The Bridge

@ickleislands It's actually less mid and more left of center. This is actually quite ironic as the political views in this timezone tend to be quite right wing.

ickleislands

heh

Yi Jiang

I have a question about this daylight saving thing. If they really are adding an extra hour to the day when the transition happens, how do you denote things that happen in that extra hour?

Will there be a 2430h on that day?

ickleislands

also heh

no

QAdley

@YiJiang About 3 years behind the competition?

ickleislands

in spring the clocks are moved forwards one hour

during that transition the day is 23 hours long

during autumn the clocks go back an hour

leading to the effect that you live the same hour twice

and have a 25 hour day

@QAdley no it reports it is 3 years behind the competition but it could be anything between 5 minutes and infinity

Yi Jiang

11:53 AM

So there isn't a 2430 but you get a certain hour of the day twice

ickleislands

it ticks over to the next day, at 00:00, then i think the clocks officially change at either 1am or 2am before the clocks switch

skovacs1

@ickleislands Wasn't the question how you denote things that happen in the extra hour?

ickleislands

so you get the effect of going to 00:59 and then rolling back over to 00:00

we don't, we sleep

BST is a lie, we're just told it exists

nothing ever changes! tin foil hat

and we don't denote anything, its easiest to explain in terms of pc clocks

pcs manage their own clocks

so at the end of the period of time before the clocks go back, you'll get to 00:59:59

and the next second starts at 00:00:00

mini groundhog hour

skovacs1

@ickleislands Nuh-uh. It's easiest to explain things, any things, with magic. :P

ickleislands

oh ok

@YiJiang It's magic.

QAdley

11:56 AM

BST is literally a waste of time

Yi Jiang

@QAdley BattleStar Time? :P

skovacs1

OK. Enough fun. The actual answer is that it is denoted in a different timezone. MST becomes MDT and back again.

QAdley

@YiJiang British Summer Time

It needs its own time-zone, despite little evidence of its existence

Yi Jiang

hehe, no summer in Britain, eh?

ickleislands

GMT => BST (or DST, depending on what you want to call it)

but I think DST is a more generic term for everybody

the more interesting thing is why - and if you don't know you should read up on that

Yi Jiang

11:58 AM

I know why. At least the basic theory

Summer time, like Princess Peach, needs saving. Constantly. Yeah, something like that

(That makes marginally more sense than the real reasons)

ickleislands

flimsy story

so many plot holes

can we have something deep and meaningful like WOULD YOU IMPLANT SUNGLASSES INTO YOUR FACE

skovacs1

@ickleislands Isn't that always the more interesting and ultimately useless answer to seek? Just because you know why sadly doesn't change anything in a great many cases, especially if the answer, however interesting, is stupid and/or leads to no effective way to affect the situation.

ickleislands

I saved daylight on the hardest difficulty

QAdley

12:35 PM

107

Q: Stack Overflow's voting system is not entertaining enough

I submit to you the following quartet of indisputable facts: Stack Overflow is for people who are bored at work. Having animations and video games are more exciting (and therefore less boring) than not having animations and video games. Chrono Trigger is the best video game ever made. Downvotin...

Wipqozn

@QAdley That reminds me, I really need to play through Chrono Trigger.

QAdley

@Wipqozn A Lazer version of this would be awesome. Site definitely needs more lazers.

Lazers

0

Q: Maximum monster damage to lvl 60 character without equipment

Basically, what title says. I'm looking for resource that can show base monster damage (without any reduction and stuff) at the current 1.0.3 patch. If this is somewhat unexistant, then I would like to see, how much damage can take character on bosses (Belial meteorits, Diablo single attack, etc....

diablo-3

0

Q: Skyrim - Lost my unknown follower

I lost my follower some time ago. I didnt noticed until i tried to get a new one and they told me that I allready got someone. guess my follower is not dead, because then I could have a new one. Problem is that I can not remember who my follower was, so I can not beam him to me with the console. ...

skyrim

Wipqozn

@QAdley I concur.

We should also have lazers shoot at people who up vote terrible questions.

QAdley

Manifesto for Arqade: Less tags, more lazers.

5

Wipqozn

12:40 PM

@QAdley I suggest we ban anyone who disagrees with this. Ban them... from life.

QAdley

@Wipqozn with lazers

Wipqozn

►

@QAdley Well, yes, that was implied.

QAdley

@Wipqozn Our burninated tags will block out the sun

Wipqozn

@QAdley They've already blocked out the front page :P

You kids and your mass retagging has resulted in a huge jump in my number of approved edits.

Before I had a 1:1 ratio of approved to rejected edits! Now it's 3:1. It makes me look like not a hard ass.

