The Whiteboard

5:44 AM

@YannisRizos in regards to meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/5257/… you mentioned in chat perhaps a PSE blog post?

Still need someone to do it? Or did someone volunteer?

Yannis Rizos

6:17 AM

AFAIK no one volunteered. If you are interested you should ping World Engineer in the blog chat room and discuss specifics. I haven't been involved in the blog for a while, there's a trello board full of ideas for posts, so if you are interested the first step is to get access to it.

We'll remove the link from the FAQ later today btw, since it seems the community overwhelmingly supports it.

Deco

Yeah good idea, I think it'd be much better to have one of our blogs in there anyway

Yannis Rizos

I wouldn't know, I still haven't read Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer ;P

Deco

I pinged WE and eagerly await his response :)

I would hope that if I wrote a blog you'd read it :P

Yannis Rizos

I read all posts on our community blog </lie>

Jimmy Hoffa

6:52 AM

haha

Perhaps I'll see about that trello thing, I've been wanting to try my hand at writing some blogs considering every blogger I read has written at least one blog urging me to write a blog. That and it's resume fodder.

ChrisF

12:52 PM

@ramhound Your deletions triggered a "possible vandalism" flag. Are you just cleaning up some of your answers? We'd hate to think you were quitting on us.

2

user55340

3:13 PM

re: writing a "career advice" do people want a single "this is what P.SE thinks?" or a multitude of "different perspectives on career development"?

user55340

Also, writing my version and reading the gamedev.SE (a fair portion of the "what should I learn" questions tend to be followed by "to be a game developer") they had a link to a lengthy forum post with specifics on technology. I believe that even "just read the questions" will lead a person who wants to know what to learn for game development in the right direction.

Thomas Owens

@MichaelT What?

user55340

This weekend I was taking a stab at trying to write my own version of "Don't Call yourself a programmer" that is more suitable to the questions that we find (and try to avert) on P.SE (without the "bad" advice in that blog post - though I suspect I've got my own set of controversial opinions).

user55340

In writing it, I began to wonder what the ultimate goal would be - a single whitepaper of a sort that maintains a single collective community viewpoint or if a multitude of blog posts would be better where it is more clear that each post is a single individual's opinion.

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT @Deco also expressed interest in helping write the post, the two of you should discuss and co-ordinate in the blog chat room.

We won't just add the post to our FAQ just because it's hosted on our blog, we'd still have to go through Meta.

user55340

3:42 PM

@YannisRizos Absolutely.

Ramhound

3:52 PM

@ChrisF I just removed some answers with zero votes on so there is less answers for people to vote down for no reason.

2

ChrisF

@Ramhound That's cool. We'll ignore the flag for now :)

Yannis Rizos

4:29 PM

@gnat If you ever want to talk about the experience you mentioned in my recent MSO post, I could set up a private chat room for the two of us.

gnat

5:00 PM

@YannisRizos no need, mistakes were quite routine and I'd say were corrected, and most important I had grown skin thick enough to deal with these in the way like you suggest, "to be constructive about it" :) My point is,...

recalling my feelings back then I find it would be quite hard to keep constructive tone (back then - that's why I mentioned less experience and not particularly thick skin... casual user, I am no longer like that)

my comment there is rather of editorial nature, if you would say something like "it's possible..." instead of "it's not that hard...", I wouldn't post it

Yannis Rizos

@gnat Edited it to "it's not impossible to be constructive about it".

better?

gnat

@YannisRizos better! :) removed my comment

Yannis Rizos

Also I must say that I agree the "question" isn't constructive without concrete examples. But I really can't give more details, although I really want to.

user55340

Having been a modish elsesite, the best way I've described being a mod is that of a janitor in middleschool - "bzzt Janitor to Mr. Blank's room, someone threw up." -- Mods are the unsung heros of interwebs that put up with more vomit than most people ever see outside of the health care industry. Be glad that someone is cleaning up after other people because it really stinks when they don't. And they are human and under paid.

