Winter 2015 General Meeting

Took place on 2015-02-17 15:00

Summary

  1. cv-pls

    • The issue of mob-mentality with regards to cv-pls has been brought up by various people in the past.
    • Using cv-pls itself is not necessarily bad, it helps to keep the various Python related tags clean.
    • Re-opening questions that have been edited, however, is not nearly as quick. In an ideal world, people who close a question should “stick around” to ensure that it doesn’t get edited.
    • Some form of “tracker” was suggested, which keeps track of questions that have been closed by the group, and could notify the room when a question has been edited significantly so that people could take a fresh look. Davidism mentioned that he’s been working on something similar as a side-project. Zero suggested that an automatic tracker would make us appear as self-appointed police. No definite conclusion was drawn on this particular point.
    • It was agreed that using cv-pls should incorporate a grace period, where the question is now brought to the attention of the room. This period is 10 minutes to begin with, but may be subject to change. Individual users are, of course, free to do whatever they want with regards to moderation, e.g. they could vote to close after 30 seconds, but are asked to wait the grace period until they post a cv-pls request.
    • Exceptions to the grace period are permitted, including: typos, duplicates (or asking for dupe targets, spam, offensive posts, resource requests. These are permitted to be used for cv-pls at any point, due to their nature.
    • The issue of snarky comments on posts was also addressed. While it’s tempting to vent sometimes, it was generally agreed that any venting should be done in chat, and not on comments on a post.
    • It was agreed that cv-pls requests should either be Python-related, truly, abominably awful, or in low-traffic tags.
    • The fact that close votes belong to each user was made clear. cv-pls is a request, not an order/requirement. If people are not sure on whether to close vote, it’s probably better not to. If people actively disagree with a cv-pls, they should mention the fact.

  2. Help vampires (HVs)

    • A wiki post on sopython.com was proposed, that would explain help vampire behaviour.
    • Sometimes it’s better to cut your losses on a HV. A generic rule was suggested that “if the user still doesn’t get something simple after a page of conversation, it’s probably time to drop it.”. This, of course, is not a hard-and-fast rule.
    • It’s possible that ROs could kick more often, and earlier. Benjamin Gruenbaum mentioned “the advice Shog gave me is to kick often since it’s just a minute.” This has worked well for the JS room, improved signal to noise a lot.
    • It was generally agreed that, when dealing with HVs, you should:
      • Be polite.
      • Ask them to research their problem a bit more.
      • Try to “save” someone who is stuck helping a HV, the helper may not even realise it themselves.
      • Point them to the wiki post (once it’s publised).
    • The Salad term “garlic” now means “To recognize, deal with, or kick a help vampire.”

  3. Creating a Python-specfic trash room

    • Having a Python-soecific room allows us to have a custom message, pointing them towards the chatroom rules.
    • This would allow the ROs to be RO of the trash room. This means that ROs could move messages back to the main room if necessary.
    • Zero suggested The Rotating Knives. It’s a Monty Python joke, so it was accepted immediately.

  4. Events features

    • Chat has a feature which can be used to organise events.
    • It was agreed to be a good idea, and could help to promote the room/have some fun.
    • A wiki page will be set up to help further planning.
    • Some ideas for events are:
      • Livestreams
      • Hangouts
      • Code sprints
      • sopython event
      • Tag clean ups
      • Tag wiki clean ups
      • Burnination
      • JS competitions (or similar)
      • Close/reopen events
      • Python golf
      • Code review
      • Canonical question creation
      • Dupe target hunt (simiar to canonical Q creation but more about filling out canon list)

  5. RO coverage

    • As has been brought up before, RO coverage can be a bit low during 0000 - 0600 UTC.
    • It was put forward that the activity in the room is low though, and so we should be okay.

