@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 shakes fist

@JasperLoy Hi.

@MrHen Do you need assistance in your side room?

I suppose I did. I will probably go to bed early tonight too.

That could be. A desktop though? It's unusual to have internal speakers on a desktop.

Usually the external speakers that are plugged into it. Maybe the monitor if it has integrated sound.

But it did before?

Probably your sound card driver needs to be updated or reconfigured.

If you think it is related to your Linux installs.

OK. Don't forget you can plug in headphones to check your sound card.

If you happen to have some.

Possibly your sound setup is sending the sound somewhere that doesn't work. Like, sometimes my Linux desktop sends the sound through the HDMI port even though I have nothing plugged in there.

Check whatever mixer tool you have for configuring the volume levels.

Taxi driver confronting an Uber driver during protests today

@KitZ.Fox Nah, I'm fine. :)

@Jasepr Loy

@Jasper oLy

@Japser Yolo

no good?

@Jasper Loy

@Jasper Is only the first name important?

@Jasper Huh, whaddaknow

I thought you needed only 3 letters

@jas

Huh, crazy

yeah that'd be weird if you could

yup

@jas testing

@bar testing

Oh, shiny, tab completions works

And you can't @ yourself

So if there were 2+ users with "Jas" at the start, I'm guessing it would alert none, not all of them

@barrycarter You suck

There must be a better interface to these chat rooms.

@barrycarter teletype

@tchrist Humor?

yanetut

@JasperLoy This is my first time. My goal was to help people in real-time, but these chat rooms seem badly designed and not really all that many on-topic questions being asked.

@barrycarter What do you find to be "badly designed"?

@tchrist I should be able to access these rooms using Pidgin/Trillium/etc. In other words, some sort of Jabber interface.

@tchrist And given the low volume of posts, it'd be nice to be in multiple rooms at once without having multiple tabs open

@barrycarter Noi, you shouldn't, actually. Because those do not reflect your SO id.

Nor would they work without a home site affiliation.

@tchrist You lost me there. Why couldn't I log in to a Jabber server with my stackexchange username and access to all of these rooms?

And I'm perfectly capable of being in more than one room at once without having multiple tabs open.

@barrycarter Authentication.

@tchrist They could be made to work. The chat system already has an identity for you based on your "parent" SE account

This has been discussed to dust.

@tchrist How are you in multiple rooms at once? Can you do "/msg #room message" or something?

IIRC the main reasons why chat doesn't have XMPP is 1) user authentication wasn't handled by SE for the longest time. 2) chat has features XMPP doesn't have and vice versa

@barrycarter No, it keeps track of all your rooms separately. You can be IN multiple rooms but you can only see one per tab.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You see the most recent line of each room.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 So you're saying we need a web interface because other interfaces aren't sophisticated enough?

@tchrist Yes, I see the sidebar on the right with "other rooms you're in", but I'd have to switch tabs to actually talk in another room

Perhaps you should offer up your opinion on MSE where it would mattter.

And get -16 reputation points... hmmm, tempting.

You mean -32.

And you can't go below 1, so give it your best shot.

@barrycarter I'm not saying it has to be the way it is. I'm explaining what we've been told for years about why it is what it is.

I think that sniffing the network traffic and reverse engineering might be the way to go here.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Might be a catch 22. No one uses chat to ask questions because the interface is ugly, and no one creates a better interface because no one uses chat.

honestly I've used IRC, various jabber clients, various other chat clients, and this one, and I like this one best.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Ditto.

@barrycarter I'm not sure my experience supports your notion that nobody uses chat.

@barrycarter You realize you have no leg to stand on.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I like Pidgin best because it supports multiple protocols. It's ugly to find a site that I can't roll into Pidgin

I'm pretty sure that virtually nobody I know uses any XMPP things for anything.

Ah, a Microsoft lover. Have a nice day.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 @tchrist The traffic in these rooms seems fairly low and not really on-topic?

@barrycarter Is that a question?

@tchrist What makes you think I like M$?

