I've been pondering these proposed changes to the site's name and scope for the past few weeks. This was, you'll recall, instigated by Ana's response to Rachel's proposal for a new name for this site..
Why are we changing anything again?
The purpose of that name-change request was explicitly t...
it says: File "Test.py", line 4, in <module> connection = pika.BlockingConnection(pika.ConnectionParameters(host='localhost')) File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pika/adapters/blocking_connection.py", line 339, in __init__ self._process_io_for_connection_setup() File "/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.5/lib/python3.5/site-packages/pika/adapters/blocking_connection.py", line 374, in _process_io_for_connection_setup self._open_error_result.is_ready)
the code is only single line
import pika
if __name__ == '__main__':
connection =pika.BlockingConnection(pika.ConnectionParameters(host='localhost'))
Today - thanks to our amazing community beta testers - we're shipping our [biggest expansion to Stack Overflow][1] since it first launched: Documentation.
I am trying to use rabbitmq in python.
My code is:
import pika
if __name__ == '__main__':
connection = pika.BlockingConnection(pika.ConnectionParameters(host='localhost'))
I am running this file using:
python3 test.py
Error Signature:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Test.py...
a specific programming problem, or a software algorithm, or software tools commonly used by programmers; and is a practical, answerable problem that is unique to software development
I don't know why we're arguing about the On-Topic page anyway. It's mod-editable; we can put whatever we want in there. And nobody reads that page anyway.
@RobertHarvey I don't know either. SE has nothing to do with the /help/on-topic page. Just change the name and add an interstitial. We can handle the rest.
Description: Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for practitioners, researchers and students of software engineering to ask questions directly related to the Systems Engineering Life Cycle, but not code troubleshooting. — Robert Harvey4 mins ago
I've been pondering these proposed changes to the site's name and scope for the past few weeks. This was, you'll recall, instigated by Ana's response to Rachel's proposal for a new name for this site..
Why are we changing anything again?
The purpose of that name-change request was explicitly t...
@Ana: Then here they are: * Software, * Development, * Life, * Cycle. I'm still a bit mystified why it has to be four. It's not like the software can't handle the load (we have seven there right now). For those who don't understand what that term means, they can read this and look at this picture. — Robert Harvey5 mins ago
Hi, @Ana. Sorry if I'm coming off as stubborn, but we're not understanding what you're looking for or why our significantly reduced scope definitions aren't good enough.
There are two pages I'm looking at: /tour and /help/on-topic. Both of these are mod editable and we've done (as far as I can tell) a great job of reducing complexity and confusion on these pages. Our /help/on-topic is going to be much, much shorter now. Our /tour is also going to be a tad shorter.
@ThomasOwens Gnat's "Homework cheaters" post came up again. I sort of dismissed it, but he does have a point: we need a quick deletion policy for certain categories of questions.
Apologies, things are a little hectic around these parts today. :)
@ThomasOwens No sweat. I really, deeply respect how much you care about this.
You have done an excellent job of reducing complexity. I'm pushing so hard for four or fewer bullets in order to increase the chances that people will actually read it.
Like I alluded to in comments, having a shorter list of more focused bullets frontloads something important; it throws terminology that one will or won't understand directly into a new user's face. It's taking the burden of clarity upon ourselves so that when someone still gets it wrong (because someone always will), it's easier to tell them how they're getting in wrong.
Easier to communicate and take action, which is fewer headaches and less gnashing of teeth for you.
@RobertHarvey Right...which means a short enough list that someone will glance at it and have at least a fighting chance of thinking to themselves "This looks straightforward enough, if I dedicate a moment to consuming this little cluster of text, I bet I'll know what they're getting at."
Do we really need approval of the Tour Page content to get the name change?
The subject matter description is "Questions directly related to the Systems Engineering Life Cycle, but not code troubleshooting." That's something that everyone can agree on, and it's all the new person really needs to know.
@RobertHarvey "...in order to help whichever rando shows up from elsewhere on the 'net to filter themself out for whether or not they engaging in the kinda thinking we want from them." Yeah.
I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you just said.
This isn't some sort of in-club. All we really want is a little clarity on the scope, and some guidance to new users to help them avoid some of the land mines.
I was attempting to confirm, that yes, we are straying away from a well-known, well-understood taxonomy in an effort to get more of the behavior we want from people.
@Ana Readers. Let's say I'm a software methods guy and I see a site called Software Engineering. I visit the homepage and I don't see any methods questions. I hit up /tour and I don't see anything about processes and methods. I think "Oh, this isn't a site for me." That's the wrong impression.
To a professor or academic in software engineering, we managed to come up with 6 bullet points that fully encompass the 15 or so bullet points on that Wikipedia page.
