Wow, the 2019 election Q&A page is off to a mixed start. I considered adding my own humorous take, but it's probably just my fever talking, so I thought better of it. I know a couple good candidates, though!
Inspired by this SF&F meta question, and given the upcoming moderator election, I thought it would be interesting to ask current and past moderators what it’s like to moderate U&L. (Blatant copying and pasting follows. All credit to TheLethalCarrot, Snow, and Monica Cellio.)
To be absolutely cle...
I'm trying to run a find command for all JavaScript files, but how do I exclude a specific directory?
Here is the find code we're using.
for file in $(find . -name '*.js')
do
java -jar config/yuicompressor-2.4.2.jar --type js $file -o $file
done
the pain of "this attempts to answer the question" versus "not an attempt to answer the question" when it takes the question very literally (and apparently is untested) -- unix.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/285256
I should remember these lessons and write them down for some better guidance in learning the art of the LQP queue. Some heuristic questions to help decide which button to push
I flagged this answer for moderator attention: it suggests aliasing rm to rm -f which, in every possible use case that I can imagine, is a spectacularly inadvisable course of action.
The flag was declined with this note:
declined - flags should only be used to make moderators aware of content t...
@FaheemMitha would you consider some sort of helper script or function that pre-populated the ".hg" exclusion part for you, so you would just call findspecial '*tax*'?
@terdon I appreciate that, but I do not trust myself with this one gold hammer, so I think my limited powers are good for now. I promise to continue mopping the floors no matter who has the diamonds :)
maybe "dusting the tabletops" is a better analogy, since I let the zero and negatively-score posts "go"
@terdon I do feel unqualified, though. not only for the "3 years" part, but because it's honestly not a life goal to keep all of Stack Exchange in my brain.
@JeffSchaller Nor do you need to. As a mod you would just continue doing the cleanup you already do and then help deal with any drama that might arise between users.
@JeffSchaller Also, as a moderator, you would be able to correct most errors that you (or any moderator, invariably) makes. Moderators are humans, and as humans they are fallible.
I wonder if getting drunk with power is an issue, and if so, how often. I heard distant rumors of what sounded like a fairly ugly dispute over in SF & Fantasy (I think it was).
@FaheemMitha thank you for the kind words; although I would split hairs with you and say that I don't think I'm doing the work of a moderator (that only they can do)
@JeffSchaller As I understand it, it's mostly janitorial work. And there is the occasional issue with breaking up fights. But that doesn't happen often here.
@Kusalananda granted; I just feel like I constantly struggle to understand the ins & outs of Stack Exchange, so I'd hesitate to put myself in that group
@JeffSchaller But you should compare notes with other mods. I'm sure @terdon would be happy to tell you his experiences. And he's been doing it a while.
Over the years, I've seen him trying to reason with people. He's more patient with them than I would be. But I also don't think that's actually something that is required of a mod.
@JeffSchaller Personally, I'm rather limited in my use of SE. I only ever come to U&L, and I rarely follow what happens on the larger scale (SE outside of U&L). That may well change, obviously.
@JeffSchaller In my experience, trying to talk people into behaving reasonably if they are not doing so is of limited utility. It might work sometimes, but can also be time-consuming and frustrating. And SE attracts its share of wack-jobs. Even in U&L.
@Tim Oh man, you have no idea. That is the worst part of being mod. That and having the users you try the hardest to help thinking you're not doing anything.
People seem to think mods have access to things like who votes and how, and can change everything on the site. We only have a slightly better collection of tools than regular users do.
@JeffSchaller Bear in mind that (as far as I can tell) mod positions on SE enjoy quite a wide range of latitude. If you don't want to be involved in dispute x, nobody is going to force you do so.
I mean, you don't work for anyone here, so how could they?
@FaheemMitha well, as a moderator, I'd want to uphold the guidelines of the community (which means having a clear view of them and standing up for them)
@JeffSchaller That sounds rather ambitious. You realise that even the President and Congressmen of your home country don't actually do their jobs much of the time, right?
Seriously, it's mostly a janitorial position. But that's really fine.
