Questions tagged [discussion]
Questions that may not necessarily have a clear-cut right or wrong answer and are often subjective. If your question isn't a bug report, feature request, or request for assistance, or question with a concrete answer, it's probably a discussion.
1,877
questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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Stack Exchange Moderator FAQ
As per the FAQ for Stack Exchange sites, this FAQ will serve the following purposes:
To be the canonical reference for moderators across the Stack Exchange sites for things that are beyond question (...
87
votes
0answers
470 views
Tool for peer-reviewed no-bump mass retagging
Cleaning up a bad or ambiguous tag is a very annoying and disruptive process. While there are moderator tools for renaming and merging tags, there is no tool that helps splitting a tag or removing a ...
83
votes
0answers
1k views
Markdown change: Intra-word emphasis now works
There are tons of questions I could maybe post this as an answer to, but before choosing the best one, I'll just post this as an announcement question that can be linked elsewhere.
The short story
...
71
votes
0answers
13k views
List of communities with base css updates completed
By January 2016, All communities have been updated
The design team has been rolling out design updates to sites as part of network-wide update to a new base css framework. The updates allow us to:
...
71
votes
0answers
1k views
Nailing it up on your Community Bulletin Board
Community Bulletin was redesigned on June 23, 2014
More info on Redesigned community bulletin.
As some of you may have noticed, there's a new feature on Stack Exchange:
The Community Bulletin ...
70
votes
0answers
514 views
2017: a year in spam
Last year, I posted 2016: a year in spam. Since that was pretty well-received, here’s the 2017 version. Ladies, gentlemen, aliens, and everyone in between: more statistics about spam that you never ...
60
votes
0answers
76 views
Some kind of notification system for when tag synonyms are suggested
I have recently suggested tag-synonyms for a couple of tags. There have been no activity on them, regarding up-voting or down-voting those suggestions. Probably because no one knows that they have ...
59
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0answers
2k views
How is question quality measured in A/B tests?
As sites grow, there's a noticeable increase in community unhappiness with question quality. Quite a bit of the problem is simply a matter of scale, but sites sometimes optimize for extremes. Bad ...
56
votes
0answers
546 views
Brief maintenances planned for Sat, July 22, 2017 at 00:01 UTC (Fri July 21, 8pm US/Eastern)
Update: The July 21st maintenance is complete. All systems are back to normal now.
There will be a service degradation for up to 20 minutes shortly after Sat, July 22, 2017 at 00:00 UTC (which is Fri,...
55
votes
0answers
1k views
Add the ability to cite questions and answers
The Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science Stack Exchange sites have a great feature that allows a user to quickly create a citation to answers and questions. This is accomplished by clicking ...
49
votes
0answers
685 views
Why are usernames allowed to be composed entirely of non-visible Unicode characters?
This user on Ask Different appears to have no name due to invisible Unicode characters:
he's the #2 user on the site:
Why is that allowed? I think it is confusing for users, e.g. when they will see ...
48
votes
0answers
503 views
Supporting your candidate for moderator & being nice
Elections are one of the backbones of the Stack Exchange network. It gives the community a huge voice in determining the handful of people to who will volunteer to have their role on the site ...
47
votes
0answers
201 views
Two years later: How has moving the Meta link affected Meta usage?
Two years ago the link to a site's Meta was moved from an always-visible position in the top bar to subitems in the help and Site Switcher menus, as part of the top bar redesign progressively rolled ...
45
votes
0answers
267 views
Users with 100% flag decline rates will never know their flags are being declined if they flag infrequently
The flag warning is shown to a user based on flag statistics within a window of 7 days. This means that flag warnings, and by extension flag bans, are optimized for users who flag a lot.
Besides the ...
asked Jul 31 '15 at 5:32
BoltClock's a Unicorn
40.7k10 gold badges136 silver badges231 bronze badges
45
votes
0answers
257 views
TagOverflow - interactive exploration of Stack Exchange tags
I created a graph of tags from Stack Exchange sites (including Stack Overflow, obviously), TagOverflow.
It is a continuation of my previous project, which have met with a warm response here.
Nodes ...
