The Whiteboard

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10:47 AM

@MichaelT did you notice that "cliff" questions allow one double their daily voting limit? I mean, cleanup script runs 3 hours after "server day" starts, and killer votes cast during these happy hours, stop counting towards the limit after the script deletes questions so that one can vote further

4 hours later…

RhysW

2:40 PM

jozefg

Hello @RhysW

RhysW

not really sure why i havnt stuck my head into programers more often, hows everyone doing?

jozefg

I'm trying to decide on a topic to talk about at a user group meeting

RhysW

free choice or a list of things to choose from?

jozefg

3:15 PM

Free choice @RhysW

I'm leaning towards a talk on functional lens or scrap your boilerplate

3 hours later…

gnat

6:33 PM

is this question a candidate for collaborative-answer lock? the way it is now, it appears fucked up beyond any recognition...

Q: What is the history of the use of "foo" and "bar" in source code examples?

Why do many code examples, especially tutorials, use the names "Foo" and "Bar" so often? It is almost a standard. For example: void foo(char* bar) { printf("%s", bar); }

let's see. 15 deleted answers

multiple repetitive references to the same page at wikipedia

2 or maybe 3 times repeated idea about f.u.b.a.r. (that's just in the answers visible to everyone; I did not check deleted ones)

even the high-brow "metasyntactic" is boringly chewed up in two different answers at least

RFC-3092 mentioned 2 or three times in answers that aren't deleted

amount of repetition in answers that are deleted are hard to describe without curse words. Yeah "metasyntactic" is there. And yeah RFC-3902 id there multiple times. And multiple FUBAR variations are all there

and "Jeffs answer" at codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000375.html is referred to many times. And jargon file references are hard to count

FOO BAR

crap repetitive answers make good history question look like a place where imbeciles meet to celebrate the day when no one reads what others wrote

what about we stop it at last, instead of deleting every crappy answer that tends to go in just because it has got 10K views? What about...

Q: New lock type for truly collaborative questions and answers

We have a new lock type that can be added to questions that are not strictly on topic or constructive but have, because they have been edited and expanded, become a valuable resource. The first question that it's been applied to is this one: What should every programmer know about web developme...