The Whiteboard

user41796

8:00 PM

It's expensive because you use it so damn much

user41796

:-)

user41796

One of them 'leccy cars might be a good fit for you. Tweak it right and you get ~50 - 60 mpg

psr

@enderland That explains the constant smile. Endorphins.

gnat

Software Recommendations is not your next NPR

2 days ago, 1 minute total – 6 messages, 1 user, 0 stars

Bookmarked 23 hours ago by gnat

enderland

@GlenH7 ugh. I'm hoping to move in the next few years and avoid that problem...

psr

8:05 PM

@gnat Yeah, but they do software recommendations, right?

gnat

@psr they do software recommendations right... or, as close to right as it is possible (@JimmyHoffa pointed to a few vulnerabilities when we recently discussed this)

user41796

@MichaelT - thanks. That's what it looked like.

enderland

hmmm looks like if I lived in the SW corner of my city it'd be closer to 22 miles biking

12 miles if I moved to a tiny town down there

user41796

@enderland I bet Ampt could help you design a plow for your bike so you could handle the inevitable snowfall.

enderland

lol

user55340

8:09 PM

gizmag.com/elio-motors-84-mpg-three-wheeler/27454

user55340

Put a plow on that.

user41796

@MichaelT easey-peasey. It's a reverse trike, so you've got that nice, big, broad front-end to work from. Might blow the 84mpg though

user55340

psr

@gnat Right. But they do understand that they are on the internet? So, say, if someone have a blog and links to them, they aren't going to ask them to take down the link because then people will just come by and annoy them with ill-considered questions (which, of course, they will). They do know it's set up for Google to index it?

user55340

@AshleyNunn here's one (or two) for you...

user55340

8:13 PM

►

user55340

►

psr

It's one thing if someone tries to migrate a question which has already been asked, and isn't good. But not telling people it exists seems... odd.

user41796

@psr I read it as "please don't suggest the site on crap questions."

user15026

@MichaelT Those are awesome. :D

user41796

Which is really no different than what we do over on SO and what TW does with the rest of SE (including here)

user41796

8:17 PM

I think they would happily accept a well researched SW rec question that would still be closed as off-topic on Progs.

Braiam

@gnat lets put it another way, SOFTWARE RECOMMENDATION IS NOT A DUMPING GROUND

@psr we do software recommendations, not software lists ;)

user41796

@Braiam Are you familiar with what gnat meant by NPR?

user55340

@Braiam Culturally, P.SE isn't likely to be your problem. We flag for migration and don't put it in comments to ask elsewhere - we have enough problems with SO doing that to us.

psr

@Braiam Hopefully that distinction will make sense to people.

enderland

@Braiam can you tell me what software sites I should go to to get a list plz

user55340

8:20 PM

Your biggest problems will likely be from SO putting comments of "try asking this on Software Rec instead"

enderland

;)

user55340

(which is one of our biggest problems too)

Braiam

@enderland Yahoo answers ;)

2

user55340

Why is why I kind of hope that Undo gets SO & SR mod status so that he can do ChrisF like things.

user41796

@Braiam - said another way, you have a lot more allies on this site than you realize.

user55340

8:21 PM

the "migrate, close, dup, merge" in one go.

user41796

NPR stands for "not programming related" which is what Programmers was originally called. We were the dumping ground for all sorts of subjective, crap questions from SO

user55340

"What should I name my kittens?"

user41796

Fortunately, we're not like that anymore. But we have had to invest a lot of effort to clean up all of that garbage

user55340

(seriously, thats a P.SE question from the old days)

user41796

So we don't want to see software recs be burdened with the garbage that we had to dig out from underneath.

enderland

8:22 PM

can confirm that P.SE doesn't (always :P) dumb questions on you, workplace get a lot of "should we send this?" requests

user41796

@MichaelT Too bad Pets.SE didn't exist then.

user41796

We should dig it up, undelete, and migrate just for @AshleyNunn.

user15026

@GlenH7 That...would be so....sweet of you.

