/dev/chat - 2014-06-25 (page 4 of 4)

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10:00 PM

Bluetooth, wifi, etc, all imply wireless. And there's no reason to ever tag something as just wireless

Then, hooray @Flimsy,

@Flimzy I completely understand and follow your reasoning. But @Braiam had a very good point in that we do exactly this for other things like the console/terminal stuff

@Flimzy and that's what I'm writing in meta

I think it might be - there are problems that might affect both bluetooth and wifi simply because they deal with the way radio/microwaves are transmitted.,

If we merge wireless and wifi, why not merge console & terminal?

10:01 PM

And so having both tags could make sense.

Therefore, IMHO, wireless ought to die. whether it's blacklisted (and all questions appropriately retagged) or merged to wifi is rather beside the point.

@mikeserv OK, but those would be very, very rare questions.

So, tag them so rarely.

Anyway, that would make them easier to find.

I suspect (without going through questions) that if there are any questions that deserve only wireless right now, a more specific tag could be created to handle them.

@mikeserv and what should we do with the ~300 questions already tagged wireless that are actually about wifi?

10:02 PM

Vomit.

Dang. Beaten down by pragmatism once again...

Sorry to bring up this silly issue guys. Heh. I wish you all luck :)

@Patrick Well, no. The issue here is that people use them interchangeably.

@Flimzy And he runs away... :)

Not very far, though.

I'm not running away... I'm just going to sit back and lurk a bit.

:)

@terdon They do for console & terminal as well

10:03 PM

0

A: What is the intended difference between the 'wifi' and 'wireless' tags? Should they be merged?

Since wireless can be loosely interpreted as anything that transmit data using non-wired medium (RF, wifi, et al) I suggest just renaming wireless to wifi and done. No synonym. Of course it will be helpful to have a list of the questions that were affected so we can review calmly. Summary: mer...

@Patrick Yesh. But, dammit, that one is a difference I understand much better than all this wireless/wifi crap.

@Flimzy We take our tagging VERY seriously here on U&L :-)

Damn, where's @Gilles when you need him?

2

sending the Gillesignal

^^get him on it. if there's anybody that knows tags, it's that guy.

10:05 PM

@terdon Should we all join hands and perform a seance

@Patrick Yes. And light the incense.

it's nice to see I'm not the only one that demonizes him.

@Braiam so you're suggesting that anything tagged wireless should get wifi instead and that wireless be blacklisted/deleted?

@terdon yup

That may well be the best solution.

10:07 PM

I could stand behind that

@Braiam: Could you spell out that bit about blacklisting wireless in your answer? Then it will get my vote.

but blacklisting will only be in place if a) the tag comes revives b) the wireless tag needs cleanup

@Flimzy ^ I was writing this also for your comment

I still think it's backwards looking solution, and will only be regretted in years to come.

Errr... the UX of having wireless be a synonym will be much better.

@derobert worries not, the system is pretty nifty about guessing the tags you need ;)

10:08 PM

Someone who calls it wireless goes and looks for the tag, if its a synonym wifi will pop up, and they'll pick that.

^^!!

Yes, that's a problem.

wireless is a very active tag... with a new question (not counting my own) yesterday

simply re-tagging everything won't solve the problem. I think wireless needs to be synonymized or blacklisted right away.

Actually, how is making wireless morph into wifi automatically (making them synonyms) a problem?

And if you really want a general tag, radio would work.

10:11 PM

@Braiam @Flimzy, why would you prefer to blacklist rather than simply make the synonyms?

@terdon someone tagging wireless + bluetooth might biring problems

@Braiam They'll see it turn into wifi when they try, won't they?

@terdon: To me they accomplish the same thing. I can accept either solution. Anyone who wants a general 'wireless' tag will realize that 'wireless' isn't for them when it's changed to 'wifi'. They will realize the same thing if it's blacklisted.

Exactly

@derobert - and we could generalize further with radiation for displays, wifi, bluetooth, overheating, nuclear apocalypse...

10:12 PM

When does the synonym kick in though? Is it after posting a Q or before, when the tags are chosen?

user image

@terdon this is what appears when blacklisting ^

Blacklisting it is probably slightly more "technically" correct. But the problem is (in my mind) sufficiently solved by the UX with a synonym as well.

@mikeserv insufficiently general. I believe we can get all the way to electroweak with current well-accepted theories of physics.

just change "installation" and "system-installation" with "wireless" and "wifi"

@Braiam True. So those searching for wireless will also find wifi.

10:13 PM

@derobert - I like it.

if we go the blacklist route, we can make it propose both bluetooth and wifi. a synonym route will force it to go wifi. though that would probably be correct in the vast majority of cases

@derobert Oh man, that's so tempting. "Wireless is blacklisted, please use electroweak instead".

