@EliahKagan I have cast the third vote required to undelete the answer that you edited.

lol someone casted a CV for this spam askubuntu.com/questions/961502/…

well it's off-topic XD

> off-topic → This is not about Ubuntu. Questions about other Linux distributions can be asked on Unix & Linux, those about Windows on Super User, those about Apple products on Ask Different and generic programming questions on Stack Overflow.

\o

o/

o|

that's a korean character

oh yes? What does it do?

smokey seems sleepy. I got two spam flags this morning already

it's off topic isn't it?

@karel Thanks!

@Zanna Yes.

I would expect that to get closed quickly... everything is slow

Hmm. Well you know what I'm wondering, then.

...Has the new top bar been rolled out to more users? :)

:(

:(

Are redundant canned comments on the rise again?

Is this post NAA?

@Zanna Maybe this is why?

What can be done with cant boot after “find -type l -delete”? Should they be advised on how to proceed further? Asked to put more information in their question? Should the question be answered? At least as asked, I think the question is answerable and you largely answered it in your comments.

I'm confused by their recent comments... I thought they had already managed to rescue their data... what's going on?

I don't know, but you could comment to say exactly that. :)

@Zanna Thanks. I've upvoted your comment. Any reason not to close the question as unclear at this point?

If we construe it as not an XY problem and think it should be answered literally, then it's answerable now. Otherwise I think it's unclear.

I agree it's unclear. A literal answer won't help them at this point

I'll VTC.

Have you observed any changes in review quality?

If not, I'm not sure it's a big problem that things are little slow and that the CV queue has grown without explanation.

(I definitely don't think it's a problem in general for the CV queue to be bigger.)

On that note... some close votes I disagree with very much, but I don't think they're a misuse of the system, like the (renewed?) attempt to close Does installing kernel 4.13 on Ubuntu 12.04 change the update policy?

So that's not an indication of any systemic problem.

But some are just objectively wrong, and can only be the result of ignorance of our actual polices (or deliberately ignoring them, though I doubt that's what's happening). Is this something I'm just noticing more, or is it something that is increasing? Is that why the queue is bigger?

I'm thinking of the attempt to close How to delete lines from a file until a specific pattern? I'm not criticizing the user who posted the comment claiming they should use SO instead; that user doesn't have enough rep to cast close and reopen votes and would only have been able to flag for closure. Although I hope they check first before (mis)reporting site policy, they're not the ones making the mistake that really matters.

@EliahKagan after I VTL-O that one, I got that one - why are people voting stuff like this as off-topic?

if that stuff is off-topic, I am on the wrong site...

@EliahKagan Yeah, that's that one. ^^^

Spam. Since it's taking a long time to delete it today. Deleted.

:) missed that one

@EliahKagan this seems to always be happening... the number of people reviewing is small - this is usually the problem. Otherwise the size of the queue wouldn't matter, but as it is, stuff just doesn't get closed before the votes age away because only a handful of people review

Are they aging away before they get any reviews?

Sometimes yes, I think so... but I would have to do a lot of analysis to be sure

Dupe or off-topic.

the last two of my close votes that aged away on Trello went that way I think - if I go to the review from the timeline, it says "this item is no longer reviewable" - but maybe it just doesn't show me what reviewers did

@Zanna Which post is it?

hmm this one about NVIDIA and this one about GRUB rescue

Do you have the old review links?

sorry

askubuntu.com/review/close/754889

askubuntu.com/review/close/758653

What does invalidated mean for a review?

askubuntu.com/posts/613735/timeline

askubuntu.com/posts/614861/timeline

It doesn't mean it got Leave Open'd out of the queue, because that still shows as completed: askubuntu.com/posts/961462/timeline

yeah, so I think it means all the votes died without anyone reviewing

or all the votes died... and if reviews were done they would be shown

possibly I should ask on MSE

Please do!

There's Why do some close or reopen votes show in a timeline as invalidated instead of completed? but the answer only answers half the question we have.

What does 'close invalidated' mean answers part of the other half, assuming it is correct and assuming the system still works that way. It says reviews with just one vote or flag age away in a week, but it doesn't say if reviews age away under other circumstances.

For the case of only one vote or flag, I don't really see it as a problem for things to fall out of the queue, especially considering the large volume of wrong close votes. This might be the first argument I'm seeing against reviewing! (I'm only half kidding.)

haha yeah if nobody reviews the wrong close votes, the good posts will stay open!

I think once it is in the queue we more often err insofar as we err on the side of closing...

