis Rizos

@PersonalNexus Noticed that edit, good job, and I will keep mentioning it, even if for everyone else to go check your profile activity and do similar edits. If you are unsure feel free to flag, but if you can edit, go for it and don't worry about it, edits are reversible after all...

PersonalNexus

1:40 PM

@YannisRizos Thanks :)

Yannis Rizos

2:01 PM

What factors should I consider when choosing names for identifiers? http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/134643/what-factors-should-i-consider-when-choosing-names-for-identifiers #csharp

Tweeted by StackProgrammer on February 12, 2012 at 11:47 AM

That daring edit helped the post to make it to twitter...

Rachel

3:43 PM

I would think that some questions about health should be on topic. For example, almost every programmer uses a keyboard and probably has an interest in keeping their hands healthy, while not every profession works with a keyboard

Scrooge

4:41 PM

whos the new moderator ? any news ?

Rachel

5:02 PM

@Scrooge Yannis Rizzo and Thomas Owens

It was starred in chat and posted in meta: meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/3072/1130

Yannis Rizos

@Rachel Rizzo? Well, that's Italian, part of my family has roots in Italy, so that works I guess... :P

@Rachel I thought we decided that questions should apply uniquely to Programmers to be on topic... Did I miss a memo or something? :}

Not to mention the fact that even if they are health related issued that are unique to our profession, expert answers will only come from medical professionals, not a bunch of software developers...

Rachel

@YannisRizos Hey I never agreed to that :) I feel if some topic could be applied to a large majority of programmers, and it could be applied to some careers but not all, it should be on-topic

And I would prefer to ask other programmers what they've found to be beneficial to their health while programming instead of a medical professional (although if I did have medical issues, of course I would see a doctor instead of a programmer). For example, I'm sure my doctor wouldn't recommend left-handed mice with low click thresholds (programmers.stackexchange.com/a/5929/1130) :)

Yannis Rizos

5:18 PM

@Rachel Yes but would you honestly take any medical advice from me? I can fake a great answer anytime... I'm actually pretty good at that, managed to fooled programmers in heavily upvoting an answer of mine on programming languages...

Rachel

@YannisRizos No I would not take medical advice from you, however I would take your advice on things programmers can do that have helped them avoid medical problems

Yannis Rizos

@Rachel The problem with those tricks is that they might not work for you and they even might worsen the situation. Check with a doctor before doing anything, RSI can be a very serious issue...

Rachel

The general idea is that lots of up-votes mean people agree with the answer, and if something works for a large number of programmers, I don't see why I shouldn't give it a try as well.

Yannis Rizos

@Rachel because there are several medical issues where such tricks may make you feel better, while they actually worsen the underlining issue.

Rachel

Of course I'm not going to take peoples opinions as law online, however honestly I find better facts online then I do going to most professionals

(although I suppose it's the quality of the professional that matters)

For example, I needed to fix my dryer last month, and I suppose I could have contacted a professional for that, however it was much cheaper to simply look up the problem online, buy the part for it, and fix it myself using How-To materials found online

I'm not going to pay someone to tell me things I could or should not be doing to improve my health when I spend a large majority of my days at a computer (unless it's causing problems), but I will find topics about that interesting and attempt to implement some changes based on other user's experience. Usually if something is incorrect you can find that online also, because people love posting things online that other people don't know.

I would rather have someone give me their opinion, than to have them be quiet just in case they may be wrong. I know it's an opinion, not a fact.

Yannis Rizos

5:28 PM

@Rachel I fail to see how that has anything to do with what's on topic on P.SE. P.SE is not the internet, just a very small part of it. Anyways, I have to go, if you want you can bring the issue up on Meta or we can pick up the discussion tomorrow...

Rachel

@YannisRizos lol don't worry, it's nothing against you. You're just the most accessible mod who happens to answer in chat a lot, and I feel very strongly about the direction this site is going (PS, you're doing a great job as a moderator and I'm still glad I voted for you)

And I happen to want the site to match it's name, and be about and for programmers, not about software development and for programmers

PersonalNexus

5:54 PM

@YannisRizos Nice. What are the criteria for choosing what goes up on Twitter? I noticed a question I asked the other day was tweeted, too.

Rachel

6:11 PM

@PersonalNexus you might want to post that question on Meta. I would be interested in finding out the criteria as well

Yannis Rizos

@PersonalNexus No idea, it's automatic, algorithm not disclosed.

@Rachel Oh, I didn't worry :) just had to go asap, and now even more... I'm lateeeeeee....

user2334

@PersonalNexus Based on the hotness algorithm: same thing that makes things show up in the Multicollider, the Stack Exchange site, and the hot front page sort

user2334

82

Q: What Formula Should Be Used To Determine "hot" Questions?