2

gnat

5:16 PM

@YannisRizos lack of examples is understandable. At MSO I am not that purist wrt "constructive"

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT I just don't like seeing good people getting called out constantly for doing what we ask them to do. Some mods, including myself, couldn't care less. Others care a bit, and it's understandable that they get frustrated.

And the trend is bit alarming, taking cheap shots at mods in comments is (slowly) becoming a meme...

2

A: Could we please be a bit nicer to moderators?

I think what we're seeing here is the confluence of two very separate problems. Together, I think, they create situations like those Yannis described in generalities. First: The Silent Majority I've done my best to consistently remind people that the VAST MAJORITY of our userbase is excellent....

user55340

5:31 PM

@YannisRizos Have you ever read [A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy ](shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html) (it was also referenced in Coding Horror). Elsesite, it was required reading for all modish types.

Yannis Rizos

@MichaelT Nope, but I will now, thanks.

gnat

@YannisRizos regarding examples... did you consider giving a positive one instead of negatives? Say, what about the one you mentioned in comments, about the user whose account was deleted by mistake and who handled this nicely. I for one would be interested to learn how stuff like that can be reported without f-words :)

Yannis Rizos

4

Q: All of a sudden my account dissapeared?

Like every morning I was going to check out skeptics, just to find out that my account wasn't recognized by the site, it worked on all other SE sites except this one, when I looked as a guest I can see my old questions are posted as user5169 , I'm not sure what happened to my account, as far as ...

@gnat and the follow up was this, posted by a Skeptics mod, probably inspired by the accidental account deletion:

30

Q: Delay user requests for account deletion by 24 hours

With the exception of spammers, who either just get their posts spam-flagged to death or are destroyed by a moderator, the by far most common reason for deleting a user is that the user requests himself that his account be deleted. The guidelines from SE used to be that we moderators should wai...

feature-request moderator-tools deleted-accounts

Mod screws up -> constructive Meta question -> issue resolved -> feature request about avoiding such screw ups in the future.

That's how it should be...

gnat

5:57 PM

@YannisRizos thanks! Really mature discussion there. brief summary of it would probably make a great addition to "tl;dr" part of your question

Jimmy Hoffa

8:00 PM

Interesting looking at quantcast, the number of page views per visit has been in a steady decline (visits going up so page views are going up, but at a significantly lesser rate than visits)

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa Drive-by users who find their question quickly (perhaps even only using outside search engines) and then leave?

Jimmy Hoffa

Well, those who do visit previously viewed far more pages

look at the graphs for all of 2012 switch between page views and visits

look by month so you can see more easily the actual trend

The significance has to mean the normal community visitors are viewing fewer pages

I'm sure searchers have an effect to, but the difference in the trend is a bit much to account for just that

visitors is going to increase significantly, that's a given by the fact that it's a collection of historical content which is constantly growing therefore constantly matching a greater number of googlers search terms

Rachel

@JimmyHoffa Have you seen my meta post about user participation yet?

Programmers does have a lot more visitors, but it also has a lot more content and a lot more advertising.

But I think there's fewer active users, and a higher rate of user turnover

Jimmy Hoffa

That is one plausible interpretation of the quantcast numbers. Though correlation and causation and all that, there are other completely viable interpretations of the quantcast numbers

January had 4.5 page views per person, now we have 3.0 page views per person, that's a decrease of 33%

Thomas Owens

I'm not sure if page views per visit is a good metric to judge a site by.

Or even page views per person.

Jimmy Hoffa

8:14 PM

@ThomasOwens I'm not talking about any judgements, I'm just trying to look for cause; one plausible cause is the engaged viewership are spending less time viewing now than previously

that's one plausible cause

Thomas Owens

Total page views are trending upward.

