2018 Programming Puzzles & Code Golf Moderator Election Chat

Heeby Jeeby Man

00:29

Ah well it looks like there will be no need

Pavel

Good to see

FryAmTheEggman

If I'm seeing what you are seeing, we'll probably be back down to two shortly

Pavel

@HeebyJeebyMan Nevermind, it's Neil back with a troll nomination

Catija

Y'all know that chat flags are for network-wide mods, right? If you have an issue with someone on your site... flag it on the site.

Pavel

@Catija Oh, I thought if I flagged it in a PPCG room it would show up for PPCG mods

And we can't flag election nominations directly

Catija

00:35

@Pavel It does... if they're in chat... but it also shows up to every other mod on the network.

FryAmTheEggman

Please don't use flags for anything other than exactly what the flag says

Catija

Again, if it's a site issue, use site flags.

Pavel

Sorry, I'll remember that from now on.

Catija

Thanks! :D Happy election.

DJMcMayhem

@GraceNote The trolling nomination is back...

Pavel

00:39

@DJMcMayhem I think it was handled by our own mods (Dennis) the first time, not Grace Note.

DJMcMayhem

Oh, I didn't know PPCG mods could handle it.

Catija

@DJMcMayhem They can't. Mods can't remove nominations, only the user or a CM.

DJMcMayhem

Oh

Pavel

@DJMcMayhem Oh, there was a screenshot the Neil attached that says it came from the PPCG mods

Anonymous

The Patreon link makes it spam, so suspension time IMO

Catija

00:41

It'd be a conflict of interest. If it had been deleted, I'm guessing Neil deleted it himself the first time... pretty sure that a CM deletion would have been irreversible... but I'm not certain.

@Mego The patreon link makes it sick and I feel like Patreon needs to be made aware of it.

DJMcMayhem

15,000 for a fax of a handshake

Seems legit

Catija

Well, I guess patreon actually has no interest in being made aware of such things. They make contacting them technically impossible.

DJMcMayhem

I mean, technically nothing he's doing on patreon is wrong

It just means that the entire "nomination" is a joke (shocker, I know)

Catija

He's not "Creating" anything... so the entire campaign is a violation of their terms.

Pavel

01:09

\o/ Niel's nomination is down again.

DJMcMayhem

@Pavel But for how long? lol

Alex A.

@Pavel The screenshot of the moderator message came from a community manager, not a PPCG site moderator.

DJMcMayhem

@AlexA. Aaaaaand it's back

PhiNotPi

Ayyo

I am in fact back, to announce my candidacy.

Haven't written my post though.

DJMcMayhem

@PhiNotPi Yay!

PhiNotPi

01:20

TBH, I don't think I have the "name recognition" among non-chat users required to win anything. But whatever, worth a shot.

Conor O'Brien

01:36

@Mego Regarding your answer to question #6, would you delete without first notifying the OP?

DJMcMayhem

My answers

3

Anonymous

@ConorO'Brien No. The policy I linked specifically mentions notifying the user and giving them time to fix it before deletion.

Conor O'Brien

@Mego Ah, I see, somehow I missed the link, haha

quartata

why star that

it doesn't matter

can we get the starboard cleared

anywho

nice to see both of you mentioned Charcoal

DJMcMayhem

Could some star my questionnaire?

quartata

01:40

Y'all should link to charcoal-se.org instead though

Anonymous

@quartata I donate my time and flags to Charcoal - I'd better be able to use it to bolster my nomination :P

DJMcMayhem

I starred mego's but it isn't visible lol

quartata

since that explains more

Journeyman Geek

That's an entirely valid tactic ;)

Anonymous

@quartata Done

quartata

01:41

also saves bytes

hint hint

DJMcMayhem

@quartata That saves bytes too! :)

ninja'd lol

Anonymous

Also Charcoal HQ says diamonds are made there, so I hope to perpetuate that :P

Conor O'Brien

2 hours ago, by Mego

Done with my questionnaire answers: https://codegolf.meta.stackexchange.com/a/14770/45941

star this^

Vogel612

welp ...

quartata

! metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/… mego you don't have core

that seems wrong

Anonymous

01:43

@quartata That's odd. I'm listed on /people, and I'm getting stickers

ArtOfCode

hm? no core? I'm not seeing that

quartata

Funny

Ha Ha

ArtOfCode

@Mego depends which stickers you mean :P

quartata

@Mego I think we pretty much crammed everyone on for that

ArtOfCode

SE stickers not Charcoal stickers, I assume

Anonymous

01:44

@ArtOfCode The ones from SO :P I'll probably buy some Charcoal stickers soon

Vogel612

oh yeeesh ...