  6. Room language

    • The room language is Salad.
    • The alternative room language is English, which also happens to be the main language of Stack Overflow as a whole.
    • Speaking in non-English occasionally is perfectly fine, for example greeting a friend, but an extended conversation should not take place that effectively excludes other people.
    • Concerning legibility, if someones posts are so incomprehensible that they are seriously hampering communication, then it should be brought to their attention.
    • Let common sense prevail. There’s no harm pointing it out to someone, after all they may take it on board and then you’ve taught them English as well as programming.
    • l33t speak is banned on punishment of death, unless you’re using it ironically in small amounts.

AOB1. inspectorG4dget and his mum are doing fine.
AOB2.

Agenda

  1. cv-pls
    • To educate people new to the room, some form of wiki page could be put together with how cv-pls works. In time, as sopython grows, this could be moved from a wiki page into its own dedicated section.
    • The issue of mob mentality has been brought up a few times. It could appear that we, memebers of the room, are ganging up by instantly closing questions. When these Qs are really quite poor it’s not really an issue, but when they’re borderline it could be seen as more significant.
    • Members should remember that using cv-pls is merely a suggestion, you do not have to vote if you do not agree. In fact, you shouldn’t vote unless you’re absolutely sure that it should be closed.
    • Another possible solution would be to avoid posting “obvious” cv-pls unless they’re already aquiring bad answers. Leave cv-pls to less popular tags, or where the close is more about guiding the user than preventing bad questions. This is similar to how we don’t let new users post new questions.
  2. Help vampires
    • Lately we’ve seen a rise in the number of help vampires (HV) (anecdotal evidence only).
    • HV are users who come in with (typically simple, though not always) issues and then require being walked through the solution completely.
    • They are typically a drain on the room resources, and can be a major annoyance to experienced users.
    • While we’re here to help people, we must always consider the well being of the users who provide that help. Having people annoyed/angry at HV is not good for our regular users, and in the end you’re not helping the HV either (give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for the rest of his life).
  3. Create a Trash room specific to Python, so that we can “untrash” stuff.
  4. Make use of the “events” feature. They make the room more visible in the room list, and can focus discussion or provide us with something interesting or silly to do.
  5. Do we have enough RO coverage between midnight and 6am – if not, should we be concerned about it?
  6. Room language
    • The official language of the room, and SO as a whole, is English.
    • Occasional non-English is not an issue, for example two friends who’s native language is non-English saying hello to each other.
    • However, prolonged conversations in non-English should be taken elsewhere.
    • Conversations should also use proper spelling/grammar as much as possible. We understand that English is not a first language for a lot of our users, but the effort of speaking clearly is always appreciated.
    • To this end, should we put together some wiki page (or maybe on the /chatroom page?) about the room’s language?
  7. AOB
    • Contact has been made with inspectorG4dget, both him and his mother are doing well.

Room owner topic discussion - This private room is for the ROs to discuss anything sensitive that might need to go on the agenda. Of course, we’re still open to suggestions from non-ROs :)

Why do we hold these meetings?

We like to be open with what we do in the sopython community and with what plans we have for the future.

As such we like to hold these open-house meetings every once in a while for the development team to let everyone know what they’re up to, as well as letting anyone voice any opinions they have to the community at large (be they positive or negative). If you cannot attend the meeting but would like to be involved within sopython then you are of course welcome to bring this up with one of the room owners at a more convenient time.

