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durron597
durron597
1:11 AM
@RobertHarvey congress can't manage to do the things everyone can agree on
 
Ampt
Ampt
@user143252 A few thoughts for you: You need to format your code better
 
durron597
durron597
"Sure, I'll make that change, it's a good idea, but my constituents don't actually care about it, so I'll only vote for it if you vote for my thing (which not everyone agrees on)"
 
Ampt
Ampt
the point of leftshifting bits is so that it's easy to understand what bits you're setting. 0x09 << 14 means nothing to me
 
durron597
durron597
two weeks later: bill doesn't pass
 
Ampt
Ampt
Lastly - ask your teacher
you are stabbing blindly in the dark here and it shows
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
2:02 AM
@durron597 I was a grump today. I don't know why I'm so invested in this whole change teh namez thing. It is just a website, after all.
I just feel like, every time a new person gets involved in the NPR/Programmers debacle, we have to explain the whole thing all over again. And it's not like a new person's fresh perspective is going to change the reality all that much.
The last thing I wanted to have happen is bikeshedding over bullets, and that's exactly what has happened.
0
Q: Which server side language is best to learn?

asehgalI am new to web development and have started learning the LAMP stack and did some projects with it. However, due to the availability of so many web languages, its difficult for me as a beginner to decide which is a great language to learn ? php, python, java, asp, etc ? Which one should I master ?

server-side
[sigh]
 
Quill
Quill
@RobertHarvey if it keeps happening, can we just streamline it with a catch-up post or something?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
117
A: How can I encourage Stack Overflow to rein in the 'subjective' vigilantes?

Yannistl;dr We already tried supporting those questions, we even gave them their own site. Sadly, it didn't work out. C'est la vie. In 2010, a Stack Exchange site called Not Programming Related came out of Area51, the Stack Exchange staging zone. NPR was supposed to be a site where questions that ...

 
 
1 hour later…
Ampt
Ampt
3:33 AM
Guys, I really think that we should consider the color of the bullet points. I mean if we could color code them, or find a color that lets people take in information better, we could really streamline the whole FAQ
 
 
8 hours later…
Simon Forsberg
Simon Forsberg
11:59 AM
Greetings.
I just noticed that @Duga is not posting that much here lately, have all your hard work succeeded?
It seems like she's posting much more on Code Review than about Programmers.
 
gnat
gnat
12:38 PM
@SimonForsberg I think it's about half of what was when Duga just started, or even less than that. Wrt Code Review, do you guys flag comments that misguide people about it? It may be important part of teaching experience when mistaken commenters see how their garbage disappears, sort of authoritative confirmation
 
Simon Forsberg
Simon Forsberg
1:08 PM
@gnat I tend to do that at least, but I don't respond to that many comments these days. And I think many others in the CR community are a bit fed up with the never-ending stream of comments that come.
 
enderland
enderland
wow, interesting transcript from yesterday
 
gnat
gnat
1:23 PM
@SimonForsberg this lowers chances to cut that stream. Quite a pity, because 6-yes requirement of CR looks so much easier to teach than fuzzy scope of Programmers
 
Duga
Duga
1:35 PM
This is probably more appropriate for programmers.stackexchange.com. — ceejayoz 23 secs ago
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
2:28 PM
0
A: Follow-Up: New Site Name and Scope Proposals

Robert HarveyThose of us who are left on Programmers who still care about these things have one singular goal: to get bad questions off the front page. Bad questions take time away from the participants that could otherwise be used to answer real questions, and they turn away the professionals, which are the...

 
enderland
enderland
@RobertHarvey well said
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Thanks.
 
enderland
enderland
I feel like that summarizes my feelings about this perfectly. there's a gunshot wound to the chest that we're trying to treat but it feels like a lot of the discussion is about putting on makeup and making the face look pretty
2
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Yeah. Lipstick on a pig.
 
enderland
enderland
I want to reduce the quantity of "should be deleted immediately" questions so we can Make Programmers Great Again™
 