user41796

@AshleyNunn No beer & whiskey cupcakes for me.... :-(

user15026

@GlenH7 Actions have consequences!

user55340

8:24 PM

@GlenH7 I'm looking for it, but I think it was mod deleted.

user41796

@AshleyNunn please don't chat ban me

user55340

And it would take an act of Oden to migrate it.

user15026

@MichaelT what why

user41796

@Braiam - so that's why I asked for specifics. When you see a bad referral to software rec from here, let us know. We'll add on to the comments and make sure the guilty parties know it wasn't an appropriate suggestion.

user55340

In trying to find it in the archives...

user55340

8:25 PM

Jan 27 '12 at 19:24, by Rachel

And you know I just had to see if kittens.stackexchange.com was a real site ^_^

gnat

@psr sure. I am slightly optimistic about them only because they seem to set up rules allowing regular site users (not just diamond mods) to identify, close and delete "strongly poisonous" questions and answers. Another half of the puzzle is to build the community capable and willing to enforce these rules; let's wait and see how it will go

MetaFight

My latest question is too long isn't it?

user41796

@MichaelT interesting read

user41796

@MetaFight Scrum & volunteer one? Possibly

user55340

@MetaFight Nope

user55340

8:29 PM

Btw, did you see the kanban answer'er's credentials?

user55340

1

A: Feedback on a Kanban Board for Solution Architectects

Wow! That took some time to fully digest and understand. Congratulations on deciding to adopt Kanban for your Agile initiative. Really nice analysis and modeling so far. Thanks for sharing it here and allowing us to help and contribute to that initiative! I have some thoughts and suggestions...

MetaFight

Possibly and Nope are good enough for me for now. I'll consider condensing it up when I can put it up for a bounty.

gnat

crappy question => crappy answers, not surprising

this does not answer the question; instead it just vomits a bunch of spammy links at the reader — gnat 43 secs ago

psr

@gnat They really need to work on the help center. They just have the generic SE help center at present.

user55340

@GlenH7 want to grab my comment into your answer there?

user55340

8:35 PM

data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/151567/… - your ID is 115641. This is not realtime. — MichaelT 1 min ago

user55340

user41796

@MichaelT stolen

user15026

@MichaelT What even, why would you....

user41796

@MichaelT nice find

user55340

Mar 27 '13 at 20:10, by Yannis Rizos

@JimG. The problem with NPR wasn't really questions like that. Yes, it's NC and should stay closed, but the real problem was that the more relaxed culture meant people were feeling comfortable enough to post crap like this:

user55340

8:38 PM

Just had to dig up... its from the next bit with Yannis explaining NPR days.

user41796

Dang. He didn't give a 10k link

user15026

My brain hurts now

user55340

@GlenH7 Nope, you'd have to bug a mod to dig that one up.

user41796

@AshleyNunn We could dig it up if you think it should be migrated to Pets....

user15026

@GlenH7 Noooope. Don't want it. You can't make me. :P

user55340

8:39 PM

Oct 31 '13 at 19:41, by Yannis Rizos

10K+ link of the day: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/46835/what-should-i-name-my-cat

user41796

@AshleyNunn Just trying to be helpful, that's all

user41796

> Schrödinger

user15026

@GlenH7 You have an interesting idea of help.

user41796

^^^ got 13 up votes?!?

user55340

Or trust in my search super powers.

user41796

8:40 PM

@MichaelT once again, I bow before your google-fu

user55340

Not google that time - was searching for 10k when said by Yannis.

gnat

oh my that vomiting answerer is something special

The Crazy Programmer, India

1 1

user55340

He likes to do those '10k links of the day'

user55340

-2

A: How do programs like JAVA and C++ store variables in a database , does it still use MySQL like in PHP?

