The Junk Drawer

Zach Saucier

1:00 AM

@Gilles questions testing the scope that we have that you don't agree with

Gilles

What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!

Sabre Tooth

@ZachSaucier am researching an answer on my main site - you can not see what I am doing on my side of the keyboard - so don't assume

Gilles

@ZachSaucier there are already plenty of questions on the site

Sabre Tooth

@Shokhet not really

Zach Saucier

@Gilles I'd love to see them

Shokhet

1:01 AM

@Gilles I think that's cute, but I don't see what it had to do with the discussion

Gilles

It seems that a lot of closed questions were deleted, so it's hard to judge

@Shokhet waiting it out means letting other people make mistakes

Shokhet

@SabreTooth hm. Would you come back if/when this gets sorted out? ....most sites' scopes can be figured out from their name, but this one's a little different

@Gilles I see. I don't know if most people share that super-citizen mentality of yours, but that's one way of looking at it, I guess

Zach Saucier

@Gilles isn't the fact that they're closed and deleted proving the point that the scope we propose isn't a catch all?

Gilles

@ZachSaucier er, yes

Sabre Tooth

@Shokhet we'd have to wait and see.... IMO I do not see consensus happening

Gilles

1:02 AM

but by your definition many of them shouldn't have been closed

Shokhet

@SabreTooth Hm. One thing we need to do to come to consensus is start listening to each other, and stop reverting to ad hominem attacks........which is up to one or two people

Zach Saucier

so you're suggesting inconsistent moderation then

Gilles

@ZachSaucier ???????

Sabre Tooth

@Shokhet yes! and unfortunately I can't seeing that happening

Zach Saucier

that the scope wasn't applied properly and some questions were closed that shouldn't have been

Shokhet

1:04 AM

@ZachSaucier that was already talked about here

Gilles

No, these questions should have been closed and deleted (at least in principle, I didn't review them)

Shokhet

@SabreTooth hmmm.....

Gilles

but they shouldn't have been deleted until the scope debate had been settled, because it's hard to debate without the negative examples

Zach Saucier

@Gilles they delete questions before going public, there's a meta on it if you'd like to see

@Shokhet wut

Gilles

by YOUR definition (some of) these questions shouldn't have been deleted, but by mine they should have been

Shokhet

1:05 AM

@Gilles I didn't delete one or two of my closed questions, for that reason....some users with delete vote privs in private beta went ahead and deleted anyway....

Zach Saucier

@Gilles but yet they were deleted?? I don't follow

Gilles

@ZachSaucier yes, that comes back to the earlier remark that the public beta started too early

Shokhet

@ZachSaucier inconsistently applied moderation? ....I know, not the most recent iteration of it, but we've discussed this before

Zach Saucier

ah, I see

Gilles

@ZachSaucier Ok, let me do it again: some questions that you consider in scope but I consider off-topic were deleted.

I agree with deleting these questions, except that as long as the scope hasn't settled I think they should have remained closed but not deleted. Once the dust has settled on the scope they should have been deleted.

Zach Saucier

1:07 AM

kk

Shokhet

@Gilles I agree

Zach Saucier

so that deals with our discussion because you were wanting to use them as evidence

Gilles

@ZachSaucier not as evidence (of what?), as examples

Zach Saucier

same difference :P

Shokhet

I have to run now (Bat signal, @J.Musser ;) ....hopefully I'll be back later

Zach Saucier

1:08 AM

but you said there were plenty of examples, surely there has to be some still up somewhere?

J. Musser

@Shokhet cya then mate

Zach Saucier

can't spell today

Sabre Tooth

think of it this way, a new member comes in, thinks - 'awesome, lifehacks!', they come in and read several (what appears to be upvoted questions and answers, uses that to work out what is on scope, writes a questions - gets it dv'ed and closed - and they are supposed to be 'all singing and dancing' or in reality - think, "what the..." and in some cases not bother with the site

Shokhet

@SabreTooth that's why I was uncertain about the move to public beta

Gilles

@ZachSaucier examples of what?