Duga
Duga
2:42 PM
This question would be a better fit for programmers.stackexchange.com — Rob K 12 secs ago
Should this be moved to Programmers? — IAbstract 50 secs ago
Why would it be on-topic on Programmers? Programmers specifically disallows code troubleshooting questions. — Robert Harvey ♦ 50 secs ago
 
enderland
enderland
@SimonForsberg you jinxed us this morning
 
Duga
Duga
3:01 PM
If this were a code troubleshooting question then it is on-topic on StackOverflow (which clearly some believe it is not). So, if this is not a code troubleshooting question, then it belongs on Programmers, correct? — IAbstract 53 secs ago
 
 
1 hour later…
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
4:15 PM
@ThomasOwens: I suspect that we'll now have to wait six to eight weeks for another response from SE.
We were pretty hard on Ana.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
4:25 PM
@RobertHarvey I hope not.
@RobertHarvey That's probably true. But they are also being pretty hard on us and their demands.
 
 
1 hour later…
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
5:27 PM
@Evan: As to the length of my formulation, it's now down to a single bullet point with 9 words in it, and a cautionary banner with 72 words in it. I really don't know how I can make it any shorter than that. — Robert Harvey 4 mins ago
 
enderland
enderland
6:08 PM
I can only imagine what the types of people that P.SE would love to attract think - imagine you are an expert in software development and come here to answer questions about it. Your first glimpse of the site is the last 5 questions, two of which are trivial implementation questions. Another isn't related to the SDLC. The fourth is "tell me what the future of tool X is" and finally, luckily, one of the five relates to an actual, SDLC problem. If you were that person would you stick around? Would you be interested? I doubt it. — enderland 55 secs ago
 
Ana
Ana
6:25 PM
@RobertHarvey S'all good. :)
 
Shog9
Shog9
@RobertHarvey, @ThomasOwens, @Snowman et. al.: we need to clear a few things up here.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@Shog9 I'm around.
 
Shog9
Shog9
First, I wanna make something clear: the "bullet problem" is a non-issue. There are multiple easy solutions, and we can wrap that particular debate up quickly... But we gotta get past a few other things first.
Number one is this idea that we're trying to fill Programmers with crap or drive everyone away or just hate you all personally or whatever.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@Shog9 I don't think anyone thinks that. I don't.
 
Shog9
Shog9
Sure ain't coming across in the comments and answers I got this morning, but I'd hope it's pretty damn obvious that it ain't the case; if we didn't like you, or wanted programmers to fail, we'd just be ignoring these discussions; god knows there's plenty of other work to do.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
6:29 PM
If you just hated us, we'd probably just come to a site that's shut down one day.
 
Shog9
Shog9
But regardless, if anyone feels that way... It's probably time to step away from the site for a bit. This ain't a healthy activity if you're not having fun with it. No one wants this to become something you feel, ahem, trapped in.
Critically, name-changes aren't as simple as they sound. Rebranding is dangerous, even when the current brand is problematic; if we're all gonna invest time and energy in trying to do this, it's important that:
1) we all believe it's the right thing to do
2) we're all committed to making it work
3) we're not working on opposing sides
with that out of the way, I wanna quote a comment I just left under @Robert's answer:
You kinda bury the lede here: "There are three groups of people who visit Programmers" - this is your audience, this is who you're writing for, this is why changes to guidance and branding matter, if they are to matter at all. These people are not you. They don't have half a decade of history on this site. Understanding what brings them here and what creates the misconceptions they labor under when asking is critical to success. Otherwise, like the boxer, they'll hear what they want to hear and disregard the rest.... — Shog9 ♦ 9 mins ago
This is essentially the argument that kicked this off in the first place:
That - the idea that in spite of all efforts in the help center, on meta, in closing and in commenting, folks are drawn here because the name implies they should be here - is a compelling argument.
So that's where I'm coming from, that's the mindset I'm trying - with a good deal of help from @Ana - to put myself into when discussing this.
To look at Programmers with fresh eyes, without a half-decade of history influencing how I interpret this stuff.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@Shog9 I'm almost certain it's mostly true. I don't think a name change will fix 100% of the problems, but it will go a long way. A very long way. I think there's some evidence of this with Electrical Engineering, if I'm not mistaken. I never participated there, since it's outside my knowledge base.
 
Shog9
Shog9
@ThomasOwens of course it won't fix 100% of the problems; y'all have a lot of problems, and a wide variety of them.
But one of the biggest ones is... simple confusion.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Yeah, I'd agree with that.
 