I don't have any idea about C++ because i have never used database in it but yes you can use mysql for database in java.

user55340

o_O

user55340

8:42 PM

I want 443 more rep.

user55340

Here's another 10k link for people to enjoy from the NPR days programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/29326/…

user41796

@gnat On his way to getting banned

Brant

sigh

okay, STOMP feels way too enterprisey

user55340

Brant

it's a protocol backed by a protocol backed by a broker backed by a service

user41796

8:44 PM

Yay, my meta answer is attracting unicorn poo

Brant

I JUST WANT TO MOVE SOME JSON AROUND

user15026

@MichaelT oy.

user55340

@AshleyNunn The NPR days are things we are still trying to clean up from.

user41796

They are fortunately harder to find

user55340

Well, we also get the "absurdly broad honeypots" that people find with google.

user55340

8:46 PM

I'm still sad that I don't have access to the anon-vote feedback anymore easily.

user55340

You look at the last 5 days in that report and you'd see an indication of what people were searching for.

user55340

Sometimes they were bad questions that needed to be closed. Sometimes they were questions that needed to be edited so that the SEO matched what they were asking. Sometimes they were good questions that deserved an up vote or so.

MetaFight

thecrazyprogrammer.com/2014/02/…

user41796

@MichaelT They pulled that out of tools?

user55340

@GlenH7 Yep. The pivot SQL for it on SO was causing some significant lag at times when people went digging.

user41796

8:50 PM

@MichaelT If SO suffers then we all suffer I guess

user55340

11

A: Post Feedback link is broken

The way this is architected absolutely does not scale. It's also not something we want to put resources into fixing given opportunity cost and what it would take to refactor. We will be removing the link in the next build and removing the page and code later in the week. I'm sorry that answer ...

user41796

@MetaFight how .... enlightening

user55340

Removing it from SO only or all sites? — 3ventic Dec 3 '13 at 21:18

user55340

@3ventic likely all sites, it's a fairly significant database pain point (seriously, pivot tables) that has grown large enough to be an issue now. — Nick Craver Dec 3 '13 at 22:37

user55340

Are you taking away all the anonymous and low rep feedback (which is a good source of indication that random people from google are or are not finding what they are looking for when they hit a given question)? or just this interface to it (and redesigning said interface at some point in the not-determined future... like just showing it on the questions and answers themselves)? — MichaelT Dec 3 '13 at 23:31

user55340

8:52 PM

So yea... it sucks. Though the info is in the database... (you'll note on the hot question feedback shog gave 'anon votes' - thats those.

user55340

Just have to poke Data.SE the right way to get the data.

user55340

@GlenH7 data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/…

user41796

> 6096 rows returned in <1 ms

user41796

How can that be a performance issue? :-P

user55340

Because I'm not doing crazy pivots in there.

user41796

9:00 PM

Trying to figure out who gets my 3rd vote for SO mod

user41796

@MichaelT leaning that way too

user55340

Enhanced query: data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/169976/…

user55340

There's still another round of enhancement on that though.

user55340

Maybe...

gnat

9:22 PM

@GlenH7 first two were easy, weren't they? This year elections aren't as competitive as '2013; back then I've been breaking my mind over like 5-6 extremely solid candidates to pick from, and at this very moment ChrisF stepped in and immediately occupied 1st choice, making it only harder to pick remaining ones :)

user55340

9:36 PM

The neat bit with that feedback query is you can get a glimpse of what it was like years ago.

user55340

Which questions were getting hit from google.

user55340

@gnat thanks for digging up those coding standards... I humbly submit that my search-fu of java standards is not as good as yours.

gnat

@MichaelT I kind of remembered them by heart after one of the past projects that was a bit paranoid about following these (was rare case when it translated into profit more or less directly)

user55340

@gnat I use 'em... and remembered they where in a doc somewhere (for me it was Eclipse default -> Oh, this is documented as a standard? Ok using that.).

gnat

9:56 PM

@MichaelT IIRC, IDEA has 'em "embedded" in inspections as well. With the only deviation that line length limit is 120 not 80

user55340

@gnat Yep. They're also a check style 'warning' and I think that some CI games or such have a "removed a TODO comment"

gnat

@MichaelT todo isn't in Sun standard, but IDEA supports these comments in a fairly convenient way

user55340

Btw, 10k'ers, there's a number of flags and delete votes to pile on to today.

