Thomas Owens

@Basilevs There is absolutely no indication that this is an AI-generated post. It appears to be a person who is more familiar with traditional forums rather than the SE Q&A model.

Those seem to be good edits. But taking a post that is a comment and trying to make it into an answer isn't. It fundamentally changes what the author wrote. But there are other cases. Like if a resource request is the reason for the question and not a secondary aspect, just vote to close and don't bother editing it since it's a fundamental change.

Otherwise, asking questions would be better. Rather than accusing someone of using generative AI, ask them if they used generative AI and point to the Help Center. Or if you see a comment as an answer, point to the guide to writing good answers without editing it.

Why not just leave it to a moderator? Because right now, I only see false accusations. I see no evidence of generative AI or spam seeding based on the heuristics and tools available to me. Even if you think you are sure, this isn't a good track record for getting it right.

If you see something you think is spam or a spam seed, flag it and move on. Moderators have tools to look into such things, even across sites.

If you see something you think is generative AI, flag it and move on. Moderators have heuristics to evaluate posts.

Edits that destroy a post are inappropriate edits. If you see something that isn't an answer, flag it and move on. There's a flag reason for that and we delete them.

Moderator actions aren't your concern - they are between the moderator team and the user. However, accusing people of violations when there are none is rude and could result in actions against you, so I'd strongly recommend not leaving such comments. Flag the post and move on. If you have questions, ask them on Meta.

@Basilevs We need to separate everything. I think my answer to @Christophe's Meta post addresses everything. Don't accuse people of posting generative AI - it's unkind and unwelcoming. If you suspect something doesn't belong, flag it and explain what you think is wrong. Both posts have been deleted, but they aren't generative AI. Once a user exhibits a pattern of behavior, only then can we take moderator action.

Thanks!

@SimonForsberg Given the lack of regulars...although the starboard explains it. So that's good.

That's your call. If it's burdensome for you to run, I won't ask you to keep it running. But if it's not a problem, having an unfrozen room could be interesting. Although people may also be confused by it.

For example, I don't monitor chat unless there are chat flags. I just use RSS feeds to monitor the main site and meta for new questions and pop in to handle flags a few times a day (usually before work, lunch time, after work, and times when I see a new post in my feeds and I'm free).

@SimonForsberg I don't think Duga killed the chat room. I think chat killed this chat room. It's not the most discoverable SE feature, and I think most of our power users pop-in, do stuff, and pop-out rather than hang around and chat.

Yeah, looks done.

Probably. I would be.

@RobertHarvey I did, but I have no more insight than what was posted already. :\

That looks really familiar. I think that's a boilerplate one from somewhere.

That's a good one.

I saw that one.

I need to read more into this and see what's up.

Hmm. Yeah.

So some other mod can mod fight me. Or whatever. Although some rooms are more...sensitive right now.

Well, I see nothing wrong with these statements. :\

Hmm. I need to consider this more.

I need to think it over through the weekend, but I plan on resuming activity by Monday.

I don't think it's so hopeless. Yet.

@RobertHarvey Done.

@RobertHarvey Yeah, one sec.

@gnat I acted on this. Since both tags were roughly the same size on SESE, I took a look at Google Trends and "scope creep" has consistently more interest than "feature creep", so I made "scope creep" the target tag for the merge and synonym.

It depends on your specific question.

And tool recommendations, whether they are software or hardware, are off-topic.

@Szabolcs Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but you would be looking for a tool to facilitate programming with one hand.

@MadHatter Your interpretation seems to go against Feist v Rural Telephone. My understanding is that the collection is copyrightable - and therefore licensable as a whole - because choosing which works to include in my collection and how to order those works to make them useful is a creative endeavor. I can't change the license of the works, but I can license my selection of them and the order that I present them in along with the filigree bits that I may add around them.

@MadHatter I agree that the works in the collection remain under CC-BY-SA 3.0. But the collection as a whole - the filigree bits plus the individual works as a singular entity - is licensed under the license that the creator of the collection chooses.

Yes - I do mean the entire collection. Let's say the collection is under license X. I receive license X and can do anything that it permits me to do with the collection as a whole. I also receive a CC-BY-SA 3.0 license for each of the CC-BY-SA 3.0 licensed works in the collection. If there are any other works in the collection under a different license, I may also receive those depending on how that license treats collections.

@MadHatter It depends on if there is anything copyrightable around the work. I would have to understand what was put around the individual works to create the collection and if that "stuff" meets the threshold of originality. Just mechanically taking two CC-BY-SA 3.0 works and distributing them together may not be something that you can copyright, which would mean you can't license it as a Collection anyway, making the whole thing irrelevant. You're just redistributing two CC-BY-SA 3.0 works.

@MadHatter The exact wording is This Section 4(a) applies to the Work as incorporated in a Collective Work, but this does not require the Collective Work apart from the Work itself to be made subject to the terms of this License.. 4(a) says that the work is under the CC-BY-SA 3.0 license, but that the Collective Work or the Collection does not need to be under that license.

@MadHatter Yes. The collection may be released under any collection you choose. The individual works are under their respective licenses. This is why it doesn't make sense to release the collection under a more restrictive license than the individual works, since one could just remake the collection.

@AaronHall I want to make sure I understand. Author A creates content and licenses it CC-BY-SA 3.0 to Collector B. Collector B licenses the collection under CC-BY-SA 4.0. Collector A modifies the original work. At this point, I think you get into questions about any terms of service between A and B, the amount of changes, and other factors. I'd have to read the license with this case in mind again.

I'm going to make a few minor edits to my answer.

Anyway, that's an interesting interpretation. I've taken that to mean "every commit to a public/shared branch". If you make four commits locally and then push up, you wouldn't run everything four times - just on that last commit that got pushed.

Sorry - thanks for the ping. I just forgot to check in, @Alexander.

I think there's one important thing still missing. All of this only applies to remote branches. Nothing local. You can do whatever you want on your computer, but teams that I've been on or worked with tended to consider all branches on GitHub or Bitbucket as public and anyone could pull them down and even use them as a basis for their work. Having some of this bureaucracy helps.

@Alexander I'm not really following this. It's been a while (>5 years) since I've worked with compiled languages. However, I would encourage commits to not have such cases. Instead, use exceptions (like Java's UnsupportedOperationException or Apache Common's NotImplementedException or .NET's NotImplementedException). That way, you won't get compilation errors and you'll still be able to run every other test, static analysis, dynamic analysis, and whatever else you want on the build.

@Alexander I generally agree with your definition of "production code", but with a few caveats. One is that the PR doesn't need to be open. If there's an intention of opening a PR (and having it merged - a PR is a way to get a diff and have a conversation, like GitHub's WIP PRs), then it's production code. I'd also use "integration branch" instead of "master branch", since it could be master in a commit-to-trunk workflow, develop in Gitflow, or even a long running feature branch.

@Alexander I should edit that. Production code needs to meet the team's rules and style guide. There is a time and a place for throwaway prototyping (including using a REPL).

@Alexander I would agree that it depends on how your team treats development branches. If they are a personal workspace, then it could be OK to have some checks that fail in a development branch. However, I still wouldn't recommend ignoring all of the checks until the end. Any code that is written should be high-quality code that meets the team's rules and style guide.

@Alexander Most test frameworks support marking tests as pending. If you did that, why would you not mark the testing as pending and begin your day by finding a pending test and starting there? Ideally, you would only have one (or a few closely related) tests marked as pending in your personal development branch.

Does your organization have a HR department that you can escalate to? Although I have seen Agile purists advocate that managerial functions be moved to the team in the name of self-organization, I don't subscribe to that viewpoint because of the problems that you describe. The whole organization does not need to subscribe to the values and principles of Agile Software Development in order for development teams to be successful using it.