QAdley

@Wipqozn Daaaw

Burninator script upgraded, now speed is effectively only limited by how fast it can load pages

It contains many gotos, I think it may be the most evil piece of code I've ever written, in a number of different ways

ickleislands

12:56 PM

@Wipqozn Don't blame me, I got unmoderated editing rights

oh wait, actually, blame me, I only had 15 edits yesterday

@QAdley in before you accidentally untag everything

QAdley

@ickleislands Accidentally set it off with skyrim

ickleislands

lol

user2334

@QAdley Careful, there are throttles in place that will effectively IP block you if you load up too many pages too fast. Grace Note used to talk of getting blocked for a period of time when he/she loaded up every single site's meta as part of his/her CMing duties

QAdley

@MarkTrapp Interesting, thanks for the heads up. I can easily throttle so it never loads more than one page every 10 seconds or so

user2334

That should be fine. I think Grace Note had Chrome or whatever browser load 100 bookmarks at once

QAdley

1:01 PM

@MarkTrapp This script, at full throttle, goes at a rate approaching 1 question detagged a second. I could theoretically set up a few instances and completely nuke any tag on the site in a matter of minutes

MUAHAHAHA, ULTIMATE POWER

I could do some very evil things. Take half of skyrim and retag to starcraft2. Take the other half and retag to diablo3

ickleislands

"Don't just delete the tag from the question and ignore everything else. If a question also has grammatical errors, terrible title, et cetera, then fix it along with removing the tag."

6

QAdley

@ickleislands But...but... burnination...

ickleislands

but but but "the great arqade cleanup"

QAdley

@ickleislands Yes yes, I'm aware. I'm just having fun playing with my shiny new burninator.

It's so easy

ickleislands

go burn scifi.se

they probably won't notice

run 10 copies all unthrottled

QAdley

1:12 PM

@ickleislands Not enough rep.

ickleislands

awww

Wipqozn

@QAdley I wonder how long it would take to delete every tag on the site...

ickleislands

do skeptics

lol

QAdley

Here's the script, if you want to try it out, you'll need to install sideflow

Kinda opening Pandora's box here, but you know, all fun and games...

ickleislands

one moment just retagging everything on the site as cake

2

QAdley

1:24 PM

@ickleislands This is scarily plausible

ickleislands

@QAdley :p

I will do it one day at 4am when people aren't around to react fast enough >:)

QAdley

@ickleislands Mods are asleep, retag all the questions

ickleislands

they're not asleep

they're watching and waiting

not saying a word, luring us into a false sense of security

so that the moment that execution begins they can pounce

Fluttershy

Needs more close votes!

QAdley

@Fluttershy No it doesn't

Fluttershy

1:32 PM

@QAdley It did when I linked it. >.>

ickleislands

@Fluttershy I am 73% towards assisting you

fbueckert

More mass tag burnination happening?

Wipqozn

OH my

12

Q: What's the best counter strategy against battlecruisers?

How should I prepare my army when attacking someone who has 12+ battlecruisers? (Protoss/Zerg/Terran answers are more than appreciated)

starcraft-2

You bumped up an old an interesting (by which I mean lulzy) conversation @QAdley.

user2334

@QAdley Okay, yeah, seriously retagging dozens of questions in the span of an hour is borderline abusive

user2334

The guidance is spurts of five. The site can live with bad tags a little longer

ickleislands

1:39 PM

he hasn't dominated the whole of the front page yet, he's not trying hard enough

user2334

39 out of 50 is dominance in my book

ickleislands

best I've seen to date is 50 out of 50, your scale is broken

;p

user2334

Crippling the site for regular visitors is not something you should optimize for

ickleislands

by regular visitors you mean new visitors right? regulars would be aware of the cleanup effort

fbueckert

I liked the idea of just automated tag cleanup during quiet hours.

Wipqozn

1:43 PM

@ickleislands The first thing users see when visiting the page is the "active questions" list.

fbueckert

What happened to that?

ickleislands

@Wipqozn when I open google chrome it automatically takes me to gaming.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=newest

I won't be the only person who does that

user2334

@ickleislands spam cleanups like this break every question listing except arqade.com/questions/newest

Mad Scientist

@QAdley Your meta post nudged me towards posting yet another feature request for better retagging tools:

5

Q: Repurpose the new review system for large-scale tagging operations

The SE developers are currently busy implementing a new review tool that will replace the old /review queue. I think this new review tool could also be used to make large-scale retagging and tag removal easier. The workflow I propose would be something like this: community decides that a speci...

feature-request tags review moderator-tools

user2334

Every active question listing, including the home page, is useless

Mad Scientist

1:46 PM

Large-scale cleanup also drowns out new posts from the frontpage that actually need the attention

user2334

@fbueckert SE is global: there are no "quiet hours". People need to just use common sense and not use their time to retag 100 questions at the same time. Bad tags are suboptimal, but if they're so bad as they must be done quickly and urgently, we should get SE involved who can do backend magic

fbueckert

@MarkTrapp Fair enough.

