The Whiteboard

user55340

3:36 AM

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user55340

I'm going to warn you before you hit that play button... the title is "Zero Wing Rhapsody"

Thunderforge

4:12 AM

Hi folks. I recently had my question put on hold and I'd like to know how I can improve it so that it can be reopened.

Voted to close. It is attracting opinion based answers. — mattnz 10 mins ago

3

Q: Is it Typical for Large Software Companies to Not Document or Refactor Code?

I have begun working at a large software company and was assigned to a project that is over a million and a half lines of code. It's part of a program suite that is sold to clients (not an in-house project) and the source code can be purchased if they desire (although given the extra fees associa...

It seems to me that the comments have indeed been attracting opinions, but the answers themselves have been polished up to be decent, supported by studies or experience.

I'd like to know what more needs to be done in order to reopen it.

Thunderforge

5:14 AM

If anyone has any ideas I'd love to hear it.

gnat

7:48 AM

0

A: Is it possible on MSO to question something that people hold dear without getting "disagreement downvoted"?

Below recipe will likely be heavily downvoted by the same group it is intended to work against, but somehow, I don't give a shit. A solid way to ensure unbiased evaluation of your question is to build a support group prior to posting it. If you convince handful of users that your ideas are wort...

if you have an MSO question in mind, ping me about it prior to posting :)

ChrisF

9:04 AM

Who's behind the mass flaggings of "+1" type comments?

While I can see the benefit of getting rid of said comments, I don't really appreciate logging in to see so many flags on Programmers each morning.

So if you're going to do it please make the flags a trickle rather than a flood.

And make the trickle during the European/US East Coast day when there are going to be moderators around to deal with them.

gnat

9:54 AM

@ChrisF blame Jimmy, it's his fault...

yesterday, by gnat

@JimmyHoffa "+1 great query!" http://data.stackexchange.com/programmers/query/150346

as far as I can tell there are at least 3 (more likely 4-5) flaggers bhind this flood, yours truly included

from my side, I can make a limit to like 20-30 flags, and do it as you suggest during the European/US East Coast day, would that be all right?

note query shows like 3000 comments, at least half of which seem to be 200% clear "too chatty" flaggable, the trickle may take a few weeks, are you OK with that?

oh, and of course Undo is guilty too, damage he does is not limited to SO anymore

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Overflow Chat, 10 hours ago, by jmac

Sometimes I feel like you two should have a special workflow, where animuson hands over his handling-flag power to Undo for an hour, but has a giant red button where he can stop Undo at any time and undo the last 2 minutes of work. And give him an electric shock (that'll teach him!)

and Yannis, and Glen are guilty, too

"I kind of like flagging obsolete comments." You need a hobby. ;} — Yannis Nov 19 at 1:40

If you're serious about coming to Programmers next, please drop into chat (The Whiteboard) and let us know. You'll find a number of like-minded users who would be happy to review, flag, and help clear out stale comments. — GlenH7 2 days ago

ChrisF

10:11 AM

As I said, I'm happy with the flags in general, just not so many at once.

gnat

10:38 AM

@ChrisF all right, I'll do it in chunks by 20-30 then (can't make similar promise for other flaggers though, since the list of garbage in that query looks really tempting)

user41796

2:09 PM

@Thunderforge I have opened a question in meta to help your question get more review. It's a holiday weekend in the US so chat is going to be somewhat quiet.

user41796

I have opened a meta question to discuss improving this question. — GlenH7 54 secs ago

user41796

^^^ shameless plug for comment votes to raise the visibility, please.

user41796

@ChrisF I concur with @gnat. It's @YannisRizos's fault. But I'll throttle my overall flag volume down a notch to keep it more reasonable. @MichaelT, @JimmyHoffa, @Ampt - please see the above comments from ChrisF and modify your flagging accordingly.

user41796

@ChrisF I don't know how SE views the urgency behind the comment flags, but it's kind of hard to argue they have to be dealt with "immediately." A lot of these comments have been around for months or years. They need to go, but any damage they have done is already done. I'm using what I consider to be "not urgent" flags. Not Constructive or Obsolete or Too Chatty imply "yeah, this ought to be removed at some point…" and aren't as urgent as Rude / Offensive.

user41796

That was a long winded way of saying that I wouldn't expect you to have to review all the flags in the queue as part of your morning routine. WorldEngineer needs something to do too.

ChrisF

2:19 PM

@GlenH7 There is some discussion about whether moderators need to get involved with these at all. If enough users flag a comment it will get auto deleted. It's just that there's no "10K" queue where regular users can see these flags and validate/dispute them.