Right now the front page Popular tab is fairly broken -- it's a simple descending sort by views. As Joel said in podcast #18, it is "a self-fulfilling prophecy." But this is not intentional, it's only because we haven't had time to improve it yet! As I sit down to write a better algorithm, I tho...

PersonalNexus

@Rachel I am looking through some Meta questions right now. There are a few details mentioned here and here

Yannis Rizos

@MarkTrapp Oh, cool, thanks Mark, I had no idea...

user2334

6:20 PM

@PersonalNexus The whole hot questions tag is enlightening

PersonalNexus

@MarkTrapp Ah, thanks.

Yannis Rizos

@MarkTrapp Thoughts on this earlier discussion?

user2334

@YannisRizos @PersonalNexus Sounds like a perfect candidate for the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative

Yannis Rizos

@MarkTrapp And are we about to begin?

user2334

5

Q: Structured Tag Cleanup — Call for proposals #1

This is a call for proposals for the Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative. Provide one proposal per post A tag cleanup proposal is a tag, or a collection of highly related tags (e.g., tags all sharing the same stem) that needs to be dealt with en masse. Besides naming the tag or tags to be handled...

discussion featured tags posse

user2334

6:24 PM

Already began

Rachel

@YannisRizos I thought you were late :p

Yannis Rizos

@MarkTrapp Sorry I meant with cleaning up, guess I read "On February 22nd, 2012 at 00:00 UTC or when a proposal gets a 5 score, whichever comes last" as whichever comes first...

@Rachel Yes, but she is late as usual, so I can now pretend I was on time and nag, nag, nag...

user2334

@YannisRizos Vetting proposals now. Back-room talk about cleaning up one tag is exactly what the STCI is supposed to prevent. [health] is a great example of something we can't take care of using mod tools and could use the community looking at the questions and figuring out what needs to be improved to better fit the site scope or just closed.

Rachel

@MarkTrapp What does SCTI mean?

PersonalNexus

@Rachel Structured Tag Cleanup Initiative I guess

Yannis Rizos

6:29 PM

@MarkTrapp Didn't mean we should start on our own (Back-room talk?)... Thought we could start as three proposals reached the 5 vote threshold.

user2334

@YannisRizos There's a two week period to allow people to actually see what's being proposed for cleanup and let them raise objections or make refinements to the proposals. These tags have existed for months; we don't need to fast track this

Yannis Rizos

@MarkTrapp Yeap, misread the whichever comes last sentence, thought you meant we should start when vote threshold was reached.

More time is good... Mods doing as little as possible on cleanups even better... :P

user2334

@PersonalNexus So yeah, flagging all the questions is not going to be good. If you see something wrong with the tag where people are using it for the wrong reasons but still think the tag's okay, mention that in your STCI proposal (Many of the questions are bad/should be closed, but there might be several [health] questions that should stay). But if [health] is a honeypot for off-topic questions, maybe it's not the best tag and should be renamed to something more on-topic

user2334

A quick glance at the tag and the only one that I see that's on-topic, and only because it was by Jeff Atwood fiat, was the ADHD one

user2334

Maybe the insomnia one too

user2334

6:38 PM

health is probably the best name for the tag, if it's staying, to be honest

PersonalNexus

@MarkTrapp OK, my concern was, that one would be hard-pressed to find a health-issue that was unique to programmers and thus on-topic. I have no problem with the name of the tag per-se. I just doubt the need for its very existance.

If you asked me, pretty much every question tagged health should be closed, which is why I considered flagging them.

Rachel

If this were a site about software development, the [health] tag would be fairly useless. If it were about programmers, I would find it useful. I think we're somewhere between right now...

PersonalNexus

And since Jeff Atwood has left the company, doesn't that also mean you are no longer bound by his fiat ;-)

Yannis Rizos

@PersonalNexus march 1st, so... let's wait a bit :P

PersonalNexus

@YannisRizos Oops. My bad

user2334

6:55 PM

@PersonalNexus Understandable, but what you or I might not see, others might, or at least could rewrite the questions to be more on-topic. The idea behind the STCI is to work on tags that need serious help: maybe killing all the questions in the tag is the way to "help" them, or maybe we can save some fairly decent questions that just happened to have a honeypot tag by improving them and retagging them with something else.

user2334

Basically, one person flagging and one moderator approving is unsustainable, and really hasn't effected much change over the past few months (cf. the career tag). The community as a whole needs to be more involved in the cleanups

PersonalNexus

@MarkTrapp I see your point. I'll see if there are related tags and submit the whole thing as an STCI proposal.

user2334

Excellent.