These tags don't seem bad enough to require SE intervention.

Maybe just slow down on all the mass editing.

Wipqozn

It's more an issue of quantity than quality that makes the tags seem so problematic.

user2334

right

ickleislands

I've kept my re-tagging to a minimal after all the highlight spammage I got yesterday

that and yesterday I ended up retagging instead of doing my day job >.<

QAdley

1:50 PM

@MarkTrapp I'm retagging once every ten minutes, that ok?

user2334

@QAdley I'd wait until the site absorbs the last set you did and they fall off the front page, then do it in spurts of 5 or so: let the retags drop at least below the fold, then do it again.

user2334

If any one person's name is in the majority of the modified fields, there's a problem

Wipqozn

@MarkTrapp So what you're saying is @QAdley should make a bunch of sock puppets? :P

user2334

Yes, yes I am. >.>

fbueckert

Sock puppet #1, sock puppet #2, etc.

Wipqozn

1:56 PM

An alternate solution to doing 5-edit bursts would be to just wait until the page is completely clean, grab every active question that needs to be edited. If there is a sizable amount of them (>~15) then do some mass retagging and then fix up alp the questions you queued up earlier.

but only do that once a day

QAdley

@Wipqozn Plan

I'm not doing any more (automated) tagging until I get an answer on the meta. This has quite big implications, and I don't want to get into trouble.

Also, close votes on tags:

0

A: Repurpose the new review system for large-scale tagging operations

What I think would work better for mass retags is a system of voting to close a tag, much like bad questions are closed. High rep would be required to VTC a tag, say 15,000. If a tag reaches 5 close votes, the tag is closed. Closed tags Closed tags still exist. They are still attached to qu...

Wipqozn

@QAdley This isn't anything new though. We've had issues with mass tagging before.

QAdley

@Wipqozn This doesn't seem to have been raised before though

user2334

@Wipqozn Judging from the rate at which the front page is recovering right now, it should support larger spurts more than once a day, but… like… 10-15 max. Not 30-50+

Wipqozn

ACtually, something else we may want to consider is to do some heavy clean-up during the LoL contest. Not only is the volume of LoL posts so high, but so many of them are crap that they will constantly be updated to the top of the active list anyways!

QAdley

2:02 PM

@MarkTrapp Ok

@Wipqozn I can purge them by nuking the front-page if you like?

Wipqozn

@MarkTrapp As in: spurts of 10-15 tags, or 10-15 large spurts a day?

QAdley

That's a great solution for everyone, right?

Wipqozn

@QAdley Totally.

user2334

@Wipqozn That's a pretty good idea. Heck, timing mass cleanups with any contest would work well and actually be beneficial: keeps the site looking like it has variety

QAdley

I prefer larger spurts less frequently. Small spurts throughout the day are harder to maintain

snicker

ickleislands

2:03 PM

@Wipqozn lol contest?

I can laugh out loud for a pretty decent amount of time!

user2334

@Wipqozn spurts of 10-15 tags, maybe 20 if the site has heavy activity during that time. Looks like it could be done maybe 2-3/day if spaced out evenly.

user2334

So, same volume per day, just spread out more

Wipqozn

@MarkTrapp That allows us to get though ~45 questions a day, which is pretty good. A

Also, that reminds me, you should make a point to do more than just re-tag the questions @QAdley. If you see other issues with them, fix those up as well. Perhaps you have been doing that already, but I just assume you haven't had time due to all the mass retagging :P

@MarkTrapp I'll make up a meta later today to perform a major clean-up during the two weekends that contest is on. Get some volunteers, and have a plan of action.

QAdley

@Wipqozn When not using the LAZER-TAG-BURNINATOR-3000 I have been fixing, but my new toy is just so shiny...

Lazers

0

Q: I selected a different quest and now I can't get back to the quest I was on

I had quite a few items I had been saving for my husband who had just started playing. I was in Act 2 working in the sewers of Caldeum but hadn't quite met the gem artisan yet. I joined my husband's game just to see how the feature worked and I gave him some gear. Now I'm stuck, I can't seem to...

diablo-3

0

Q: What changed in the ending for the Extended Cut DLC?