Shog9
Shog9
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
6:38 PM
Totally agree.
 
Shog9
Shog9
In the last 90 days, 45.7% of questions were closed...
and out of that, 27% were closed as off-topic:
> Questions asking for assistance in writing or debugging existing code are off-topic on Programmers. These questions can be asked on Stack Overflow if they include the desired behavior, a specific problem or error, and the shortest code necessary to reproduce it in the question itself. See How To Create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable Example.
another 5% were migrated:
> This question belongs on another site in the Stack Exchange network
pretty much all of those to Stack Overflow
so even ignoring some of the more esoteric stuff, ignoring unclear questions that are probably still OT coding issues, it's safe to say that a solid 1/3rd of your problem here is a deep misunderstanding of what this site is about.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@Shog9 Absolutely. I'd say even more than that, perhaps. Thanks to Duga, how many people have we corrected or cross-posts have we stopped with a well-timed comment? There are more confused people that don't end up posting here because we try to fix the confusion.
 
Shog9
Shog9
Then you look at the friendly Duga, posting comments from SO from folks with tons of experience on that site, who still think "Programmers == Stack Overflow's trash heap"
@ThomasOwens right? That's really telling, IMHO - even more than the close rate. This isn't at all limited to folks coming in from google (although there are plenty of them) or folks who are banned on SO (a decent number though tiny by comparison) - it's folks who've been around maybe almost as long as you have, who still have no clue what this site is for.
Now, even for those, a name-change ain't a silver bullet.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@Shog9 Of everyone, I think we're among the best to realize that there isn't a silver bullet.
 
Shog9
Shog9
Some folks just won't even realize it's changed; others will see the change and blithely assume that nothing else has changed, that it's still the same old game with new branding.
But I do think with a little bit of work, we can convince many of them that hey, this isn't a trash-heap, it's a site for folks who care about creating good software and want to go beyond mindless coding to learn real craftsmanship, discipline, skill.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
6:46 PM
Yes. My position is that a new name will make that work easier.
 
Shog9
Shog9
...*if* that's actually what we're setting out to do here. If we're working together on it and pushing in the same direction.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
And not only to explain to people who have the wrong idea, but to explain to people who still haven't heard of the site in the first place.
 
Shog9
Shog9
If half of you are trying to push for a broader, richer scope that excludes bug-fixing and half of you are just hoping for a bigger stick with which to hit folks who visit the site, this isn't gonna work.
If y'all want a clear, rich scope, we can work on a couple of sentences that convey this and trumpet to the heavens that this is the place for THIS and not THAT.
If y'all just wanna punch newbs, we just need another moderator election in which we convince gnat to run.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I do want a clear, rich scope. I think our current list of things, although verbose, captures everything. The only thing that I'd like to talk about more (but seems to be well received on our end) would be to move licensing questions to Law and Open Source. They just...do so much better at answering them. But we need to talk about that in far more depth.
 
Shog9
Shog9
@ThomasOwens be careful of falling into the trap of trying to capture every problem that's ever come up here.
Licensing isn't something that really enters into most of the questions that get asked.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
6:52 PM
@Shog9 licensing is the 11th most common tag on the site.
 
Shog9
Shog9
@ThomasOwens Yeah, it's something y'all have to figure out... But it's a super inside-baseball kinda discussion; licensing and law just aren't a big part of this site on a day to day basis.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Yeah. That's going to come later. What I'm saying is that I think the power users have a good idea of what the scope really is.
 
Shog9
Shog9
If and when you decide to just start pushing those over to Law, that'll be easy to solve compared to, say, code-fixing questions or personal advice or whatever.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Yeah. One problem at a time.
And licensing isn't a problem. It's just...a weakness.
 
Shog9
Shog9
That's when you say, "ok, we need to start closing and/or migrating these", not "ok, we need to trumpet to the world that this site which doesn't in any way look like a law site isn't a law site"
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
6:54 PM
@Shog9 Yes, that's the right way to do it.
 
Shog9
Shog9
There are a crazy number of things that should be closed or downvoted or edited or just discouraged, but only a tiny handful reach the sort of volume that you need to announce them to all visitors.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
And the code troubleshooting types are, by far, the worst.
 
