Root Access

6:17 PM

I just gave away 12 bounties across 4 sites, go and answer those top unanswered questions if you want some cross-site reputation... :D

studiohack

@Sathya what's happening with that?

Mokubai

@Sathya From that I get the impression that The Comms Room is a shouty sweary 4-chan... okay, a more shouty sweary 4chan.

Tom Wijsman

in The Comms Room, 17 mins ago, by voretaq7

@MikeyB raaaaaaaaaaaaaape!

in The Comms Room, 16 mins ago, by WesleyDavid

@voretaq7 You do have a point. I hear that IBM accepts sodomy as currency.

in The Comms Room, 2 mins ago, by voretaq7

@MikeyB so as an IBM partner I get lube?

Mokubai

So it's a classy chat room then...

Tom Wijsman

I think that after the meta post some of us are watching out for messages that go worse than those, at least I'm ready for flagging...

Daniel Beck

6:32 PM

@TomWijsman What Meta post?

Tom Wijsman

@DanielBeck: The one Sathya linked.

Here is an example of what seems common there, and there is no moderator cleaning them up:

Mokubai

Granted I get that it's people who do this stuff for a living and when they get frustrated they need to go somewhere to unwind, but it's still a bit wrong to do it in a public forum...

Daniel Beck

Wow.

Tom Wijsman

Or well, perhaps they wait to do it around the time no moderators are there.

There is also something about F-bombs at night starred...

Best to keep them back, before they anger the wrong person and they start flaming around.

Daniel Beck

@Mokubai That's what alt.sysadmin.recovery is for, isn't it?

Mokubai

6:37 PM

@DanielBeck Yeah, that'd be an appropriate place :)

Daniel Beck

I remember, I once used a four letter word here in chat. I got 4 flags before it was edited by a moderator who wanted to prevent me from being auto kicked or something like that.

studiohack

@TomWijsman I'd flag that. and kill it. and suspend

Daniel Beck

@studiohack Sooo... goodbye @TomWijsman, was nice having you in chat?

studiohack

@DanielBeck lol. it depends on the comment. that particular one is very...vulgar

Daniel Beck

:2724752 I think you're right. But it's Meta, so it's free ;)

Mokubai

6:48 PM

I just think that questions that can be answered by the most simple of google searches are not the kind of quality necessary to keep the site going

WTH, I just had a weird counting circle next to my icon while I was typing...

Daniel Beck

@Mokubai That was the chat flags.

Mokubai

Network timeout thingy? or something else?

Daniel Beck

Someone didn't like the quoted post from The Comms Room.

Mokubai

Ahhhh, fair enough

Michael Mrozek

@TomWijsman I just read through their star list a few minutes ago, and that exact post was the one where I just stopped

studiohack

6:56 PM

what is @MichaelMrozek doing here? :P

Michael Mrozek

I'm everywhere; you just aren't always aware of it

studiohack

@MichaelMrozek sorry buddy, that's not always true

Michael Mrozek

EVERYWHERE

surfasb

Learning something new everyday.

Mokubai

The mods are like ninjas, Random has the ninja-like tendency of knowing when you are just about to type about him and replying beforehand...

@surfasb Gotta pace yourself though, don't want to run out of things to learn...

surfasb

7:03 PM

I was wondering what the heck was on the Stack overflow blog. . .

Stack Overflow Blog: Come Here Often?

Posted by Alison Sperling on December 14th, 2011

The holiday season is upon us, and as another year comes to an end, it is Stack Overflow Annual User Survey time again! So, take a break from wrapping gifts and come tell us about yourself. We promise it will only take a few minutes of your time.

Of course, as the “annual” implies, we’ve been running a survey for a few years now, including last year’s survey which marked the first time the anonymous data was formally used in support of selling advertising on Stack Overflow and Server Fault. This data is an important part of keeping the lights on around here, and, as a user of either of those two sites, or any Stack Exchange site for that matter, we ask you to participate. …

I thought it was a hampster and someone informed me it was a gopher!!

codeghost.com/gopher_history.html

Gopher (protocol)

The Gopher protocol is a TCP/IP application layer protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents over the Internet. Strongly oriented towards a menu-document design, the Gopher protocol was a predecessor of (and later, an alternative to) the World Wide Web. The protocol offers some features not natively supported by the Web and imposes a much stronger hierarchy on information stored on it. Its text menu interface is easy to use, and well-suited to computing environments that rely heavily on remote text-oriented computer terminals, which were still common at the ...