Zach Saucier

1:11 AM

@Gilles the types of questions that you were wanting to use as examples of "A major unresolved contradiction in your viewpoint is that you say you don't want the site to be a catch-all, but then you refuse closing questions because they aren't calling for lifehacks."

Gilles

@ZachSaucier we were talking about one earlier: the spackle question

Sabre Tooth

and a general impression - that even though it should be a community consensus, it appears (note, I say 'appears', not 'is') that a very small group have already decided to impose what they feel should be on topic

Zach Saucier

lifehacks.stackexchange.com/q/164/78 here's a link to it for reference

I think it's a poor question, I downvoted it

but why do you say it's off topic under our scope?

Gilles

30 mins ago, by Gilles

the “hide a nail hole to get my deposit back” question requires doing a clean job because of the high monetary stake, so it isn't a lifehack question.

Zach Saucier

how does the monetary stake make it not fit under our scope?

which part of it?

Gilles

1:16 AM

@ZachSaucier the cheap aspect of lifehacks

Sabre Tooth

toothpaste? what a great solution

Zach Saucier

it seems to go against your definition, not ours

Gilles

@ZachSaucier I disagree with your definition… That's what we've been talking about for like an hour

Zach Saucier

yes

but I thought we were trying to show the unresolved contradictions in the current definition

Gilles

@ZachSaucier not in your definition of lifehack, but in your site scope proposal

Zach Saucier

1:17 AM

I feel like you're distracted xD

Gilles

@ZachSaucier well, you aren't getting my full attention. But I feel I'm talking to a wall

Zach Saucier

I'm trying to find these unresolved contradictions

it seems you're dancing around answering other stuff

Gilles

@ZachSaucier I haven't danced around answering anything

J. Musser

You guys...

Gilles

but you still haven't explained why you're so concerned about the site being catch-all, yet want an extremely inclusive scope

Zach Saucier

1:19 AM

questions are inclusive so long as they're on topic

it hasn't been proven as a catch all, the examples you gave would be closed

Gilles

pleonasm of the day...

Zach Saucier

@Gilles I'm concerned about it becoming a catch all because if it becomes one it'd be closed down

our scope isn't extremely inclusive, you haven't proven it to be so yet

Gilles

@ZachSaucier Ok, sure, I can agree with that. So why are you against restricting questions?

Zach Saucier

what do you mean? We do restrict questions

Gilles

37 mins ago, by Zach Saucier

all questions are implicitly seeking lifehack answers (unless the questions ask otherwise)

Zach Saucier

1:23 AM

agreed

6

A: How do we define what is on-topic without requiring the questioner to know the answer to their question?

Under the definition of a lifehack in our new scope, we can determine if a question is on topic or not by the following: The question is about a practical, physical problem. The question must implicitly demand unconventional and creative solutions, meaning the solutions use materials that are o...

Gilles

even questions like the spackle question which are explicitly not seeking lifehack answers

Zach Saucier

@Gilles sure it is

how is it not?

Sabre Tooth

thank goodness I left this site - no scope (at least no agreement) and seemingly anarchy - I actually hope this site succeeds, but I now can see that the site's scope is based on the whim of 1 or 2 members and if you disagree, well...

Gilles

@ZachSaucier No: it says that the result has to be good enough so that the guy doesn't lose his deposit

Zach Saucier

From the question: "I don't want to use spackle, because it would require me to repaint the walls, and I don't want that."

@Gilles agreed, it's seeking a lifehack to do so

Gilles

1:24 AM

@ZachSaucier how is this relevant?

Zach Saucier

more proof it's seeking a lifehack

Gilles

@ZachSaucier No, that objective is fundamentally incompatible with the principle of lifehacks

Zach Saucier

@Gilles you can't know that without knowing all possible solutions

Gilles

it's not trying to do a quick and dirty job, it's trying to do a socially acceptable job

Zach Saucier

it's seeking both

Gilles

1:25 AM

@SabreTooth not only that, but the whim changes on a whim!

Zach Saucier

to see if there's an answer that gives both

I really am interested in why you don't think the current scope doesn't work, Gilles. I'd like for us to fix it

but as it is you haven't proven to me that there is something wrong with it yet

Sabre Tooth

@Gilles that's my impression, regretfully

Gilles

@ZachSaucier My biggest problem is that you want to have questions where the best answer is excluded.