I call the Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Cabbage to order. Is the Door of Knowledge sealed fast against heretics and knowlessmen? Is the triple circle well and truly traced? Art all here who art here? And it be well for an knowlessman that he should not be here, for he would be taken from this place and his gaskin slit, his moules shown to the four winds, his welchet torn asunder with many hooks, and his figgin placed on a spike.
ok thnaks :D
Bugger, forgot about the circle.
I thought you were going to get the chalk, @Antti?!
One of the best scenes in all the books.
hehe
Ok. Might as well begin without the circle then.
I couldnt find the triple circle
GM agenda is here sopython.com/transcript/3/winter-2015-general-meeting
◎ will this do?
I'll nominally chair but might have to randomly disappear if supervisor comes in, if I'm not moving things along/replying then just move on without me.
At least we don't have anyone go did you say Unique and Supreme Lodge of the Cabbage, and Sorry, wrong society..
Starting with 1. cv-pls
I've been delaying close-vote requests a little, to see if anything is happening before calling in the mob.
Yeah that's the main issue.
It's been raised by more than one person that sometimes it could appear that we're a mob.
To keep this limited to the non-obvious cases. Posts that are older and won't be getting the regular fresh-post attention, for example.
Closing questions nearly instantly. In general, this isn't a bad thing if the question really needs to be closed.
Better to have a bad question closed quickly than have it accumulate bad answers and rude comments and downvotes.
I agree.
I don't know what the real stats are, but it feels like most of our CVs are either (1) Flask, which we have a proprietary interest in, or (2) stuff which would be closed anyway.
also it does not get the bad answers before it is fixed
@DSM (3) LinkedIn posts, some regulars are standing in for LinkedIn devs to keep that mess under control.
I try to keep Flask clean, so that's why there's a lot of requests from that corner. Usually I'll just post stuff that didn't get addressed by the op since the previous day.
the problem is ofc that reopens should be as swift :D
@MartijnPieters: true, I'd forgotten about those, but those seem to have dropped off a little lately (could just be my room hours.)
Nah, we've been a little quieter about that lately.
there should be some system to follow up if a question is edited after closing
@DSM There was a new spate as LI made another 'well-thought-out' business decision to cut of most of their API users. But we are digressing.
@Antti ideally that'll be something that, eventually, a dedicated webpage on sopython.com could fix. We could have a page that monitors cv-pls requests and if something has been edited since being closed, is flagged for re-looking at
@AnttiHaapala you mean like a tracker to notify us if they edit their post?
yeah
bc they will go to reopen queue but ppl there might not be as knowledgeable
I'm here...
I'm working on it, I've got an api/websocket/chat client in development.
Wouldn't some constructive laziness be in order? Is it really such a negative if a bad question sticks around for ten minutes?
just worrying that the question wouldn't be reopened if it needed
So we can have it watch questions we vote to close, to see what happens to them for a couple days.
Could automatically stagger close vote requests notifications to specific people :P
duplicates should be closed outright at least
typo's should be closed the fastest
Agreed, duplicates are a special case.
Okay, dups are a good example where fast action would be warranted.
@DSM I kinda agree. We close questions so fast sometimes that the edit grace period isn't even over (I know that OPs should have their Q perfect in advance, but we have to be realistic). And we're probably slower at re-opening than closing. Maybe asking that we let the Q have a grace period (say 5-10 minutes) unless they're typo/dupe.
Although it's sometimes easy to point at the wrong dup when the question is ambiguous or the OP is making multiple mistakes.
That gives the OP time to edit their Q, also gives people time to comment on it and hopefully for the OP to reply.
@davidism I'd be against an automated tracker. We're not The Closing Room, and the more we buld systems for managing that stuff, the more it appears that we're self-appointed police.
Isn't there already a closing room?
Yup.
the mjölnir is especially problematic with dupes :D
martijn closes with the wrong dupe sometimes too fast, then need to wait him to reopen
@Zero but we'd close things anyway. Shouldn't we think about having something in place so we can re-open when a user has gone back and made a better Q through edits?