45
votes
0answers
231 views
More info on “For more info visit Meta” required
The current wording for content dispute notices is:
This post has been locked while disputes about its content are being
resolved. For more info visit meta.
To me, the emphasised part isn't ...
44
votes
0answers
1k views
Switching to highlight.js for syntax highlighting
I'd like to offer our syntax highlighter library highlight.js for using on the Stack Exchange sites. I am perfectly aware that you already have one in place and there was a similar discussion a while ...
44
votes
0answers
197 views
Linking “helpful flags” to available close-votes for 20k+
For people who are active in the SO community, it is quite common to run out of close votes. It is especially noticeable, when chat rooms like try to do some controlled cleanup in their particular ...
43
votes
0answers
288 views
Tag synonyms: show suggestions to people who can vote
I just found (by surfing other questions) the dsl tag (which seems to be used mainly for domain specific languages, although there is no tag wiki yet), and saw that there also is the domain-specific-...
42
votes
0answers
185 views
The “Featured” tab is now “Bountied”
It's long confused me why we put bounties on a tab labeled "Featured" that has no connection to the "Featured" questions in the right sidebar. I posted a discussion about it earlier this year here on ...
39
votes
0answers
396 views
Stack Exchange Blogs Authentication, now with 80% less suck!
It appears that this post hasn't been entirely clear on how brand new blog users register. Check this post for a quick explanation on the process. Otherwise, read below for the announcement.
You may ...
39
votes
1answer
324 views
Delay answer downvote rep loss to voter to help hide voter's identity
A while back, I posted an answer to SO, which was downvoted. I wasn't sure who did it, but had a suspicion because I thought I had seen a particular user lose a reputation point.
When I deleted the ...
38
votes
0answers
658 views
Is an option missing in the new off-topic reasons?
I really like the new option structure when flagging - I have in particular missed the "Minimal understanding" option.
However, I think that one option is missing. If we look at this rambling ...
38
votes
0answers
368 views
Spot the difference
This reopen review popped up in the queue (and was unanimously left closed).
Update: The review link now points to a different edit (the latest one).
It states that a revision was made after it ...
36
votes
0answers
336 views
Yet another case of serial minor tag editing
Related
This user has been suggesting tag-only edits that, for the most part, just add mysql to sql questions, without improving anything else. He's at 60 approved (!) and 12 rejected (:(). (update ...
36
votes
0answers
836 views
Can we get more opportunities to “earn” Stack Overflow swag?
In light of the Stack Exchange swag store closing (luckily I already got my SO shirt), I've realized it's very difficult to get a Stack Overflow t-shirt. I propose we get more opportunities across all ...
36
votes
0answers
337 views
Does restricting the number of links for new users do any good?
New users with 1 rep face the following restrictions on all SE sites:
What are the new user restrictions?
New users cannot:
post images
post more than two hyperlinks at a time, ...
36
votes
0answers
424 views
Copycat site causes disturbing images to turn up in image search
Today I tried out various images search sites and one of my test search terms was my own name.
What struck me was that the false positives were mostly the same regardless of the search site used. Also ...
35
votes
0answers
211 views
How was the new SE arbitrator selected?
I was just reading through the arbitration clause (sec. 10b) of the new Terms of Service (related MSE announcement) and saw two references to "JAMS INC."
That name is never explained in the document ...
34
votes
0answers
154 views
“Spare” rep for use on bounties for points over the cap
There are lots of very good reasons for the 200 point cap, but at the same time it adds an anticlimactic area above the 200 point cap each day.
Why not let the points over the 200 cap go into another ...
32
votes
0answers
168 views
Can we add whatexactlyisyourquestion.com to the blocked list?
I just stumbled on this and I think we might do well to squash it before it becomes a wide spread problem.
http://whatexactlyisyourquestion.com/
I found a particular user, who shall remain nameless, ...
32
votes
0answers
251 views
Better tools to handle spam on low-traffic sites
On many Stack Exchange sites, particularly during the hours when Europe and America are asleep, spam can survive for hours. This gives a bad impression.
What can we do to allow the community to ...
32
votes
0answers
154 views
Stack Exchange Privacy Policy Revision history
On http://stackexchange.com/legal/privacy-policy, there is mention that "If we change this policy, we’ll update this document to keep you in the loop".. Great!