And what is "these rooms"?

@barrycarter I'm not sure what rolling this chat into pidgin would buy me.

@tchrist It's an indication of my being unsure.

@tchrist Uh, the chat rooms provided by SE

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It would buy me the ability to have all my chats in a single application in a single place.

@barrycarter This particular room alone has a million and a half messages.

@tchrist Yes, but how many of them are recent and how many actually dicussion the English language?

Most are in English.

Some are not.

@tchrist I also visited other active rooms, and it was just general chitchat. Nothing actually wrong with that, but I envisioned these rooms as real-time questions and answers.

@barrycarter That's not exactly what chat is for.

Thank you for contributing to the problem you're complaining about.

@tchrist But isn't this the chatroom for the English language stackexchange board? Where people ask questions about the English language itself?

Chat is SE's "third place" where people can hang out.

It's for discussions of various natures.

You've been here for five years.

Questions about the site are on meta.

Questions about English are on the main site.

@tchrist Since absolutely no one else has asked an English usage question while I've been here, I don't think I'm contributing to the problem.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 OK, and general discussions are here in chat?

Perhaps you should find somewhere that you approve of.

@barrycarter Well, there is broad latitude for discussion.

@tchrist Does such a place exist? Or should I work to fix this one?

In this room we frequently discuss English-Language-related topics.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm not complaining about the chit chat. I was just hoping to see more real-time questions. My goal is to help others with real-time answers.

Judging by the people that come in here to ask these questions, their participation is not impacted by the lack of XMPP.

@barrycarter Both of those are unanswerable, the first because I cannot change your approval, the second because there is nothing to fix.

@barrycarter We don't even get "real time" questions on the main site... why would there be such in chat?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don't think there's a way to know that. How can you know who is NOT coming here?

@tchrist The answer to the first could be something like an IRC network or openstudy.com or something.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Clearly, I have misunderstood the nature of chat...

@barrycarter I'm inferring based on my experience with computer users, language learners, and jabber-app-installers, and estimating based on how likely I think those sets intersect.

IRC sucks. No thank you. This is much beter.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Do you feel your experience is sufficient to qualify you to make such a wide-ranging inference?

@barrycarter I mean, you can hang out here and answer questions, if they arise. But the main site itself isn't bombarded with questions on a frequent basis... why not just subscribe to its rss feed and answer those questions as they arrive?

Apparently he's come here for an argument.

@tchrist I'm not a fan of IRC either. But some sort of non-web protocol would be nice.

@barrycarter Yes, given that I'm merely opining and not, say, in charge of development priorities at stackexchange.

But seriously real-world use of things like jabber or xmpp is minimal.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Chat gives the unique opportunity to ask people to clarify their questions in real-time.

@barrycarter True, UDP would be much better for chat.

@barrycarter yup. And we do that. But recall that to chat you need at least 20 reputation points. So you need to have acquired some upvotes somewhere in order to be able to participate. That implies that you are answering or asking on the main site.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Hey, google chat uses it. Of course, I haven't found any chat rooms on jabber yet, but I don't know if there aren't any.

@barrycarter Well, google chat barely uses it, and hangouts doesn't.

@tchrist Umm, I said non-web, not non-TCP

Google, Facebook, etc, are moving away from XMPP

They don't make it easy to log in with XMPP

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 20 rep points isn't really that hard to acquire.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'm not crazy about hangouts, and I'm annoyed that FB turned off XMPP access.

Furthermore, Pidgin and Trillian and the like typically implement per-protocol backends.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I used to use XMPP for FB chat until they turned it off.

@barrycarter Me too, but we're in the tiny, tiny minority.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes! And that's what I'm looking for: a backend compatible with this chat. There are so many established protocols that Pidgin already supports, it would be nice if this chat used one of them.

Maybe it would be useful to have xmpp. It would at least allow for a potentially better mobile phone experience. But the number of users it would help is minimal.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Well, the number of current users maybe. It's possible that having real-time expert access to various subjects would bring in new users.

