@Rusher ahhh, that's what you mean. I thought you were referring to waiting until someone else has reduced the current owner to a couple of units, and then kill them to get the instant spawn for yourself. I think I'll need to give battles with multiple parties more thought. you're right though that would be nice to give you an instant defense so it's not immediately taken away again.

this is ridiculous, the 11 most recent questions are all closed. :(

@m.buettner And many of them have 5+ answers... :/

@Doorknob well I'm sometimes tempted to answer such questions, too, just to point a flaw or so. and if people have fun answering them, let them. I'm more concerned with the general question quality and current ratio of decent questions.

that being said I've seen very few questions of long-time users recently

Wait wait, that seems counter-productive. What's the point of closing a question if you're going to answer it anyway?

there are a bunch in the sandbox, but not on main

@Doorknob the other way round, you mean?

you're probably right

I should refrain from doing that

@m.buettner Yeah, me too. I'd like to be posting more challenges, but it's been final-exam-crazy-panic mode at my school for a few weeks :P After school ends, I'll probably be able to think up a few more challenges

fair enough. I'm working on two KotHs but they might take a while before. I might try to come up with some plain old code golf in the meantime.

@Doorknob should go on an editing spree some time soon to convert all tips-lists into the "one tip per answer" format?

on a lot of the newer ones, there are 5-10 tips per answer, which is completely useless

(for voting)

Uhhhh... did something happen on meta that I missed?

Not that I don't agree, but you're saying that as if we've been talking about it for a while

no I wasn't implying that

I think we just talked about it once that tips questions should follow that format to be maximally useful

Ok. That sounds great; just don't edit them all at one time to avoid bumping too many posts to the front page

yeah, of course

I might just tackle one language a day

@undergroundmonorail re mafia. really only one cop (and one doctor)? even if you get like 30 submissions?

@m.buettner At least at the moment, I don't see any particular need to make it easier for the village. There are variants of Mafia with no PRs at all, so I don't think it'll be an issue to have a single doctor/cop.

I don't know if it would translate to AIs playing it, but in real games larger games tend to become even more townsided, anyway.

@undergroundmonorail okay, fair enough.

Another day, another "I open code golf and see 7 closed posts"

In theory, unless humanity generates new classes of problems, we will eventually get only duplicates

most of them are "on hold" not "duplicate"

Well, maybe what I said was not so closely related to what you said

Sometimes my mind wanders and I forget to type the lead in

Usually leaving people wondering what my point was

Random off-topic link: wired.com/2014/05/pi-takedown

@Rusher next time just start prefixing everything you say with "Meanwhile, back at the ranch"

@Geobits You have got to be kidding me. The Internet must be in an uproar

I imagine so, the webs like their pi.

@durron597 I appreciate the tip :)

Does anyone know how to make new questions with a specific tag on a specific site send a text to my phone?

@Doorknob ^ ?

I'd use one of the 783 000 results I get for googling "send sms with python" to write a script that uses the SE API to watch for new questions and text you when it sees a tag, but I have no idea how much of your allotted API usage that would take up.

blog.mashape.com/post/56272188360/list-of-50-sms-apis

Or how to get any of those results working, actually. I searched it to make sure it was possible but didn't click anything.

So my Create a Nonogram Puzzle code-golf that's in the sandbox right now has 4 upvotes, and the only comment that suggests any changes is a clearer specification of the required format. Do you think if I drop this in there it'll be good to go?

@undergroundmonorail that is absolutely amazing

I wish we had more specs like that around here

Thanks :) Should I post it?

@undergroundmonorail Oh they have those puzzles in games magazine a lot

Internet's about to disappear for a few minutes, brb

@undergroundmonorail yes, post it

how did you create that image? is it two overlapping ascii texts?