Shog9
Shog9
I'm pretty sure just about every site on the network gets coding questions now and then, but only a few bother mentioning that they're off-topic explicitly anywhere.
here, they're a problem, so you focus on that
Meanwhile, you don't have to focus on, say, recipe requests, since those aren't as much of an issue.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
And I think that's what we want to do.
If people are asking software engineers for recipes (for anything other than coffee or scotch based beverages), we have bigger problems.
 
Shog9
Shog9
@ThomasOwens it's happened several times on SO. Still not even on the radar. Dups and low-quality are the emperor of maladies on SO
here, it's coding questions and ... personal advice?
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
6:57 PM
Coding questions for sure.
The second place is either personal advice or tool/library suggestions.
Really, highly opinionated things. NPR-style questions.
 
Shog9
Shog9
@ThomasOwens I'd lump 'em into the same boat, really. Stuff that could be valid questions, but need a lot of work. Often a very large amount of work.
this is where you need to enlist someone like @enderland to help.
changing the name or help center or putting up big red banners doesn't help
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
No, it doesn't. Commenting, guiding, and so on will help. Unfortunately, the bigger problem (code debugging/troubleshooting) is keeping us worn down from helping users with the second problem. I think we get tired of the first and aren't doing what we can to coach on the second.
 
Ana
Ana
@ThomasOwens I think you're dead on.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I think if we can work on fixing that problem of coding questions, which was almost 1/3 of all closures, we'll have more time and patience to help other people.
I know I will.
 
Ana
Ana
As Robert accurately noted, I'm kind of an outsider here. But from that perch, I've been trying to understand this site's history, and the experiences of the people who have put in the most time and care into it over the years.
One thing which has stood out to me is that it looks a bit like the pressures and frustrations over the years have led to a tendency to moderate defensively.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
7:03 PM
I'd agree with that.
 
Ana
Ana
We'd really like to figure out how to help you set that feedback loop aside, because I think it wears on everyone over time.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I think we want to try to keep the homepage as close to representative of what we want on the site as possible for people who come in via Google. They hit a question, click the logo, go to the homepage. We want that next impression to be good. So we moderate defensively - down vote, close, and delete relatively quickly.
 
Ana
Ana
That's why Shog and I have been typing all these words in here the past couple days.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I think we all agree that a rebranding should be a giant step toward helping us to explain this community to other people, yes?
I know that I want people to understand what we are all about, to explain it to people.
 
Shog9
Shog9
@ThomasOwens yeah, yeah... THAT is key.
and that's what I'm being... perhaps a bit too strict on here; I don't want folks showing up and thinking, "Huh, new name, everything else is the same, ok."
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
7:09 PM
I don't want that, either.
 
Shog9
Shog9
It's not like y'all haven't been trying for years to convey a scope that's significantly different from expectations.
But it hasn't stuck
The last thing we want to do here is, uh, innoculate people to the name-change by implying that nothing has changed. Even if it hasn't changed for you the experienced user of the site, we want to make it utterly clear to folks who didn't pick up on the last 5 years of refinements that this is a change.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I want to be able to say "Hi, we're Software Engineering. We're all about questions about requirements, architecture/design, algorithms and data structures, quality assurance, configuration/build/release management, and processes/methods. We're not about helping you write code or learn how to use your tools. We're also not about opinions or discussions."
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Can I just ask a couple of questions?
 
Shog9
Shog9
@RobertHarvey yes
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Are we all agreed that this is the site scope?
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
7:13 PM
@RobertHarvey I think so, yes.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Except for code troubleshooting.
And peripherial concerns like law and product recommendations.
 
Shog9
Shog9
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@Shog9 Cross out "acquiring systems" in development, too.
But yes.
 
Shog9
Shog9
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
OK.
 
Shog9
Shog9
7:16 PM
ok, but in all seriousness... Saying, "SDLC" is actually a pretty good start.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Bingo.
That's our scope.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Is there anyone that qualifies to ask a question at Software Engineering that would not understand that picture?
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I say no.
 
Ana
Ana
Qualifying the asker, as opposed to the question, tends to be dicey territory. But probably not.
 
Shog9
Shog9
@RobertHarvey critical question is, Is there anyone who qualifies to ask a question at Software Engineering that would not understand "Software Engineering" as a scope?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
7:18 PM
No, but there are people who will try anyway.
 
