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08:01
does someone remember that question where it was advised whether or not engaging in a relationship in the workplace was a good idea ?
fairly recently, it was a salesman wondering with a date with a client IIRC
OK, found it
08:23
@JoeStrazzere the troll seems to have attempted to impersonate you: m.erwaysoftware.com/posts/uid/workplace/154670
08:52
2
Q: That troll again, what can be done?

Solar MikeSo back again, and now using a name that belongs to an established user... This should be controlled as it now starts to harm users... A delay loop of users with a rep less than 10 would be a start... See: I would like to get a job but I have little experience. What transferrable skills might ...

 
2 hours later…
11:08
@Magisch Hmm. I can't tell if I should I be flattered, or complain to SE management?
Neo
Neo
Greetings
@Neo 'sup
Neo
Neo
I have escalated the two accounts ( the ones I know of ) to out CM team.
@motosubatsu Just getting rolling on this fine Monday morning.
Yeah saw the "fun" over the weekend when I came in this morning
Neo
Neo
man I wish I had that kind of down time LOL
gee what will I do today...
oh wait, I will waste time impersonating high rep users on TWP
sounds fun
:-|
11:14
ha
Neo
Neo
I know right?
@JoeStrazzere Not surprising they are using your name.
I was too busy over the weekend actually having a life
Neo
Neo
LOL
it's more expensive than writing BS on the internet I guess - but far more fulfilling
Neo
Neo
Very true....
Next it will be a moderator...
11:27
@Neo Seems kinda odd that username uniqueness isn't enforced. I wonder why?
3
Neo
Neo
Good question.
11:39
@JoeStrazzere yeah that feels like a bit of an oops.. although that said it wouldn't really solve the problem completely, it's easy enough to make a very-similar-but-not-exact name for this kind of f##kwittery
Bee
Bee
@Joe also you'd probably have to enforce some sort of freeze on changing ones username if you stopped dupes
because otherwise someone could just swoop in and steal your username if you amend it to (say) reinstate Monica and then you couldn't get your origination back
Neo
Neo
@motosubatsu yep
take out one z
in Joe's case
As a regular user you can only change your name every 30 days
Bee
Bee
I didn't realise that - never tried to change mine. Good to know though!
Who knows - maybe it was Joe setting up a secondary troll account ;)
Neo
Neo
:-)
Kaz
Kaz
@Neo Kinda hard to impersonate the diamond though
Neo
Neo
11:50
@Kaz Good point.
that is why this attacker(s) is very smart
Bee
Bee
In other news - my work laptop power socket broke this morning :(
sucks, not something you can replace and probably means buy a new one right ?
Bee
Bee
Not my problem luckily
Bee
Bee
Unfortunately though - my oneDrive didn't seem to back up friday so I lost all the files I had open (although I'd put most changes online already)
Anyway - the company I work for actually rents all the machines (new) and so if anything breaks you just call up the rental company and they send a temporary one whilst they fix the problem
12:00
Must be somewhat expensive, but I think that's a smart thing to do
rent the hardware
@ArthurHavlicek you'd be surprised, in the long term it can actually be quite cost-effective
I wonder if the username field has restrictions on special characters? I do see some people with special characters but I wonder if it restricts the ♦ character.
Bee
Bee
Yeah and it means the company can afford to get us pretty good equipment all under warranty and stuff
@dwizum anyone feeling brave enough to find out? :D
@Bee I'll consider it for my next global corp, thanks for the tip :D
Bee
Bee
12:06
@moto ahaha I'm glad I've already been warned about the 30 day change rule
@motosubatsu I would give it a try but I once tried to create a different account to test something else, and I couldn't figure out how to get fully logged out of my google account on SE. Every time I tried to go to the create new user page it somehow already had me logged in, even when I explicitly logged out. I couldn't be bothered to try another browser or anything. As someone who's made a career in IT, that's pretty embarrassing, but it's the flat out truth!
@dwizum I would think it probably says more about SE than it does about you!
@Bee I've always thought allowing duplicate usernames was unnecessary and a poor system design decision. And changing usernames for public commentary reasons should be allowed if people wished to risk it - that's their choice. I just don't understand the thinking behind the design. I see no advantage in permitting duplicates. Where could one ask such a question?
12:22
Oops! There was a problem updating your profile:

Display Name can only contain letters, digits, spaces, apostrophes or hyphens and must start with a letter or digit
@JoeStrazzere probably on meta.stackexchange.com - I wonder if it's been covered there before though, it seems like a pretty major "feature"
seems like my ♦ name change didn't work
Bee
Bee
@Joe I'm not arguing that dupes should be allowed
@ArthurHavlicek That only serves to make me wonder what counts as a "letter" then, because there are a lot of usernames that contain things that aren't standard English letters.
Bee
Bee
Too many negatives in that sentence - I agree with you
@dwizum someone somewhere must know the character set
12:24
@dwizum Thanks to Chinese and Japanese they probably allow their letters as well. There must be a handy is_letter(c) function somewhere :P
Bee
Bee
6
Q: Are usernames required to be unique?