4

You're ok with that, I'm not.

Zach Saucier

we have to enforce answers being lifehacks

that's what the site is for

if we don't, there's no site

Gilles

If I find a thread on the site, I want to have reasonable confidence (subject to the reliability of votes by random people on the Internet) that a high-scoring answer is a good one.

But you want to exclude the best answer in the cases where it happens to not be creative.

Zach Saucier

1:29 AM

in cases where it's intended purpose, yes

because it's not a lifehack

Gilles

@ZachSaucier For me, no site is preferable to a site with bad answers.

Zach Saucier

other sites provide the intended purpose tools

Gilles

Other sites are not relevant.

Zach Saucier

@Gilles lifehacks are the "quick and dirty" solutions when the (at times) best answer are not available

that's the main point

if, for some reason, the usual way of doing it is not available

Gilles

@ZachSaucier Then the question should include requirements that exclude the “best answer”. Such as it being too expensive, or requiring a tool that isn't available or something.

Zach Saucier

1:31 AM

agreed

Gilles

The requirement doesn't have to be stated explicitly if it's obvious enough.

Zach Saucier

that's what we've been trying to enforce :)

that's why J.Musser went through commenting and voting to close loads of questions before we went public

it's even in our definition of a lifehack

J. Musser

-7

Q: Triple booting Chromium Os, Ubuntu 14.10, Windows 7

I have a lenovo L410, with windows 7 professional pre-installed. On this, I have dual booted Ubuntu 14.10. Now, I want to triple boot with chromium os, but as I have a lot of stuff, I dont want to format or reinstall anything. Can someone help?

technology

I didn't favorite that

but it says I did in my network profile

Gilles

@J.Musser welcome to the world of “oh, a textbox”

J. Musser

weird

@Gilles Yeah I know it's a bad post. But I really didn't favorite it, so that's weird.

Does it show up for you?

click newest

Zach Saucier

1:37 AM

@J.Musser yes

4th page on votes

7th down on first page on recent

J. Musser

When I click favorite, it gets a '2', because the current favorite is not mine. I don't know what's going on

Zach Saucier

post in meta?

J. Musser

Unless someone knows off the top of their head

Gilles

@J.Musser Yes. Weird.

Zach Saucier

cars are so pretty

I'd never buy one even if I had the money to though, haha

Gilles

1:41 AM

@J.Musser Did you maybe favorite it by mistake and then immediately click again?

4

Q: How to remove an unfavorited post from my Stack Exchange overall favorites?

Sometimes when I unfavorite a post, it still appears in my Stack Exchange favorites (which shows favorites across all SE network sites). This is clearly a bug, but I don't know how to fix it. Clicking on "Sync with oldest profile" doesn't fix it; favoriting and unfavoriting again doesn't fix it....

bug favorites network-profile profile-sync

could be a misclick, the downvote button is very close to the favorite button

J. Musser

@Gilles Possibly, I don't remember though

That's probably it.

And they should fix that.

Zach Saucier

@Gilles Post a bounty on that question, you have more meta rep than I do :P

J. Musser

lol

Zach Saucier

I already used most my rep on this bug meta.stackexchange.com/questions/240192/…

Gilles

@ZachSaucier I could but bounties on bugs are pretty useless. Not that I haven't done it.

J. Musser

1:43 AM

But shouldn't it update, @Gilles?

Gilles

@J.Musser it should but sometimes doesn't — that's what the bug is about

J. Musser

I dv'd on Dec. 24

Zach Saucier

@Gilles mine hasn't gotten much more attention...

J. Musser

@Gilles Oh I see.

@Gilles Yeah, devs don't need a rep incentive

:D

Gilles

@J.Musser I've been told that they don't pay attention to bounties at all when they prioritize bugs. So you only get the indirect effect that the bug report gets a few more upvotes from being bumped.

