@MadScientist FWIW, I follow plenty of SD links from the Tavern. When they're borderline promotion, I leave the flags for the site mods & move on to something more blatant.

y'all should do likewise

@Magisch Coffee now, talk later ;-) Days is a bit of a stretch, but you're no longer sounding like the person that's always keeping me in line

@Magisch really don't know where you're getting that, there are many non diamonds here

WTF I'm out of stars, and not in the 2nd monitor?

@Shog9 it's a question of volume, if it's high enough it doesn't matter that 95% don't act on it, the only users that count are the ones that take active measures

I mean I'm not a diamond and I just flipped the switch

@Shog9 So maybe we should refrain from leaving comments, at all?

That'd work for me.

Stick to flagging. We're good at that.

So if your deal is "diamonds are just doing things without consideration from other people" you'll need to rephrase

@Undo That... Actually might be a good solution

@Shog9 mod flags are beautiful things

Let moderators decline the flags if they want. They're good at that.

@Undo Would there be exceptions? For example, familiarity with the site or vandalism are the two exceptions I can think of

@ArtOfCode agreed. If you're nice mods will accept mod flags even if they disagree

@DJMcMayhem I can't make hard rules. Use your head, as always ;)

the secret is the extremely complicated technological advance known as the "custom message"

I can throw something up in the sidebar occasionally to encourage people to do things that don't draw unwanted attention, and I can point the unwanted attention we do get to that sidebar. That's about it.

transparency report: I'm gonna post this in TL:

> So one good thing that came out of the discussion today: We can't keep having discussions about Charcoal in TL. It locks the discussion in here, and (rightfully) makes the non-mods in Charcoal feel left out. So we're going to try to steer conversations back to CHQ. We might forget, so help would be appreciated :)

Good one

@Undo It's a judgment call. If you know the site, feel free to comment. If you don't... Well, that can go wrong two ways, right?

Either you know that the author is not just a local pest that you shouldn't waste time on, or there's a chance that what they're posting is benign and you're getting in the way of their acclimation.

Sure... We're users, too... We catch spam from the sites we use in addition to those we don't.

The other benefit of a comment... or maybe a chat reply in here... is that it might indicate to other Charcoal users that they don't need to respond.

@Shog9 Thanks. We're probably going to plagiarize that into some guidance somewhere.

So, it seems like this has been a generally nice a productive conversation. Should we all/Charcoal folks start trying to pull all of this together into some policies/summaries?

It's amazing - you can have a long drawn out debate about something, then Shog comes in, lays down some common sense stuff, and everyone goes "... huh, yeah, that's right"

It's an amazing skill.

@thesecretmaster While it's still fresh, ideally

@thesecretmaster basically, yeah

It's like he's been doing this for years or something.

@Art/Undo How/where?

It seems like something significant happened. Is there somewhere I should start reading to understand what I should learn from this as a Charcoal citizen?

@thesecretmaster github.com/orgs/Charcoal-SE/teams/smokedetectors/discussions/1 ?

@thesecretmaster well I've got some training docs to write, so it can probably go in there somehwere

404

@Undo I'm coming into this late, and I have a bunch of other stuff on my plate... So I don't want to come off all preachy rehashing stuff that's already been discussed thoroughly.

But one final note...

Y'all are working toward the same goals here. I know, I know, nothing divides folks like a common goal... But please, try & assume good intentions. Criticize with the intent to improve, and don't get all passive-aggressive or pouty when someone criticizes - if they're coming here to critique, they respect y'all enough to come to your house & engage rather than just flag-deleting or grousing in their own rooms.

more silly ideas: point the detection links through something that shows a "flag/comment at your own risk, different sites handle it differently" warning

@Cascabel that'd get old fast, people would just click through it. Doing it for specific reasons might work, though

@Cascabel people don't read

I am aware of all these things and that's why it's a silly idea, even if you make it a once-only

oh that kind of silly idea.

@thesecretmaster github.com/Charcoal-SE/SmokeDetector/issues/1666

Even a once-only would have to proxy through metasmoke or somewhere, which is slowish

I'm just thinking... the reports here are kind of like saying "hey this article is probably bad, and there's a comment section, wanna click the link?"

That's... kinda insightful

Where, yeah, it's the user's problem if they do and get in trouble, but... well, maybe there's a better way to send them there.

You could have MS proxy the raw links, and distribute a userscript to un-proxy them

That would make it difficult to use on a phone that doesn't allow scripts.

