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Stack Exchange
Stack Exchange
1:19 AM
Stack Overflow Blog: Farewell
Posted by Joel Spolsky on February 6th, 2012

Stack Exchange co-founder Jeff Atwood announced that he is leaving the company to spend more time with his family, including his twin daughters Maisie Jane (5lb2oz) and June Adeline (5lb 7oz) who celebrated their 0th birthday (and joined Twitter) last Friday, to the great joy of their parents.

It has been a great honor for all of us to have worked with Jeff over the last four years as Stack Exchange grew from absolutely nothing to a world-changing resource with over 30 million monthly visitors.

When I first met Jeff, I told him that when Stack Overflow was built, it would become a standard part  …

 
 
2 hours later…
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
3:43 AM
@StackExchange um, wow.
In other news, we've broken the 4000-question mark, B"H. Only 69 more answered questions until we break the more significant 4000-answered-questions mark.
 
Stack Exchange
Stack Exchange
0
Q: {How/When} Should we allow Purim Torah?

Isaac MosesGenerally, we expect all questions here to be written from the point-of-view of genuine curiosity, and we expect all answers to be genuine attempts to provide real information and analysis that directly addresses the question. Last Purim, in the SE 1.0 incarnation of mi.yodeya, we broke these ex...

discussion scope policy
 
 
1 hour later…
Stack Exchange
Stack Exchange
5:06 AM
0
Q: Will there ever be a Meet-up?

Seth JJust putting this out there. What are the chances of an official M.Y. (or J.SE) meet-up/tweet-up of sorts?

discussion
 
 
5 hours later…
Stack Exchange
Stack Exchange
9:42 AM
0
Q: Request for Closure

MbrevdaRecently, a question was asked which recommend "bypassing" some of the most important sanctifications in Judaism in favor of the exact inverse of what is in the spirit of the Torah. While there is nothing wrong with an innocent Halchic question, the OP seems to looking for simple and, frankly, fr...

support misuse vote-to-close
 
 
9 hours later…
Alenanno
Alenanno
6:13 PM
@msh210 Are you there?
or @IsaacMoses too :D
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@Alenanno Here I am.
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
@IsaacMoses Hello! I'm a mod from the Linguistics SE... I wanted to ask for some insight on the Challenge Weeks you do
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@Alenanno Sure!
@Alenanno We actually recently changed the mechanics of topic proposals a bit. Our current method is written up at meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/441/…
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
@IsaacMoses Basically, I think we're going to make one but there's no prize available... Did you do something in particular to involve people without promising prizes? This is our first challenge, so we don't know how it will go. It can be that it'll be successful without any prize, but I want to be sure somehow :D
Yeah I saw that :D I saw it's working quite well
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@Alenanno The basic assumption behind ours is that we have community members who are interested in contributing, but they don't have questions in mind, or when they do, they don't necessarily think of posting them here. So, we try to get a particular topic into everyone's heads each week, to hopefully jog their memory about questions on that topic that they've thought of in the past, and to attune them to noticing question-worthy things on the topic over the course of the week.
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
6:22 PM
@IsaacMoses I see... :D How many challenges did you do so far? And do you know the average number for asked questions?
 
msh210
msh210
@Alenanno Hi!
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
@msh210 Hello!
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
... If the assumption is correct, people will post questions thus inspired for the usual motivations, without additional, extrinsic motivations.
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
It makes sense. reflects
 
msh210
msh210
@Alenanno Comme ci, comme ça.
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
6:24 PM
@msh210 What were you answering to there? Didn't get it :D
 
msh210
msh210
@IsaacMoses, very nice answer re Fiddler.
@Alenanno "it's working quite well"
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
@msh210 I see... But from 1 (min) to 10 (max), how would you evaluate it?
 
msh210
msh210
@Alenanno It was doing better earlier. I suspect this is a combination of (a) it was a novelty; (b) it was better advertised (we used... what are they called? the notices that go atop every page. @IsaacMoses, help me out here, please?) until SE folks told us to stop; and (c) the topics were more interesting (I chose them in high-vote order, so the earlier ones were more interesting to people).
And probably other factors.
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
System Messages?
About the System Message... A new "calendar" feature is being taken in consideration, so in the future, the mods could use that for non-emergency announcements like weeks, etc...
:)
 
msh210
msh210
@Alenanno Yes, I think that's what they're called.
@Alenanno Yeah, I've seen the MSO feature-request. We'll see if/when that gets implemented. I hope so.
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
6:33 PM
@msh210 I hope so too!
 
msh210
msh210
@Alenanno It's easy to run, so even if it's not particularly popular there's no harm done.
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
Well thank you both @msh210 and @IsaacMoses for the help! :D
 
msh210
msh210
@Alenanno You're very welcome.
@OtavioMacedo, hi.
 