@Patrick that's true

I didn't realize blacklisting suggested alternatives. In that case, I prefer the blacklisting route.

Yeah, if it suggests alternatives, someone just needs to go through the list of wireless and find out which alternatives are reasonable.

10:14 PM

Why don't we also blacklist wifi, and require 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, instead....

OK, the main aim here is to 1) have the tags consistent and 2) make this as painless as possible for users. In no particular order.

* runs away *

@Flimzy grrrr

There'll be three or four questions tagged gravity that go something like: "I dropped my computer and..."

@Flimzy because they all share the same configuration utilities and thus experts on Unix & Linux systems.

10:15 PM

@Flimzy search for the hatcher

So, it looks to me like the best way of getting both 1 and 2 is to blacklist wireless and offer wifi (and perhaps bluetooth) as an alternative.

@Flimzy that's a new change.

@Flimzy AU™

@terdon If you're only going to offer one alternative, just synonym it. We can always clean up the few people who fail to notice.

@derobert You'd offer bluetooth as well?

10:16 PM

@terdon Not sure. I'm going to count the 50 most recent questions and see

@terdon: I wonder if usb-wireless would also be a good tag as there are a few questions tagged with usb and wireless which would otherwise be orphaned from the wireless-esque tags

But... wireless usb?

well

I guess wireless usb is ambiguous

it could be a proprietary usb mouse, in which case wireless is really beside the point

wireless usb I've seen so far is talking about usb wifi adapters

or it could be usb + wifi

in which case our existing tags work

so never mind that suggestion of a usb-wireless tag :)

10:19 PM

I meant this:

Wireless USB is a short-range, high-bandwidth wireless radio communication protocol created by the Wireless USB Promoter Group. Wireless USB is sometimes abbreviated as "WUSB", although the USB Implementers Forum discouraged this practice and instead prefers to call the technology Certified Wireless USB to distinguish it from the competing UWB standard. Wireless USB was based on the (now defunct) WiMedia Alliance's ultra-wideband (UWB) common radio platform, which is capable of sending 480 Mbit/s at distances up to and 110 Mbit/s at up to . It was designed to operate in the...

my stance is: you can't make synonymous the general tag to the specific tag especially when the specific tag doesn't contain all the meanings of the general one

@mikeserv errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr............

There are a lot of wireless protocols when it comes to computing, and that list is only expanding day-to-day.

All 50 of the most recent wireless questions appear to be about various forms of wifi. One was about rfkill, but rfkill for the wifi connection.

@mikeserv exactly

there are 0 questoins tagged both wireless and bluetooth, for whatever that's worth

10:20 PM

@mikeserv but no one calls them just "wireless"

@Flimzy I can't see why anyone would use those together.

@Flimzy I removed the intances while writing the metaq

@Seth there were

Maybe, though I think that's subject to change.

@Braiam :O

@mikeserv think of it this way, if someone says they're worried about data costs because their smart phone isn't on wireless at work ... what does that mean?

It means 'wireless' means 'wifi'

10:22 PM

Probably true, but, again, I think it will change. At the very least, as @Braiam said, I prefer the technical stance.

@Braiam Ah! How many were there, do you remember? And I presume they weren't actually questions about (say) bluetooth coexistence?

@mikeserv If it changes, the synonym can always be removed. It's not carved in stone, AFAIK.

@derobert rfkill but with the bluetooth device

whimper

there was one???

@derobert only mods can reverse it

10:25 PM

0

A: What is the intended difference between the 'wifi' and 'wireless' tags? Should they be merged?

After the discussion in chat, my suggestion is that we: Merge all existing wireless questions into wifi Blacklist wireless, and offer the following suggestions when someone attempts to tag their question with wireless: wifi bluetooth In the future, perhaps other wireless technologies (Wirel...

@Braiam And with two new mods around, that shouldn't be a big deal.

@derobert exactly.

11

Q: Give the power to the community to revert back a tag synonymization

Most of actions are revertible. Delete/undelete, edit/rollback, close/open, protect/unprotect, vote, etc. But tag synonymization isn't. There are cases where the community through an idea was fine just to discover years later that it was not. This can only be addressed by a moderator, which can ...

feature-request tag-synonyms

@derobert moderators are to do as little as possible

@Braiam Hey, I want that job!

grants permission to @terdon and @slm to slack off

10:29 PM

@Braiam Cool :)

Well, so far, the only real issue I can see here is with wireless mice. It might make sense to tag as wireless if the issue is about the communication between the mouse and the receiver. I've never come across any such issues though, they seem not to come up.

@terdon: Couldn't we use wireless-mouse or wireless-hid for that?