Yeah, I'm not making it for this room/sopython, I'm making it as a standalone app, I just happen to hang out here.
@AnttiHaapala I try not to.
I have a list of well-used dupes which I'm going to start populating the canon list with by the way.
But we do have a vested interest in the Python tag being clean and helpful.
So we're all sort of converging on one point, which is that we need to have some rules about what cv-pls request we want, somewhat like the rules we have about what questions may be posted here.
I do think that that's a good function for this room, to apply experience in gardening the tag.
I'd rather handle it by promoting responsible room culture. I don't do this (much) either, but given how quickly Qs can get closed from here, one could argue there's a responsibility to hang around and see whether OP makes improvements.
@ZeroPiraeus usually I see one or two of us hang around questions that could realistically be improved
Yeah I see your point re. better culture.
Sorry, back.
for example the "offtopic, resource"
What we need to avoid is posting not-so-helpful, or at least poorly worded, comments as everyone jumps on the link.
I like the idea of a 5-10 minute grace period. But first, put a comment on the question to ask the OP to clarify, add code / traceback / sample data, etc.
On the subject of which – gong was funny for a while, but I think it's encouraging the FCITW thing when what we want is for people to make a calm, reasonable decision.
If you don't feel like posting a completely serious response, don't post.
There are lots of non-sopython users who are perfectly capable of sorting through a bad question if they have a chance, and we don't use our collective power to slow the process.
@Ffisegydd can you organize which subtopic we're talking about? We should focus on one bullet point at a time.
@Zero are we sure that's the case... I probably only agree with half the votes posted here... no one's forcing to me to vote, nor should everyone agree with the ones I post... make up your own mind... we're all individuals
Let's sort out when/how to call out cv-pls, first.
At least one other person has directly told me that they feel like they're in a race to get into the list of closers at times.
@ZeroPiraeus Agreed, the Gong makes the whole job of gardening look like a race to beat everyone else at the expense of paying attention.
My idea was to treat cvs similar to how we treat new questions posted here.
Can I suggest definite dupes should definitely be called out, as we have a lot of hammer holders here, so we certainly don't want those clogging up noise and garnering 5/6 answers within minutes
How about this: A 10 minute grace period before we post cv-pls unless it's a typo/dupe/spam/offensive post. That 10 minute period gives the OP time to edit, and also gives people time to comment.
We don't allow most new questions because the rest of SO will see those as well, and can identify if they should be closed just as easily.
@JonClements New users may not have understood that.
I wish there were a "pause while we find the dup" hammer.. ah, well.
Dupes and typos are particularly specific to our tag, and are easier for us to identify than others, so we should focus on that.
(My supervisor has gone home so I should be here for the rest of the meeting now)
@DSM yeah, that'd also help with the Martijn closed to the wrong dupe post.
@Martijn okay... how about we break up [tag:cv-pls] and make it more explicit for the cases it's urgent
Sometimes it is such an obvious dupe and I already can hear the low-quality answers being pounded in around the world.
10 minutes is too much. Lesser interval for more experienced users?
Lets set it at 10 minutes and evaluate.
@BhargavRao no, like I said, others are watching the site
Yeah. It should definitely be one time for all people. Let's start with 10 and see how it goes?
many low quality posts already have 3 or 4 votes by the time you post them here
I don't feel like I have a handle on what kinds of posts I am going to ask for assistance on.
Someone who's just posted a question often doesn't even reply to the first comment for five minutes. I think we overestimate how easy the back-and-forth is for newcomers.
A thought: except for dupe/offensive etc., how about we start with something like attention-pls, calling people to look at the post, comment constructively and see if we can help OP improve it?
I wish there were a "Please don't post an answer until the OP responds to the comments & improves the question" ... but I guess that's the function of putting questions on hold.
cv-pls stackoverflow.com/questions/28564726/…
@DSM agreed. Case in point: stackoverflow.com/questions/28562179/…
Typos/dupes (asking for suggestion for dupes if you have a hammer but don't know the dupe)/spam/offensive/*truly awful*
