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So I had a fascinating discussion with an expert, and now I'd like to chat with her again :P.

Will it still be accessible in some way in the future? 'Cuz it is pretty awesome (not the part where it chases me all over the page, though).

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  • 1
    you have to Waite until expert free again .. ]
    – NullPoiиteя
    Apr 1, 2013 at 8:48
  • @FrédéricHamidi: I see. So I guess what is left to answer is whether this feature will still be accessible in the future?
    – Saturn
    Apr 1, 2013 at 8:51
  • You mean after April 1st? Outlook not so good.
    – Frédéric Hamidi
    Apr 1, 2013 at 8:52
  • @FrédéricHamidi: Damn. It was the coolest SE thing ever.
    – Saturn
    Apr 1, 2013 at 8:55
  • @FrédéricHamidi: Not a dupe of that either.
    – Manishearth
    Apr 1, 2013 at 9:07
  • Wait, this was closed for being a duplicate, but, a duplicate of what question? I'm asking if it will be accessible in the future, not how to get it back. The two questions listed are "What is chat with an expert" and "Get the expert back", but I already edited my question, and it is no longer about any of these two topics. Why was this closed then?
    – Saturn
    Apr 1, 2013 at 9:33
  • @Omega, I voted to close before that edit. Voting to reopen now.
    – Frédéric Hamidi
    Apr 1, 2013 at 9:44
  • it would be a great feature to help out people with trivial queries, It could also diminish the number duplicate questions posted by new users. I would love to see a full fledged version of chatbot working in actually aiding people
    – Shekhar
    Apr 1, 2013 at 23:37

1 Answer 1

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This will no longer work, the adviza server is no longer running

Found this in the code:

// Yes, dear person reading this, there's a secret trigger. But you'll have to
// work a little bit to find out what it is.

Challenge accepted

So, here's a surefire trigger, that ought to work for a few days (until the code is pulled, which it probably won't be for a few days):

Go to any question.

Copy paste the following into the search box (any permutation of it ought to work too, and this is not the only set of trigger strings):

āāĂĂăċċ

Blur the search box (click outside it)

The expert thingamajig should appear!

Thanks for the fun math problem by the way!

If it's not April 1st, then run this in the dev console first:

StackExchange.adviza.init($('.question').data('questionid'),0,100,true)

Normally, you will see the popup once every 10 minutes, but there is a delay of 30 minutes before the next popup if you actually go through with a chat. The local date on your machine must be set to April 1st, and you need to have not clicked on the "never" button.

Update: Another phrase that works in the search box is unicorn overflow, and the code was designed for this. (see comments)

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  • 2
    Nicely done! Great find
    – Madara's Ghost
    Apr 1, 2013 at 9:09
  • 13
    Now that you found one solution, there's also one that a regular person can type :) unicorn overflow
    – balpha StaffMod
    Apr 1, 2013 at 9:18
  • @balpha: facepalms ohhh so obvious in retrospect; why didn't I think of that!. Though finding that with math tricks (namely factorization) would have been impossible,
    – Manishearth
    Apr 1, 2013 at 9:20
  • @Manishearth Where did you see that comment? All I get is a minified code.
    – Antony
    Apr 1, 2013 at 9:48
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    @Antony: The unminified JS of SE sites is not private. Look for it :) I'm sure there are references on meta or chat. (I'll tell you later if you can't find it, for now, here's the relevant bit regarding the April Fool's joke)
    – Manishearth
    Apr 1, 2013 at 9:51
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    @Manishearth Thanks. I've found it: dev.meta.stackoverflow.com/content/js/full-c.js
    – Antony
    Apr 1, 2013 at 10:11
  • @antony Great job! :D
    – Manishearth
    Apr 1, 2013 at 11:10
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    BM also works.
    – Dennis
    Apr 1, 2013 at 13:03
  • @Manishearth: Might I wonder how did you find out that? =D
    – Saturn
    Apr 2, 2013 at 3:05
  • @Omega: I went looking for it months ago, and I already knew about the dev.SE/dev.MSO private sites. I soon learned that the unobfuscated code can be found there, though it's not always the same version. A lot of folks know about where one can find unobfuscated code, that's why the devs (balpha probably) kept that comment :)
    – Manishearth
    Apr 2, 2013 at 6:19
  • Is it still possible to activate it? Yesterday I was out of home all the day and I wasn't able to see it :-(
    – xanatos
    Apr 2, 2013 at 18:45
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    @Supuhstar: obviously. That could be bypassed if you injected the adviza script, but either way the adviza server is no longer up. This was an April fool's joke, and the server was only kept up for about a week after April 1.
    – Manishearth
    Apr 25, 2013 at 5:08
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    @Supuhstar: I'm not trying to be rude here, I just didn't see much of a point :/ And on SE it is not one's duty to keep an answer up to date -- fixing stuff is one thing, curating old answers is quite another.
    – Manishearth
    Apr 25, 2013 at 5:57
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    @Supuhstar: Again, like I said, it seemed pretty obvious to me. The april fools pages are always quite localized, none of them say that "this no longer works"; because it is reasonable to assume that it won't.
    – Manishearth
    Apr 25, 2013 at 6:05
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    @Supuhstar: Well, I did that; I always do that. Only thing was that I didn't notice that the question failed to mention anything about it being an April fool's joke; sorry about the confusion.
    – Manishearth
    Apr 25, 2013 at 6:13

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