This edit is mostly good and I'm trying to figure out how to improve it. The thing is... I don't think the apt manpage actually names that option. The content is correct, I'm just not feeling too good about the heading change.

manpages.ubuntu.com/cgi-bin/…

@EliahKagan I rejected - full-upgrade doesn't replace apt-get dist-upgrade

Can you explain?

they should say apt full-upgrade is the equivalent of apt-get dist-upgrade

You rejected based on that?

I was just going to remove that one change they made.

what else did they do?

They changed apt-get dist-upgrade –with-new-pkgs to apt-get upgrade –with-new-pkgs, which is correct since apt upgrade will install packages but not remove them to satisfy dependencies. Though the en dash, which is from the blog post, should be turned into a --.

oh oops... well if that correction is good then I would "improve" it to fix the -- and get rid of all their other changes

Done.

I guess I should still keep this comment for the further explanation it provides.

This is clearer than before, but should more information be requested?

Any thoughts on this?

@EliahKagan yeah :)

Or should I be adding more information to the answer?

Are they trying to ask a question? Either way it's NAA but I can comment if they're trying to post a new question.

@EliahKagan eventually I voted to delete it because "I assume you are using the command line qcalc" is completely the wrong assumption... maybe the suggestion is useful in general but it's not answering this question I think

So the "Calculator" button (which some keyboards have??) doesn't cause that command to be run?

@EliahKagan it looks like it, and the canned comment does say "if you have a new question..."

@EliahKagan hmm I don't know... I don't have such a button either

The main thing confusing me about this post is that none of the four people who clicked Delete or Recommend Deletion downvoted it.

That's also something that confuses me in general. The circumstances where an answer should be deleted but not downvoted are pretty rare, since the voter can reuse the same vote after the post is deleted, so long as it's the same day. Am I the only one who downvotes non-answers so they appear before actual answers until deletion and so they are deleted more easily?

I would actually be downvoting, flagging, and voting to delete that post right now, based on what you have said and on rereading it and the question, except that the utter absence of downvotes there suggests to me that maybe there's something useful about it that I am not seeing.

Now I always downvote things when I am flagging them, but before I understood how things are deleted I didn't think this was necessary; I thought if it would be deleted there was no point downvoting it as nobody would see it.

I will downvote that post and delete it (it has two delete votes from review already since 20k users can cast delete votes on score 0 posts if it's from the review interface)...

I saw that post in review, went to edit it (partly so I could read it properly), then before I could read the question or complete the review, something distracted me, so later I saw the post in review again, and voted to delete it. I don't usually click the link just to downvote the post, but I should probably do that

...unless there's some reason it is valuable.

I've deleted it.

I will try to downvote more conscientiously...

I'm not saying any individual is personally obligated to downvote. (After all, SE devs could've put voting arrows in the VLQ review, and they didn't.) Just that none of the reviewers did made me feel like maybe they/you weren't fully on board with their/your judgments.

yeah, I feel what you mean, I think

Besides making deletion easier and preventing non-answers from being shown above answers in the "votes" ordering that most people use when they browse the site, I think there's another benefit to downvoting NAA posts: you will often be informed if they are undeleted, so you can figure out what's going on.

Because the negative rep will come back.

But if it comes back on a day when you hit the rep cap or have serial downvotes reversed, you might not see it.

That's a great point... I don't think I have even noticed that happen though. Must not be downvoting enough... but I think it's very rare that things get undeleted

I hope the bug where when it shows accumulated rep changes from the past as just having happened is fixed soon.

I just got +18 rep but was shown +160.

Is there a good way to encourage people to post an answer because their comment oversimplifies something so much it's wrong... while actually being encouraging?

I don't know of a general way...

@EliahKagan maybe it will be fixed when we get the new top bar D:

In the process of trying to formulate my question, I think I've figured out the behaviour of the timeline with regard to uncompleted reviews

What is it?

oh hmm maybe not quite...

but if it says invalidated, I think the reviews will not appear on the timeline, but they may still have happened, they were just insufficient to complete the review, for example on this timeline the invalidated task doesn't show karel's review, but I can see it on the review page...

I keep getting distracted and losing track of exactly what I'm in doubt about now haha

→ 6 messages moved to Island of castaway thoughts‌​

if the post remains open because it's kicked from the queue by Leave Open, it shows as completed evidence if the votes age away without the review being fully completed, the close task on the timeline is "invalidated" and the details are not shown on the timeline task, but they are viewable by clicking the review.

If there were no reviews, the top bar where actions are normally available or recorded says "this item is no longer reviewable" example with no reviews and example with a review

note to self: don't forget newlines in chat kill all formatting

@EliahKagan I just got +1 and it showed me +21... I got all excited haha

If you've figured this out and don't need to post a Meta Stack Exchange question, maybe a self-answered Ask Ubuntu Meta question would be appropriate? I doubt most people here know how this works.

sorry I seem not to be able to complete my thoughts or messages today!

are you still in doubt about any of the possible behaviours of the timeline with regard to close tasks?