Otavio Macedo
Otavio Macedo
@msh210 Hi, I was following the conversation
I'm a mod at Linguistics.SE, too
 
msh210
msh210
@OtavioMacedo Ah. Well, welcome.
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
6:38 PM
I should have introduced him before... :D
 
Otavio Macedo
Otavio Macedo
Well, I'm convinced
we should stick to our plan for the challenge week!
Thank you, @msh210
 
msh210
msh210
@OtavioMacedo Meaning, having such a thing even though there's no prize?
 
Otavio Macedo
Otavio Macedo
@msh210 yes
let's see what happens
 
msh210
msh210
@OtavioMacedo Good luck.
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@Alenanno No problem. Sorry I disappeared for a bit. Phone call.
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
6:42 PM
@IsaacMoses No problem!
@msh210 thanks! :D
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@msh210 :) Thanks. I happened to remember hearing that interview, so I googled for it and was not disappointed. I was quite proud of myself for coming up with that source.
 
msh210
msh210
@IsaacMoses Rightfully so, though late summer might be a better time for it.
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@msh210 ?
 
msh210
msh210
@IsaacMoses Pride cometh before a fall.
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@msh210 8^) 8^P
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
6:54 PM
Thank you guys for the help again, I'll see you around! :)
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@Alenanno I hope the challenges are productive for you.
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
@IsaacMoses Me too! :D
 
msh210
msh210
@Alenanno @OtavioMacedo If I may comment on your set-up...
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
@msh210 Shoot! (figuratively)
 
msh210
msh210
@Alenanno "When you ask your question, post the link in the answer below, so it'll be easier for us to retrieve them" (a quote from meta.linguistics.stackexchange.com/q/247/228) assigns a little bit of work to each asker, slightly inhibiting asking. One person's gathering all the posts at the end of the week is not hard if they're all tagged appropriately (since you can sort the tagged questions by time). [cont'd]
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
7:01 PM
Yeah actually that is gone... I'll delete that comment... We were thinking, thanks to @OtavioMacedo proposal, to use an API... But I don't know how it works.
 
msh210
msh210
[cont'd] (OTOH there may well be some weeks when the topic at hand has no tag, in which case it's harder to find the questions. It might still be worthwhile doing it all at the end so as to remove the inhibition to asking.)
@Alenanno Ah, good idea (when there's a relevant tag). Thanks.
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
@msh210 Do you know how it works?
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@Alenanno The API only works for launched sites, I think.
 
msh210
msh210
@IsaacMoses Oh, drat.
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
@IsaacMoses Ah...
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
7:05 PM
A few of us tend to collect links to challenge-related questions when we see them. It doesn't matter that much, since we're not picking winners or anything.
... Why are you bothering to pick a winner, BTW, if there's no prize?
 
Otavio Macedo
Otavio Macedo
if there's no prize and no winner, can we even call it a challenge?
 
msh210
msh210
@IsaacMoses Oh, I missed that (that you're picking a winner).
 
Alenanno
Alenanno
Uhm...
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@OtavioMacedo Sure. "I challenge you to come up with cool questions about historical linguistics to populate our site with."
Then again, maybe we'd have better participation here if we had a bit more ceremony and a winner each week, even without a prize.
... I'd choose the winner based on something other than a random draw, though, to make the victory mean more. Most Q votes, most Q+A votes, most views, vel sim.
 