Shog9
Shog9
@RobertHarvey right. So after you say "Software Engineering", those people are your audience. Next word out of your mouth needs to disabuse them of the notion that this is what they're after.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@Shog9 It does need to be clear and up-front that we aren't about code debugging. That is a part of software engineering. A relatively small percentage, as you can see by how little text was crossed off your diagram.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Is the goal of SE to clean up the front page?
 
Shog9
Shog9
Goal of SE - in this particular endeavor - is to reduce the amount of strain on the core community here.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
My strain would be reduced if I didn't have to deal with code debugging dumps.
 
Shog9
Shog9
7:20 PM
Front page is relatively easy to clean up. As is getting rid of Maple's panhandler. But if you gotta do it every 30 minutes, there's a bigger issue.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
How does that get done?
 
Shog9
Shog9
which?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Cleaning up the front page.
 
Shog9
Shog9
Same way we do it on MSE every day: delete everything that's blatantly off-topic as soon as it appears.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
That's...hard.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
7:22 PM
I don't have the power to do that, and neither do the remaining high-rep users that care.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
It's too hard right now.
 
Shog9
Shog9
@ThomasOwens right, because an hour later, you gotta do it again.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Yes.
 
user114359
@Shog9 I am short on time, so I will make this quick: you are correct, this site has several problems. Several of the (previously) very active users perceive a lack of commitment or caring on the part of the CM team. Some things we can do ourselves, some things we cannot. There is a lot of frustration among the high rep users, some of which who already left, some of which still participate infrequently (e.g. myself).
 
Shog9
Shog9
So that's the critical problem. Doesn't matter how many folks look at the home page and see no coding questions, they're seeing something else that says, "ask about your code!" and listening to that.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
7:23 PM
Bingo.
Right now it takes somewhere between 4 hours and two days to dispatch unsalvageable questions. In my opinion, that's too long.
 
user114359
I am not saying that you hate us, or don't care, and this is not about you specifically: you have always been one of the more active CMs and we do appreciate that. This is a general statement about the perception among users, and I think a lot of this is simple communication.
 
user114359
It is similar to how I just asked my son to vacuum the living room instead of telling him to. The delivery of a message is often more important than the message itself, and that is not lost on the list of names who choose not to participate here anymore.
 
Shog9
Shog9
so when y'all are looking in amazement at meta and wondering my I'm making an issue of something like a page-long interstitial or a 6-bullet list... That's where I'm coming from. I'm looking to eliminate as much as possible that has the potential to scream, "code! get your code here!"
because it doesn't matter if you have a big bold bit of text that says, "no code", if someone wants to ask about code and they've found something that suggests this is the place... That's what they're listening to. Everything else becomes noise.
Lemme tell a short story...
A while back, Tim wrote up a beautiful page explaining question rate-limits.
It was polite, instructive, comprehensive, and really just a joy to read.
...when we get questions about it, it's pretty obvious no one's reading past the first paragraph.
 
user114359
Anyway, my wife demands my presence on the beach. I will check back later.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
@Snowman Lucky stiff. Leave your laptop on the kitchen counter.
@Evan: As to the length of my formulation, it's now down to a single bullet point with 9 words in it, and a cautionary banner with 72 words in it. I really don't know how I can make it any shorter than that. — Robert Harvey 2 hours ago
 
Shog9
Shog9
7:27 PM
@Snowman well, we're trying to change that. Don't promise it'll happen though.
They're not reading the bits that tell them how long they have to wait, or how they can reduce that time, or really anything that actually benefits them. They're reading, "no" and that's not what they want to hear so the rest is irrelevant.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
See, I understand that people may not read things the first time. But my take is that having a few extra words to be quoted can be helpful.
 
Ana
Ana
@Snowman Thanks for weighing in there, I agree. It's worth nothing that this is why we're sitting here, hashing this out with you, trying to come to an understanding, even while Docs launched yesterday and our whole team is walking around with singed hair.
 