I just don't think it would boost chat participation much at all.

I've been here for years and this is the first I've heard it suggested that it's a barrier to entry.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You're probably right, but I'm going to try to write something to interface with this site more "naturally".

Go nuts.

As tchrist pointed out, there is a meta post about that where someone wrote an xmpp bridge

It doesn't have to be XMPP. It could just be a Perl script listening on a socket.

I want my chat centralized, and I want to turn chat into something where people can get real-time help.

Excelsior!

Centralized, sure. real-time help? Again, pretty sure we're as real-time as it can get. So you imagine there's an army of ELU users out there, not on chat, wanting to answer questions at all hours of the day? Or an army of question-askers, with Pidgin already installed, but disgusted at the current chat system and thus refusing to use it?

Maybe some of the more technical chat rooms. But considering that the site is already designed for asking questions.... why not just ask there?

Re the army of expert users, there might be. Re the army of askers, I'm convinced there is, but they aren't aware that SE chat is a resource.

I maintain that real-time chat is an order of magnitude better than reply-based commenting.

so these askers, are they not asking questions on the main site already?

OK, good point. I guess the problem is that the askers aren't aware of SE as a whole.

@barrycarter Sure, but the reply-based-commenters are typically not in chat anyway. Many of the high-rep users come to chat sometimes, but don't bother staying around, probably because they have other things to do.

Also, I've invited people to chat before (to avoid extended discussion in comments) and have never once been taken up on it.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, but if there are enough people in chat at any given time, presumably one of them could help an asker in real-time.

@barrycarter But those people could just be monitoring the site RSS if they want to help askers in real time.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 By the time the comments chain gets long enough that someone requests chat, it's usually unnecessary.

@barrycarter You can request chat before that happens. Just say "come to the chat room" and post a link.

Nobody ever does.

Well, not nobody ever. But it's rare.

Hell, lots of people don't even respond to comments for clarification.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 True, but people answer questions on the main site insanely fast. The answers aren't always complete or correct or useful, but I don't want to be competing with those people.

Maybe each question should be its own chat room right on the page.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 YES! (you're being sarcastic, aren't you?)

@barrycarter The kinds of questions we encourage in here are typically language-related ones that are off-topic for the site, or too basic. Otherwise, ask it on the site so we can get fake internet points for answering.

Perhaps you misunderstand what Stack Exchange is trying to do.

The problem with comment saying "come to chat" is that it's possible the commenter/asker has already wandered off. If they enter a chat room where they expect real time answers, you can reply to them knowing you can help right away.

@tchrist You are correct in saying my philosophy of helping people does not align completely with SE.

@barrycarter No, not really being sarcastic. I'm imagining a sort of cross between Facebook's "all messages are chat", where comments are chat messages, and wikipedia's "talk" page, where people discuss the articles... it needs some thought.

@barrycarter I'm not really sure if it'd be helpful to direct more people into chat to ask questions. The site is for asking questions. Chat is for extended discussions.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I try to make comments longer because I have to impart a lot of information at once. It would be nice to cross-examine the asker with simple questions: "are you working in the real or complex plane? [get answer] Are you factoring, completing the square, or using the quadratic equation [get answer]

@barrycarter Yeah, I get that, but this site is designed to function as a QnA repository of information. Chat is just people blabbing about stuff.

I guess I'm looking to help people who post a 'simple' question without a lot of detail, and then take the minimum effort to find the level of detail they need.

Sometimes there're several topics at once.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Sometimes, chatting with the asker can lead to a good answer.

@barrycarter I suspect most people here expect that the asker put some work into asking.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, and I agree that's a good thing, but I also prefer to help people who are "totally lost" or people who don't make it clear what level they're working at.

@barrycarter It can! that's one reason why we have chat. But I think we want to primarily direct questions to the main site, so that the main site builds up value over time.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Chat is archived and indexed by google, no?