Pavel

@DJMcMayhem Your response to question 6 cuts off midsentence: "As a mod, my actions would not be that different. I would comment, let them know the post is invalid, and give them some"

quartata

@Pavel no actually it's perfect

Pavel

@quartata But there should at least be punctuation, no?

ArtOfCode

@Mego buyable stickers may not be a permanent thing... current run is basically a test

quartata

01:45

fair

ArtOfCode

anyway, y'all want me to clean up those stars or do we like drama on the walls?

quartata

no please do

animuson

→ 70 messages moved to Trash

Pavel

\o/ thanks much!

Anonymous

@ArtOfCode passes a sponge and a bucket of soapy water

DJMcMayhem

01:48

@quartata Changed the link. For some reason, my computer was flipping out on me, so I had to reboot before I could copy it ._.

quartata

cool cool

really it's just so that people can read the about us section

rather than go into the room and see a small brown dog, neo-cubist painting and black and white pichu and wonder what the deal is

DJMcMayhem

Golfing skillllz

FryAmTheEggman

If it were golfed, you would have plenty of space left ;)

DJMcMayhem

Unless I'm optimizing for information conveyed, rather than byte count

Anonymous

@DJMcMayhem code-shuffleboard

Vogel612

01:51

the problem with golfing natural language lies within the missing standard interpreter..

quartata

solution: lojban

or as @AlexA. prefers, logjam

Pavel

lojban?

quartata

(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban)

Vogel612

a pretty information-dense artificial language

IIRC it's heavily agglutinative

Conor O'Brien

at least it isn't french

Vogel612

01:53

french isn't really information dense, for one

Conor O'Brien

that's my point :)

entirely ungolfy

quartata

@Vogel612 if you like that kind of thing Klingon is absolutely bonkers

Vogel612

I'm somewhat tied up in procrastinating learning japanese, so I'd prefer to not start another language..

PhiNotPi

Posted my nomination.

Conor O'Brien

:o

PhiNotPi

01:56

> I know first-hand that the mod hammer is a finesse weapon (high dexterity needed).

The best part.

quartata

> largest community projects

love too not name drop quest for tetris??

what you doing

:P

PhiNotPi

I'll edit that in, fine

quartata

nah I'm just joking

PhiNotPi

Should I though?

quartata

hmm

Conor O'Brien

01:58

yeah!

quartata

I think keeping it vague is actually good though

because you don't just mean answers

PhiNotPi

But I'm also thinking of stuff like Fortnightly Challenges, Blue vs Red, etc.

quartata

yeah exactly

those are more community oriented

which I think are more important for this

PhiNotPi

Also AvocadOS

quartata

so I think leaving it as is is better, keeps it open

@PhiNotPi no we don't talk about that one

Pavel

02:00

Did AvacadOS ever go beyond the planning stage?

PhiNotPi

It did!

FryAmTheEggman

@DJMcMayhem @Mego I noticed both of you answered question 8 similarly, do you think there is a way it can be changed at all to make the question elicit more expressive responses? The only current difference seems to be that the community isn't upset about it, do you think we could make it something like "another mod acted based on a small community consensus, which you think was premature, what would you do?

PhiNotPi

We got it to boot and take keyboard input.

More than slightly buggy though.

We had a cool website and logo though

Anonymous

@FryAmTheEggman The issue is that it's a duplicate of another, better (IMO) question.

FryAmTheEggman

Right, I was wondering if there would be a way to turn it into less of a duplicate

Anonymous

02:03

Probably not

Vogel612

@FryAmTheEggman the problem is that while the questions are quite different, the answer still is the same... Though that is something of a spoiler :/

FryAmTheEggman

It is probably too late, it's a shame no-one caught it on meta earlier

It seems we failed to golf the questions :P

Vogel612

meh. just because the answer is the same, that doesn't mean the question is the same...