In the new Extended Cut DLC, what has changed in the ending to the game? Is there new gameplay or purely new end game cutscenes?

mass-effect-3

fbueckert

2:11 PM

> Equipped items will now take "wear-and-tear" durability damage at half the previous rate

Great! It no longer costs 100 gold to break a barrel!

ickleislands

rofl

HEY GUYS we made repair costs insane

Community: QQ

HEY GUYS we kinda uhm, well, tested the change, and realised it was bonkers

The Stack Exchange Blog

Blog - Stack Exchange: Welcome to the Arqade: Rebranding a Successful Site

Lauren Gundrum on June 26, 2012

Question: What do Stack Overflow, Super User, and Server Fault have in common that most of the sites on our network don’t?

Answer: A unique brand.

It’s no coincidence that our three largest sites happen to have their own brands. Unique domain names are more memorable than the subdomains that cover most of our network, which we believe is part of the reason why those sites are so successful. Gaming.stackexchange.com has been growing on its own for a while now: the community is extremely active and it has some of the best traffic statistics of any of the non-trilogy sites. The site has gotten a lo …

5

QAdley

@TheStackExchangeBlog Fuck me I'm feeling so engaged and excited right now

ickleislands

every time I get excited I get told to stop re-tagging

;p

Wipqozn

oh, right.

I should check the results of the SO election

Fluttershy

2:29 PM

QAdley

@Fluttershy I find these endlessly amusing, please post more

Fluttershy

@QAdley It's the only one I've seen other than the one LessPop posted a couple days ago. =(

Wipqozn

@Fluttershy I've seen two posted, aside from this one.

They are all awesome.

Lazers

0

Q: Anti crash program? (Like FireDaemon)

I've set up 2 Team Fortress 2 servers on my dedicated server, both has custom maps,, the second tf2 server crashes alot, so FireDaenib cannot restart it, so i had to set auto restart in around every 30 minutes, but the program is the demo version, so it doesn't work because the clock was wrong, a...

team-fortress-2 hosting

Wipqozn

tiddy

2:39 PM

Is meta the place to post suggestions for developers

Wipqozn

@tiddy What kind of suggestions?

Because if they are really good suggestions you should probably let me post them for you.

Don't worry, I won't give you any credit.

tiddy

Simple one. They don't have any search meta information regarding what the site is. Googling Arqade just brings up the address and what looks to be the first question on the page.

Should remove the question and have a site description

QAdp

@tiddy yea

RESPAWN

@tiddy Be careful, tiddy. If your suggestion is too good, they may ask you to volunteer to help them with it. :-P

QAdley

tiddy

2:44 PM

I have a list of colorful replies to such requests

QAzer

@tiddy I think this is because there's no meta description so the crawler is defaulting to the closest thing

tiddy

Yeah that's what I meant by no search meta information

QAzer

someone got lazy xD

tiddy

Or someone is lazy

Either way I think we can all agree some form of public flogging is in order

RESPAWN

Handy. I happen to have my whip and chains right here with me today.

tiddy

2:47 PM

At this point the only qaestion is whether I stuff a sack full or oranges or grapefruits

QAzer

there's no metadata at all for the site xD, cept a no-index for certain pages

Tim Stone

@QAdley I like the one where the guy decides not to throw himself in front of the train because it would inconvenience people on their way to work.

RESPAWN

What are these trains that you speak of. We have no such things where I live!

QAdley

Train

A railroad or railway train is a connected series of vehicles for rail transport that move along a track (permanent way) to transport cargo or passengers from one place to another place. The track usually consists of two, three or four rails, but might also be a monorail or maglev guideway. Propulsion for the train is provided by a separate locomotive, or from individual motors in self-propelled multiple units. Most modern trains are powered by diesel locomotives or by electricity supplied by overhead wires or additional rails, although historically (from the early 19th century to th...

Tim Stone

shakes head

fbueckert

2:55 PM

@TimStone Fun story: Apparently, that used to be the preferred method of suicide in Japan.

QAzer

@QAdley uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Train

QAdley

@fbueckert Hilarious

@QAzer I'm at work

fbueckert

@QAdley Well, it wasn't done yet. :P

Tim Stone

Yeah. I know in Hong Kong, they put up plexiglass barricades on all of the platforms to prevent things like that from happening (intentionally or accidentally).

QAzer

@QAdley "Trains are commonly regarded as strange combinations of public transport, mobile torture devices and lateness inductors. The ratio of public transport to torture varies as a function of the time of day. Around the beginning or end of the standard working day the ratio massively favors torture/lateness at the expense of transport. At other times of day the ratio balances out again."

QAdley

2:57 PM

@QAzer Haha, excellent

fbueckert

The cleanup crews got so good at cleaning up the aftermath that it would delay the trains by no more than 15 minutes.

The suicide rate dropped off precipitously after family members started getting bills for the cleanup.

QAdley

@fbueckert Fuck. Don't they announce delays of more than 5 seconds?

fbueckert

@QAdley That, I don't know. I don't believe I was ever on a train that was late when I was in Japan.

Transcript for