@barrycarter perhaps but Google isn't yet doing full AI-NLP to understand everything we're saying here. It's not a great format for transmitting information. It's like listening to people talk on the phone, vs reading a summary of what they decided.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 My gut belief is that most people end up on SE for the first time from a google search.

@barrycarter yes, but they end up on the main site, not chat.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 OK, good point. I still think having some real-time discussion between the asker and the answerer can lead to better answers, and even better questions for that matter.

@barrycarter Sure, I agree, but I don't think chat being a web-app is a barrier to that. In fact I'd say that if chat weren't a web-app, that would be a barrier.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 You're probably right that I don't fully align with SE's philosophy. For example, I'd enjoy helping people on openstudy.com if their interface wasn't as horrible as it is.

Adding XMPP or a jabber plugin would, IMO, increase the number of linux nerds on chat, but I strongly doubt it would increase the number of, say, German-language or cooking nerds.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, but a great deal of SE is focused on subjects dear to the hearts of Linux nerds.

People do come here to fine-tine their questions before they ask them on the main site. And many ask questions that aren't really a good fit for the main site but are fine here.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I absolutely agree with your statement when it comes to non-tech topics. But isn't having more tech/math/etc people in chat a good thing?

@tchrist Well, good. And the second part of my whining is that I want the ability to help them, which means a non-web-chat interface.

@barrycarter I dunno. my experience on SO is that there is so much volume of everything that questions get missed. Having a chat room with hordes of askers shouting questions would be unworkable. Having a chat room with experts on-line would be ... expensive. I'm struggling to understand what volume of traffic your solution works for.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 If an expert sees a question he likes, he could invite the asker to a new chat (for example?)

@barrycarter Sure but he can already do that.

@JasperLoy So if someone is being a jerk and posting unacceptable things, they can't be stopped? They can just be retroactively censored?

@JasperLoy Did you read Shog's post?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Right, but I'm explaining why having a horde of askers shouting questions wouldn't be as bad as it seems.

@barrycarter But the main site is essentially a horde of askers asking questions.

And anyone can create chat rooms.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But there's no guarantee those questioners stick around after asking their qusestions.

I want "I am asking this question and going to sit in front of my computer for the next 5 minutes in hopes of getting a real time answer"

Not: "I'm asking this question, but not expecting an answer for a considerable amount of time, so I'm not looking for real-time communication about this question"

One-liners don't make good questions nor good answers that have lasting value for the future knowledge-seekers to profit from.

Maybe a real-time tag or something?

@tchrist So you're saying that questions like that shouldn't be asked on SE, even in chat?

@barrycarter Everyone wants a real-time answer.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, but most people don't expect one.

The large sites have too much volume to expect that. You'll get an answer when someone has a chance to see it.

@barrycarter I don't think it's a realistic expectation.

The people who can answer your questions might be busy. They answer at their pleasure, not yours.

Indeed.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yes, but if someone could flag their question as "please help me now in real time", real time answerers could respond

Because of the asynchronous nature of the medium, it behooves you to ask questions carefully. garbage in, garbage out.

@barrycarter Wouldn't everyone just set that flag?

@barrycarter Everyone always wants that.

It is not well looked upon.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 And that's where I disagree. I don't think we should use a technical quality (asynchronicity) to enforce quality of questions.

admittedly, when I ask questions on sites whose topic is merely a hobby of mine, I don't care how soon the answer arrives.

But when I'm on SO, asking something, it's because I'm doing work and I'm stuck. So answer it! Right now! Except SO is sooooooooo busy that questions are on the main page for a brief moment.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I don't think the flag would be abused. And, if it is, it gives the answerers many choices of questions to answer.

You have to wait for people who are interested to go back and read questions.

Asking a question on a busy site is like a job interview. You need to catch people's attention then make them want to help you.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 I'd rather help someone who I can chat with in real time, so I would favor those questions where the questioner indicated they are ready and willing to discuss their question.

@barrycarter It's not a technical quality that it's asynchronous. It's a social one. You're relying on expert humans to find the time to read and reply. They're busy people.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 But, as we noted earlier, questions often get answered very quickly. My complaint is that the answers aren't really good quality because we have to guess to some extent what the questioner wants.