@m.buettner I opened the second sample output I created in nano, then took a screenshot. Next, I pasted it into GIMP, inverted the colours to make it black-on-white (I keep my terminal white-on-black) and manually drew the lines and stuff. The text is size 10 "Fixed", which is a font I've never seen before but I like it.

ah okay, that makes sense

I thought you just had some mad ASCII diagram drawing skills ;)

:)

I think I'll whip up some quick images to replace the ASCII art I have in the examples, actually.

Because they look ugly.

New question: Create a Nonogram Puzzle

It's weird to me that this challenge says "Put on hold as off-topic by" and includes my name. Three people closed it as off-topic but I closed as "too broad" and someone else closed as "unclear what you're asking".

It's not a big deal, I'm not super offended that I'm being misrepresented or anything. It's just odd.

I was wondering about the same thing. Usually it lists the different reasons with who picked them.

I know that if one reason is selected by 3 people and another by 2, it lists both.

I know that if one reason is selected by 4 people and another by 1, it only lists the one selected by 4 people.

or maybe that

I've been misrepresented as well, and seen it happen to others. Should I post on meta about it?

Not our meta... the exchange meta

sure, but there's a good chance someone already did

I tried searching for it, but it's one of those phrases that are hard to Google. "List of users that closed a question"

"displaying wrong close vote reason"

Got it meta.programmers.stackexchange.com/q/6324

Thanks

that doesn't seem to be true (at least for PPCG) though

because I've seen it as well that two reasons are displayed if the result is 3 vs 2

That must have been a while ago. Apparently one is picked now, and everyone's name is stamped on it.

Wait

If both of the reasons are standard reasons, there might be a different behavior than if one is custom

Do I lose anything by having questions closed if I choose to be a guinea pig?

I don't want to lose posting privileges temporarily lol

what's your plan?

well if you lose rep, you can lose privileges

There's an error in my sample output. Oops.

you can even lose privileges by offering bounties

Actually, my sample output makes no sense at all. What?

@Rusher no it was last week or two weeks ago. the thing with the standard vs custom reasons might be the case.

Post one question and have 3 people vote Opinion Based and 2 people vote Unclear, then post a second question and have 2 people vote Opinion Based and 3 vote for a custom reason (but the same custom reason)

Oh, wait, figured it out. The top line wasn't lined up properly, so the two columns that had 3 hints had the top one shifted over.

If it happens the way I think it will, then we won't need a third question test

But I'm not gonna use the main site as a sandbox. I'll just stay curious

apply for a job at SE and just look at the code

^

@Rusher you could probably set something up with an RSS feed

If my kneejerk response to that wasn't to Google "RSS feed" then I might

I'm angry because the bug I've been hunting was something stupid

I had a function that took an argument called h

l = ['stuff', 'more_stuff']
a = my_function(l)
b = my_function(modify_list(l))
a == b # True

I couldn't figure out why it was returning the same thing

But then, I finally found the problem

@undergroundmonorail I once had to fix a segfault. I thought I found it, fixed it, reran the code and the segfault was still there. I went chasing after the real cause for 2 hours. at which point I realised, I never recompiled after applying my initial fix. that is stupid and makes you angry ;)

my_function=lambda h:[do_things(c) for c in l]

Do you see it? I see it. I found it eventually.

@m.buettner Ouch.

well, you're not using h, but l directly.

so modify_list is ignored for b

You got it

@Doorknob beat me to it by 5 seconds ;)

What's the rule for solving your own challenges? I know there were people suggesting that OPs wait a few days before solving, because they have the unfair advantage of thinking of ways to solve it while writing the challenge, but I don't know if that was consensus or not.

@undergroundmonorail I recently posted this answer, it got 13 upvotes and there were no other answers with different opinions. So I don't know whether that is really consensus, but at least many people agree with it.

As far as waiting goes, I sometimes do, sometimes not. If I have something that's actually good, I might wait. For a baseline example (or even a "just mediocre" answer), no sense in waiting.

Alright. I'll wait a while before posting mine. I didn't start working on it until after I posted the question but I don't want to give the impression that I've been working for a while and posting my solution on the day of.