Well, like I said before, I'm really holding out for only two things: 1. "We don't answer code troubleshooting questions" in a place where it's the first thing a new user is likely to see, and
@RobertHarvey We'd like for that to be clear. We attempt to frame it that way via the actions and visual cues. It's a huge toss up, though. Try as we might, we can't make users get the actual idea we intend, we can only try our best to make it clear.
> Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for people participating in, researching, and learning about the Software Development Lifecycle who care about delivering and maintaining software responsibly. We don't address code writing or debugging questions here.
Something like that needs to be the very first paragraph of /tour and /help/on-topic.
Ideally "software development lifecycle" would link to the appropriate Wikipedia article, too.
@Ana Then, further down on the /tour page, and on the /help/on-topic page, there are a list of things that you can ask about. We want 6 things there. I don't think many people will read them, but we managed to get our scope defined in 6 bullet points. Let's put them all in both places so people can see what we're about, for those who do happen to read before typing in the box.
Honestly, I think a name change will help with 85% of the problems. The lists of things on topic about 5%. That's a 90% reduction in problems and low quality posts. If you guys can give us an interstitial, that should take care of at least 5% more.
@Ana We already have that capability now. The goal is to catch some people before they ask their off-topic question. Removing clearly off-topic questions is onerous; it requires five close voters and three delete voters over a period of several hours to days.
I've been tasked with improving the software development process through the implementation of process improvements, of which we will most likely be using CMMI for Development, Version 1.3 as a guideline and adopting the best practices in whole or in part. What is the best way to introduce standa...
We elicit requirements from our product stakeholders by creating and refining user stories in monthly sprint planning meetings. This includes defining use cases, acceptance criteria, and identifying constraints, and the final result is a sprint backlog of user stories. The high-level customer r...
There are two examples. When you hit the homepage, you don't see many metrics, process, or requirements questions. I want to be clear that these are welcome.
@ThomasOwens Those are a few examples of those kinds of questions (metrics, requirements, methodologies) which are on those topics and look to me like they're written in a way which is a good fit for this site's intended direction.
The problem is, good questions like that don't appear on the homepage often. So it's hard to highlight that this is a good, on-topic question that we like in our community.
So we'd like to highlight requirement questions and methodology question in /tour and /help/on-topic. But you're asking for 4 bullet points and those are the two that went away.
It really jumps out at me that of all the ~40K questions on this site, only 121 have the [standards] tag, and 60 have the [metrics] tag.
If they're such a small footprint on the site as is, why squander new users limited attention on those? (Nevermind that more words === less reading as a general principle.)
@RobertHarvey but you can't seem to get anyone to fall in line with what's on topic here historically as is. Now you're saying that the problem is that folks comply too closely and cautiously with what's on topic?
The problem is the same as it ever was. Professionals who would otherwise ask their questions here are turned off by the bad questions that flood the site, and leave.
That's the fundamental principle on which Stack Overflow was created.
So any changes to the site have to address the fundamental problem, which is "how can we educate users better about the kinds of questions that are acceptable here, in a way that they are likely to see?"
I think the name change will help the most. It should help to eliminate two types of problems. The first is the low quality asker who sees the name and dumps their programming question here because "this site is for programmers". The second is the professional who isn't a programmer and doesn't see their type of question on the homepage so they leave. The first person will (hopefully) not dump their garbage. The second will hopefully see the name and stick around.
"We don't do code troubleshooting here" would help immensely. But it has to be in a place where the new user is likely to see it. I'd be quite happy if it were on the "Ask a Question" page for everyone below the protected questions threshold.
See, there's lots of ways to skin this cat. n number of bullets in a place where a new user is not likely to see that "hey, this is important" is very likely not the most optimal way.
@RobertHarvey As of a slightly earlier point in this conversation, I said that placing "We don't do code troubleshooting here." more prominently is something we're open to.
At this point, I think that the name change and hopefully an interstitial will fix the first problem of people dumping garbage on our site because "it's a site for programmers". However, I'm on to the second point of trying to help experts understand our full scope and having that very clearly somewhere that can be presented.
@ThomasOwens I'm sorry, the interstitial isn't in the cards. We gotta make use of the tools we already have at our disposal and again the struggle is to get people to read things. We're not down to throw more stuff at them to read in the form of a whole new page.
So, @Ana, I'd really like to see us move forward as soon as possible with a name change (and deploying the updates to /tour and /help/on-topic). What, exactly, do we need to finish up? I think we've worked hard as a community and we'd like to see some changes that help us better identify who we are and what we do.
...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud an approach like that...
I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.
But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.
I tend to give a few hours, a day tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...
...because...
2) the the on-topic list contained in Shog's proposal with the addition of "We don't do code troubleshooting here" more prominently featured at the top.