Michael Mrozek

A gopher who sucks at three dimensions, even

studiohack

@Mokubai I'll take that as a compliment :P

surfasb

Yet another old technology to add to my nerd file.

Mokubai

@studiohack I certainly mean it in a good way. All the mods do a good job that is only evidenced by the massive pile of dead bodies that only those blessed with the power to see dead people are truly aware of.

I mean I knew that the mods had a full job keeping the site tidy, but only realised the full extent of it all once I got 10K...

studiohack

@Mokubai thanks :-) we certainly try

@Mokubai I felt the same way when I became a mod

BloodPhilia

7:13 PM

Hi there :D

studiohack

hey @BloodPhilia

surfasb

@TomWijsman We can post cross site bounties?

studiohack

@surfasb no, he posted bounties on different sites, at once

surfasb

Ah ok.

BloodPhilia

7:36 PM

Wow, what the hell's the matter with The Comms Room? :/

surfasb

@BloodPhilia This is what happens when you put that many males into one room.

BloodPhilia

@surfasb Never seen anything like that happen here... :/

surfasb

Everything degenerates into locker room talk.

@BloodPhilia There aren't 20+ people in this room at all times.

BloodPhilia

Not over here

@surfasb I don't believe the regulars here would allow for it to degenerate to that level to be honest...

surfasb

Ya true.

BloodPhilia

7:41 PM

I've rarely seen conflict here!

surfasb

The flagged posts just remind me of what the guys I know in real life.

BloodPhilia

And when it does occur, it's quickly dealt with and dismissed by kindness :D

It's like a soap over there lol

Makes for great entertainment :P albeit sad

surfasb

Stack Overflow Blog: Own Your Community

Posted by Laura Dobrzynski on December 15th, 2011

Each of our 73 sites has a common goal: to own their community. Taking ownership means (in part) figuring out how to promote the site, make it attractive to newcomers, and make the awesome content and community even more awesome. While we have internal- and external-facing teams of employees to help with this, Stack Exchange is fundamentally driven by the people who use it. Here are a couple of ways that two Stack Exchange communities have come up with to improve their sites.**

Answer-a-thon!

One of the things we pride ourselves on is the ridiculously high answer rates on our sites. (Some other …

I like these "all nighters"

Like hack-a-thons.

Maybe compile canical answers on stuff like x86 v x64, address space and memory, SSDs, troubleshooting bootups and stutters, etc

Daniel Beck

8:35 PM

@surfasb we have that. It's called community-faq. There was the question on environment variables, and more recently a topic suggestion on meta about something like this, but I don't know whether we got a topic from it.

I'd be willing to invest a few 100 rep in bounties if we'd make a larger event out of getting new community faqs.

surfasb

@DanielBeck You mean the community wiki?

studiohack

@BloodPhilia we're all males here. for the most part, so not sure that means anything lol

except for @surfasb, I take it?

nhinkle

@DanielBeck that's a nice idea - get some of the established users with rep to burn to sponsor some community-faq topics.

studiohack

@nhinkle how would that work?

nhinkle

@studiohack we make a list of community-faq topics that need some good canonical answers. Then we split them up so that each sponsoring user gets 1 question to themselves. they ask the question, then put a large bounty on it. then we encourage all the other users to go and answer one of the dozen questions with big bounties

we could coordinate choosing topics via this room and a shared google spreadsheet, and we could announce it via the blog

studiohack

8:47 PM

@nhinkle interesting.... I like that idea

surfasb

@studiohack I agree.

nhinkle

And, you can have up to 3 active bounties. So people who wanted to could sponsor multiple posts.

Also relevant, see this meta post:

26

Q: Another take on canonical answers: Add a "canonical" vote

When closing a question as a duplicate, it is becoming harder and harder to search for a good original as the pool of questions and answers grows and grows. While the new dupe closing dialog is a huge step forward, it doesn't always work - if you've spent some time on the site, you know there ar...

surfasb

@nhinkle Isn't that what the Community wikis are for?

nhinkle

@surfasb not really. Community wikis are a weird thing. They can be used in conjunction with canonical posts to encourage participation, but the difference here is about how to promote the canonical posts. Community wikis don't get any special treatment in search results.

surfasb

@nhinkle Yeah, the search results priority would be big.