Brant

relevant:

in The Bridge, 54 mins ago, by Jeffrey Lin

Suicide Linux wipes your drive everytime you type a command wrong

Jimmy Hoffa

10:11 PM

0

Q: C# Internal Class - what is most common convention for applying access modifiers to members?

Suppose I have this Internal Class in C#: internal static class DataProxy { internal static Data GetData() {..} public static Data GetData2() {..} } It doesn't make a difference if I use internal or public, right? I always use public mostly because of consistency, but browsing throu...

c#

user41796

@MichaelT - take a look at the suggested edit review queue. :-(

user41796

@BobCross - sorry, but I had to reject the recent edit of yours

user41796

The question can't be salvaged; it's just too broad for the site

user41796

The OP did ask here in chat yesterday (or the day before) and had a pretty good give-and-take discussion. Ultimately, he got the answer he was looking for.

user41796

Please note that "got the answer he was looking for" doesn't imply that there was an appropriate answer that would meet guidelines for the main site.

gnat

10:23 PM

@GlenH7 I somehow like the idea of linking closed / close-worthy questions to each other

user55340

Relevant chat bookmark: on "engineering" and teaching pointers — MichaelT yesterday

user55340

He keeps trying to make that a reopened question. programmers.stackexchange.com/users/10696/…

user41796

@MichaelT Bob is in the chat room at the moment

Jimmy Hoffa

Stupid question. Q:"What's your opinion? Mine is X." A:"Yeah, that's mine too!" accepted

user55340

Ahh, well... so he is. 'ello @BobCross

Bob Cross

10:25 PM

@MichaelT Yes, because I think it's a valid question and a strong Google target. If you don't want it, I guess that's up to you.

user55340

Did you look at the chat bookmark?

user55340

On "engineering" and teaching pointers.

2 days ago, 1 hour 5 minutes total – 219 messages, 10 users, 7 stars

Bookmarked yesterday by MichaelT

user41796

@BobCross It's not just @MichaelT's decision; it's a community decision.

2

user41796

And the edits you're proposing are pretty radical.

user41796

It wasn't a bad question to start with, just one that isn't constructive for the site

user41796

10:27 PM

Every now and then we get really good questions that just aren't constructive for the site. Doesn't mean anything against the question except that it's not a good fit

Jimmy Hoffa

@JimmyHoffa: I suppose that makes sense to some degree, but again, it's ultimately a matter of intent as far as I'm concerned. However, an answer containing your view could receive votes and surpass mine, which would indicate that it is the more recognized approach. Without your answer this question is incomplete, as the correct answer is the one of our two which receives the most votes. — Magus 5 mins ago

@Magus this isn't a popularity contest website, this is supposed to have authoritatively correct information like Wikipedia, that's why so many questions are closed and deleted - this is a better fit for Reddit or Yahoo Answers. I'm not going to write my answer up just so I can vie for popular vote on my opinion, opinions aren't inherently right or wrong. — Jimmy Hoffa 1 min ago

user55340

The design of Stack Exchange emphasizes questions that are problems that can be solved rather than polling for people's opinions or where there is no way to say which answer is the right one because they're all kind of right.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa are you suggesting a recurring theme? :-)

Bob Cross

@MichaelT Yes, and I was trying to redirect the text to reflect the intent. Have you ever tried to teach pointers without using the word "array" or "string"? It's hard. Non-CS majors and the equivalent don't even have the vocabulary.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 No, just griping; wasn't even paying attention to the current conversation.