DJMcMayhem

On the same subject, I really disliked 9). I would have rather not included it

FryAmTheEggman

They pretty much are in this situation, one more or less just has more words

That one also does seem odd, I think it would have been alright if the bolded part were left out

PhiNotPi

02:51

@quartata I reckon I should also not mention anything to do with my invention of stealth pinging? RIP, that meme died so that our chat room did not have to.

Also I'm working on my questionnaire responses right now.

Nathan Merrill

03:03

@PhiNotPi hey, this is new. IIRC, you were pretty adamant in past years about not being a mod, right?

PhiNotPi

@NathanMerrill TBH I don't think I remember that.

Nathan Merrill

hmmm. Maybe I'm thinking of Peter Taylor

(Both of you are the mathy people of PPCG to me) :P

PhiNotPi

I think that's who you're thinking about.

I ran for mod back in 2016.

Nathan Merrill

hm, must be then

PhiNotPi

Also, I was busy when school started back in August 2016 and missed the room owner election, which I'm still sad about. That was like, the longest single period I had ever gone without visiting and I happened to miss an election because of it.

Nathan Merrill

03:09

@DJMcMayhem To me, #1, #4, and #9 are the most important questions

so I'm glad it's there

the rest of the issues are mostly "how do you deal with people" questions, which all basically have the same answers :P

@PhiNotPi on your candidacy page, you should definitely add projects that you've contributed to

PhiNotPi

@NathanMerrill Out of character count, I'll have to reword some stuff.

Definitely don't have room to include links.

Nathan Merrill

ah, forgot about those limits

you know, they do it to limit the post size, but as we all know here: the characters (or bytes) of a post has nothing to do with the size of the post

I'm tempted to post a candidacy with 1 character per new line.

(in case that wasn't clear, I'm being sarcastic)

PhiNotPi

Or one with only non-breaking spaces to have text off to the side of the screen.

Alex A.

@quartata I had completely forgotten about that

PhiNotPi

@AlexA. You planning to run again?

Alex A.

03:23

Moderation is for life, son

PhiNotPi

I was expecting all the current mods to get a jump on the nomination process.

Alex A.

Once you're elected, you're a moderator until you resign or die.

Nathan Merrill

you'd actually be a moderator for a while if you died

resignation is really the only practical way out

PhiNotPi

Oh, I didn't know that. Thought it was a redo each time. But that raises the question, how many slots are people even competing for?

Nathan Merrill

2

PhiNotPi

03:25

JK I'm blind. Literally written right there on the page.

Nathan Merrill

@PhiNotPi I thought so too, but I was remembering our transition from beta

because you have to re-elect pro-term mods

PhiNotPi

Me too.

I wonder how many candidates we'll get.

Heeby Jeeby Man

I don't really understand why we don't have reelections

I mean we would pretty much reelect our current mods if they ran

Nathan Merrill

well, the advantage is you'd get rid of the less-active moderators. The disadvantage is that you'd end up with more of a swing site.

moderators' opinions have a huge influence on people.

If you're rotating the entire cast, that could have large potential ramifications

PhiNotPi

@HeebyJeebyMan Down with the establishment!

takes to the streets

Heeby Jeeby Man

03:31

@NathanMerrill Shouldn't that be a bad thing? Shouldn't the moderators represent the community?

Nathan Merrill

regardless if its a bad or good thing, its true, and I don't see a way around it

PhiNotPi

We could have re-elections with a significantly lower bar for current mods. Like, you'd have to be actively hated to be kicked from modship.

Nathan Merrill

@PhiNotPi they've already got a process to remove the "hated" mods.

I mean, its not about whether or not they are hated, its whether or not they are being a good moderator

Pavel

05:02

@WheatWizard Would we? I'd vote for Dennis and M. Ender for sure, but IDK about the rest. Hell, I'd vote for you over them.

Journeyman Geek

@WheatWizard @NathanMerrill there's been talk of letting mods opt into moderation annually. Also, elections are a bit "expensive" in terms of the work involved from what I hear.

Practically - as a mod (elsewhere), typically its older mods who teach newer mods the ropes so a total rotation would be ... kinda tricky. Even in a beta site, you'd often at least have one mod who's been a mod elsewhere.