Undo - Reinstate MonicaI recently changed my username to Undo. I was amazed when I pressed Submit and saw that it actually went through - surely someone somewhere was using this same username. Out of curiosity, I then search the SO user list for Undo - and found another user with Undo as thier name. They have 50 rep. ...

I wonder if the message is deliberately vague versus saying "you can't put a diamond in your name"
@ArthurHavlicek Here's a short read on the subject: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/126807/…
interesting that right in that very question there's a contradiction, in terms of a user with a period in their display name, despite period characters not being mentioned as allowed
meta.stackexchange.com/questions/25404/… is marked as a duplicate of meta.stackexchange.com/questions/176683/… which says, in part, "What you can't do is impersonate someone else". Uhm, okay. Still makes no sense to me.
None of those questions about duplicate names are satisfying, at all
Bee
Bee
45
Q: Why does Stack Overflow allow duplicate display names?

John MacIntyreWhat is the reasoning behind the design decision to allow users to create a display name which matches another existing users exactly? This is opposed to the common practice of enforcing unique user names, and I'd really like to learn something.

12:29
@dwizum yea, very strange
Bee
Bee
This is closer to the question - but then it got marked as a dupe of the first one I shared. It doesn't have a satisfactorily answer though
Someone with the display name of "Jeff Atwood" wrote: "Think about the implicit message we're sending here: if you want to be unique, then choose a unique name. If you don't, then don't." Obviously, it could be some other Jeff Atwood. And just as obviously, it's not much of an answer.
@JoeStrazzere I'd go with flattered. Not much SE can do about an IP hopping jokester that finds joy in mildly irritating a few people for a few minutes
@Magisch I'm not really concerned. But I disagree about the "Not much SE can do" part. Unique usernames is something that could have been done but wasn't.
@Neo About as much free time as the one person who kept trying to troll a charcoal member for a little over 3 months straight almost every day
12:36
@JoeStrazzere Someone with the display name of "Jeff Atwood" I see what you did there
yeah but that's more of a system level change rather then the response to any individual case
in the grand scheme of long term abuse trolls this person is at most "meh". No avatar impersonation, nothing creative, just open transparent trolling
Maybe I should change my display name to Jeff Atwood and my avatar accordingly.
iirc impersonating staff or mods directly gets you suspended
I'd suggest we ALL change our names to Jeff Atwood
3
at least it does on SO and meta.SE, no clue about here
12:39
@Magisch oho oops
Bee
Bee
directly is probably the key word - I suspect you have to do more than just change your display name
a rather bad double standard, imo. Impersonating a high rep member is just as bad
@Magisch The problem with that is, what counts as "impersonating?"
@Magisch Would that constitute "impersonating"?
@dwizum no clue, I just remember the chet atwood incident on Meta.SE
12:40
You can't impersonate a mod in the sense of actually moderating. And you're allowed to have the same name, and do normal user things
@Magisch I agree with that, and even mid low rep people can be pretty bad as well, imagine trolls commenting as impersonates on a question of a mid low rep user
let me find it real quick
if people get confused about who you are, it's not your fault
@Magisch Jeff Atwood is no longer staff
jeff is (was) a global mod though, he turned in his everywhere diamond voluntarily
12:41
so "impersonating" him shouldn't trigger that :P
(not that I'm suggesting or condoning doing so)
here's a SO mod on meta.SE going into detail on their policy around impersonation within the mod team: meta.stackexchange.com/a/279109
tl;dr if you copy someone's name AND avatar it's disallowed and will be rolled back, possibly with consequences if repeated
seems like sites have some autonomy to determine their approaches to that or some moderator internal document exists for it
13:31
wow that looks like a mess if I understand it
 
3 hours later…
Bee
Bee
16:57
workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/154700/… <-- is this our troll again being self aware?
I believe I have seen the name Solar Mike on a high rep profile before too
Have flagged as opinion based anyway
@Bee yeah their new "thing" is posting sh't "questions" under accounts matching the name of well known accounts, they posted the exact same question over the weekend
@Bee flag it as spam or for mod attention as well
Bee
Bee
Will do
I didn't see it over the weekend, don't tend to log on
@Bee I saw it this morning - it was already deleted by then but I've got enough rep to see deleted posts here
Bee
Bee
Ah - need more rep ;P
17:33
@DarkCygnus care to stamp on this? workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/154701/…
@motosubatsu hammered
Impersonation again it seems
@DarkCygnus much obliged.. seems to follow a pattern of impersonating whoever calls them out for trolling on the posts
17:50
heh
@DarkCygnus trial by fire eh?
18:03
Another one
-2
Q: Are the mods here Islamists who enjoy digital beheading?