Removes the slowness for established folks, keeps the safety for wanderers.

@Catija yeah, that's the problem. MS could bypass the proxy if you're logged in, but still requires a slow MS step

@Undo as in installation of the userscript constitutes an implicit acceptance that if you do dumb stuff it's your own fault, we warned you?

@ArtOfCode Also stopping Smokey (or putting it into silent mode) should be in there.

@ArtOfCode yeah

@thesecretmaster these are training docs, not high-level rare procedure docs

And it shows some level of involvement - enough to find the script and install it, at least

Not supporting the idea yet, just having fun with the tech side

too bad the internet is complicated :(

@ArtOfCode Oh, oops. So, where should that part go?

@thesecretmaster wait, you mean !!/stappit or !!/block, or as in not running it on a site like today?

@thesecretmaster Even a gist would be fine, just need them captured.

We can move them around later

@ArtOfCode Not running it on a site, like today.

@thesecretmaster yeah, so that's not a training doc. You don't need to know the procedure for that when you're just starting out

@Undo If I submitted a gist to you/art/charcoal, would that be useful?

Definitely

I'm tempted to make training docs actually part of the website

commuting home, out for a while

@Undo OK. I'll work on summarizing those 5 hours of discussion :)

Well. That escalated quickly.

I just caught up on the transcript and would like to clarify a few things since I set the ball rolling here.

First, I did not mean to accuse @DavidPostill of doing anything wrong. The result was suboptimal but I never doubted his motives.

Second, I did not ask for smokey to be turned off for BI. I asked for BI to be removed from the sites that trigger your self promotion alerts. I felt that those would be better treated by the community of the site who know and understand the site's subject matter.

Now, what I was offered instead, is a "we can turn off smokey instead". That was not what I asked for and not what I want. But since that was what I was offered I accepted.

For me, personally, as a mod on BI, the best suggestion I've seen in the whole transcript was what Undo said here:

As he said, Charcoal folks are great at flagging. There is not much benefit to be had from commenting as well.

Given that there's already a feeling in some quarters that charcoal tends to walk roughshod over "our" precious communities while not actually being part of them, comments will only make it worse.

And that isn't specific to charcoal. It's often annoying when people who aren't regulars come in and try to tell the regulars how to run "their" site.

!!/alive

@Sentos plz send teh coffee

@terdon I'll admit it was something of a knee jerk reaction on my part, but I also do want to keep our 'jurisdiction' over how we handle reasons. Shutting it off and waiting for meta consensus seems like the best thing all around in this case.

I dislike this strategy of not blaming everything on @DavidPostill

Comments are a thing that some of us do in an attempt to let misguided users know about policies. They're not a primary function of Charcoal, and not doing them is absolutely no skin off our nose. May even be easier.

(by the way, it's off now. We found a solution to keep monitoring, but not post to chat)

@Shog9 SPIN THE WHEEL! CRUCIFY THE CHOSEN ONE

That said, I will also add my voice to the group of people who have expressed a certain level of exasperation with what we perceive as a sense of entitlement and presumption on the side of charcoal. It is grating. It is fundamentally flawed in its premise and it is very counterproductive for you guys.

@Undo Sweet, thanks.

(our autocomments are/were fairly badly worded, which I hadn't noticed because I don't use them, but Mith is working on that)

@terdon We talked about that after you left for a long time. You're right, we do some things that certainly come off that way

Now, as for meta. What really bugged me here was that you expected us to go to meta to turn this off and yet assume you don't need to go to meta to turn it on in the first place. There's something fundamentally wrong about that.

@Undo I know you did. And I appreciate it. And I also realize you don't want to come across that way. I've read through the entire transcript.

But some things were said in my name, so to speak, and I wanted to clarify them. Others have made most of the broader points I would have made.

We talked about that too, actually. There was a meta post featured on mSE a year or two back that was on every side bar everywhere, and we think we're going to do another one. That seems like enough to me to justify default-on, with a clear opt out. That last part needs work.

Oh hey, I forgot to mention this: the reason that /help/promotion is titled "How to not be a spammer" is that I created it to send folks who emailed us all upset after all of their posts got deleted. In that context, it's kinda important to convey two things:

Neither of those are particularly useful in a comment on someone's first post.

Thank you for that, now if you could just pin that in SOCVR we'd be golden

@Shog9 This is really useful, thanks.