It does beat the only answer so far, but only by 6 bytes.

Sorry, 7

Still though

I just realized I allowed a function that takes arguments and a program that reads stdin, and I wanted to allow a program that takes arguments via the command line but I forgot to do so. Is it kosher to edit a question that has an answer to add options, instead of take them away?

(I don't know if the current answer would have been shorter with command line arguments, but they were forbidden, or what...)

Haha, he actually did use command line flags anyway! So there's nothing to worry about.

Actually, having reread my own question, I said "as an argument", which I only meant to refer to functions with but it turns out that the letter of the law accidentally permits what I wanted to permit! I had nothing to worry about at all. :)

It seems okay to me to add options, even after answers have started. So long as your changes don't invalidate existing answers, I don't see a problem.

I'll keep that in mind for next time, thanks :)

Clarifications are always ok, of course.

On my animation one, I took some complications out when I tried it myself. But nobody had answered yet, fortunately.

oh hello ;3

Hello @Wobblebot!

hehehe, talking here feels nice :D

Chatbots are taking over this room!

i should make a room for m'self

Odd

hm :/

Also, heck yeah, I got back the privileges I lost when they killed the "be unexpectedly obscene" question.

;D

@undergroundmonorail that happens all the time... the SE cache does funny things sometimes

Imma logout, relogin as Trimsty, make a room, logout, login, come over here and talk about reddit and various other fruits

@Wobblebot It's not really necessary to logout/login when you want to switch accounts. I'm logged in and my bot is logged in in a Private Browsing window, so I can use both accounts at the same time.

Well, last time I did that they got merged :I

Do you mean that you was also logged in in Private Browsing and could not log in your bot account?

i mean the accounts got merged, the answers are now credited to me and their user page redirects to my account

In Firefox it works fine. I can use both accounts without having problems.

Meh, I don't wanna take any chances, but thanks for the tip

imma switch now :3

eh

it still says Trimsty is online

eyyyy

wha

so scare

?

It says Trimsty's still online but I logged out from that account

eh

It can take some time before it doesn't say that anymore.

It also says:

ahk

> seen 4m ago

I'll set up the ChatExchange things on my VPS and run it from there, and login as Trimsty from my laptop

That also indicates that Trimsty is not online anymore, because normally the number doesn't go above 2m because it also counts "new messages loaded" as "seen".

i like how I can just randomly switch location from the country that was recently placed last in a global math/science ed test

to the usa

ah

What country is that?

Not the USA, the other one.

Ah, South Africa (where I live)

Ah.

anyways, switching accounts again

Okay, see you.

Haha, Trimsty's icon just disappeared as Wobblebot said that.

hehe

Okay, now to set up meta commands and figure out how to do hot swaps with modules in python

Ooohhhh

reload(module) is a function

i'm building python 2.7

it feels nice to finally build a big project

Wait, people use Python for serious work

data analysts

Oh, that's not serious work

xD

I'm just using it for Wobblebot

Most interpreted languages are useless to me for my own work

I suggested Genie or Nimrod to the Pythonners on Reddit

they said compiling was inconvenient

It's the "build time vs run time" issue

I need my code to be fast, so I need to spend time on the design

But other's don't need fast code, but they need the code quick

I don't blame them for doing it the wrong way, it's their employer's money ;)

I wrote a bash script to score a program better. Strips comments, empty lines and the trailing newline before running it through wc -c. :)

so apparently i didn't have zlib on the vps at the time, and now i have to rebuild

:c

I want someone to solve my challenge in python because I have no idea if my attempt is good or not

heh ^^

eeurggh

?

looks like i'm not gonna get pip or easy_install on my vps

:(

or ChatExchange...?

why does everything need setuptools? :c

Sounds like you have too many problems with Python

You should use something more stable, like Fortran

lolol

i was writing an OS with Fortran and Rust

but then i got bored :c

@Trimsty You've got my attention

i got bored because my hard drive got corrupted

lost it all

Awwww

That stinks

indeed

I'd like to see a Fortran-based OS appear one day

also, i got python working now :D

:D

:D

well that didn't last long

No?