Zach Saucier

1:45 AM

^^ that's why I did it

J. Musser

I don't bounty on mse

I want to work up to cv privs

over time

apaul34208

11

Q: Total stats on Area 51 commit wrong since the Meta SO/Meta SE split

It looks like the total rep and badges on my Area 51 commitment are being miscalculated. I think it started with the SO/SE meta split. Should be: Adding my Meta rep in twice would put my rep in the ballpark of 33k, and the badge counts match exactly if you add in my Meta badges twice. As o...

bug reputation area51

Zach Saucier

I'm not on MSE enough to use privs anyway xD

J. Musser

I haz only 1k xD

apaul34208

A minor bug, but it has been around for a good long time

J. Musser

1:48 AM

same with

5

Q: Please show proper weekly/monthly etc. reputation on mobile

On mobile, if I search users by ?tab=reputation&filter=[week][month][quarter][year], the users are listed properly for the respective filters, in proper order of rep gained in that time period, but their reputation shown is their all-time rep. It would be more useful if their reputation shown act...

bug reputation mobile-web tabs

No fix :(

Gilles

@J.Musser there are much worse bugs in the mobile app

On Android, if you switch to another app while making an edit, the edit is lost. That bug has been around for a year.

J. Musser

@Gilles It's not the app, it's the mobile site

That u click at the bottom of the page.

Gilles

oh, right

apaul34208

You would think that a site with an army of programmers/developers at its disposal wouldn't have these ongoing problems... Perhaps there should be a special tag category on SO for fixing SE's bugs.

Zach Saucier

we'd need access to their systems for many of them

J. Musser

1:52 AM

And then there are questions that have to have an easy answer, that no one answers.

10

Q: How many characters will tip the post?

I hear that abnormally long posts get automatic flags, but I can't find anything on the exact number of characters that will make it flag-worthy. What is the number?

support flags question-quality automatic-flags

Like that^

also by me

Zach Saucier

what's a word similar to "dive" that means look into or analyze?

J. Musser

idc

Zach Saucier

not as detailed as analyze though

J. Musser

(I don't care)

apaul34208

I think this may be the answer meta.stackexchange.com/questions/244031/…

J. Musser

1:53 AM

That's not an answer.

Zach Saucier

@J.Musser thanks for the help!

J. Musser

:D anytime

Are you doing a test?

apaul34208

Not an answer, but perhaps a reason

Zach Saucier

@J.Musser writing a subtitle for a post of mine

trying to make it as tantalizing as possible

Gilles

@J.Musser I think that automatic flag no longer exists

J. Musser

1:56 AM

@Gilles reference?

Gilles

@J.Musser not seeing it in the history of the longest answer on CS.SE, which is >29k chars

J. Musser

@Gilles Ah.

Gilles

ah, but the initial version was only 12k chars

This flag still existed as of 2013-11-15, for a 24k-char post

I don't know what the threshold is, it's cumbersome to find (I can't get a list of posts with this flag, I can only look at the flag history of an individual post)

J. Musser

@Gilles Write a meta post, I'll accept it

@apaul34208 Ooh, that one's Shog9's fault

Oh no, now it's Frank's (my) fault! :(

Wow, I know almost everyone on there.

brb

Gilles

@J.Musser I wrote a SEDE query. 24k initial rev → flag, 17k → no flag

so probably 20k

but I don't have a lot of data to go on

not that it matters anyway, this flag is totally pointless

apaul34208

2:08 AM

@J.Musser It told me to blame @Mooseman I think we should go with that.

Zach Saucier

2:25 AM

I wrote about the SE network in a blog post medium.com/@ZachSaucier/… if you liked it, I'd love a +1 on HackerNews :)

Doorknob 冰

@ZachSaucier delve?

Zach Saucier

thought about it, but I'd like an adjective and delvution doesn't seem right :)

Zach Saucier

4:18 AM

@MattS. That's a sad answer

does that mean you're pretty much done?

Shokhet

4:40 AM

A lot seems to have happened since I left, and it's very difficult to follow the flow of a conversation you weren't part of, in my experience. Did you guys reach any sort of conclusion, @ZachSaucier, @Gilles?

