V'dibarta Bam

3:14 AM

This (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentecost) makes me wary of this (judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/pentecost).

Is it commonly accepted as having a jewish meaning?

@msh210 Just when I was going to question what I perceived as a misapplication of the word "acronym" to two abbreviations that are not pronouncible (בס"ד and ב"ה) I read this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym_and_initialism

And incidentally I've heard people use "basad" as a declarative and as a noun so I suppose it could be only a matter of time before the distinction is entirely blurred.

Feeds

3:18 PM

Stack Overflow Blog: Community Promotion Ads

Posted by Robert Cartaino on May 31st, 2011

You may have seen our vote-based advertising for open source projects on Stack Overflow — Stack Overflow users create ads for their favorite open source projects, and the community votes for the projects they’d like to see promoted on the site.

In response to the popularity of that program, we’ve extended this vote based advertising program to all the public Stack Exchange sites.

There are likely other activities of interest to your community beyond asking and answering questions, such as: …

Stack Overflow Blog: SE Podcast #06

Posted by Alex Miller on June 1st, 2011

It’s our first test of a live podcast! In case you missed it, we streamed this week’s podcast live during the taping. It’s something we’re playing with and may continue to do in the future if it is popular. You can tune in to the live tapings Tuesdays @ 4 PM Eastern / 1 PM Pacific — check Joel and Jeff’s Twitter feeds for the location.

Tune in next week when our guest is Sam Saffron (aka Waffles) – once again, you’ll be able to watch/listen live on Tuesday @ 4pm as we do the taping. Follow @spolsky and @codinghorror for the link. You can also hang out in the official chat room during the tapings. …

Stack Overflow Blog: SE Podcast #07

Posted by Alex Miller on June 8th, 2011

Jeff and Joel are joined by Sam Saffron (aka Waffles), our only Australian developer at Stack Exchange!

Join us next week when our guest is Marco Arment, the creator of Instapaper and the former lead developer of Tumblr. We’ll also be live streaming again, so tune in to http://www.livestream.com/stackexchange starting at 3:30pm – you can also join the live chat at http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/512.

Stack Exchange Podcast – Episode #07 w/ Sam Saffron by Stack Exchange

Are there any plans to make the videos available after the podcast has been streamed? I’d like to w …

Stack Overflow Blog: 1,000,000th user!

Posted by Joel Spolsky on June 9th, 2011

Like most sites, it’s hard to figure out the number of users on Stack Exchange. The widest possible number is the number of unique visitors, most of whom just read our content and move on. That number is now around 19,000,000 according to Google Analytics or 14,000,000 according to Quantcast – the difference comes from the fact that Quantcast has some “de-dupe” technology to try to estimate the number of human beings while Google Analytics just counts unique cookies.

Another number we track internally is “number of human beings who type on one of the Stack Exchange …

Stack Overflow Blog: Optimizing For Pearls, Not Sand

Posted by Jeff Atwood on June 13th, 2011

In March 2010, we rebalanced our reputation system to favor answers.

While we value good questions (and asking a great question is absolutely an art), we want to explicitly encourage people to provide the best possible answers. Without people interested in providing good answers, the questions are moot. We know that answers have more intrinsic value than questions, and the reputation balance should reflect that.

The question asker already enjoys a substantial benefit beyond reputation gain from upvotes on their question — namely, they get great answers to their question! Thus, the asker shouldn’t need as much reputation gain. …

msh210

4:14 PM

@WAF I think so. And certainly on J.SE that's its obvious meaning.

What's the difference -- in the list of starred lines at right -- between one with a filled-in star and one with a hollow star?

yydl

6:35 PM

I'll be willing to do a write-up for the Touro College Newspaper (I'm a regular contributor)...

msh210

@IsaacMoses ^

msh210

7:08 PM

-1

Q: Is oral sex permitted according to halacha?

What has the halacha have to say about a husband and wife sharing oral sex (in either direction).

@msh210 If it's closed, I'll detag 'sex': it's the only question with that tag, and we don't need it IMO if a question like this is closed. I do think we should close it, and if I had a vote I'd vote to close. But I don't. (Funny how being a ♦ moderator takes away a privilege.)

95

Q: Add a way for moderators to cast a normal, non binding vote

I think moderators should have the ability to cast a normal, non binding vote like if they were a normal user (while of course retaining their ability to cast a binding vote where necessary). This can be used in "grey areas" where a moderator can choose to give his or her opinion but not make a ...

feature-request status-declined moderation moderators moderator-abilities

msh210

7:34 PM

@msh210 Ah, never mind. It really did deserve to be closed. Done.

Isaac Moses

8:08 PM

@yydl Awesome! Go for it! If you're interested in talking to SE's publicist, interviewing me, or arranging through the publicist to interview Joel, please email me at info@yodeya.com

@msh210 Not the first time this question was asked and closed.

... the first was a long time ago, on m.y.

msh210

@IsaacMoses Oh, then coulda closed as duplicate. :-P

Isaac Moses

8:31 PM

@msh210 Actually, the first time it happened, I deleted it. Do you suppose that'd be appropriate again?

Possibly relevant: I don't know if the last clause of stackexchange.com/legal/content-policy applies here.

msh210

@IsaacMoses I don't think questions like this were the intent at all.

@IsaacMoses If it's deleted, people won't see it, which ruins its value as a closure precedent.

Isaac Moses

@msh210 No, I suppose not.

msh210

@IsaacMoses That said, I don't know.

Isaac Moses

@msh210 True, but past some threshold of explicitness, we'd want to delete, right? So the question is where that threshold is.

... "Ask Justice Potter Stewart"?

WAF

@msh210 I agree. I think it's useful to leave it for that reason.

@IsaacMoses Yeah.

General question: What is the purpose of badges?

Is it written up somewhere?

Isaac Moses

8:39 PM

@WAF To subtly incentivize behaviors that are useful to the community

msh210

@IsaacMoses ...as not exactly exemplified by my recent jonesing for a vote so I could get a badge.

WAF

@IsaacMoses So the determination of badge types and administration would be best left to trained neuroeconomists, would it not?

msh210

@IsaacMoses Right: I don't know. In this case, though, I don't think the question's over that line.

Isaac Moses

@WAF blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/07/stack-overflow-badge-feedbac blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/12/badges-positive-only

msh210

@WAF "Our “Badges” system fulfills three roles: bronze badges encourage people to try all the different functions in the system, silver badges encourages continued participation, while completionists and hardcore users can strive to get the gold badges." --blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/07/podcast-13

WAF

8:56 PM

@IsaacMoses Thanks!

@msh210 Thanks!

Isaac Moses

@msh210 Thanks for handling that one, BTW. The only thing I might have added was a link to faq

WAF

I wonder what they are doing back at headquarters to assess which ones will be effective to those ends.

Isaac Moses

... which you can now get really easily by typing "[ f a q ]" without the spaces. It even works in here

WAF

faq