Jimmy Hoffa

I recognize that

That's always going to be the case though as I said; more content = more search term matches, and the nature of the site is one wherein there is direct correlation between time and content amount

We would hope to convert more visitors into engaged participants though, and the numbers appear that isn't happening at any significant rate, rather the opposite may be occurring

1.2m page views january, 1.7m now, 400k visits january, 700k now, we have 75% more visits, and 40% more page views

that's a statistically significant disparity

But we can only theorize as to what it means. Meh iduno, I just thought it was interesting when I saw the difference in those trends

Rachel

@JimmyHoffa Where do you see those trends? I'm interested in checking them out for myself. And was that from January 2012?

Jimmy Hoffa

quantcast.com/programmers.stackexchange.com

meanwhile we've doubled the "people" but I don't know how it defines that metric so I'm ignoring it, but if it's the actual unique visitors then that's even more disturbing that we have such a significant rise of unique visitors and a non-correlated trend to total visits which would mean the percentage of visitors that never return has increased

that's percentage not total, obviously the total one-time visitors has increased, but you should hope the percentage of visitors that never return stays fairly constant or at least decreases minimally

Thomas Owens

@JimmyHoffa It probably bases on IP addresses. In that case, I typically log in from 2 different IP addresses per day. Sometimes 3 if I'm using my laptop at home. I know other users log in from home and work, leaving with two unique IP addresses.

Jimmy Hoffa

8:30 PM

@ThomasOwens yes, but a growing engaged audience would show increases in those numbers to stay in line with eachother (not the same but at the same rate) where those multi-IP and etc situations live in the noise as a part of that rate which both people and visits get increases from

I would think... though like I said, we have no idea how they identify "people" so it should probably be ignored

As someone whose written instrumentation systems in the past I know how subjective and bad measures of "people" can be

Another interpretation of the numbers is that the site amassed the people who would be interested by and large very early in its life and the selection of people who real engagement in this site appeals to are already usurped into it's community therefore while visits will continue to grow, engaged participants simply won't grow except at a trickle. You see the same thing happen in markets as "market saturation" when the vast majority of people who want product X already have it

Rachel

@JimmyHoffa Thanks, I'd seen the Quancast link before but hadn't realize you could switch between people and views

Jimmy Hoffa

It's statistics so different interpretations are altogether possible.

Rachel

@JimmyHoffa Perhaps questions on what people vs views in web stats actully mean might be on-topic for Stats.SE. Im not sure though since I don't participate there

Jimmy Hoffa

I would ask on there presenting the statistical interpretations I (and any of you?) can come up with and ask for details of why what interpretations would or wouldn't make sense, but that's more of a forum discussion question. Perhaps should go dig up a statisticians/mathematicians forum somewhere and ask for interpretations there.

Jimmy Hoffa

8:56 PM

actually, it might be a really good question for webmasters; if I'm thinking of webmasters correctly their job is understanding a websites visits/views/etc statistics (Is that right? WebMaster is a really vague concept heh)

Rachel

@YannisRizos Can I propose an edit without implementing it right away once I have the rep for that?

@YannisRizos I'd like to make an edit to your meta post to remove the majority of your rant, but I'd want you to approve it first

Yannis Rizos

@Rachel It's a lovely rant, and I've grown quite fond of it. You've already posted an answer, no reason to change anything else.

@Rachel Ah, you've already edit. Don't really have much time to review it now, but it seems like a good edit.

Rachel

@YannisRizos well as you're so fond of pointing out, meta isn't really a good place to post rants :)

Yannis Rizos

9:12 PM

@Rachel At this point I can only say one thing: I wish I could share some, if not all, the details with you. Your input on the actual things I'm talking about would be very valuable. Unfortunately, I can't share the details. One thing I can say is that nothing in that rant has anything to do with Programmers.

user55340

@YannisRizos have you had a chance to massage Shirkley's great wall of text with your eyeballs yet?

Yannis Rizos

No not yet. But I will later tonight.