Bob Cross

10:29 PM

The concepts are tricky

Jimmy Hoffa

Also asking for CV help on that Q

user55340

@BobCross If you look through the commentary we had the other day, we did acknowledge that problem and realized there is a way of teaching arrays first (statically sized) then moving to pointers from that.

user55340

And doing so completely avoiding the * notation for a bit.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa on it's way

Bob Cross

And that's great for that one teacher. The problem is that you've hidden that discussion inside your chat. Google can't see it.

user41796

10:31 PM

@BobCross but the conversation (and question) only worked for that one teacher

2

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Make sure it deserves the CV first. I can see people being on the fence, but the way it's played out cements it for me. Either way I presume nobody here shares CVs without first agreeing it makes sense

user41796

a different teacher will have a different class and a different style

user41796

So the answer will be different

user55340

The problem is it is great for that one teacher. Another teacher with a different ciriculum won't find the answer useful because its not the right answer for that class.

user41796

@JimmyHoffa it's just inviting opinions, ergo CV as primarily opinion based

user55340

10:32 PM

Stack Exchange is very poorly set up for having a question where there are a dozen answers with different approaches to the same problem. Quara is better for that.

Jimmy Hoffa

@GlenH7 Aye, I answered it explaining internal at first not understanding it was just looking for opinion...

user55340

Or slant.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT I think Reddit is the best for that

user41796

@BobCross - for example, what if I wrote an answer that provided a hands on way of understanding what registers were and how pointers get created?

Bob Cross

@GlenH7 Except that I had this same problem. Programming for non-CS majors is a common class. There are best answers because you can measure their effectiveness with the students.

Jimmy Hoffa

10:33 PM

There's lots of smart people on /r/Programming, there's an equal number of assholes but that's what you get with unmoderated internet communities

user41796

It's an excellent answer, and uses a different learning mechanism (tactile vs. visual)

user41796

how do you pick your answer over my answer?

Christoph

@GlenH7 Thanks for your reply earlier, I logged out before you posted it.

Bob Cross

The understanding is testable. Can you write proper pointer-based programs in C at the end of the class.

user41796

@Christoph NP, hope it helped

Bob Cross

10:33 PM

But, as I said, if you don't want it, that's up to you.

user41796

@Christoph Sometimes you have to wait a bit before the right answer will roll in.

user41796

@BobCross Just because the question is closed doesn't mean it will be deleted off. Your answer has 5 (deserved) up votes, so it's unlikely to be deleted.

user55340

Stack exchange works with a particular type of question... and unfortunately, that isn't a question that it works well with.

gnat

@BobCross "Google can't see it." -- this is intentional. If Google could see it, and advertize to their audience, site would be flooded with the questions about how to teach programming

user55340

But thats also why chat is here.

Christoph

10:35 PM

@GlenH7 Yes, in that respect programmers is a lot different to tex.sx or stack overflow

user41796

@BobCross and also keep in mind that closing / reopening as well as whether or not a question should be deleted are community decisions. The mods do have binding votes but they tread lightly in cases where it isn't clear cut.

user41796

@Christoph Patience can be required, especially for question a ring or two out on the popularity continuum.

gnat

moderators are merely sock puppets in the hands of experienced flaggers :) — gnat 5 hours ago

comment upvoted twice, likely by mods tired of handling flags

Bob Cross

@GlenH7 You keep trying to convince me. I've already said, if you don't want the question, it's up to you. I've edited the question a couple of times to fit with the standards for "answerable", etc. You don't like the edits or the question. I get it.

user41796

@BobCross - another indicator that the question isn't a good fit is the comment thread on the main post itself. Long comment threads generally align with questions that don't fit well.

user41796

10:40 PM

@BobCross Part of the problem with the edits is that they are too radical on a question not deserving of radical change.

user41796

If the OP made those edits, that would be one thing. But your edit changes too much and invalidates some of what the OP was going after. The context was important. And I'm not certain that your edits make the question any more answerable.