Wheat Wizard

I guess that's a good idea. I would prefer if there were some term limit. Even if they are not up every election cycle

@Pavel I kindof forgot that we had mods other than Dennis and Martin

Pavel

My point exactly

Like, has anyone even seen Alex this year?

quartata

He was literally just here an hour ago

I would also note that most of mod activity is not public. Regular users have no idea who is handling their flags

Pavel

@quartata Oh, must have missed him.

quartata

05:13

last answer was from a month ago

Dont conflate not being in chat with not being active is all I'm saying

Doorknob posted three answers last month also

PhiNotPi

05:59

My answers

2

beep boop

Someone should start some room feeds.

And... good night.

DJMcMayhem

06:13

@PhiNotPi I like your answers :)

Overall, I think you wrote what I wanted to but better worded lol

PhiNotPi

Thanks

H.PWiz

06:36

@Christopher I think you want patience, not patients

Mithrandir

07:39

@H.PWiz ...unless he's a doctor.

Hosch250

14:01

Go Phi and Mego!

Neal got deleted?

Erik the Outgolfer

I think one got deleted because it was spam or something, but non-current mods can't see deleted nominations regardless of rep

Fatalize

15:09

Christopher also seems to have removed his nomination

Sanchises

@Fatalize I think this was due to a comment by @EriktheOutgolfer, about how you can't nominate yourself if you've been suspended in the last year?

I couldn't find rules on that, only a Meta discussion meta.stackexchange.com/questions/274114/…

Erik the Outgolfer

most likely a mod deleted their nomination

Fatalize

I see

Not sure why there is no mechanism checking that you haven't been suspended before you can nominate yourself

Mr. Xcoder

You can nominate yourself, even if you were suspended in the past year, but that only happens under extraordinary conditions, and if you contact the SE team before and let them know about your situation and why you want to nominate yourself as a candidate, even if you had were suspended. Otherwise, your nomination can be removed at any time without prior notice.

@Fatalize There is one.

Erik the Outgolfer

@Fatalize you get a warning (as I included in my comment)

Mr. Xcoder

15:18

You are prompted with something like this.

Anonymous

There isn't an automatic system in place to block nominations from people who have had a suspension in the past year. The CM team has to manually review nominations, and remove them if the user has a recent suspension. Of course, that means that they can also choose to overlook the suspension, if they decide that it's not a good reason to block the user from participating in the election (like if the user requested the suspension "for science" or "for exams").

Fatalize

@Mr.Xcoder Thanks for the screenshot

Anonymous

Naturally, currently-suspended users can't run regardless, as they're effectively in read-only mode on the site.

Mr. Xcoder

@Fatalize Heh, np. Seems like that suspension really helped me with 1) changing my perspective upon rep and moderation and 2) made me more familiar with what suspended users experience :)

Anonymous

@Mr.Xcoder I don't even remember you being suspended, or why you were suspended. I guess that means the system worked. :P

PhiNotPi

15:24

We should bring back ostracism: suspension via popular vote.

5

Erik the Outgolfer

ostra... what? noooooo

Anonymous

@PhiNotPi Oh please no

Hosch250

And require one suspension each week to keep things lively.

Anonymous

@Hosch250 So The Hunger Games meets PPCG

Sanchises

I'll gladly offer myself, I really should be working on other things right now.

Hosch250

15:26

PPCG, meet The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games, meet PPCG. May the best man win.

Mr. Xcoder

@Mego Well I was suspended in ~September (?) for voting irregularities, but (during that period when I was extremely active) I would have won more rep during that week than what I earned – and then lost – because of the wrong things I've done. I was a completely different person back then, though... Things changed :)

PhiNotPi

@Hosch250 ~~May the best man win.~~ May the odds be ever in your favor.

Erik the Outgolfer

one would normally say that to a candidate, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anonymous

@Mr.Xcoder Voting irregularities was my guess, since that seems to be a common suspension reason. And given that I didn't remember the suspension or the reason, voting irregularities makes sense - it's often not noticed by the general public. I'm glad to know that you've improved yourself.

Mr. Xcoder

Me too :)

Erik the Outgolfer

15:30

uh, are we drifting a bit off-topic or is it just me?