Jimmy Hoffa

@MichaelT that turn of phrase really generates a bloody strange mental image'

user55340

@JimmyHoffa I had a latin teacher back in highschool who would ask of her students "Did you actually read the text or just massage it with your eyeballs?"

user55340

When reading Latin, one can go through and get the gist of the text (skipping the vocabulary you don't know). But actually reading it and understanding what tense a particular verb is and how that changes the meaning of the text is more than a "massage of the eyeballs."

user55340

9:22 PM

(this may explain some of my temptation to write some Lingua::Romana perl code and leave it for someone else to maintain)

Jimmy Hoffa

10:09 PM

@YannisRizos I flagged the SEO question to be moved to webmasters, did they not accept it? I always hate seeing the close-happy P.SE community just declare "Bad question!" when a new poster just didn't know there was a site where it was a good question..

user55340

Of note, I also commented and flagged the same...

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Your flag sits there, waiting for someone to handle it. I'm done moderating for the day, catching up on some reading.

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos Oh sorry

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Nothing to apologise for ;) I'm here, but right now I'm catching up with the latest questions in my new favourite SE site, History.

Jimmy Hoffa

10:24 PM

@YannisRizos I'm surprised that's only a beta now; that site is fun reading. I'm going to have to be careful with it, that could be a worse time sink than wikipedia

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Hm... There are some problems with the site, I've voiced my concerns on Meta a couple of times. But overall it's fun.

Jimmy Hoffa

Like what? Mostly related to the fact that history is written from one perspective?

Yannis Rizos

A few very unconstructive questions survived for a while, and generated opinion heavy answers. AFAIK this has been a recurring theme for the site, and there quite a few rather flame-y Meta discussions about it.

But it looks like a lot better now. Another problem was that when I first started using the site, the two most recent Meta posts where calling out a troll. He is a troll, but the posts were unnecessary, Meta is for content and general behaviours, not individuals.

(all) that said, it's a great site. my spider sense tingled a bit here and there, but it has a solid group of regulars who take care most of the moderation and (at least) try to edit discussion-y questions into something more concrete.

Jimmy Hoffa

11:22 PM

@Yani

Yannis Rizos

Yes?

Jimmy Hoffa

@YannisRizos I'm surprised on those sky scrapers history question nobody wrote the answer that immediately came to mind for me. Sky scrapers are seen in asia (or so I understand) as modern symbols of economic power, which is something large parts of asia are in great struggles for in the past half a century. There haven't been similar power struggles around most of Europe since A) modern sky scrapers became a particular development and B) WWII which likely demolished any overly large buildings

Granted that's only a part of the picture but I don't see a mention of it at all

I'm just thinking, if building sky scrapers were as possible in the early/mid 1800s as they were in the past half a century, Europe might be full of them.

Yannis Rizos

Voted to close that question, my only motivation to post an answer was to point out that Europe has quite few skyscrapers, didn't really put much thought to it. But you should post an answer, your reasoning makes sense.

Jimmy Hoffa

Oh, I didn't read the Q, just the title; I was thinking more about the fact that all the record breaking towers you hear about for decades are in asia, though he was asking specifically about cities which are known to be some of the most densely populated in the world, so the answer to his question is simply population density more than anything else

Eh, if you voted to close I won't bother writing an answer. Though in response to your rhetorical question; Yes. I would very much like to see a hulking sky scraper next to the eiffel tower. I just think it would be funny. :)

Yannis Rizos

Nah, I've been to the Eiffel tower, it would more sad than funny.

Jimmy Hoffa

11:50 PM

@YannisRizos Why do you or others hate answers in comments?

Yannis Rizos

@JimmyHoffa Lots of reasons: 1) Comments aren't really visible (and they tend to go away), 2) Comments aren't searchable, 3) Comments can't be downvoted, 4) Comments are generally not enough for a thorough answer.

Jimmy Hoffa

#4 tells me though they should have written it in comment because they weren't thorough. #3 I didn't think about though and that is definitely something I should be thinking about..

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