Otavio Macedo
Otavio Macedo
@IsaacMoses Yes, we were considering page views
 
msh210
msh210
7:11 PM
@IsaacMoses Indeed: maybe we should.
@IsaacMoses Or, as @Alenanno suggests over in the other room (and I'm copying here so future readers see it), more than one of the above.
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@msh210 Careful. You don't know how many entries you're going to get. If they're all winners, then none of them are.
 
msh210
msh210
@IsaacMoses Good point.
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@msh210 I'd say that we should pick one objective, simple measure and pick one winner based on it. We could reward the winner by putting a bolded comment on the winning question (which would, in turn, advertise the challenge to future readers)
I'm thinking maybe Q votes plus A votes would be a good measure. It captures the quality of the question itself as well as that of the activity it generated. Views, as you've observed before, are not a great measurement early on.
 
msh210
msh210
@IsaacMoses Good idea. Maybe most (views + net question votes)? Most views because we're looking to push the site, and most question votes because it's the sign of a good question. Net answer votes are important, but many a good question won't get a good answer in a week.
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
Votes, too, bias for questions posted early in the week.
 
msh210
msh210
7:17 PM
@IsaacMoses Have I?
@IsaacMoses Ah, true. As do views.
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@msh210 I think so. Just smile and nod and accept the credit. It'll come in handy when they discuss pay raises.
 
msh210
msh210
:3303184 How would that work on J.SE? :-)
Hm, that didn't work. I was trying to link to:
in Linguistics, 54 secs ago, by Isaac Moses
@Aarthi Winner gets to coin a word, and everyone else has to use it at least once in the following week?
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@msh210 s/word/Minhag/ ! :)
... or chumra
 
msh210
msh210
@IsaacMoses heheh, that could get fun
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@msh210 Hey! I just re-invented the Chumra of the Week Club!
 
msh210
msh210
7:30 PM
I don't think random selection of a winner of the topic challenge, at least when there's no tangible prize, is the way to go (on J.SE, anyway). What do other J.SE folks think?
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@IsaacMoses OTOH, given the stakes involved, it doesn't matter much if there's some bias. If people are desperate for the victory, let them exercise some zerizut.
@msh210 I agree. A simple, objective, value-related measure makes most sense to me.
 
msh210
msh210
@IsaacMoses Think waiting here for people to chime in regarding how to pick a winner suffices, or I should start a [meta-]meta post about it? I'm inclined to the former. (After all, the challenge is not an official thing by any means, so I don't feel bad about imposing us chatters' (or even my own) will on it w.r.t. how to pick a winner.)
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@msh210 Honestly, you could just do it unilaterally. I doubt anyone would mind. If they do, they can always let you know via comment.
 
msh210
msh210
@IsaacMoses Okay. I'll wait a bit, though.
@IsaacMoses Do you know an easy way to count net answer votes for a question with many answers?
Otherwise, I think I'll not use it.
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
7:48 PM
@msh210 cf meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/770/… I'd just tally them in my head.
@msh210 How about Q votes + votes on top A?
... with either views or votes on second A as a tiebreaker
 
msh210
msh210
@IsaacMoses Hm, perhaps. Again, though, a good answer doesn't always have a good answer within a few days. What argument against views doesn't apply to the other measures?
 
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
@msh210 I suspect that votes and answers both differentiate significantly more quickly than views do, since the former come from regular site users, and the large numbers of the latter do not. Really, just Q votes would be fine, but you'd need a tiebreaker somewhat frequently.
@msh210 Don't worry too much about fairness. The stakes are very low.
 
msh210
msh210
Okay, makes sense.
My plan with respect to the weekly topic challenge is to start awarding a prize, which will be intangible (viz, just the ability to say you won). To choose a winner, my tentative plan is to choose the question highest in net votes on the question (with ties to be broken by net votes on the highest-voted answer or possibly by number of views). I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions.
2
@ShmuelBrill, pinging you, since you're in the room anyway, so you see the above (my last post here).
 
Shmuel Brill
Shmuel Brill
8:11 PM
@msh210 why not? I don't think it should be too complicated. It's that anyone is getting anything (not even a "badge")
 
msh210
msh210
@ShmuelBrill Okay, thanks.
 
 
2 hours later…
Isaac Moses
Isaac Moses
10:44 PM
@msh210 Mazal tov and yeyasher kochacha on becoming our first enbadged Research Assistant
 
msh210
msh210
11:29 PM
@IsaacMoses Thanks. Y'all should feel free to call on me if you need assistance with research. Or something. (Where do they come up with these names?)
 

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