I don't feel there's a shortage of experts who want to help people in real-time, but I may be very wrong about that.

"I'm bored. I'm going to spend an hour helping people on SE".

Don't believe in FGITW?

matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/10109/… reflects my position.

@tchrist Well, I had to look that up and I still don't understand it.

It's pretty common for SO questions to get effectively real-time answers.

Agreed. BUT the fast answers aren't always good answers. Oh, OK, that's what you meant. Yes, I don't believe in FGITW

My premises: 1) most questions on SE contain some level of ambiguity, 2) the primary goal of SE is to help the askers, 3) to actually help people with semi-ambiguous questions, real-time chat is the best way to proceed.

You don't think the current library of answers is serving those needs?

Well, yes. I've often found answers by googling with "site:stackexchange.com". However, those questions never get asked. I'm talking about the questions people actually ask.

Not following.

Also, why are you asking in the English room?

That's just where the discussion started. I agree it's off topic.

If the current library of answers does serve those needs, why are people still asking new questions? Are you saying most questions are duplicates?

Of course.

Presumably, if someone finds an answer, they won't ask a new question.

Didn't you know that?

Well, you're probably right. So you're saying that, instead of trying to answer questions rapidly, questions should be flagged as duplicates rapidly?

Sure.

OK, so we have two statements here. 1) most SE askers get answers in near real-time, and 2) most SE askers ask duplicate questions. The statements aren't inconsistent, but are you saying that most SE askers get answers of the form "your question is a duplicate?" That hasn't been my experience.

Often, moderators do show up and flag the question as a duplicate, but the "first responders" answers are usually attempts to answer the question.

@barrycarter I can attest that it's a big problem here. We get tons of dupes.

@barrycarter It can be a problem when users attempt to answer dupes instead of linking them.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Yeah, I agree. I suggested an FAQ for astronomy.stackexchange.com but the preferred solution appears to be marking questions as duplicates.

@barrycarter Isn't the FAQ determined by the dupe counts?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 And that's what seems to happen a lot, though. First response answers usually aren't pointers to other questions, but actual answers.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Someone showed me how to get a list of dupe counts, but I don't think it automatically creates a FAQ? (I could be wrong)

Please do not answer duplicates.

@tchrist It would be really cool if SE could merge questions like the RT ticketing system.

They will not be visible.

Most visitors are unregistered.

And unregistered people get instant redirects to the target of the duplicate.

@JasperLoy really?

@tchrist And, per the FGITW observation you made, most answerers are in a hurry to answer, not to link to a duplicate.

So by answering duplicates, you guarantee that most people will never see your answer. Is that what you really want?

@Mitch Who are you talking to?

@tchrist Oh you know.. the wind.

@tchrist So you're saying that the people who rapidly answer duplicate questions are pretty much wasting their time?

@JasperLoy ;)

@barrycarter Depends on what you mean by "wasting". Their answer might help the asker of the dupe. But it may be ignored from then on.

Just like chat messages.

@tchrist And duplicate answers often add value to the answer. I'd suggest merging or some sort of linking would be a better solution.

@barrycarter mods can, and do, merge questions.

english.stackexchange.com/questions/292913/…

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 Except, if the asker of the dupe visits after the dupe has been marked a dupe, they won't ever see the answer?

@JasperLoy flags Jasper for using the offensive word 'rubbish'

@barrycarter dunno about that.

Wait, you can get suspended from chat from talking too much?

@tchrist Just to clarify, if an unregistered user asks a question, someone answers the question, the question is marked a dupe, and the unregistered user returns, they will never see that answer, is that correct?

@JasperLoy From the little I've seen in math, they tend to hold intense math convos and aren't intentionally ignoring you just keeping a consistent conversation

Anyway I must be off. @barrycarter good luck on your pidgin plugin.

@barrycarter I'm not wholly certain.

@barrycarter I misread your name as 'barycenter'. haha. math pun