it claims that "chatexchange.wrapper" doesn't exist

well, it doesn't

PACKAGE CONTENTS
    _utils
    browser
    client
    events
    messages
    rooms
    users

looks like i'm rewriting

[root@stsh Wobblebot]# python2.7 Wobblebot.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "Wobblebot.py", line 7, in <module>
    g = Client(host, "[redacted]", "[redacted]")
  File "build/bdist.linux-i686/egg/chatexchange/client.py", line 69, in __init__
  File "build/bdist.linux-i686/egg/chatexchange/client.py", line 140, in login
  File "build/bdist.linux-i686/egg/chatexchange/browser.py", line 177, in login_se_chat
TypeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute '__getitem__'

wonder what's happening there

@undergroundmonorail Posting a good answer to your own question can risk scaring people away.

But hinting in poor English that you don't know the answer can cause panic among the PPCG community and you will potentially be burned at the stake for offering homework-in-disguise (regardless of whether it actually was or not).

So pretend you know everything, but possibly wait before posting your own answer, and you'll be alright.

@Doorknob when I split up the tips answers, should I flag the original answer for deletion to reset all votes? otherwise I'd have to pick one tip to keep the current upvotes, which hardly seems fair (as in, I might pick the tip that I like most which amounts to myself voting on that tip as often as the original answer had been upvoted).

@m.buettner Um. Wait, what? I'm not sure I'm following you

@Doorknob Okay, say I find an answer with 5 tips and 15 upvotes. I want to turn that into 5 answers, so people can vote on them individually. The naive thing to do, is copy out four of the tips into new answers. That will leave 4 of the tips with 0 upvotes and one with 15 upvotes. Since I have to choose which tip will remain somehow, I'm single-handedly giving one tip 15 upvotes (while robbing the others of their shared upvotes).

So it seems fairer to actually remove the old answer, make 5 new ones, and hence reset all of them to zero. But then what do I do with answers that already have only 1 tip. Those would be the only ones that have any upvotes at all afterwards.

Wait, how would this splitting process work in the first place?

@Doorknob I just write 4 new answers and edit the original post to delete the four tips that went into new answers.

So... the original poster would no longer own their tips?

it's CW anyway, right?

I'd credit them at the top or bottom of the post, of course.

... yeah, but there's still some sense of ownership (showing up in their profile, badges, etc.)

can you split up someone's post as a mod? (such that it's still their post?)

I don't know what else we could do... go through those answers and leave a comment to ask the owner himself to do it?

No.

Hmmm

I would think that a side effect of allowing Code Golf questions on main would be that they need to follow the same Stack Exchange policies that every other site has. It should be specific enough to lead to a single good answer. Not "Give me tips please."

If you try to mess with these relics it won't make sense.

Am I correct that new questions that are related to code-golf but not actually a "challenge" need to adhere to the same standards that every other site follows?

Like "How do I do X in language Y? I've tried this technique, because my research here, here, and here got me that far. Here is an example of some relevant code I wrote."

Sometimes when I make a point here and forget to ping anyone, I talk and talk until I read back over my wall of text and think "Wow that doesn't flow and nobody will care."

@Rusher I think we had this discussion before? I could personally agree with you, but I'm also fine with allowing tips-lists as an exception, simply because they are useful. Furthermore, the underlying reason for disallowing list questions on SO that they are often primarily opinion-based (What's your favorite C++ book?). That's not the case for tips lists.

I was fine with allowing past tips list questions as an exception. I didn't vote for more tips-lists, as they no longer make sense by present standards.

I just didn't want to encourage destroying the hard work of tips-questions past.

I never said you did.

That was supposed to be funny but it really wasn't.

;)

okay, afk for now

On second thought, "I could agree with you, but this is how I feel" implies that you think I feel the opposite, so I had to redeclare my position.