Shog9
Shog9
@RobertHarvey so yeah - that single bullet is really kinda key. As we established earlier, the folks you'd want participating here are probably gonna be satisfied with "SDLC" or even just "Software Engineering". That conveys the information necessary to the right audience.
...and then leaves you free to talk to the folks you'd rather discourage, both for their sake and for your own.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
There are always going to be people who will post whatever they want no matter what you say. I have no illusions about that. But if we provide some reasonable disclosure about what people cannot do on the site, in a place where it cannot be ignored, they can no longer claim ignorance.
And hopefully some of them will go somewhere else to ask their off-topic questions.
 
Shog9
Shog9
Quite honestly, I don't care if you have 1 bullet or 4 or 6. Until someone reads them and thinks, "yeah, I'm in the right place"... and isn't. As soon as you have to qualify the text, it becomes suspect.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
7:32 PM
I've said this before, but it bears repeating I guess... I will entertain almost any software-related question that meets my 72 word cautionary banner.
It might not be a great question. It might not even be answerable. But at least we've made a minimal effort to inform people about some of our expectations.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
That right there is why I'm a fan of more specific lists of things that are allowed.
I don't care if people read it, but I want something to point to.
I don't want to write a novel, but I want people who do read to have 0 confusion. And people who don't read...well, the name should give them a good enough idea.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
And that's why I'm a fan of letting people know what they should not do. I think I've demonstrated that you can do that, be succinct, and catch most of the really problem cases.
The best off-topic question is the one that never gets asked.
It relieves the community of having to process the question for removal. I spend far more time on the site going through those mechanics than I do answering people's questions, and that's not how it should be.
 
Shog9
Shog9
The best off-topic question is indeed the one that doesn't get asked. The best way to not get it asked is to not have the person who wants to ask it even visiting your site. So after an hour or so of conversation, let's see how close we are to being on the same page with that.
That's the current audience or, uh, tagline for Programmers.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Software Engineering, a Q&A for software developers interested in questions about the software development life cycle?
Or even remove "questions about" - a Q&A for software developers interested in the software development life cycle.
 
Shog9
Shog9
Remember, you're hopefully already capturing the right audience with the name itself. Software Engineering.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
7:39 PM
Are you guy still toying around with that tagline? Software Engineering is a Question and Answer site where you can ask questions directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle, but not code troubleshooting.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I like.
Although "directly" isn't necessary, is it?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Um, what was my wording before?
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I think you always had directly. It just adds 8 characters. 9 if you count the space.
Software Engineering is a Question and Answer site where you can ask questions related to the Systems Development Life Cycle, but not code troubleshooting.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
[sigh] We're counting characters now?
 
Shog9
Shog9
> Q&A for software engineers interested in the Systems Development Life Cycle (not code troubleshooting)
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
7:41 PM
@RobertHarvey No. I just don't like the word directly. I don't know why.
It bothers me.
Unless you are going directly someplace.
 
gnat
gnat
@ThomasOwens "directly" is better to keep. Indirectly related question could be like this: "how do I build my career in order to have more influence on the project development life cycle"
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
It's there as a signal to those people who want to ask about peripherial issues.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Oh, that's true.
I suppose it makes sense.
 
Shog9
Shog9
keep in mind, this isn't just a line in a help page somewhere. This is what describes your site pretty much everywhere it appears on the network that isn't the site itself.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I like @RobertHarvey's now. I've been won over.
 
Shog9
Shog9
7:44 PM
Here's DBA for comparison:
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Suitably fluffy.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
You should change their name to Database Administration, FYI. I counted once. I think there are only something like 4 SE sites that are nouns. Android Enthusiasts, Programmers, Database Administrators...I'm missing one.
 
Shog9
Shog9
yeah, that was an old, old thing that we kinda stopped doing
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Webmasters.
 
Shog9
Shog9
Writers, probably
oh. Then more than 4
anyway, only major issue I'd have with @Robert's suggestion is that it focuses on asking questions. Might be slightly off-putting to folks who, y'know, come here to answer.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
7:47 PM
Then add the phrase "and get answers" to it.
Software Engineering is a site where you can ask questions and get answers directly related to the Systems Development Life Cycle, but not code troubleshooting.
3
 
Ana
Ana
@RobertHarvey Got a nice ring to it.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@RobertHarvey If it's laid out like the pictures @Shog posted, does it need to start with "Software Engineering"?
 
Shog9
Shog9
user image
5
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Yes.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Yeah, that works.
 