Indeed.

there is one single question tagged wireless and mouse

we could edit that one and be done with it :)

0

A: What is the intended difference between the 'wifi' and 'wireless' tags? Should they be merged?

Examining the 50 most recent wireless questions, all were about wifi. Braiam previously fixed one that was also tagged Bluetooth (one out of all 317 tagged wireless). So wireless is overwhelmingly about wifi. Indeed, that's how people use the term. If someone worries about using too much data o...

@terdon Well, that depends. Are those even on topic?

@derobert I was trying to imagine a situation where they would be. Hard going.

10:33 PM

1

Q: How do I get my wireless USB mouse working

My wireless USB mouse is not plugging and playing. This is my first time using linux (Ubuntu 12.04) and I'm trying to get a development environment going to learn to use the shell, Python, and other things as I learn more. I have done my best to solve the problem, but I cannot find a solution. ...

ubuntu usb wireless mouse

Maybe if your mouse runs Linux...

I think the question is on-topic... but the wirelessness of the mouse is incidental

Yes, I just removed the wireless tag from it.

Yep. It uses the standard usbhid driver. The OS doesn't know or care its wireless.

OK, let's get some votes. @Braiam or @Flimzy's answers for blacklisting wireless and merging existing Qs tagged with it into wifi and @derobert's for making wireless a synonym of wifi without blacklisting anything.

10:37 PM

@terdon actually mine doesn't include blacklisting at all, just wait and see if the tag surfaces again

@Braiam OK, I was not sure about that.

@Braiam: I predict that it will surface again within 24-96 hours, based on recent history of that tag :)

Yeah. The tag has to remain unused for a bit before the system will purge it.

Once it gets purged, you at least need some rep to recreate it.

And wireless is bound to come up. It's a household name.

just do it minute before the 300 hours

@terdon only people with the privileges can create it again ;)

10:39 PM

Only once it gets purged. Before that, anyone can use it.

@Flimzy mm? the tag purging runs every day

wireless is actually more popular than wifi at the moment

wait, there are 2 days difference between each wireless question

@derobert 42 are tagged wifi too

Trying to fight that common usage is going to be a real uphill battle

You only need 300 rep to create a tag. The first person with 300 rep to ask a question with wireless will create the tag without even knowing it.

10:40 PM

Yep. And the anyone can use it, until we manage to catch it and retag, and get it purged again.

@Flimzy actually the system will slap them very hard with a EULA kind of message

So maybe it won't happen tomorrow, but it will happen soon.

@Braiam: Is that new? It's never done that for me before when I've created tags.

user image

Interesting.

you guys need to read MSE more meta.stackexchange.com/a/233897/213575

10:42 PM

Ahh... so it is very new.

and it's also not implemented here, apparently :P

@Braiam "This feature is currently enabled on Stack Overflow, Server Fault, Super User, Ask Ubuntu, Physics, Sound Design, and Pets."

And, BTW, the obvious answer is "yes, I'm sure". Because the person asking knows it only as a "wireless card" or a "wireless network" or...

@Gilles Whoops, sorry about the delay. This is now turned on for U&L as well. — Anna Lear ♦ Jun 16 at 17:58

I still think the tag creation privilege should be moved higher.

@derobert read the small letters at the end ;)

(but I'm sure nobody does :( )

@Seth amen

If we were a site about physics, hardware, radio, etc., then it'd be worth preserving the technical (correct) definition of the term. But we're not. We don't really need an umbrella tag to talk about communicating over electromagnetic waves.

Oh, and BTW: you configure WiFi devices (and pretty much only wifi devices) on Linux with..

NAME
       iw - show / manipulate wireless devices and their configuration

SYNOPSIS
       iw [ OPTIONS ] { help [ command ] | OBJECT COMMAND }

10:47 PM

here's an umbrella wireless question:

1

Q: Mint: equivalent command line call for airplane mode

OS: Linux Mint 14 Can someone suggest how to turn on airplane mode from command line instead of using the GUI? Also can someone list what all are turned off by enabling airplane mode? or how to turn off all radios including bluetooth and wifi? is there a difference between hardware shutdown and...

networking linux-mint wireless

while wireless is techincally more correct there, I can't see why wifi would leave the question wanting

@Braiam Hey, they're supposed to be for commenting on the post. The post should be updated with current information :-P

@Flimzy IMO networking could work

@Braiam modules has already been merged into kernel-modules. Michael must have done it. Tagging the Q as status-completed now.

@terdon you ought to ping me instead :(

and Gilles

@Braiam There you could use radio. Or honestly rfkill.

10:51 PM

@Braiam Sorry, I thought I was.

Hah, in the question body, OP even realizes they're radios. So, yeah, radio would work. Ooh, maybe I can get the new tag creation dialog :-)

mmm... status-completed

I expect that tag to last all of a few days, because I seriously doubt it'll get used again.