Bob Cross

@GlenH7 Again, I get it. You don't like the edits.

user41796

If you'd like, we can post the edits as a question on meta and ask for feedback.

user41796

I'm very willing to accept the community's decision if it comes back and says "those edits are perfectly fine."

user55340

The core of the question is a poll - thats not your fault, its just how the question is framed originally. To 'fix' the question it would be necessary to rework it from its very foundations rather than just changing the siding on it.

user55340

10:44 PM

Without putting words in the OP's text to pose a problem, this becomes very difficult to do.

user41796

And for that matter, if the OP agrees to the edits, then I'll happily approve them.

user55340

One of the biggest problems with this question was that to get to what needed to be done, it required a dense back and forth between him and us (in chat).

user55340

The clarification of the question and possible approaches to it wasn't something that could be "here is my problem" -> "here is the answer" worked well with.

user55340

From the "boxes" approach to a "bait and switch arrays" - these are both equally valid ways to solve the problem. I'm sure there are others too.

user55340

And that's where the problem with the question lies - you can't pick one answer being better than the other except by opinion and preference.

user41796

10:47 PM

@BobCross - I just looked up Dr.Elch in chat and it doesn't appear that he's a regular. You would need to super-ping him for him to be aware of this discussion.

user55340

@GlenH7 Bookmark and comment?

user41796

this is a link to the edit review that you put in.

user55340

And even though he's not here regularly, I think that notifications work for a week or so.

user41796

@MichaelT yes, I think you're right. Although the handle doesn't come up in my suggestions when I tried to @

Braiam

is the CDN slow for everyone?

user55340

10:48 PM

@GlenH7 That's a logged in / out thing.

user41796

And per the profile, Dr.Elch is in New Zealand. So it's just about daytime there I think.

user55340

Early early morning. Note MattD's activity to get an idea.

user55340

chat.stackexchange.com/users/81067/matt-d

user55340

The blue line is now... but its also now Saturday morning.

user41796

10:52 PM

@MichaelT good point as they might be accessing from work / the university

user55340

Well, I'm gonna idle a bit as I get the snow-boulders out of my driveway before the sun goes down.

user41796

have fun!

user55340

(I blame @Ampt)

user41796

I think we all do

psr

I wonder what would happen if during the ask a question process stack exchange displayed the % of question in a tag that get closed? If it changed behavior would it make people think carefully about whether their "career advice" question is valid or would it make people tag career advice questions "haskell"?

2

user41796

10:57 PM

@psr that's an interesting thought experiment

Christoph

@psr I think they would just remove the tag so they don't have to see that sad number

psr

@GlenH7 It could be an interesting actual experiment as well. It's probably pretty feasible.

Maybe displaying it at all would get people to think "hmm, a lot of questions get closed. I wonder why?"

Christoph

Masses don't "wonder why"

psr

@Christoph Yeah. Probably anything you do has relatively small effect.

Christoph

@psr Actually I like the idea of displaying the percentage of closed questions per tag - my first reaction was a bit pessimistic, I think

What now comes to mind is the interplay between suggested existing questions and percentage of closed ones: "See how 86% of the others were rejected"

psr

11:05 PM

I think most people have a mental model of invalid answers. But invalid questions is just strange.

@Christoph That's the idea, yes.

I suppose it really should include deleted in the denominator too.

Christoph

Seems rude at first but is in line with the overall sx philosophy imho

user55340

Wet snow became hard wet snow.

Christoph

@MichaelT flat or bumpy (i.e. useless)?

psr

@Christoph I thought that too. But I imagine it's experienced as much ruder when your won question is closed. Especially if you don't even really understand that as a potential outcome.

user55340

The boulders that the plow pushed in front of my driveway were not things that a shovel could split anymore.

user55340

11:09 PM

Had to pick 'em up and heave ho 'em.

user55340

(and searching for that Data.SE query about 'most dangerous tags')

Christoph

@psr In fact being told that I don't even know what I want is a valuable thing. People should appreciate that

user55340

Data.se appears to be in an unhappy state at the moment.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT how's the snow coming out your way?

user55340

But there is a query there that someone wrote that shows which tags have the highest % close rate.

user55340

11:14 PM

@JimmyHoffa I'm good now, last night a fair bit. The office was work form home today - road and parking lot were rather treacherous.

