Raiders of the Lost Downboat - 2019-12-04

« first day (2717 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (1607 days later) »

12:28 AM

@EliahKagan I think that person said something like that about our policy in AUGR recently

in Ask Ubuntu General Room, Nov 30 at 20:18, by Doug Smythies

@WinEunuuchs2Unix : You around? For that question we were both on earlier, https://askubuntu.com/questions/1192779/how-do-i-make-a-shell-program-run-with-the-script-name-and-script-help?noredirect=1#comment1996631_1192779 , I was being vague in my comments on purpose. Why? because it looked like a homework assignment, in which case our job is just to nudge, not solve.

I replied to the wrong message

@EliahKagan that was about the off topic question but I guess I can live with those edits that remove the distros information if there is an existing answer to preserve

12:49 AM

@Zanna To clarify, Doug was not the author of the comment I flagged. The comment I flagged was just a link to an image. I don't think the remaining comment is a fully accurate characterization of our policy by any means, but I don't think it needs to be removed. The other comment, which was removed, and which was not posted by Doug, easily qualified for the "unfriendly or unkind" flag.

@Zanna Sorry, it seems you already knew all that. I'm just going based on which chat message you replied to without reading your message about which message you replied to, darn it! :)

@Zanna It's not ideal. I'm not confident I acted rightly (which is one reason I mentioned it here). The question didn't seem like a very good candidate for migration to Unix & Linux, Ask Different, or Super User, though, and the answer seemed valuable for Ubuntu users. I don't actually know to what extent it's a good answer for macOS users.

I feel this is a risk people accept when asking questions on Ask Ubuntu about macOS systems, and I think it's consistent with the purpose of the site is primarily to build a reusable Ubuntu Q&A. I didn't find a clear consensus about this sort of gray area on Ask Ubuntu Meta, though a number of posts touched on it.

If the edit is rolled back or otherwise undone (by you, the OP, whoever), I'm still willing to vote to close, but I think the current situation is okay. Maybe the bash tag should be removed.

I was slightly worried at your :( since that that one emoticon can express such a broad range of emotions and attitudes.

(I'm not suggesting your :( was in any way bad, just that that's why I replied to it with my equally dramatic ? rather than going with my guess that it might have been about my edit... which I did guess it might have been about.)

(unrelated) I've noticed recently that there seem to be very few tag wiki edits. At least tag wiki edit suggestions.

Are the tag wikis of Ask Ubuntu not being actively maintained?

Is there a SEDE query for general tag wiki editing activity?

1:17 AM

@EliahKagan my bad, I should have been clearer, sorry

1:40 AM

[ Natty | Sentinel ] networking Ubuntu 18.04 netplan static routes By: MagicCamera 3.5;

@EliahKagan my view is that such edits should not be done and the post can be closed (this doesn't delete the answers, unless all their scores are less than 1, and if we can't fix that, are they really worth preserving?) But I think other people think such edits are ok. My main concern is that, seeing such actions, people will think it's our policy to make such edits in any situation, which I think would be very bad.

I find the justifications I've heard for these edits not clear and compelling enough to use as the basis of a workable policy.

Like "I'm sure this is distro agnostic" (dubious claim) or "this is relevant to Ubuntu as well and it doesn't matter that we're not helping the OP" (we can send the OP to where they will actually get help - surely we're not so desperate for questions that we need to snatch them from other communities and we do actually care about helping the OP at least enough to do that. If it's relevant to Ubuntu and useful we can make a Q&A)

The only condition that seems to me sufficiently concrete to shape a reasonable policy is that there is an existing valuable answer to preserve, but I don't think editing is necessary to do that. I think the policy should be simply to not delete such questions with valuable answers. I don't think our policy is or should be to delete all closed questions.

Anyway this particular question seems a case where editing is about as justifiable as it would ever be

2:21 AM

@Zanna I agree that there is much danger in altering a question to be or appear on-topic based on the belief that the question itself applies fully to Ubuntu. It is very hard to be right about that in a way that one can be confident of. Questions proffered as the clearest available examples of this are sometimes not examples of it at all.

I am thinking of a Kali question where the problem was the result of the OP doing everything as root, and the OP was admonished not to go out of their way to run everything as root, whereas what they should have done (besides not using Kali for things it's not really meant for) was to go out of their way to make and use a non-root account... something people virtually never have to go out of their way to do in Ubuntu.