Zach Saucier

it seems gilles understands our viewpoint more now, though I am pretty sure he still disagrees

Shokhet

any specific reason for that? .....or am I going to have to start digging through the transcript?

Zach Saucier

3 hours ago, by Gilles

@ZachSaucier My biggest problem is that you want to have questions where the best answer is excluded.

I go on after that to argue that it's required to exclude non-lifehack solutions as answers because otherwise we have a catch all site

Shokhet

I see. That message is on the star-wall, currently

Zach Saucier

it is

Shokhet

4:49 AM

....conversation, from that point, seems to spin off into a discussion of @J.Musser's most favorite question in all of SE

....which appears to be Shog's fault

one minute; brb

Shokhet

5:14 AM

@ZachSaucier @Gilles @J.Musser @MattS. and everyone else involved in today's discussion:

0

Q: Must "conventional answers" be off-topic, to avoid becoming a "catch-all" site?

Over the past few days, there's been a lot of discussion in Meta and chat about "conventional answers." Leaving the definition of "conventional" aside, for the moment, I'd like to explore an issue that I believe is central to the discussion at hand. Some users propose that if we were to allow "c...

discussion scope

......if we can get an answer to that one, I think the conversation can continue in a healthy manner.

Zach Saucier

you know my answer

1. yes 2. yes

Shokhet

@ZachSaucier I didn't ask you; if you thought I was asking you, please go back and read the paragraph in bold again.

Zach Saucier

that's silly

if we can't decide it then lifehacks should be closed, no question

Shokhet

We've been throwing around the buzzword "catch-all site" all day; if we don't figure out the issues in that Meta Q, the conversation will not be able to advance

....hopefully Shog9 or Jaydles or Robert Cartaino will see that question and answer it

once we figure that out, then you and Gilles can stop arguing, and start planning what to do next in a more efficient way

Zach Saucier

lol

I completely disagree with limiting the responses to staff members

Shokhet

5:20 AM

@ZachSaucier for the benefit of those watching the conversation in chat:

Your argument "no reason" is based on the assumption that a "catch-all" never should and never will exist on the SE network, @ZachSaucier. I'd like to find out if that's fact — Shokhet 23 secs ago

which was a response to

There's no reason to limit the answers to just SE staff. If we can't decide how this site will work by ourselves then there's no reason why Lifehacks should remain — Zach Saucier 1 min ago

@Shokhet This was the purpose of that Meta Q

Zach Saucier

I don't understand your comment nor your reason

a catch all site is of course disallowed

Shokhet

@ZachSaucier that's what we've all been assuming, and that was your main argument against @Gilles, from what I could tell.

Zach Saucier

> That's exactly what you have to protect against. If this site becomes a catch-all site where pretty much anything is on topic, this is going to be a non-starter. Robert meta.lifehacks.stackexchange.com/a/93/78

Shokhet

If the value of that statement is "true," then you're right. If not, then Gilles is right.

Zach Saucier

> Not everything is a lifehack, and we cannot create a catch-all site about everything. The purpose of this site has to be definitive… and understandable. Robert again meta.lifehacks.stackexchange.com/q/1187/78

MacGyver

5:24 AM

1

Q: Must "conventional answers" be off-topic, to avoid becoming a "catch-all" site?

Over the past few days, there's been a lot of discussion in Meta and chat about "conventional answers." Leaving the definition of "conventional" aside, for the moment, I'd like to explore an issue that I believe is central to the discussion at hand. Some users propose that if we were to allow "c...

discussion scope

Shokhet

@MacGyver Thank you; that link had been in here already :P

Anyway, I'm beat. I have to get up early tomorrow, and really need to go to sleep a half an hour ago. I'll wake up tomorrow and find a whole bunch of comments, and hopefully an answer too, from that question, I'm sure. See you around!

Zach Saucier

@Shokhet this still doesn't make sense to me

apaul34208

5:49 AM

0

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There are times I get mild wounds like incision, scratches & abrasion due to daily outdoor activities. For these mild things, I do not prefer to go to a hospital as it gets healed over the period of time. How can I avoid getting infection on the mild wounds when I do not have access to medicatio...