DailyRaiseQuestionMany participants here have been beheaded in a digital way in the past few days.

yawn
0
Q: No raise was provided?

DailyRaiseQuestionI did not get a raise, so I decided to use garden sheers in the networking closet. How can I cause more damage to the company with my sheers?

both reported to charcoal
18:16
thanks
-2
A: Most effective time management

poopyI didn't get a raise, so I have been refusing to wipe in the office but myy boss is mad about the smell and is threatening to fire me for doing that. now the hair and poop are stuck together. how can I remove it?

0
Q: No raise so I pooped and did not wipe?

poopyI didn't get a raise, so I have been refusing to wipe in the office but myy boss is mad about the smell and is threatening to fire me for doing that. now the hair and poop are stuck together. how can I remove it?

-1
A: How much personal information is too much to give a recruiter?

poopyI didn't get a raise, so I have been refusing to wipe in the office but myy boss is mad about the smell and is threatening to fire me for doing that. now the hair and poop are stuck together. how can I remove it? Pls answere here:No raise so I pooped and did not wipe?

-1
Q: DarkCygnus, what is it like living alone with nothing to do but fight with me?

poopyHello fellow loser. Hello fellow loser. Hello fellow loser. Hello fellow loser. Hello fellow loser. Hello fellow loser. Hello fellow loser. Hello fellow loser. Hello fellow loser. Hello fellow loser. Hello fellow loser. Hello fellow loser. Hello fellow loser. Hello fellow loser. Hello fellow lose...

Stop! Hammer time!
@DarkCygnus Can't touch this.
mc hammer sounds
Headline boyyyy, you lookin' at a headline
18:29
@Magisch What (or who) is charcoal?
@JoeStrazzere community led anti spam project
operates a chat bot that scans all incoming posts to the network, and reports instances of possible spam
you can request new filters to be put into the bot, or add them yourself if you have the permissions
or report posts
they're headquartered in charcoal HQ: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/11540/charcoal-hq
18:46
-2
Q: Could we encourage the troll to troll another site in the stackexchange network?

uglyduckingEvidently the mods and CMs dont want to ban him, so lets try and push him away to be some other sites problem. Posting with a throwaway to avoid retaliation from the mods.

19:26
I haven't been around for a while but i don't rememver it being like this
 
1 hour later…
20:34
I would like to edit out the company name of this question except it's in an image workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/154719/… what to do
Maybe transcript the image to text ?
I'll make a proposal of edit toward that
@ArthurHavlicek just did
cur the image to avoid showing the company name
Cygnus just did it, but you can just download the image, crop it and re upload
@Magisch That's what I did hehe
20:45
Allowing duplicate names seems a silly idea. But I guess with the numbers here it makes more sense.
@Kilisi I don't really see why the numbers would matter. Sites with far more members manage uniqueness. Oh well.
I didn't know that, I assumed SE has hundreds of thousands of registrations
@JoeStrazzere perhaps the logic was that they expected many people to use their real names, some of which would be the same.
21:02
@Kilisi SO has 12 million as far as I know, TWP does not
21:12
@JoeStrazzere Some also do it the SO way such as facebook. It may have been a model here. I think unique nicknames make sense if you don't want to end up with a thousand Naruto on an anime site but don't make sense if you expect people to use their real name. They may have chosen not to enforce it for the latter reason. But pure speculation here anyway
I'm in two minds about it. If it was unique enforced, I'd have almost certainly not gotten my nickname on SO
21:48
@Magisch I just assumed the registrations cover all sites on SE, I haven't bothered digging into the infrastructure
It's complicated
When you create any site account, a network account (of not necessarily the same name) is also created
you then create accounts on the individual sites which can all have their own name
Ahhh well, I'm happy enough with my name.
meaning you have a network-account-id and an account-id on every site you're on. For instance my account-id on TWP is 44144, my network account-id is 7034529
It would be possible for me to have different names on each community I have an account, and on my network account
I also think having non-unique names is not a particularly wise move, but fixing it now would be completely unfeasible. There are people on SO using their real name where 10+ others with the same valid real name are also members
The competition for the unique names would be an absolute crapfest, considering people would argue up and down who is allowed to keep theirs.
Yeah seems messy
We'd have 11 million people all wanting to be 'FunkyMonkey'
consider wikipedia where they have a whole structure of bureaucracy around name usurpations with waiting times and activity levels
and several permission levels just for renamers
21:55
no idea, don't really use sites like wikipedia
0
Q: Canonical for "can my boss restrict non-work related activity"

aaaaa says reinstate MonicaI saw the "boss demands I don't talk to any people, because I can get coronavirus" question earlier today and recalled this similar question: Boss has banned cycling to work because he thinks it's unsafe I make this meta post to attract attention of the network since more similar questions can ...