@Natty tp

2:50 AM

@Natty report askubuntu.com/a/1193656/22949

[ Natty | Sentinel ] Link to Post Low Length; No Code Block; One Line only; Low Rep; Unregistered User; 3.0;

Btw I had intended or at least hoped to say something more useful than ":(" but a mosquito bit me which was much sadder than the edit

After chasing it I decided to go to sleep. Communication fail

4 hours later…

7:00 AM

[ Natty | Sentinel ] 16.04 404 Not Found nginx/1.10.3 error in Ubuntu 16.04 By: ShahbazAli 3.5;

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, link at end of body, pattern-matching product name in body, +5 more (690): What is LumaSlim? by thomaserrerag on askubuntu.com

2 hours later…

9:00 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted user (70): Upgraded to Ubuntu 19.10, cannot boot anymore, boot repair log attached by xpusostomos on askubuntu.com

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, bad keyword in username, blacklisted website in body, link at end of body, +7 more (881): Where To Buy Prime Natural Cbd Oil Joint Pain Relief Oil Cyber Monday Offers? by Prime Natural Cbd Oil on askubuntu.com

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted user (70): Can't boot Acer laptop into Ubuntu 19.10 after dual boot install by xpusostomos on askubuntu.com

9:55 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad ip for hostname in body, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, pattern-matching product name in body, +3 more (590): Instant Keto Reviews Benefits Pills Price & Buy! by Defborwlrow on askubuntu.com

10:29 AM

[ Natty | Sentinel ] flicker External monitor flickering with usb-c dock displayport / vga By: Alex Dalsgaard 4.0;

2 hours later…

12:06 PM

@Natty tp

@Natty tp

12:23 PM

spam or vandalism

12:35 PM

(unrelated) It would be good to check back later in case the image with the slur in it gets put back.

@Natty report askubuntu.com/a/1193718/22949

[ Natty | Sentinel ] Link to Post Low Length; No Code Block; Low Rep; 2.5;

@Natty report askubuntu.com/a/1193748/22949

@EliahKagan Post already reported

no longer needed, wrong canned comment

[ Natty | Sentinel ] drivers Ubuntu or Fedora drivers for Canon imageCLASS MF632CDW colour laser printer By: Rick Masters 4.5;

[ Natty | Sentinel ] mount CD Drive not recognized - 18.04 By: Sam Spade 7.0;

Some Error Occurred on this post

[ Natty | Sentinel ] wireless Cannot connect to WPA2/WPA Enterprise (PEAP and MSCHAP) By: R1234 7.5;

Some Error Occurred on this post

1:22 PM

@Natty tp

@Natty tp

1:37 PM

seems dupe

dupe

OT "EOL" - the question is not actually specific to an end-of-life release, as asked, and it is potentially answerable, but it can get much better answers if the OP edits it to give a more detailed description of what they've done, including code -- and I'm reluctant to ask the OP to do that if the question would just be OT "EOL" afterwards anyway.

If the OP clarifies that it's not really about 14.04 (I think people sometimes pick version tags indiscriminately) then it probably shouldn't be closed (except as a duplicate) but more details should be requested.

A possible result of requesting more details now could be that what the OP is doing really is specific to an EOL release, in which case they would have undertaken the effort to expand their question only for it to remain OT "EOL".

I've commented to ask if they're running 14.04.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer (86): EPSON Printer driver for download by linud on askubuntu.com

dupe or unclear

@Natty report askubuntu.com/a/1193678/22949

1:52 PM

[ Natty | Sentinel ] Link to Post Contains ?; Low Length; No Code Block; Low Rep; 3.0;

2:07 PM

That suggested edit replaced a link with a useful title with one that was (a) entirely broken, and (b) lacking in a useful title, which even when a link is not broken worsens a posts for everyone and especially for readers accessing the site in a way that does not make it easy to inspect link targets. I've fixed the post, but that edit should never have been approved.

(I don't mean to single anyone out--I see Approve reviews of posts with both those problems all the time, and only rarely from Downboat regulars.)

The relevant meta posts for these issues are:

15

Q: Broken links starting with http://%20https://

An edit suggestion like this pretty often appears in the review queue. These edits are generally fixing http://%20https:// to https://. (%20 means an escaped space in URLs.) Does anyone know why such broken links appear so often? Shouldn’t they be corrected automatically?

discussion feature-request hyperlinks https

11

A: Should posts be edited to have readable links?