Anonymous

A bit, yeah. We should probably try to bring it back to the election

Pavel

I've never been suspended from main, but I have been suspended from chat for a day on numerous occasions before it got through to me that the level of politeness acceptable in your average discord server is not acceptble at stack exchange.

Anonymous

It's strange - the conversation happening in TNB is more on-topic for this room than this room's conversation is :P

Mr. Xcoder

Perhaps we should move the messages from there to this room and the other way around (:p).

Erik the Outgolfer

Actually, 1 byte: @

oh Mr. Xcoder ninja'd me

Mr. Xcoder

15:34

@EriktheOutgolfer Hmmm, what?

Erik the Outgolfer

like, "swap [the conversations]"

well, Mego can easily do one part of the swap, but Grace Note (or some other blue) has to do the other

DJMcMayhem

16:39

@Pavel I don't think chat suspensions have any affect on candidacy

Adám

16:57

Is it really right of people (e.g. Dennis, DJMcHayhem, Mego, Alex A., Erik the Outgolfer) to "pre-vote" in the form of nomination comments?

Anonymous

@Adám I don't think there's anything wrong with expressing public support for a candidate

Catija

@Adám Yep. And it doesn't have to be limited to support. If someone is concerned about a user who has stepped forward, you can note that, too... It's not voting, it's support. I've written supporting messages for people and not voted for them in the end.

Anonymous

Really as long as everyone is Being Nice and not trying to subvert the election process, it's all good

Mr. Xcoder

> DJMcHayhem

ಠ_ಠ

PhiNotPi

I feel kinda nervous about running for mod.

Mr. Xcoder

17:03

@PhiNotPi Why exactly?

PhiNotPi

Low confidence in ability to win.

Anonymous

@PhiNotPi I think you have a decent shot

Catija

I've lost two elections... someone's always got to lose. It's ok. :D

Erik the Outgolfer

unless candidates == positions

caird coinheringaahing

No. Then they don;t have the election. There has to be one extra candidate to run the voting :/

Catija

17:06

They don't run elections in that case. They require slots +1

Anonymous

@EriktheOutgolfer That's never the case. In order for an election to proceed, there has to be at least one more candidate than positions available

Erik the Outgolfer

uh, any evidence or has it always happened like that?

Catija

Plus, it's better for the site to have more choices...

@EriktheOutgolfer They've cancelled a few elections in that case, yes.

PhiNotPi

I have the lowest candidate score, which i anticipate will be the deciding factor for maybe half of all voters. I would've won in 2016 if we had more slots originally, but that time has passed.

Catija

Candidate score is a major indicator, but not always. :)

Anonymous

17:09

20 hours ago, by Grace Note

The minimum required number of nominees is 1 higher than the number of seats to be filled (so in this case, 3)

Erik the Outgolfer

for me candidate score is ~50% of the voting factor

Mr. Xcoder

For me, it's about ~5%.

Erik the Outgolfer

@Catija oh so that a community doesn't just put up anybody up there?

PhiNotPi

I need to work on my nomination some more. Any feedback?

Catija

@EriktheOutgolfer The community doesn't put anyone up... users have to self nominate.

Erik the Outgolfer

17:15

I meant, if two users with questionable history nominate and there are two positions, well

Catija

If two users nominate and there are two positions... then the election doesn't move forward... regardless of the history of those users...

But remember, users who have be suspended within the last year anywhere on the network are (generally) prevented from nominating... they can do it physically... but they will likely be removed from their candidacy.

Erik the Outgolfer

can they be removed after the nomination period ends? I'd assume so

also can mods see deleted posts in the election? even with high rep, I can't seem to be able to see deleted nominations

Anonymous

@EriktheOutgolfer Yes. There have been elections where users were removed during the primaries.

Pavel

17:41

@DJMcMayhem Your answer to question 6 of the questionaire still cuts off midsentence.

PhiNotPi

in The Nineteenth Byte, 2 mins ago, by PhiNotPi

Edited my nomination post: https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/election/2#post-154976 let me know what you think. Main edits include drawing more attention to account age and name-dropping some community projects. Because that's what I have to sell myself with.

> (more than all other candidates combined)

There's like a 95% chance I'll have to retract this as soon as anybody else gets nominated.