But... By all means, if someone posts 20 messages all advertising their library or whatever and you gotta delete 'em all... IF they come back and ask why, point 'em to that article. And feel free to share any feedback with me, as long as you're using it right.

Most spammers never ask though. They know what they're doing, and don't care.

@Undo That's where I disagree. This isn't a network thing. It's a site-specific thing. As said earlier, blatant is fine and easy to deal with. Nuanced is harder and nuanced needs to be under the control of the locals. If the locals want help, then great. If they don't, then charcoal needs to back off.

@terdon We've heard a few times now about reporting for moderators. Suppose we were to build something designed for you - what real-time information would you want?

@terdon which behavior would you prefer? Both are one liners despite what people might have said (it's off entirely on BI right now)

!!/rev

@quartata teward/Solar Flare 91f5df1 (quartata: emergency shutoff for BI --autopull)

@terdon Are you really saying that you expect 171 posts, one on every site, when we can get a CM to feature it on the entire network? That seems like you're uninterested in meeting in the middle.

I get the sentiment behind asking every site individually, but meeting in the middle is right.

@terdon As you know, we tossed around the idea of posting on every meta. It becomes overwhelming really fast. A network post featured everywhere with clear "if you want out, do this and let us know" criteria seems like a non-labor-intensive compromise.

@Undo Well, depends on the site :) On AU I, like Seth I expect, would love to be able to see an overview of what's been happening. On the small sites, like BI, all I really want is the understanding that some things are down to the locals to decide on. Policies can be different on different sites and, uhm, some people here have expressed disagreement with that idea.

Yeah, I know. We have to get over that.

Sounds like you're more upset about what people are doing with the information from Smokey by the way

@quartata If there are no comments, I'm happy. I just prefer not to have people who don't get the specifics of that community informing others of the rules. On the bigger sites I mod, AU and U&L, bring it on! You guys are very helpful 99.99% of the time.

Smokey is just watching the network as a whole so it's not like we turn it on for a site

It's only on the small ones where 1 user represents a sizeable percentage of the userbase where a delicate touch is needed.

@terdon So... we could build a site overview page. Any information in particular you want on it? I think counts and possibly lists of posts reported and flagged is fairly obvious; anything else?

Oh yeah MS really needs that

Should link from the piechart too

@ArtOfCode github.com/Charcoal-SE/SmokeDetector/issues/…

@terdon Agree. It's easy for us to get wrapped up in all the network wide numbers we look at every day and... over-focus

@quartata We sort of have it, but like all our tools it's fragmented, not linked, and hard to find and use.

@Catija No, I am saying that I feel it unreasonable that I need a meta post to turn it off but none is needed to turn it on. I would argue that when there's a problem detected on one site, then action should be taken immediately. Then, you can pos on that site's meta to discuss whether that action (turning a feature off) should be undone.

(afk, got a drone that needs to be flown around the neighborhood. Be same, folks. Don't throw away this start of an understanding)

@ArtOfCode I think Seth's probably the one to ask about that. To be honest, I'm quite happy with what you all do on AU. The overview would be more to have a general idea of what's going on.

@terdon what's being said is that the MSE post was the meta post to turn it on

@Undo Which is very understandable. Look, I work developing software for people all day I know what it feels like :)

That's auto flagging though

Something like this would never ever get autoflagged

@ArtOfCode Yes. I am referring to cases like this where a local mod asked for a specific, small part of smokey to be turned off.

@terdon No... you specifically said "assume you don't need to go to meta to turn it on in the first place." and when you responded to Undo saying that there'd been an MSE post the way it reads is that you don't think a network-wide MSE post is sufficient.

@Catija I am talking about specific sites. Apparently I'm not making myself clear, but I honestly don't get your point there.

Oh yeah if a featured network wide post pinned in TL and blessed by CMs isn't good enough then we might as well pack up

@terdon Okay, so help me understand what you'd like to see there. Current position on that is "do it, but ask for a meta post to ensure community buy-in", and that we need to work on how we communicate that.

@ArtOfCode Sounds good.

Asking for a meta post is there to make sure that we're not taking something away from the community that they generally find useful because one mod gauged it wrong. (Not saying you have in this situation, it's a general thing)

@ArtOfCode Oh, and I may well have. The problem, of course, is that most of our meta discussions would be lucky to get 3 or 4 votes. We're a small site.

@terdon Aye, I understand that, I'm a small-site mod :)

I know. :)

FYI, there've been precisely 4 comments with the /help/promotion link posted to Bioinformatics, ever. One from David, one from a top-10 user on the site, and two from terdon.

