Chris W. Rea

My spammer spider-sense has been tingling, but there's no obvious spam in sight [yet].

Anybody else noticing this pattern? Recently, it seems like there's been a lot of new questions tagged 'real-estate' being asked, and by users entirely new to the Stack Exchange network. See money.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/real-estate?tab=Newest ... is this potential sockpuppetry? To what end?

Trivia: The site will be 10 years old on October 6, 2019.

Ping!

Ping!

(sorry, the copy editor in me is "always on" ... hardly ever gets weary ;)

:-1,-1s/weary/wary/g

I'm not suggesting just anybody should get their blog feed added to the room, though. Moderators should decide if/when to bestow such. But regular members willing to come into chat and post about what they built / are building should be permissible.

@JoeTaxpayer I think the blogs are fine. I'm just saying we should be consistent and encourage community members to share in chat anything they've created that is topical, of potential interest to other users, non-commercial, and with adequate disclosure.

@AAron: Answer a couple of more questions and you'll be at 50 rep, and can then comment. FWIW, if you reach 200 rep on any site in the Stack Exchange network, you get an association bonus on all other sites, sufficient to comment. See meta.stackexchange.com/questions/141648/…

[My bad -- that chat room is related to the Programming Code Golf site, not SuperUser. But my point remains.]

==> How about this chat room at SuperUser, as an example of what they find acceptable? talk.tryitonline.net - For general discussion and feature requests regarding tryitonline.net.

I think flagging a comment/room that meets all that criteria as being "spam" is too heavy-handed, and I say this as one of few members who has raised more than 500 flags.

But, IMHO, community members should find chat a friendly place to talk about things they have created when they are topical, of potential interest to other users, non-commercial, and have provided full disclosure of their affiiliation ("I made this").

No doubt about that.

Such as his example here: money.stackexchange.com/questions/79005/…

I tried what AAron built and I was impressed with the modeling capabilities, and potential to use as an adjunct in answering questions.

Is this room the right place instead? There are already user blog feeds being promoted here.

@JoeTaxpayer Is there policy anywhere on what is suitable for chat rooms on Stack Exchange? AFAIK, the subject matter is related, and the content not objectionable, nor commercial in nature.

I commented on your recent meta post

@Joe Flag first, ask questions later?

I'll also add that a remark or question is more likely to get a response than "anyone here?" ;)

@AaronHall Seen github.com/numpy/numpy/blob/master/numpy/lib/financial.py ?

@gerrit ^^^

Besides, "at will" isn't actually as simple as it sounds in most states: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…

Mortgages exist precisely because banks desire more security than only the borrower's demonstrated ability to repay a loan. First, the loan is secured against the property. Second, they require the borrower to have significant skin in the game via sizeable downpayment. If the borrower can't pay, the bank has a margin of safety: a property that is likely worth more than the loan amount that remains outstanding.

@NathanL FWIW, some of my own posts were subjectged to similar "serial voting" some time ago, and the Stack Exchange software reversed the votes the next day. I presume there's a job that runs in off-hours that attempts to detect serial voting and reverses the votes. There's probably a threshold for # of downvotes from the same user id in a certain period of time.

Just wait until the tax deadline approaches ;)

@Cylindric Questions must somehow relate to personal finance. Here's a related question at the meta site on whether small business questions are on topic: meta.money.stackexchange.com/questions/15/… ... TL;DR: A small business question should relate to your personal income, somehow.

@JoeTaxpayer Thanks! If November's results are an upset, I'm sure Canada would be happy to accept your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breath free. :D And a belated Happy Independence Day to you and all, too.

Happy Canada Day!

More at sound.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/36/… ...

FWIW, I did find some precedent already: video.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/115/… ... but that was relatively early in the site's beta. Interestingly, they merged in another SE site later, too: video.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/343/… ... and then the sites split into separate sound and video sites: video.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/357/… ...

@CanadianLuke OK, cool. I'll post a question at meta.stackexchange.com asking about what the process is/should be for a site wishing to expand scope significantly (after checking if there's related precedent to reference.) I know individual SE sites do tweak own scope all the time through community discussions on meta, but what we're contemplating is more than a few tweaks ... such broadening may require renaming. I'll use "freelancing" --> "small business" as a hypothetical example when I ask.

I can chat this evening. I'll aim to be on just after 0100 UTC today (Wednesday). That's 6pm in your time zone, MST, right? (I'm just west of Toronto, so EST.)

I started the Personal Finance & Money site eleven years ago first as an independent site under the Stack Exchange 1.0 model, and later brought it into the Stack Exchange 2.0 network through the Area 51 process -- even though Money was an existing community already. But, it's admittedly been a long time since then and I'm wondering if there's better precedent for changing site scope.

@CanadianLuke I've been thinking about this again and got to wondering about the potential process for expanding the scope of an existing site. Do you think there would be buy-in from Stack Exchange Inc. to allow Freelancing the self-determination required to significantly expand scope, or would Area 51 be the right process to follow, even for an existing site?

@CanadianLuke Thanks for the reply! If you were thinking about a synchronous chat in real time, I've got things on my schedule today, but I am free most of the weekend and Monday. What time zone are you in? Let me know a time that works for you. TTFN

I think by using the specific words "taken over" that Ganesh is referring to a corporate takeover, which is when another company likes the one you're holding so much that it wants to own all of it, and makes a successful offer to buy all outstanding shares at a price significantly higher than the market price.

@Loki Your comment is the start of a good answer.

Never ever do business with a broker that contacts you first.

LOL! Before you calculate taxes, consider authenticating the currency. You don't want to pay taxes on money that came from the stranger's printing press.

@CodyGray Those are useful distinctions -- thanks.

IMHO, community members should find chat a friendly place to talk about things they have created when they are topical, of potential interest to other users, non-commercial, and have provided full disclosure of their affiiliation ("I made this").

@CodyGray Fair enough, and thanks for your thinking on that. Flags aside, would your same thinking apply to this PCG chat room for talk.tryitonline.net?

But begs the question: Who on the Stack Exchange network gets to delete a chat room? Any moderator at any site?

Found out somebody on Money SE flagged it as "spam". Poor choice of room name.

The person who deleted it had no moderator privileges on Money SE.

When and why are chat rooms deleted? This new one that a Money SE user created was inexplicably deleted today: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/65775/whatll-be