@FaheemMitha well, I couldn't say much more to that -- I completely agree it's not life & death, but -- for me -- I'd need a clear mental grasp of the community guidelines and how to respond to misbehaviors
@JeffSchaller I don't know if you are actually required to respond to misbehaviors. Though did you mean verbally, or just in terms of what penalties to impose?
Because interacting with people is of course very different from just imposing a timeout.
@FaheemMitha that was a job description that jumped out of my head, perhaps too quickly
it was meant as a summary for being the "human exception handler", or "place users in timed suspension, and delete users if necessary" or "check for flagged posts, and decide if further action is warranted"
Quick question. I have a piece of software that I maintain. Its version is "3.2.7" and we just made that release. We've now noticed that the manual is out of date and we're making a hotfix. What should the new version be? "3.2.8" seems unwarranted, and "3.2.7.1" seem unnecessarily long.
@Kusalananda unless you fear running out of numbers, I see nothing wrong with 3.2.8; I suppose it comes down to what you've set for expectations on version numbering -- does it mean something special for 3.x to 4.x, or 3.2 to 3.3, or then for 3.2.7 vs 3.2.8?
@JeffSchaller I think that for a very minor hotfix with no code changes, using "3.2.7a" is the best option for us. When there are code patches, we flip over to "3.2.8".
I want to learn about the fundamental principles of an "engine" the javascript tutorial just says they are complicated, and there is V8 and spider monkey, but I don't particularly want to become accustomed to a particular "engine" I want to study the basic principles of a generic one if you understand me for curiosity sake, im too old to be thinking of learning anything to the point that it gives me a worthwhile point, like what is the IDE for making one of these "engines"
@Adam If you want to reply to a particular message in the chat, use the arrow at the far right of the message that you are replying to to link the new message to it.
@Jesse_b s/skrivet/skriven/ But otherwise tots cool
@Videonauth well it detects everything ive tried I couldn't find Dwarfian which was suprising since I had assumed it was Dwarfian tech
i mean, don't worry about it i am quite an insane person
i cant get the disability pension for it because i satire everything and most public officials look at me with an angry face but its all bubble wrap now
its just humour puts me in a good mood ie awake and cognitive and well it doesn't sit well for serious discussion which i shall exit on and go back to my reading time
Get your list put together and you are now in a better position than you were without the list, and then start attacking that list. If you can only accomplish one thing a week it's still better than stressing out about the overwhelming amount of work and not accomplishing any of it
3
I need to make a list too
I usually find a lot of motivation to accomplish tasks but then I'm disorganized about it
@FaheemMitha I recommend listening to some speeches by Dr Eric Thomas. He gets me fired up and ready to do stuff, but he may not be for everyone as he is pretty aggressive
I have his channel in my pandora shuffle mix so every once in a while his stuff comes on and gets me going
Motivates me in life generally though. When he starts talking about having someone you care about is all the motivation you need type of stuff it makes me want to work 7 days a week
@Jesse_b Motivation helps, but it's only a part of the story. Often a small part.
People talk about it a lot, because realistically it's the only part you can really change. But there are many other factors that are far more important. And for the most part they are outside ones control.
@FaheemMitha Yeah, I've also heard people say that motivation speeches/books work but only temporarily. You hear one of those speeches and you will be more motivated for a short time but it wears off. Which I totally agree with
yeah I know, there are things outside our control but sometimes motivation helps with that too ;). Some people certainly get more bad breaks than others but I've never heard of an unsuccessful person that never gave up. I think as long as you keep getting up it doesn't matter how many times you are pushed down
@Jesse_b No, but it's the conventional/standard one. That's what most people refer to when they use the term. In the US, it's the vast majority. Like 90%+.
Of course, Americans are a bit screwy in some ways.
@FaheemMitha SFF had 1) a mod get sacked for slightly iffy stated reasons when there were pretty solid actual reasons, 2) a controversial replacement moderator election, followed by 3) one of the existing moderators deleting his own account in response to the result, and 4) multiple other users, including Gilles, leaving the site for the same reason. I'd hope it wouldn't be similar here