However, I have never liked re-reading ...
31
votes
0answers
198 views
Results of Pro Tempore elections experiment
Last year I announced an experiment of electing Pro Tempore moderators. We've completed 26 elections (with 4 more scheduled), including the Parenting pilot. One election, Tezos, picked the initial ...
31
votes
0answers
184 views
Editing bounty messages, is it finally time for a little “Love”? (anti-Doh! feature request)
I start a lot of bounties and when I add a bounty remark I often get it right the first time. Once when a mistake in my message was problematic a moderator was kind enough to take the time to help me ...
31
votes
0answers
149 views
Can we set better expectations for private beta?
When an Area 51 proposal makes it to private beta, the site has 2-3 weeks to show viability or be closed instead of advancing to public beta. I agree with that, but I wonder if we're being clear ...
31
votes
0answers
1k views
2017: a year in closing
Last year I posted some numbers on how many questions were closed on various sites around the network in the preceding year. This ended up being kinda handy to refer back to, so I'm gonna do it again: ...
31
votes
0answers
312 views
Trying to hide spam/offensive deletions on user profiles announces them
If a post is deleted as spam or offensive, the user incurs a 100-rep penalty. But SE made the conscious decision to not call that out on the reputation tab; if you go to the page of a user who's hit ...
31
votes
0answers
240 views
Add captcha to anonymous edits
I reached 1k rep on Chess.SE, now I can review suggested edits, and I see anonymous edits from unregistered users, all bots and spammers.
I know that you are not willing to turn off the anonymous ...
30
votes
0answers
203 views
Hide Left nav everywhere with a global preference
We have rolled out a change to make the "Hide left navigation" preference global. This means that changing the preference on any site will change it for all sites.
We will also be making the "enable ...
30
votes
0answers
323 views
Severe traffic drop for some sites since the last Google algorithm update
The recent update from Google to their search algorithm seems to have hit a few sites rather severely. I can't say for sure that this change is responsible, but the traffic graph from Skeptics looks ...
30
votes
0answers
218 views
Global flag history tab for moderator tools
In the moderator tools, there is a flag queue, and flags can be dismissed as valid/invalid. However, sometimes I want to review recent flags, whether I or another moderator acted upon it. I'm aware ...
29
votes
0answers
2k views
Rollout of responsive design site themes - Tracking post
This post will be updated as the responsive design and left navigation layouts are released on each site.
Previously, we tried this out by releasing still screenshots of the site designs and getting ...
29
votes
0answers
145 views
Stack Overflow doesn't notify a user when editing privileges are lost
I recently had a run-in with some minor edits, and lost my edit suggestion privileges for a week. I want to discuss part of the experience that was weird. I only found out about my loss of privileges ...
29
votes
0answers
416 views
How does Stack Exchange handle the creation of a new Stack Exchange site, in terms of backend?
I'm not sure if it's possible for SE folks to disclose architectural details, but I'm very curious about what happens in the backend when a new SE site is created. Is there one big database that ...
29
votes
0answers
1k views
How to link to open-source contributions?
On my http://careers.stackoverflow.com profile, there is a place to add Open Source projects.
I don't actually own any open source projects, but I contribute to a number. The value of this ...
29
votes
0answers
252 views
Would it be possible to organize the stackoverflow community to oppose SOPA?
While I realize this is a technical Q & A site, many normally non-political organizations, including the Internet Society and Wikipedia are either opposing or considering opposing the bill, so I ...
28
votes
0answers
282 views
What can we do to stop spammers from exploiting the grace period?
Recently, spammers on WordPress Development discovered a "new" trick - the grace period. They post a spam post without the link and immediately edit it in.
Yesterday, I happened to spot yet another ...
28
votes
0answers
206 views
Left nav is now sticky
We've updated the left nav so that it is now sticky. We are planning to add this ability to scroll the left nav independently, but that will be added later since it shouldn't be needed by anyone ...
26
votes
0answers
404 views
Winter Bash 2015 post-mortem
I was a big fan of Jon's approach to wrapping up Winter Bash last year, pairing the traditional blog post with a deeper dive here on meta. So I'm stealing it continuing to implement a successful ...