Shog9
Shog9
7:51 PM
@ThomasOwens this'll get all chopped up into little pieces and then re-assembled in different ways in various places.
Internally, there's Audience, Topic, and a bunch of more specific strings that may or may not be built on those first two.
But initially, just need like one good example we can agree on and work with.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I think that example works. If you wanted to call the audience a plural noun, I'd use "software developers"
 
Shog9
Shog9
@ThomasOwens not, uh, engineers?
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Or engineers. Either one works.
 
Shog9
Shog9
ok, no, I'm not gonna sit & bikeshed this. I think we could make this work, but there are probably a dozen variations on it that'd work too.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Yeah.
 
Shog9
Shog9
7:54 PM
Take it back to meta, talk about it some more, let's see where we are next week
onward & upward or something
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Are you going to launch a new meta question?
 
Shog9
Shog9
@ThomasOwens not today. You can if you want. Or just write another answer.
I'm gonna go drink for a while
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@Shog9 I'm not sure what you want in the answer.
 
Ana
Ana
I recommend a new question.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
I think a new question is best, too.
Can someone dig up a link to the start of this convo?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
7:55 PM
What was the question again?
 
Shog9
Shog9
2 hours ago, by Shog9
@RobertHarvey, @ThomasOwens, @Snowman et. al.: we need to clear a few things up here.
Anyway, thanks y'all. I feel like we've maybe moved a little bit forward on this.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Two. Hours. Ago.
 
Shog9
Shog9
YEAH.
Fortunately, I budged a solid hour for it :-p
naw, I think it was good. I hope so at least.
 
Ana
Ana
This was solid. Thanks guys.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
This was great.
We're inching closer. Next week, Jin shows up and we complain about the design? :P
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
7:57 PM
In other news, I think I finally got a solution to my telemarketer problem.
 
Ampt
Ampt
wait, I just got out of a meeting, can we go over my idea on colored bullet points?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
>_<
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Will it work for my recruiters, who started calling me after I started my new job?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
Don't know.
 
Ampt
Ampt
Jan 22 at 15:20, by Kit Z. Fox
<-- helping
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
7:59 PM
The way it works is you set up your phone account to ring simultaneously on their number, and if it's a robocaller, they answer and hang up.
Fantastic.
So I can now answer my phone again, if it rings twice.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
Doesn't the call to their number get a busy signal?
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
I assume they have a big bank of lines on a rotary.
It's a simultaneous ring. Your phone rings, and their phone rings. If it's a robocaller, they pick up instead of you, on the first ring.
You have to set it up in your phone account. You can do the same with a landline and a cell phone, where both phones ring on one number.
Anyway, it works perfectly.
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
@Shog9 and @Ana You said we'd be revisiting next week. What would the next discussion primarily be about?
I'd like to include that in my Meta post.
 
Shog9
Shog9
@ThomasOwens whatever comes up on meta twixt now and then
 
Thomas Owens
Thomas Owens
OK. Cool.
 
Stack Exchange
Stack Exchange
8:19 PM
1
Q: Follow-Up 2: New Site Name and Scope Proposals

Thomas OwensAfter a discussion today (July 22nd) with Ana and Shog9, we've made some more progress toward a new site name and scope. You can check out the transcript for the full details, but we talked about the purpose for rebranding the site, what we hope to get out of it, a high level scope of the site, a...

discussion featured site-definition
3
 
Ampt
Ampt
@RobertHarvey doesn't that mean the robo collars can answer your other calls?
 
user114359
8:41 PM
@Shog9 also keep in mind that there were significant delays in this process which I outlined in my answer to your meta question. That is what affects the perception that some community members have.
 
user114359
@RobertHarvey I am not much of a beach bum. I would rather sit inside, sipping rum or whiskey.
 
Shog9
Shog9
@Snowman sorry, what?
It's rather a small thing, but I responded to the wiki answer on Thomas's proposal within a few days. I was ignored, but I did respond. That's why I finally bit the bullet and tossed up a discussion last week; nothing was happening. You can't ignore feedback and then claim you're being ignored.
 
Robert Harvey
Robert Harvey
 
user114359
9:09 PM
@Shog9 I was talking about the perception of not caring from earlier.
 
gnat
gnat
10:04 PM
this topic has got quite a bunch of questions now so I went ahead and created tag new-site-name
 

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