If you're asking if I would feel confident making the meta Q&A myself, no.

But I think I understand it.

no, I'm asking if you still want me to make the MSE post and which part still needs answering

I am happy to make the Q&A I think (on AU meta)

Oh.

Well the only thing I'm really still wondering about is, how long does it take a review item to age away when it does have more than one vote or flag supporting it?

ah... well doesn't it just die when all the flags/votes have died?

animuson's answer confuses me with regard to this... otherwise I would have assumed^

Yeah, same here.

maybe I should write a confused and confusing comment on that answer...

I think I am going to take a break from thinking about it and review the close votes haha maybe my mind will be clearer later on!

Ok.

I don't this post is really intended as a (separate) answer.

gone :)

It keeps telling me I'm +161.

it seems extra glitchy right now - maybe that means they are fixing it

Nothing wrong with this question or its answer... but is it a duplicate of something?

Haha, the +161 was actually a -1!

@EliahKagan lol! big disappointment

@EliahKagan I think the title was misleading so I edited it. Can't think of a dupe...

oh both the answers were in LQP review... but they are both OK I think

I think this question is actually on-topic per this post which I believe represents a consensus. But can it be edited into better shape?

If I knew what they were talking about, I could edit it, but I don't

So you know how some desktop environments, like MATE, provide a panel that contains a window list? In the Windows world, that whole panel is called the taskbar, even though it also contains a Start Menu (or Windows button or whatever it's called on newer Windows systems) and a notification (which was at one time called the systray).

oh ok - the thing that in Windows is usually found at the bottom of the screen

so what do they mean by drop window?

I'm pretty sure they just mean minimize/iconify.

I will edit.

thanks!

@Zanna Done.

Also... was the existing wording way clearer to some people than it was to me? It was reviewed in the First Posts queue as No Action Needed.

Also... does it only take one review in First Posts to remove a post from the queue?!

@EliahKagan yeah D:

loads of stuff in dire need of fixing/flagging etc gets "No Action Needed"ed

Why is the system designed to do that from just one review?

I don't know... I think it's just not working well as it is

Is there something wrong with this answer? Or was this a case of assuming something is a duplicate answer without really looking?

Wow, this got invalidated out of the close queue three times: askubuntu.com/posts/632452/timeline

I guess so... but it is different. Does that syntax work for add-apt-repository? TIL if so! :D

@Zanna Other answers on Ask Ubuntu seem to say it does. Hold on.

hah did you make a query to find "close invalidated" posts?

(And the accepted answer too.)

@EliahKagan I see I voted to close it haha

@Zanna No, it's a post I recently voted to close. You greatly overestimate my query-writing abilities. :/

another good answer from Avinash Raj :)

Indeed.

there's probably a schema for that though... BTW while I was digging myself, I looked at some posts I voted to close as duplicate for the second time a couple of days ago (the first time I voted was back in April, and back then my vote aged away) and they all got closed already have 4 votes, despite the length of the CV queue.

Seems off-topic.

This answer is vastly overrated (as the comment explains). Can it be reworded to address that?

This answer is also bad, and I wonder if it can be fixed, too.

@EliahKagan any better?

maybe an answer should be added about the meaning of "open source" O.o

@Zanna Yes. Thanks.

I got -15 (User was removed) and I got a notification saying +15 XD

I think it might be best to keep the highly upvoted comment for a while, in case the author or someone else doesn't like the changes and rolls them back or re-edits.

the upvoted comment is very clear :)

I got +155 for a -5 user was removed, probably the same user. I'm guessing the user had been doing a lot of serial upvoting, as several users (including me) have mentioned in chat recently.

I wish it was possible to see which posts the votes were removed from when that happened, but I guess it would compromise the privacy of voting

@Zanna I've just edited the other answer.

@Zanna Yes, I think it would.

Do you think this question could just be duped to a question asking about what the difference is between LTS and non-LTS releases?

yes, that would make sense to me

I failed to find such a question by searching, but I feel sure we have one.

Ah, here we go.

@Zanna You may be able to find out by looking at your post scores through the Google cache, though.

Should the comments there be kept or flagged as "no longer needed"?

The only reason I can see to keep them is that "some VPS providers" in the question isn't addressed in the answers. But since they're "unsure" that just means they don't know if it's allowed, not that they're saying, "Maybe we prohibit but but we're not going to tell you until one day we might shut you off!" ISPs behave that way; I don't think VPS providers do.