They are easy to clear - I just need to delete the comment - so that's not a problem, but I do need to clear them as they obscure the more serious/urgent flags.

user41796

@ChrisF Adding them to the 10k flag review queue would actually make the 10k flag review queue useful. So we can't be having that….

user41796

And that makes sense regarding the volume of less urgent flags indirectly burying the more urgent ones. I had wondered about that when I was writing up my thoughts above.

user41796

Has it been (recently) suggested on MSO to have 10k tools updated to allow regular comment flags to be reviewed?

ChrisF

We can filter flags though

@GlenH7 I don't think so. Feel free to check and suggest if you want. I'll up-vote it!

user41796

okay, I'll take a look on MSO and see.

ChrisF

2:23 PM

Before you do - I've just been told that it is under consideration at the moment.

user41796

33

Q: Make comment flagging work more like chat flagging, available to users with 10k reputation

Chat flags are handled fast. So fast they're often gone before I click the little flag notification. Comment flags are handled slow. Only mods can see them and they're quite low priority. Like chat flags they can be auto-handled if enough flags pile up...but that's not a common situation. Soluti...

feature-request 10k-tools comment-flags

user41796

^^^ I think that may be the source MSO question

user41796

2:45 PM

We'll see what the MSO hordes think of my answer and suggestion:

user41796

0

A: Make comment flagging work more like chat flagging, available to users with 10k reputation

There has been a recent MSO question from Undo that would have been helped by this question. Could we have some consensus on how to flag bunches of obsolete comments? I think having a 10k review queue for regular comment flags would be a great improvement. Having the ability to review comment ...

gnat

@GlenH7 "any damage they have done is already done" -- based on my recent experience, this isn't necessarily so, garbage comments continue to make negative impact on site readers. When I started this "cleanup", I rather thought I'll just give it a little try to see how it works in general and stop, because frankly I didn't feel that comments matter much. Upon seeing these endless greatanswers go away though I have changed my mind...

...no matter if I found this crap polluting some other substantial comments exchange, or urinating alone under a really good post, or making me raise eyebrows pondering on a mediocre posts supposed to be "advertised" that way (I even flagged one such answer for deletion)... mo matter what, I had a distinct feeling that site visitors will appreciate when these comments go away

user41796

@gnat - I probably didn't express that well enough. To push the analogy - if a comment represents a broken window, then the window has been broken for some time because the comment remains. Some number of visitors have seen the post + comment and saw the broken window. The (modest) damage has been done. So I don't see any urgency in responding to the comment flag within "4 hours" or whatever once I raise the comment flag. A useless comment that's been in place for 2 years doesn't have ...

user41796

… to be removed within a super short period of time just because I happened across it and chose to point out "hey, this is a useless comment"

user41796

So on the one hand, I fully agree that the comment needs to be removed. "+100 if I could!!!" is a worthless comment and doesn't help the site's image. But how quickly that has to get removed is what I'm quibbling about. A reasonable period of time is fine, it doesn't have to be instantaneous.

user41796

2:53 PM

And so far, 3 people agree with my suggested answer. Woohoo!

Undo

3:33 PM

My goodness, I'm going to cause a revolution in the 10k tools :P

So far, SO is the only site where they haven't asked me to stop/slow down/go bug someone else :)

ChrisF

@Undo Can you stop/slow down on SO too :P

André

lol

Undo

@Chris You realize that I'll just go through the list of sites you mod, one-by-one, right?

ChrisF

Please don't.

Undo

@Chris Really, though, there is a way for you to stop the comment flags: Use my tool, review every comment in it (>3000 @P.SE, >5000 @ SO), and use your diamond to whack them before I have a chance to flag them.

But yeah, I won't hit every site you mod one-by-one. Promise :)

The way I look at it, mods are simply paying for the years when people weren't flagging comments. It'll be painful for the few months it takes to get caught up, but then it'll subside.

and I have to congratulate you on having users this dedicated to moderation.

ChrisF

3:45 PM

@Undo But that involves me doing the same amount of work. Much better for 3(?) users to flag it and poof! the comment is gone.

Undo

Yes... But then I need to find a way to make sure it gets presented to three users, which would be work. We need a 10k queue for this - make it 15k, I don't care. Just have someone other than mods handle it. (Because mods are busy).

user41796

7:07 PM

@Undo It's more than just "mods are busy" IMO. It's about pushing more of the moderation onto the more experienced users of the community. Thanks for throwing a bounty on the MSO question about having a review queue. Hopefully that will get additional views and move things from "under consideration" into "becoming a reality."

gnat

7:53 PM

@GlenH7 understood. Here, I can safely agree, there's no urgency in getting these comments removed

Undo

8:39 PM

@GlenH7 I sure hope it'll have an effect - I'll keep pushing bounties onto that thing until we either get it implemented or Shog hates it being there enough to post a big long NO answer.

Dynamic

10:35 PM

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

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