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user20683
2:46 AM
 
user20683
And now it's gone mainstream
 
user41796
3:15 AM
@ChrisF - thanks for checking the IP address. Goma seems to have a talent for crafting just-on-the-edge questions approaching on-topic but are really intended to start flame wars.
 
user41796
@WorldEngineer - "them's in the know" have had java disabled in their browsers for quite some time now. I turned it off a few years back, and there are maybe one or two sites I can think of that I have had to selectively turn it back on for. FWIW, I like java, but the way it interacts within the browser generates too many security issues.
 
user20683
@GlenH7 I've had it for school
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
4:55 AM
@MichaelT Tyrant in Ancient Greece had a positive / neutral meaning, it became negative after the end of the Peloponnesian War, when the Spartans established a puppet tyranny in Athens. The first references to the word in a negative manner is in Aristophanes' comedies, he had a feud with Cleon, an Athenian general (~tyrant) during the end of the war (but that was mostly because the Athenians were losing), and after the war both Plato and later Aristotle started using the word pejoratively.
Also BDFL was my conclusion in this question:
14
Q: What form of government does StackExchange resemble?

AlexIt's not representative democracy, because the decisions are taken by the entire community, but they are weighted :P The closest one that comes into my mind is the "Venus project" :)

form-of-government
 
 
3 hours later…
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
7:35 AM
 
 
7 hours later…
user41796
2:10 PM
@YannisRizos - the new about page looks great. Thanks for working on that! Maybe mentioning meta or chat to ask about borderline questions for the site? I would recommend adding something about the search functionality. We haven't had a lot of "closed as duplicates", but there are a number of tombstone off-topic questions that could have averted a new off-topic Q. But I'm not delusional enough to believe that just mentioning search will actually get people to look at existing questions. :-)
 
Yannis Rizos
Yannis Rizos
@GlenH7 I'm not working on it, just posting links ;) My "work in progress" comment only means that this isn't the final version.
The thing with duplicates is that the title search when you are posting a question works very well, sometimes better than the actual search. It's quite easy to spot duplicates through it, and if you don't then they are probably not that easy to find through the normal search anyway (weird phrasing, different tags, etc).
But mentioning search in general makes sense, perhaps in the "Browse new questions, or ask your own" section. You should post it as a suggestion in the relevant MSO question:
88
Q: We're rolling out a new "Quick Start" guide to help new users learn the basics

JaydlesHere's the first one, on Ask Different. We've been working hard on ways to help improve the experience of new users, and one of the best ways to do that is to help teach them the basics about how our sites work before they run afoul of them. This will improve their odds of having a good first e...

discussion featured new-users about-page
I think Jeff's answer there is in the same vein, we want newer users to look around first, and only ask (or answer) after they are a bit familiar with the site.
 
user41796
2:43 PM
@YannisRizos - thanks, and I added a comment to Jeff's answer. Especially on SO, folk should search before asking.
 
prusswan
prusswan
3:36 PM
programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/182410/… - I wonder how DHS is dealing with the problem itself
1
Q: Has the latest takedown notice (from Department of Homeland Security) on Java impacted your work already?

prusswanSource: http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/11/homeland-security-java/ ...“We estimate that about 100 million computer users are now in immediate danger of getting exploited. Given the current circumstances – wide availability of the exploit code and no fix from Oracle scheduled for the near futur...

java security
 
 
7 hours later…
gnat
gnat
10:22 PM
9
Q: Requiring registration to ask questions - did it made a difference?

gnatIn September 2012 registration requirement to ask questions has been introduced: In the past 60 days, 76% of all questions from unregistered users have been either down-voted below 0, closed, deleted, or some combination of the three. That's a total of 182 questions, compared to 877 sim...

support closed-questions asking-questions unregistered-users
It looks quite easy to get upper bound of detected attempts to abuse question ban. First, let's count how many accounts were added in last 4 months, as of Jan 12 these are roughly between 62044 and 78338, 78338-62044=16294.
Now if we find how many of these accounts are gone, as indicated by respective user profile being 404 Not Found, this will give us how many accounds were either self-deleted, or gone through legitimate merges, or... and this is exactly what I'd want to estimate... or were merged as a result of successfully detected abuse of question ban. It is of course impossible to manually scan 16K+ profile pages, wonder if this could be done somehow automagically?
 

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