@derobert: There are a number of questions about receiving FM stations... they could be tagged as radio :)

@Flimzy That is one problem with a radio tag in the technical sense...

10:55 PM

indeed

now thinking about that question, maybe we should do the merge, remove the synonym and leave wireless in the plane mode question

@Flimzy imo radio is also wireless ;)

wireless can include subspace and smoke signals :)

arguably, perhaps molecular transport as well!

mm... being technically accurate has it drawbacks

Oh man...

@Flimzy is that used for communication?

10:57 PM

Hmmm. Technically, I don't think a fiber-optic cable is a wire.

Its not metal, after all, nor conductive.

@derobert but the transmission medium is solid

wireless doesn't need such mediums

Of course not. Nor does it include smoke signals.

I think the biggest use of "wireless" not meaning wifi left is things like wireless mice.

And the chances of the problem actually being related to the wireless side are pretty slim.

well, for what's worth, AU has a wireless keyboard tag

FYI: both wireless and wifi have followers.

11:06 PM

So what happens if I make them into synonyms?

Wireless has more than twice as many...

@terdon I'm not sure. I'd hope they get moved over to the other tag.

Would wifi inherit all of wireless's?

I don't know.

If you were to make wireless into a synonym of wifi, then all wireless questions get re-tagged to wifi, and future questions tagged as wireless get automatically changed to wifi

OK, and anyone following wireless is now following wifi?

11:08 PM

I'm not 100% sure, but I'm pretty sure the subscriptions will follow the new tag (wifi in this case)

I've done a ton of tag merges/synonyms on Spanish.SE

but I never considered the subscriptions before

@terdon BTW! You can finally have your oom -> out-of-memory synonym

Ooh! True :)

11:32 PM

@terdon that kind of merits a meta-site//ask?tags=support question

@Braiam It might indeed.

11:46 PM

@terdon - why was my comment just removed? do you know?

@mikeserv, You are the trouble maker :D

I know.

8

A: Extracting a regex matched with 'sed' without printing the surrounding characters

When a regexp contains groups, there may be more than one way to match a string against it: regexps with groups are ambiguous. For example, consider the regexp ^.*\([0-9][0-9]*\)$ and the string a12. There are two possibilities: Match a against .* and 2 against [0-9]*; 1 is matched by [0-9]. Ma...

@mikeserv I can't really comment on that type of thing.

Shit, I sound like a politician. But it's true.

2

There I said - while I doubt you will, if you will edit out your erroneous statements and edit in something like my suggestions above, I will delete these comments and reverse my vote

@terdon - understood.

@terdon, I am going to * your comment and check back tomorrow if I can still see it.

11:49 PM

Haha!

Great, now somebody needs to star me saying fuck and I'll get demodded :(

Oh, the temptation is great...

:)

not really.

@terdon the star wall has many names, like the no-context wall

11:50 PM

If I have to flag one of the mods comments for moderation, who will check it out? :D

but who watches the watchers?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Shows what I know of latin.

@terdon I think to be demoded you have to re-nominate yourself during an election...

I just used English..

valar morghulis

11:51 PM

@mikeserv Yes, but I was showing off. Badly.

@Flimzy Nah, one of the ELU mods tried it last week.

I was showing off a little as well, in all honesty...

And we can all assume that we've both read the Watchmen.

I still don't understand why comments like maybe in your world... remain whereas while I doubt you will, if you will edit out your erroneous statements and edit in something like my suggestions above, I will delete these comments and reverse my vote is plucked within minutes.

It was an olive branch, of sorts.

checks the star wall

I've never read the Watchmen,

11:56 PM

after becoming a mod, terdon is escalating with the swearing D:

I saw most of the movie once, but my eyelids proved too heavy for it in the end.

@mikeserv Had you left out the "while I doubt you will" it might not have been. Regardless though, as a comment, it does not add anything to the post. It is directed at the poster and not at the content of the post. It would have been a prime candidate for removal whoever by and wherever it was posted.

And maybe in your world...?

Here enters terdon, the politician. :D

It was a political answer - in that it only answered half of the question.

11:58 PM

@Braiam Yeah, leading by example. Me cago en la puta, lo que pasa es que estoy acostumbrado a idiomas donde es mucho mas normal usar palabrotas.

@mikeserv Before my time.

grins smuggly

Very political, indeed!

@terdon and I'm the spanish speaker :/

I'm getting the hang of this politics thing!

@Braiam Yeah, but both Greek and Spanish (at least in Spain) are very profane.

I suspect the main difference though is that I didn't stoop to flagging the other.,

Are you a native Spanish speaker, @Braiam?

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