Good question and answer.

this one and the one after it might be worth keeping

I am going to flag all the others

Isn't that inconsistent with the VPS provider saying they're "unsure" if it's allowed? If the OP asked the VPS provider if it was okay and they weren't sure, it suggests they don't have an policy against it themselves. Do you think that comment should be kept for the benefit of future readers who want to torrent Ubuntu from a VPS?

that was my thought... that other people might want to check with their VPS

but maybe it is not useful...

I think a moderator might end up removing it along with the others. But I'll hold off on flagging it.

I have also flagged the others.

What's going on here?

no idea o.O

this seems unclear to me... is it really a dupe?

is this a bug report/FR? I guess not (upvoted it in any case)

Looking forward to installing 17.10 and having a clean system again :D

in this question, is OP's addendum an answer? (And should this question be closed?)

@Zanna I think so. It's off by the UTC offset.

@Zanna I'm not sure if they're saying that fixed it or not.

@Zanna Clean?

@EliahKagan I install the new version whenever it comes out. My procedure is to run a script to repackage the iso to incorporate a basic wifi fix and a couple of other small tweaks I need for this machine, and then Erase the disk and install Ubuntu ..\.... So I have a nice clean image with no extra stuff, and when I want to install something to answer a question, I have to install every dependency... over time I end up with all kinds of foo-dev packages etc

so when I try to test things I worry about what I've already got

terrible laziness

You might consider using a virtual machine to test things for answers.

yeah but not on this thing I think... only 2GB RAM and 32GB SSD

Maybe not then. Or probably not with a desktop environment, anyway.

Although, I don't know. You might want to try it. With Lubuntu or something.

I could use my new-old laptop which has more space & RAM

That might be better.

I installed Xubuntu on the metal on that one...

But maybe I can try on this one just to see what will happen haha

Lubuntu should be lighter weight than Xubuntu.

Installing from mini.iso and not selecting any desktop environment should be even lighter weight than that!

:) yeah!

I do that all the time, in virtual machines.

sounds like great fun actually

Haha.

The nice thing about a virtual machine is that you can snapshot it. So if you change something in it to test something, you can roll back to your snapshot you took before rather than reinstalling.

There are ways to approximate that with a physical machine. You can image the whole disk and restore it--but that's extremely slow. If you're willing to change how the system itself works, there are software solutions. But it's hard to beat a VM for snapshots, especially since you can take a snapshot while it's running and restore to that running state.

@EliahKagan well I never got around to finishing the testing, sorry about that :\ I don't have time atm so it might be till next weekend

No problem. If/when you do get around to it, I'll be interested to see the results.

I think this question should be considered a duplicate (see comments).

seems odd no repro maybe... I mean how could that happen?

is there a dupe target for this, perhaps?

off-topic I think

Duplicate. Also upvotes may be appropriate. (I'm out of votes.) And the comment on the answer is no longer needed.

@Zanna If their answer is useful, I'd rather keep it and generalize it by removing the information about Mint. Any reason not to?

@Zanna Yes. :)

@EliahKagan thanks!

@EliahKagan thanks for fixing that!

@EliahKagan I guess at this point I think the only reason would be that the answer doesn't work on Ubuntu... Do you think it will?

I think it will work on Ubuntu. On the other hand, the release is potentially relevant. I don't want to change it from saying Linux Mint to saying a specific Ubuntu release. It's one thing to remove information to make a question more general; it is another to insert information that is not actually true.

Actually it should be fine. The relevant plugins seems to still be packaged that way on 16.04.

OK! thanks for checking

I edited the question.

thanks for that

No problem.

Can we use SEDE to query for posts that might have unnecessary bold, like with two or more single words or 2- or 3-word phrases bolded, so as to find stuff like how this was until just now?

hmm tricky! we can search the markdown text for **, but I don't know how we can show whether it is necessary or not... presumably returning all posts that contain ** in markdown would be way too many

Yeah, SEDE would even refuse to complete that query. (I tried a query for apt-get once.)

two or more single words or phrases... hmmm

I don't know what kind of regex can be used in it... I should research that

but I know how to get the latest version in markdown

You mean you don't know what regex dialect?

I don't even know how to make it use a regex at all!

no I haven't a clue :) I know how to search for some string haha

dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/regexp.html#operator_regexp maybe??

I am just getting syntax errors (thankfully, since my idiotic efforts won't be saved haha)

haha this returns enough to be getting on with though

going to bed. I am pretty much good for nothing today so hopefully tomorrow will bring some improvement

ploughed through a bunch on Trello though :)

Good night!

:)

cancel that, while closing windows I realised I'd started doing my tax return... may as well try to get it done (tomorrow is much likely to be better if I do...)

@quartata hello! Yes I think we do

@quartata Speaking for myself, I would also be in favor of this, yes.