I am not comfortable that dev processes and methodologies are out of the short list. I certainly can live with that, I simply won't vote close and will vote reopen these topics. But still I would be happier having them stated explicitly. And no I ain't going to go to PM.SE for stuff like that, I am developer not a manager
@ThomasOwens Well, we've been saying this has to be kept at four bullet points from Day 1, because we've got to move a lot of mountains to do this, and if we're going to do so, we want to be giving you all the best shot at this site being a place you can be happy about, and we really believe this is the best way to do it.
Not sure what else you're potentially saying is not comprehensive enough.
@Ana Why are the number of bullet points in the Tour tied to the name change anyway? Those are mod-editable, so I assume the community has at least some input on what that page is supposed to look like. The name change is the only thing we can't do ourselves.
@AaronHall He's apparently never been a contractor.
The first, and biggest step, toward that, is a name that reflect who we are and what we do. I believe everyone here (even those of us that don't agree on things) thinks that Software Engineering is a name that captures the essence of our site and community.
Because it's not about the fine grained detail, it's about us seeing y'all attempt to repeat a number of the mistakes that have been made in the past, and if we're going to put in the non-trivial amount of social and technical work to make this change, we want it to help you get out of old, stuck patterns.
@Ana The only work that is required of SE is the name change and the artwork, and that is something that everyone on Programmers universally agrees upon.
Well, maybe not the artwork. But we're not going to quibble about that.
@Ana If we're making mistakes, please, do tell us. But you're trying to convince us that we shouldn't have 6 bullet points in our tour yet not giving us a good reason why we shouldn't. Please, begin the process of changing the name (and artwork, if you want/need to).
We want to learn from mistakes, but most of us here are engineers. Please show us the evidence that what we're doing is making a mistake. Because we can't see it.
I'm talking about the experience y'all know too well of receiving a flood of low quality, unwanted questions, and trying to address that problem by throwing more text, more jargon at those users, and being miserable, discouraged, and frustrated when it doesn't work.
This is why me and the other CMs have pushed for succinctness in the process.
> We don't answer survey questions, make lists of things, or engage in extended discussion here. We don't predict the future, find things on the Internet, provide customer support, or make product recommendations of any kind here. We don't know what project you should do next, what class you should take next, or what job you should apply for. We don't give legal advice.
If they read and heed just that, I'm willing to entertain almost any other question on the site that has something even remotely to do with the process of developing software, so long as it's not a "fix my broken code" question.
I'm a little disappointed, because I really hoped Shog's post earlier might help us get past the details, and give us the chance instead to get on the same page about what we're really doing here, why we care so damn much, what it is we're doing this for.
Seems we're still talking past each other on that and until we get there, we will continue to debate tiny details while fundamentally talking past each other.
I'm happy to speak more tomorrow. I'm going to go see how the rest of my team is doing in the wake of SO Docs.
I suggest you save your questions for when you're in front of your actual computer. You can't even verify people's answers if you're not in front of the actual machine you're programming on.
Well, Hindi, it might be worth your time to read some of the Help Center articles on Stack Overflow and Programmers. There's such a thing as a good question, and "[link] suggestions" does not qualify. The Help Center articles will show you what we expect from questions.
@Shog9: I have nothing against Anna, but... Why did you guys bring someone into the conversation that appears to not know anything about the site's history, and who hasn't reviewed all of the relevant conversations that have taken place?
It's often helpful to have the perspective of someone without years of past battles
Especially in this case, when the entire project is motivated by a desire to avoid misconceptions on the part of folks who aren't steeped in the lore
I don't have a lot of spare bandwidth today, but I'll try & drop in for a bit longer tomorrow maybe.
until then, I'd like to be clear: we're both trying hard to help here. The argument that a name-change would be beneficial in reducing strain on the core community here and angst among new folks is a compelling one... We just want that to actually happen.
Do the things that everyone can agree on. The things that we can't fix ourselves.
We can't fix the artwork, or change the name. But everything else is mod-editable; if the verbiage is clearly not working, changing it doesn't require an act of Congress.
I am trying to use rabbitmq in python.
My code is:
import pika
if __name__ == '__main__':
connection = pika.BlockingConnection(pika.ConnectionParameters(host='localhost'))
I am running this file using:
python3 test.py
Error Signature:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "Test.py...
We elicit requirements from our product stakeholders by creating and refining user stories in monthly sprint planning meetings. This includes defining use cases, acceptance criteria, and identifying constraints, and the final result is a sprint backlog of user stories. The high-level customer r...
...if I was a homework cheater, I would applaud an approach like that...
I'm for deletion if not improved in a reasonable timeframe.
But minutes after closure is, I think, too speedy.
I tend to give a few hours, a day tops, or recent activity on the site with no edits made...
...because...
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