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.
1,898
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 (...
118
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0answers
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What gives SE the legal right, under the CC-BY-SA license, to modify user profiles without indicating that the content has changed?
The Terms of Service clearly indicated that all content that you provide to SO Inc is licensed under CC-BY-SA, and that would include your About Me section of your user profile, which SO Inc is ...
86
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0answers
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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
...
73
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0answers
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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:
...
73
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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 ...
71
votes
0answers
526 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 ...
64
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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 ...
61
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0answers
84 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 ...
56
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0answers
550 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
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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
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0answers
693 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
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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
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0answers
205 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
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0answers
271 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
47.8k10 gold badges137 silver badges231 bronze badges
45
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0answers
263 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
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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
387 views
Communication priorities
Two days ago, via a post on codegolf.meta which summarised a number of recent network-level issues, I stumbled upon Stack Exchange and Stack Overflow have moved to CC BY-SA 4.0. I was astonished to ...
44
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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
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0answers
200 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
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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-...
41
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0answers
398 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 ...
40
votes
1answer
328 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 ...
39
votes
0answers
200 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
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0answers
662 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 ...
39
votes
0answers
370 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 ...
37
votes
0answers
346 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 ...
37
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0answers
847 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 ...
37
votes
0answers
364 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, ...
37
votes
0answers
427 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
214 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 ...
35
votes
0answers
156 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 ...
34
votes
0answers
210 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 ...
34
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0answers
156 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 ...
33
votes
0answers
321 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 ...
33
votes
0answers
171 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, ...
33
votes
0answers
252 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 ...
asked Aug 15 '13 at 12:08
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
102k25 gold badges201 silver badges449 bronze badges
32
votes
0answers
230 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 ...
32
votes
0answers
153 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 ...
32
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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: ...
32
votes
0answers
242 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 ...
31
votes
0answers
207 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 ...
31
votes
0answers
325 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 ...
31
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0answers
221 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 ...
30
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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 ...
30
votes
0answers
158 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 ...
30
votes
0answers
420 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 ...
30
votes
0answers
253 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 ...
29
votes
0answers
293 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 ...
asked Jan 16 '19 at 5:56
iBug is disappointed in SE
22.6k4 gold badges40 silver badges91 bronze badges
29
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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 ...
28
votes
0answers
449 views
Are we doing anything but spinning our wheels?
There is no real conversation between the users here and the management of SE, and has not been for, what, six weeks? Both groups are out of their depth.
We are out of our depth because we have no ...