Many times you can go too simple on the links, for example - Read this article for more information: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2013/01/12-default-ubuntu-phone-apps-to-be-community-created Is a bit too long, but if you edit it to - Visit this article for more information. You have l...

7

Q: A call to uphold accessibility by not shortening links to "here"

As far as I see there has been some discussion about the shortening of links. While keeping the complete URL visible in the post can clearly be distracting (especially when used inline), I want to warn against making it too drastic (e.g. "here"). Remember that visually handicapped people often u...

discussion editing hyperlinks

[ Natty | Sentinel ] filesystem What is the ".Trash-1000" folder and how to delete it? By: GregNewToLinux 5.5;

@Natty tp

2:24 PM

unclear

too broad

3:03 PM

Really useless comments keep getting posted on the dd question.

no longer needed - not a helpful or relevant comment for that question

no longer needed - it's a half-answer posted as a comment (and wrong), just the sort of thing that classic meta post is about

3:44 PM

@EliahKagan How did I miss that!!! Sorry for the mixup.

3:57 PM

Seems clear enough

seems like a dupe

@Kulfy Yes, and the difference they're describing is one of the many changes from 14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS that relates to the change from Upstart to systemd, so I don't think it's too broad either.

@Kulfy I'm not sure. It seems like the OP wants to know how to modify the behavior of the existing alias so that it can be run without command-line arguments but with a different effect. This can be done by having the alias depend on the values of shell variables, or by redefining the alias.

@EliahKagan Do we have something more general for that?

@EliahKagan Yeah. I think we should have something for that.

@Kulfy We have questions about changes due to systemd but I'm not sure this is a duplicate of any of them.

@Kulfy Yes. I don't think the currently proposed target is sufficient, though.

@EliahKagan May be some answer including where to find those documentations?

@Kulfy I'm writing an answer now.

But if you find a good dupe target for it then you should not hesitate to vote to close it. (I have not found one.) Also, I'm only going to post my answer if I feel it coherently covers both the general change in init system and the specific change about rc.local that the OP mentioned as an example.

4:44 PM

@Natty report askubuntu.com/a/1193803/22949

[ Natty | Sentinel ] Link to Post Low Length; No Code Block; One Line only; Low Rep; 3.0;

@Natty report askubuntu.com/a/1193812/22949

[ Natty | Sentinel ] Link to Post Low Length; No Code Block; One Line only; Low Rep; 3.0;

@Natty report askubuntu.com/a/1193816/22949

[ Natty | Sentinel ] Link to Post Low Length; No Code Block; Low Rep; Unregistered User; 1.5;

4:51 PM

This question was posted 2.5 years ago and was in French. It was correctly closed as unclear. But because of upvotes and an answer it wasn't going to be deleted. I have edited the post and translated it to English using online tools. If there are some errors, feel free to edit.

Should it be reopened and closed as dupe of this?

It seems the comments on the above question are no longer needed

5:14 PM

dupe

Please add the second target from my comment.

@Kulfy Yes. At least it should be reopened. I've voted to do so. I'll probably vote to reclose it as a duplicate once it's reopened (if it's successfully reopened).

@Kulfy On which question?

5:34 PM

@EliahKagan The one I edited and you voted to reopen

5:46 PM

One of the comments mentions [the OP's other question](How to modify $PATH?) which was posted in English. That comment should probably remain unless/until the translation has been refined based on information in that English-language question (then a URL for the other question can be included in the edit summary).

Maybe we should even undelete that question--it was deleted automatically by the system.

Makes sense

The original text of How to modify $PATH? by user669242 on Ask Ubuntu was:

I know that the question was asked before, but my problem is a little bit different :
I want to install OCS-Agent (the installation of the server is a success) but at the end of the installation i have the following line :
"can't find ocsinventory-agent in $PATH".

So I modified the $PATH, not only with "export" but by modifying the .bashrc.

Finally, I still have this line...

Can someone help me ? :) plus sorry for my mistakes in my sentences, I'm french !!

Thanks in advance

Since Zanna's edit, the text has been:

I know that the question was asked before, but my problem is a little bit different :
I want to install OCS-Agent (the installation of the server is a success) but at the end of the installation I see the following line:

    can't find ocsinventory-agent in $PATH

So I modified the $PATH, not only with `export` but by modifying my `.bashrc`.

But I still get the same error.

Isn't it more or less the same?

I'm not sure if it should or not, but the currently non-deleted question does not contain anything about what the OP did that is as specific as:

> So I modified the $PATH, not only with export but by modifying my .bashrc.