It wouldn't be fair to let that affect the chances of a change sticking. Having the meta post is more important to give people a chance to say "hang on" than it is to get voting on it.

So I kinda feel like this is overblown.

I just got annoyed since I felt (again) that the general feeling here is that anyone else who wants a change in how smokey/charcoal work needs to justify it while you all can do as you please. And I don't want to start that discussion again, I know you've hashed it out already and quite productively. Just saying that's how I felt.

And could end with "ok I won't post that anymore" which y'all got a while ago.

Oh, very much overblown. I was not expecting anything like this. And still feel bad that @DavidPostill thought I was attacking him.

@terdon Yeah, that needs work. Of course everyone is doing what they feel is the best course of action, but communication is a thing that needs making better.

But this highlighted a general issue between at least some non charcoal folks and charcoal.

Ok, fine. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. The way to stop rubbing each other the wrong way is more talking, not more rules and processes.

Oh, and because this can never be said enough, and to remove any possible doubt on the subject: charcoal does an absolutely amazing job.

Everybody line up & rub terdon the right way!

Now you're talking!

Uhhhh

er

(with the grain, head to tail)

Behind the ears

I'm pretty sure terdon is a cat

@Shog9 Ewww

If I'm wrong about that - and I'm not - mea culpa

@Shog9 In that case it's fine.

Meaw Culpa

I thought terdon was a sentient guitar

I've heard worse. At least you grant me sentience.

I thought terdon was a sentient meat tenderizer

I always read it as tendon...

Heh.

well today's transcript is about ten miles long

Solid 5 hours of discussion

you know it's a Real Project when folks can spend more time talking about using it than using it

next step: own meta site

Old TNB transcripts were way longer

Split on every hour

@Shog9 I mean we're getting that...

@ArtOfCode Good discussion.

@Catija see, y'all coulda punted this discussion...

@Shog9 Maybe we should have yelled at the Teams... uh... team... To hurry up.

well, we don't want to overload Channels on day one

or Teams 2, I guess

@Undo Teams II: The Teamening

really makes you think

"Teams" seems really bland... I may have had trouble remembering "Channels" initially, but at least it was interesting.

that was totally the right control for the job there

I feel my proposal - Stack Overflow Spaces - was rejected without due consideration.

> Stack Overflow Spaces: Get your own space, just like the one between Stack and Overflow!

Isn't spaces what they call the various desktops on OSX?

...I'll take your confused silence as evidence enough that this is too much of an inside joke to ever work in Mkgt material

We're just in awe of the name.

¥_¥

No, I think the tag line is what really sells it...

And it has the secondary purpose of informing everyone that there is a space there.

exactly

that may be my primary hidden agenda there

Gotta put Peter out of a job somehow

But I'd miss his "active reading" edit explanations.

true

> Active reading. [<http://stackoverflow.com/legal/trademark-guidance> (the last section)].

back, finally.

@Undo wat

regulars returning to the room

OK... so is it Channels or is it Teams?

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted website in answer, pattern-matching website in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer: the importance to use or the importance of using? by D. Noble on english.SE

sd k

@ArtOfCode RE reporting: It wasn't really a huge deal before, but if you're gonna put autoflags at 5 a dashboard with a list of posts autoflagged sortable by date would be nice to keep an eye on what's happening. Probably not a big deal but on a larger site there's so much that flies by every day we have literally 0 idea what smokey is doing anymore.

@Seth yup, we can do that

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Username similar to website in answer: How to print out all the elements of a List in Java? by Print List on stackoverflow.com

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Misleading link: How to use the gtk::DrawingArea in rust by Mateholiker on stackoverflow.com

tpu- by Makyen on How to print out all the elements of a List in Java? [MS]

Is there an issue that has been made for this per-site dash idea?

!!/watch printlist\.org

@paper1111 Added printlist\.org to watchlist

CI on 3693644 succeeded. Message contains 'autopull', pulling...

[ SmokeDetector ] SmokeDetector started at rev 3693644 (SmokeDetector: Auto watch of printlist\.org by paper1111 --autopull) (running on teward/Solar Flare)

Restart: API quota is 7899.

fp- by Rob

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected: Does reinstalling MAMP delete the existing database? by Chris Rathjen on stackoverflow.com

Misleading link is only 10/159 err

naa- by Floern

tpu- by Rob