I feel for italy, it looks like it's complete pandemonium over there right now
all the hospitals are full, the whole country in lockdown, death rates through the roof because of lack of care
@Kilisi Coincidentally, TWP currently has nobody named FunkyMonkey
What happened in Italy?
coronavirus is out of control
22:02
oh.... it's scaring a lot of people.
whole country announced a lockdown until further notice. nobody in, nobody out, being out and about without valid reason illegal, etc
Our health ministry says we're safe, but they always say that
their healthcare system is underprepared for the rate of spread, which is why the death toll is through the roof
that is terrible, Italy is supposed to be first World...
supposedly 15% low end cases require hospitalization due to pneumonia and they have thousands of new cases each day
22:06
I'm in a tiny country, we'll get hit very hard when it gets here. Hy even at the hospitals is pretty crap.giene
hygeine*
:/
it's here too, I hope we'll avoid having to close the whole nation down like italy and thousands of deaths
people are already stockpiling hygiene articles and masks like crazy here, some are even buying it out and re-selling it at a markup on ebay and amazon
don't blame them, I'm ok, I'm always cyclone prepared so I have stores of all the basics.
actually I'm topped right up. There was a cyclone warning a week ago so I checked everything. Cyclone turned out to be a no go. Only stores got used was a bottle of whiskey.
here's hoping y'all will be spared from it
how much is coronavirus number of deaths, compared to HIV ? I'd expect HIV would be much higher by now
I read its 4000 deaths so far. Well we do fear it could be much worse in the end but
HIV killed 770 000 people in 2018 alone and nobody declared unprotected sex illegal
22:37
here's a breakdown of how italy's hospital system is collapsing right now, from the perspective of an italian doctor: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1236933818654896129.html
spoiler: we aren't safe from it either
22:48
@DarkCygnus @Neo troll/spam account for gentle nuking: workplace.stackexchange.com/users/115456/nork
@Magisch Yes thanks, already noticed it. For now we are suspending the account and notifying CM. Instead of destroying the account, so there is evidence or reference for the CM to analyze.
ah, k
Please, continue flagging and helping :)
are you keeping tabs on spam flags or do you want to continue to be pinged?
or are custom flags better?
I flagged R/A but tell me if spam is more appropriate
22:51
it's better to use spam flags. If a post gets X (can't remember now the amount) of spam flags it's automatically deleted.
i've been flagging spam
That way the spam attack can be handled organically
@DarkCygnus yeah I always use spam, but I'm wondering if y'all need any info beyond that
can be a ping in chat or a custom flag or nothing, depending on what you want
in case we still haven't noticed the posts
For now, we re constantly monitoring
22:52
Although, sharing the problematic post or user here is always welcomed :)
I don't mind being pinged
I'm also reporting all I can see to charcoal for faster nuking
that way 6 spam flags happens faster
That's great also
23:07
2020 and I still can't save an mp3 to a ringtone on this bloody Iphone. Thank god salvation is in sight. :)
Sadly, no such salvation on the horizon with this spammer as yet I suppose.
mods seem to have a handle on it
Eh, community is doing heavy lifting on them so far.
We've caught a few before they reached the rest of the site I suppose.
well you got new and improved capacity with darkcygnus on the team now
also since you came back last year
The spammer isn't really a capacity issue, just a matter of people being online.
Thats coverage rather then capacity
true
23:12
Yup. If one of us is on then the users are gone within minutes, otherwise it's down to the 6 flags. Charcoal should help though.
in a way it complements the mod timetable, usually the downtime in mod coverage is during the european working day, which is the time when a report to charcoal deletes a post in seconds
6 flags is really much to delete content. Some high rep users could be allowed to count as two
idk I suppose the value have been carefully weighted but still
I thought it was just 5 and I thought that was a bit high
It's always been 6 for automatic red flag deletions besides in some specific circumstances
last time TWP had a wave of spam and trolling they lowered it to 3 for just here for a few months
I think the mod team has to request it from the CM team
We're checking in with the CT on how to approach it and what options we and they might have. This is one of them yes.
Staying up past my bedtime here so I'm gonna head out. Take care y'all. :)

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