DJMcMayhem

17:55

@PhiNotPi You'll have to retract what?

Your nomination?

@Pavel Thanks! I'll fix it

PhiNotPi

@DJMcMayhem No, the statement that my account is older than the other candidates' combined.

DJMcMayhem

Oh, lol

Pavel

Almost tempted to nominate myself for this reason.

DJMcMayhem

I like how all 3 questionnaire answers have the same score lol

Although @PhiNotPi doesn't have a downvote yet

Mithrandir

The questionnaire answers should all have the same score.

Erik the Outgolfer

18:00

the questionnaire isn't the primary! score doesn't count

Mithrandir

Right. Leave the voting to the primary; the questionnaire answers should be the same score so that they're sorted randomly.

DJMcMayhem

@EriktheOutgolfer I know it doesn't count, I just like how it worked out that way

Erik the Outgolfer

and that's why the questionnaire answers should actually be a feature of the election itself instead of a separate meta post

PhiNotPi

How many people even read the questionnaire responses?

Hosch250

@PhiNotPi Me.

Pavel

18:02

@PhiNotPi o/

Anonymous

@PhiNotPi Me

FryAmTheEggman

I feel like checking the views on the pages is more efficient that us all saying we did individually :P

Erik the Outgolfer

view ≠ read ;-)

FryAmTheEggman

That's true, but we could all be lying as well!

PhiNotPi

@DJMcMayhem Not anymore, mine got downvoted.

Pavel

18:08

oof

PhiNotPi

Does anybody have any thoughts on my responses?

Erik the Outgolfer

@FryAmTheEggman the views can lie the same way ;-P

FryAmTheEggman

18:20

@PhiNotPi I think your answer to the fourth question brings up a good point about deciding when something becomes policy/consensus. This happened most prominently I think with the MathJax thing a while ago. Because of the time constraint the mod team acted quickly, but the consensus changed shortly afterwards. Do you think it could have been handled better with a system like what you suggest?

Erik the Outgolfer

@phi you should edit your nomination to include a link to your answers

Anonymous

@FryAmTheEggman I'll weigh in on this too: one of SE's serious deficiencies is that it doesn't have a way to define community consensus. It's kind of a "I'll know it when I see it" situation. I don't know that any individual moderator team can really fix that.

FryAmTheEggman

It definitely feels like there isn't a way for mods to fix it, but I do think they can mitigate it, so I look forward to reading what you have to say!

Erik the Outgolfer

btw the votes on the answers to the questionnaire should actually represent if one likes the answers or not, not the vote they intend to put on the primary phase

PhiNotPi

18:56

@FryAmTheEggman I don't really have a good answer to this, it's not really something a mod can change, but might require larger changes which might not be possible on the SE platform.

Maybe something else to talk about is the best way for users to propose changes to standing policy. Like, when to post a new meta answer vs a new meta question. For example, if I have a new answer for X meta thread, but that meta thread is a month old, then it's unlikely to garner the necessary votes to be enacted regardless of what it is.

FryAmTheEggman

There are a lot of smaller issues caught in the overly large question I asked, I think you found a good one to talk about

The more you say the more we can differentiate the candidates, although I think most people will probably focus on what they think of the candidates from before hopefully it at least helps you have thought through some situations before they happen

PhiNotPi

There are a few things which indicate that a meta consensus has become "broadly accepted", such as having an accepted answer / an faq tag. Obviously this raises the question of when to accept an answer, but I think that could be a good sign of when a particular meta thread is "closed for submissions" and you should start a new thread if you want to make amendments.

Once upon a time I suggested making a compendium of all rules for answers, I don't even know to what extent that would even be possible to maintain (see: the sandbox directory). But I feel like our current system could be considered a mess if you don't already know what meta thread you're looking for.

PhiNotPi

19:22

@EriktheOutgolfer done

Downgoat

23:42

Open ended question to mod candidates: What's your favorite thing about PPCG?

DJMcMayhem

@Downgoat The community. Hands down

Anonymous

@DJMcMayhem Nice cop-out answer that I was going to use :P

Anonymous

@Downgoat To be a bit more specific: the fact that the community is so supportive of new users who want to learn about golfing and esolangs

Transcript for

2018 Programming Puzzles & Code Golf …