psr

@Christoph Sometimes it's valuable. Personally, most questions that I can't just Google don't fit the SE format. But I'd be reasonably happy to take a poll. Or hope to get some lucky nugget of an idea. My question is likely to be something such that if I knew what I wanted I would no longer need to ask it. So I actually don't find SE to be all that helpful to me.

user55340

HR wanted people to email if they weren't going to be in the office - so they knew if you were planning and didn't show up they'd start worrying.

user55340

@psr On the other hand, when you do have a question that you know is a good SE question, you know how to phrase it so that when you search for it you do find the answer?

user55340

whoo! Got 37 MSO rep today! for a palindromic rep of 3993!

psr

@MichaelT If you mean can I Google it, then, yes. And it's not uncommon for my search string to include Site:StackExchange.Com or Site:StackOverflow.Com. Which I do understand is the point.

Basically, SE is doing a great job on being a resource for the easier questions by refusing to engage the harder ones.

Considering prior to SO nobody did a very good job on the "easier" questions, that's still quite good.

user55340

11:21 PM

Its very hard to do hard questions well.

user55340

And its hard to do easy questions well.

psr

I know. If I had a better idea how to do it I would certainly be sharing it.

Christoph

@psr I'm a hobbyist, so the questions I consider "complex" are fine for SX. Plus: things don't get lost in flame wars

psr

Right now, basically nothing is doing hard questions even sort of adequately. I think SE could do that, but almost certainly it would harm what it currently excels at.

(And what SE is good/bad at doesn't really exactly map to easy/hard, other things like objective/subjective matter, so it can do certain kinds of questions that are quite hard in a particular way).

user55340

Thinking back to my tech support days, the difficulty with hard questions was that they required that dense communication between support and the customer.

user55340

11:26 PM

Similar issues show up here too - the dense communication to get the full picture of the problem.

user55340

Simple problems can be described simply - thats a rectangle, to make it into a square set all the sides to the same length.

Christoph

And sometimes that dense communication reveals a simple core

user55340

But hard problems become difficult to identify and describe "does it have 12 sides that are all convex? or any of them concave?"

user55340

The other bit is that it takes a fair bit of time to solve a hard problem. Simple problems - I can spot and identify how to fix an array out of bounds quickly...

psr

@MichaelT Yes. So it's sort of too localized. Though there is value in seeing real-world hard problems solved even when they don't match yours that well, you still probably can't use Google to find things with much relevance.

user55340

11:28 PM

but if you've got a multi-threaded application thats getting deadlocks, this requires much more time... likely more time than I'm willing to offer up for free.

user55340

At times I wonder if SE should fork off an 'SElance" site where you can offer money to people to solve your deep problems.

user55340

This question would be better on Unix & Linux. Or maybe Pets. :-) — Blrfl 4 mins ago

psr

@MichaelT You would think. But nerd sniping is a mighty force. I don't think you're wrong - but people already spend way more time than really makes sense.

user55340

Should certainly migrate that to Pets.SE, right @AshleyNunn?

user55340

@psr "Bounty: $50"

user55340

11:32 PM

That would certainly attract some people vying for answering it.

user15026

@MichaelT nnnnooooooooope.

user15026

PETS IS NOT YOUR TOILET BOWL

user15026

:P

psr

@MichaelT You have the SO investor's attention.

user55340

Oh... I know... I'll cross post about the history of biff on Pets.SE and unix.SE?

user55340

11:33 PM

@AshleyNunn You mean 'litter box'

user55340

or newspaper.

user15026

@MichaelT snorts Indeed :D

psr

@AshleyNunn Though if my keyboard is my pet's toilet bowl I have a valid question?

user55340

@AshleyNunn on biff - unixhistory.livejournal.com/2390.html

user15026

@psr ....you might.

user55340

11:35 PM

> Was the dog belonging to Heidi Stettner, a graduate student in Evans Hall at Berkeley
Would often accompany Heidi to her classes and her office
Was very friendly and would enjoy fetching balls the students would throw down the corridors
Had his picture on the bulletin board with the graduate students, with the accompanying legend indicating he was working on his Ph.Dog.
Was the nomenclature origin of the asynchronous mail notification package biff(1) appearing in 4.0BSD, written by John Federero, another grad student at Berkeley. John, along with Bill Joy, spent much time coming up with a…

user15026

That's oddly fascinating.