I was also unsure about precisely what they're saying they can access or do with Ocsreports, but I guess the English question doesn't clarify that either.

The same line already exists in the non-deleted post.

(unrelated to above) dupe

5:55 PM

@Kulfy I don't follow. As far as I can tell, the non-deleted post does not say "So I modified the $PATH, not only with export but by modifying my .bashrc."

It says, "I want to modify the variable $PATH in the long run, I have been trying to modify this variable in the .bashrc file, but inspite of everything absolutely nothing is happening there," which is much less specific.

The non-deleted post is slightly newer, and I don't know if it's deliberately less specific because the information wasn't entirely accurate, or if it omits information that it should include. But they do not have the same level of detail.

I'm not saying anything necessarily has to be done. But I wouldn't flag that comment as long as the question it links to remains potentially relevant and useful.

But I think that comment won't be helpful either for users having <10k rep

Well, there's web.archive.org/web/20170325143846/https://askubuntu.com/….

Anyway, I've voted to undelete their English question. If it's undeleted, it can be closed as a duplicate of their other question (whether or not we succeed at reopening their other question).

6:10 PM

Yeah. That seems good

@Kulfy Sorry, I didn't get to it soon enough and the question is already closed. I don't see a second link anywhere. Maybe the system swallowed it up when it deleted your dupe comment? If so, you could comment with it.

@EliahKagan I edited my comment to include the second link. AFAIK edited comments aren't deleted by system. I think Thomas deleted that.

[ Natty | Sentinel ] windows Joining Ubuntu core to Windows active directory By: Abdul Kareem 5.0;

[ Natty | Sentinel ] sound Audio is working, but the speaker test doesn't work By: user1022099 4.0;

6:27 PM

@Natty tp

@Natty tp

@Natty tp

6:48 PM

@EliahKagan I mod flagged the question and Thomas added the second dupe target.

no longer needed?

@Kulfy Seems that way to me. I've flagged it as no longer needed.

Okay. Thanks

Unrelated to the above, the three comments currently on this question are no longer needed and I probably should've clicked Edit rather than Looks OK on this answer.

unclear

Although this suggestion has been rejected but does it look like from OP?

Not sure why it got 1 approve vote

7:08 PM

It might be from the post author, but I couldn't tell, so I voted to reject it and wrote a custom message asking them to log in if they're the post author.

Well the author is an unregistered user. They might got cookies cleared.

Yes. If they have some account, they can ask for their accounts to be merged (even if they don't have access to the other and the other is unregistered). They may not know about that though.

7:38 PM

unclear, not off-topic

not off-topic (unless they're not running GParted in Ubuntu), it's asking how to format a partition as NTFS in GParted

unclear

7:53 PM

@EliahKagan I have voted to close as dupe

Do we have reason to think the OP actually has to create a new partition table? They seem to want to keep an existing Ubuntu system and the data on it, so if they do need to do that, then they should probably be warned specifically about what happens when a new partition table is created on a disk.

As of now there isn't enough info, I believe.

[ Natty | Sentinel ] evolution evolution: how to change the subject format of forwarded emails By: Ludd 4.0;

@Kulfy I voted to close it as a duplicate of the target Elder Geek proposed--the general question about installing Windows after Ubuntu and keeping Ubuntu. It's duped to both now.

Seems fine.

8:08 PM

@Natty tp

8:49 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Potentially bad ns for domain in answer, username similar to website in answer (60): Difference between "Numix" and "Numix Daily" GNOME themes by Manglada Tech on askubuntu.com

9:08 PM

^^^ NAA

9:24 PM

@Natty report askubuntu.com/a/1193874/22949

[ Natty | Sentinel ] Link to Post Low Length; No Code Block; Low Rep; 2.0;

10:01 PM

^^ Undisclosed affiliation. I left a comment.

10:20 PM

dupe

TIL unlike main site, we can vote to close questions on meta even if the target doesn't have an upvoted/accepted answer.

10:59 PM

[ Natty | Sentinel ] 18.04 Glonass BN-808 Glonass BN-808 USB GPS Receiver Receiver in Ubuntu 18.04 By: Maira P. 4.5;

11:39 PM

@Natty tp

« first day (2717 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (1607 days later) »

Transcript for

Dec '194

Raiders of the Lost Downboat

Place to sail the open sea, and search out boats to take down....

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile