The Meta Room

cottontail

5:19 AM

The chat-gpt policy post is not [featured] again. Could a mod make it featured again?

Andreas moved to Codidact

5:51 AM

Oh, wow. It's reached 5000 upvotes.

VLAZ

6:18 AM

That almost as many as I'd have if I ran in an election IRL. Well, probably without the zeroes. And without the five.

Henry Ecker

7:53 AM

My two cents, we don't feature any of our other policies. It's no longer a temporary meta policy, it's no longer handled under exceptional circumstance, it's a permanent part of our site and documented in the help center. I don't necessarily think that it still needs to be featured after two years. IMO if anything it should be converted to an faq. Again, just my own opinion on the matter there.

3

VLAZ

8:34 AM

wat

There are no edits visible on the staging ground item

It was posted 11 hours ago, too, so cache seems an unlikely culprit.

Ryan M

9:05 AM

@cottontail The featured tag was intentionally allowed to lapse. Some brief discussion is on this answer on the policy.

I'm not opposed to the existence of an faq, but... glances at the answers section ...not that exact post, please...

We'd have to completely change its format, to the point that we might as well start over from scratch on a new post. That one can be preserved for ...historical reasons, I guess.

(separately, I'm not sure we need an FAQ question on it, but I'm open to being persuaded otherwise)

Henry Ecker

9:30 AM

I'd be very easily convinced that the help center document is enough. Though there is always benefit in having something on MSO to close things as duplicates of. Though I agree the answers on that are too much to be useful. - If I could do anything I'd delete all the answers make it an announcement and lock it...

VLAZ

@VLAZ wait, it's even stranger. If you do a straight search for [api] [fetch] you don't get the SG result. It shows up in my custom filter, though. And my custom filter is just a simple tag filter, no extra options or anything:

Ryan M

@VLAZ can't repro: i.sstatic.net/fzHgako6.png

VLAZ

Weird. Maybe it is some sort of caching that's for my custom filter?

Ryan M

If you reload the page, is it still there?

VLAZ

@RyanM Yes.

Ryan M

9:36 AM

Weird.

VLAZ

Look at my first screenshot - it says the question was posted 11 hours ago. In the second one that it was posted 12 hours ago. I did come back later. I tried several refreshes of the search and the filter. It's consistent - searching doesn't bring it up, filter does every time.

I'll try to recreate the filter and see if that changes anything.

Ryan M

Yeah, I noticed that the page appeared to have been reloaded, so I didn't expect that to change anything, but...

VLAZ

And I just got the filter showing no results when I clicked on it. Well, it says "2 questions" but there were no results shown. I refreshed and now it says "0 questions" and shows the SG item

I can't get it to not show any items any more. Refreshing just flips the N in "N questions" to either zero or two.

Which, I suppose, is a form of binary. Just not very helpful one.

... I deleted the filter and recreated it. The SG item showed up again

I changed it to [fetch] and [api] now it correctly shows nothing

Abdul Aziz Barkat

I applied the filter and got the SG question, I refresh and it goes away.

That might be because I didn't save the filter though

E_net4

11:18 AM

Another yt video dissing SO was recently dropped.

I didn't watch it and I don't know if I ever will, but I wonder if there is someone out there sadistic enough to write a transcript and summarise the thing so we don't have to.

Ryan M

11:31 AM

@E_net4 YouTube has a built-in transcript feature

I did not watch the video because I don't need to watch a 20-minute version of a blog post that would take 5 minutes to read, but I did read the transcript, and honestly it sounded pretty reasonable.

And if you need a summary, ask an AI chatbot :-p

Stack Overflow, a programmer Q&A site, was once a go-to platform for developers. Its success relied on high-quality answers from experienced users and avoiding repetitive content. However, Stack Overflow has faced criticism for its unwelcoming atmosphere towards beginners and outdated information due to its focus on unique questions. Additionally, moderator resignations highlighted internal issues and user dissatisfaction.

The rise of AI chatbots offering solutions has potentially impacted Stack Overflow's traffic. In response, Stack Overflow partnered with OpenAI to integrate AI features.…

(as a human who read the transcript, I endorse this summary - by my employer's chatbot - as largely accurate, minus the fact that it sort of conflates actions taken by the company and mods, where the video did a somewhat better job, and the last sentence is...debatably accurate as to whether it says that it strained things further)

E_net4

Makes sense I guess. The comments are usually the worst out of these YouTube videos.

Ryan M

...yeah, I don't know why I looked at the comments. It's a trash fire.

E_net4

11:48 AM

Big mistake

New Posts

12:34 PM

0

Q: How can I improve this answer to an HTTP spec question?

I received a downvote to this answer to a question about the HTTP spec that I don't understand. Given that my answer is directly copied from the spec, the only reasons I could think for the downvote were: I shouldn't have used the current spec instead of the spec at the time of posting I didn't ...

New Posts

2:04 PM

0

Q: Questions published from the Staging Ground should get a new timestamp

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feature-request staging-ground

New Posts

2:28 PM

0

Q: What to do about the [wss] tag?

The wss tag is currently described as referring to "Windows SharePoint Services", but almost all of the recent questions under this tag refer to the "WebSocket Secure" (which uses wss:// urls) protocol. I retagged a few questions before realizing the majority of the first few (at least) pages ne...

discussion tags

TylerH

2:46 PM

"What's that mysterious ticking noise?" "It's a pipe bomb!" stackoverflow.com/questions/78724480/…

VLAZ

3:03 PM

@NewPosts I'm trying to replicate this (and failing) but found something else that is actually odd - if you have enabled SG items to show among other questions, they seem to not be counted in the per page limit. Or...something.

see screenshot - there are 52 questions. The two extra are SG. According to the timestamp, they shouldn't even be there - 50th question on the page is from 21 minutes ago, 51st (SG) is from 1 hour ago. Page 2 starts with a question from 22 minutes ago.

New Posts

0

Q: What details that are missing in this question?

The question How to create a layout for a quote with image and caption? (closed) has -4 votes and closed for lacking details. What details are missing?

discussion close-reasons closed-questions

VLAZ

That's the /questions page sorted by newest

TylerH

@RyanM I propose a new metric, any YouTube video or Reddit post or Twitter thread or whatever that criticizes SO is to be outright ignored as wrong/uninformed unless they state any replies/comments will be summarily deleted unless said replies/comments include a specific link to an example of the comment's criticism or complaint, and any such replies/comments must get basic facts about the site correct, like not saying "mods" when they mean another user.

VLAZ

Even easier to spot the extra items if it's 15 per page. There are actually 17.

Karl Knechtel

3:18 PM

@NewPosts I don't understand why the meta question is getting downvoted, honestly

Andreas moved to Codidact

@KarlKnechtel Not useful to future visitors. Ignore and move on.

E_net4

3:32 PM

Why the "Why the downvote?"?

Andreas moved to Codidact

You’ll get more responses if you ask about that on meta.

Karl Knechtel

I mean, specific-question issues are almost never going to be "useful to future visitors" on Meta. But we need to have them on Meta. It fundamentally can't be the same kind of reference-only space that the main Q&A is intended to be.

@TylerH Personally I would prefer the video author to "pin of shame" and roast someone

but also, there's a dearth of Youtube videos that actually explain such basic facts. (I've thought about filling that in.)

E_net4

4:16 PM

@KarlKnechtel I've seen YT comments doing that. And I don't see how that helps but to potentially humiliate a top contributor to the platform and make them stop contributing.

Karl Knechtel

commenters are "top contributors" now?

on Youtube?

E_net4

@KarlKnechtel I'm talking about comments on YouTube mentioning regular users on Stack Overflow by name.

Kevin B

4:38 PM

Why do you think people are voting on meta on the usefulness to future visitors?

Karl Knechtel

@E_net4 oh. no, no. I meant, the video author should call out the Youtube commenter.

New Posts

7:16 PM

0

Q: Why were my comments deleted but not the comments I'm tagged in and responding to?

When this question was first posted, it was almost immediately upvoted, which shocked me because a question requires at least a ?. I posted a comment asking why someone would upvote it because there was no question. Note: all of my comments on the "question" and one of the answers have been delet...

discussion

Kevin B

7:41 PM

i wish they'd improve search

stackoverflow.com/…

this is just rediculous

starball

@E_net4 I watched it and I think it's a lot more balanced than many of the highly ranked criticism videos

Kevin B

it's still entirely wrong

starball

@KevinB what part? the title? I didn't leave taking away a very big point or criticism. a fair bit of it was sort of just summary of events

(I just ignored the title and didn't even read it until now)

Kevin B

i haven't watched it yet

or read the title

Karl Knechtel

8:31 PM

@KevinB this is how I would query that normally: stackoverflow.com/search?q=%5Bjavascript%5D+url+of+current+page

Kevin B

ofc

but i twas just an example, for a different query i wanted to run on MSO

i specifically avoided words i knew would return the one question i wanted it to, to showcase that the search is in capable of semantic interpretation

they even ran a whole frigg'n experiement, for months, with a semantic search specifically for overflow ai search, rather tahn working on an actually useful replacement for site search

Karl Knechtel

ah.

gparyani

9:11 PM

@RyanM Can the text "This question remains featured because that is still the best (and only) tool we have to announce this policy site-wide." please be removed from the post, if that's the case?

Ryan M

@gparyani Hmm, good point. Done.

(even if it weren't unfeatured, that text would still be outdated)

Ryan M

9:34 PM

For those who've never experienced the delights of the moderation UI, a small taste:

"When an individual comment is flagged, there's no guarantee a moderator is going to look at the entire comment section." This is correct, and it's because the UI for doing so from the mod dashboard is painfully bad. By default, you're shown only the flagged comments on the post. To see all of them, you need to click to expand the post, scroll down to the comments section, click to show comments (yes, all the comments are hidden, even with the post expanded, when handling comment flags), and then scroll down again to bring the comments into view. And we get a lot of comment flags. — Ryan M ♦ 22 mins ago

New Posts

9:58 PM

-1

Q: Users with more than 1,000,000 reputation make scrollbars in UI

Superfluous scrollbars are visible in the UI at: https://stackexchange.com/leagues/1/alltime/stackoverflow/ I imagine we didn't have any 1M+ rep users when the stylesheets for this page were last touched - probably just a minor css tweak is needed to make them go away.

bug

Karl Knechtel

10:11 PM

max cynicism: of course a complaint about a problem caused exclusively by 7-digit-rep users comes from a 6-digit-rep user

Ryan M

I should file a bug complaining that the mod diamond and Recognized User™ flair don't line up vertically in comments.

a problem that affects, as far as I'm aware, exactly one user

Kevin B

meh, this only affects like 5 rows on the table, ignore bug

for .00005% of the userbase

on a page almost nooone views

on a site that has gone unmaintained for many years

it is so unmaintained that it doesn't even have a link to overflow ai in the header

or the footer

at least its footer is super accessible

Ryan M

Wow, that font is wiiiiiide.

Kevin B

i still hate teh font change

Karl Knechtel

10:37 PM

"recognized user"?

Ryan M

@NewPosts for crying out loud, people (no one in here), the "can no longer be reproduced" close reason is not for if you can't figure out how to reproduce it.

especially if you clearly did not follow their reproduction steps

New Posts

11:16 PM

0

Q: Collectives Update: WSO2

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discussion collectives announcement

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