user55340

Tangent (in my head). When I was in Japan, stayed at a bead/breakfast/monastery at one point. The Buddhist monastery had two dogs on a chain that was tied to each other. One, a rather old, friendly, sedate golden retriever. The other was a small yipping dog.

user55340

You could find dog prints in the rock garden.

user55340

Also saw the small yipper want to run in one way and the golden decided 'nope, I'm going over there' and the yipper suddenly realizing that he wasn't going in the direction he thought he was.

psr

@MichaelT A 10% SE cut of every bounty could potentially eventually meet their payroll.

user55340

11:38 PM

@psr Absolutely. Even a smaller cut could do it.

user55340

Random trivia...

user55340

>
The first two bytes of every VAX Unix program were zero (a register save mask saying not to save anything). As a result, a null all-zero pointer was always valid, and if a C program used a null value as a string pointer, the zero byte at location zero was treated as a null string. As a result, a generation of Unix programs in the 1980s contained hard-to-find bugs involving null pointers, and for many years, Unix ports to other architectures provided a zero byte at location zero because it was easier than finding and fixing all the null pointer bugs.

user55340

Think of the bugs that that created.

vzn

47 mins ago, by psr

I wonder what would happen if during the ask a question process stack exchange displayed the % of question in a tag that get closed? If it changed behavior would it make people think carefully about whether their "career advice" question is valid or would it make people tag career advice questions "haskell"?

hi all interested in the close dynamics of se also (& also stuff like deleted questions/comments etc).. would like to see those statistics reported possibly broken down by mods, eg as a way of looking at/balancing mod actions. maybe a good MSO question?

22 mins ago, by psr

Right now, basically nothing is doing hard questions even sort of adequately. I think SE could do that, but almost certainly it would harm what it currently excels at.

MO and tcs.se tend to have consistently hard questions but in many ways the interface is awkward....

41 mins ago, by psr

I think most people have a mental model of invalid answers. But invalid questions is just strange.

yeah!

user55340

@vzn The deleted info, you need to ping Shog for... he'll give the info if properly asked / formed.

vzn

11:54 PM

is it available in the dataexplorer? suspect that some data on deleted questions disappears there.. not sure

like closed questions that get deleted...

also maybe of interest to some here

user55340

You can find things referencing it. Like reviews and anon feedback... but its hard to get info on how much isn't there and what types of things it was.

vzn

joy of code 2013, news, lots of links etc

bookmark it if you can

user55340

You can find that there are N posts between 1000 and 2000 that are gone. But you can't find out when those posts were removed, or if they were answers or questions.

vzn

my main interest is stats that help regulate mods.... crosscutting idea.... the whole se framework tends not to have that concept much....

user55340

As a 10k user, watching the 'recently deleted' I can see when mods delete things...

vzn

11:56 PM

yeah.

user55340

or looking at the 'recently closed'

vzn

think that should be openly available info. & could help users understand mod actions

user55340

Here at least, I haven't seen anything that I'd argue with for closure or deletion.

vzn

thinking of some kind of feature request

the mods always say they never question each other, it happens everywhere.

the stats would not be to beat up mods, but just to have some perspective

user55340

We've got it... Thomas wondered about a proposed migration Yannis did. Yannis called Oded out on a close (that he reopened because of a complaint, and then we (5 community) then reclosed)

user55340

11:58 PM

That all happened in this room here.

user55340

I've even called WorldEngineer out about a review he did for new users.

vzn

there is always going to be some disagreement. am interested in making it more visible so maybe there can be improved mechanisms.

se seems to have an attitude that "mods are never wrong".... sigh... reminds me of "customer is never wrong" except backwards =(

Software Recommendations is not your next NPR

On "engineering" and teaching pointers.

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