good timing @tristan :-/
@tristan some timing there, did you read the log around your entry? :-P
:D
@davidism :)
Also, bash is not exactly low-traffic.
To me it feels that that link is OT for this room.
reviewing now, forgot my work ID, so I'm late to the GM :[
@tristan that's just as well... the alligators haven't been fed in a while... thanks for volunteering :p
We've always allowed non-Python questions, low-traffic or not, should we change that?
I think "should be Python-related unless spam/offensive" is a reasonable rule.
@JonClements my meat would be all stringy :)
yeah, although maybe linkedin is a special case, we need some entertainment ;)
Agreed on linkedin.
@Ffisegydd I think we should. I feel we are the Python community and part of the task of this room is to keep that tag clean.
That's just chemotherapy before the tumors grow into our tags.
@tristan LinkedIn is too low traffic to otherwise get the attention.
If our goal is improving SO, it's reasonable that we only call attention to Qs that we can expect people here to have enough expertise in to make the call.
@Ffisegydd umm... I've never had issues with tool related questions... but the "I have a <insert language> question" - "Have you tried the <insert language> room" - "Yeah, but no one was there, so I thought I'd come here" frustrates me slightly though :)
And of course burninating?
If it's too low traffic, it can't be that much of a problem..
if you want to focus on other tags, go to the close votes room, they have a much better system of what tags to focus on
@Jon I mean "we allow non-Python chat" in the sense that "Me and Peter talk about graphic design a bit :P or C or javascript"
+1 for restricting to Python+AWFUL for cv-please-attend requests.
What about resource request questions?
I think it's okay to post some non-python cv-pls -- sometimes the questions are just obviously bad and it's not like a single cv-pls line is that spammy.
Like this example just posted.
Yeah, what @DSM said is more or less my thoughts -- Python or just terrible (really bad or normal linkedin)
I voted to close it, I do see that as a close fast before the spam comes in post.
gonnng btw
@tristan: wince
:D
@tristan you're on a roll here
@tristan oh dear, you're late and then put your foot in it... 3rd time lucky? :p
Can we redesignate tristan as Ironic Typist For Life?
Okay so how about this: 10 minute grace period on cv-pls, where we give the OP/other members time to sort stuff out. Exceptions to this are:
Typo
Dupes (and looking for hammer targets)
Spam
Offensive
Resource Request
@tristan I call trollllllll btw. :-D
Zero gets it. (i caught up on reading, i knew what i was doing)
And cv-pls should, in general, be about Python or be truly awful (i.e. offensive/spam/nonsense).
rhubarb - it's really late here, but I'll read the transcript.
What about questions in a specific smaller tag? Python is popular, we don't need to be cv-ing everything ourselves, but Flask, as an example from earlier, is much lower traffic. I typically post those because I know they won't get enough attention. I also put a lot more effort in to improving posts there.
@PM cool, sleep well.
why is it so important that you all help stackoverflow ?
also there was some cases of "resource requests" that can be solved using standard library
example was "how can I read mail from gmail into mbox"
Because we are stackoverflow
I noticed that @davidism and I've started passively answering old questions on that tag, but I think normal rules apply -- if it's bad, it needs a close
answer: use imaplib and mbox from standard library
@WalleCyril can we answer that after the general meeting? the full answer is quite long and different for others
@davidism: can't speak for anyone else, but by "Python" I didn't mean "only the Python tag", but Python as an ecosystem.
Yeah exactly.
Python-related.
Yeah, I know, I'm just saying that rather than try to restrict what types of cvs we allow, we could decide to focus on more specific sub-tags as well
how many hours have you spent on stackoverflow, helping others
@Walle please stop derailing the meeting.
@Walle can we please discuss this after the meeting? Or in AOB?
@WalleCyril sopython.com/transcript/3/winter-2015-general-meeting <- item 1
@davidism Not sure I follow ... people with specific interests will naturally tend to focus on them, right?
Rather than define specific sub-tags I'd prefer to just say "Go for Python-related" and sort it out as we go along. We're all pretty sensible.
@AnttiHaapala it doesn t answer my question, and why do you say I should talk after, why do you exlude me
@davidism I'm sure we can word it clearly enough.
@Walle we have an agenda, and what you're asking isn't currently on-topic.
@WalleCyril kicked
@WalleCyril because this is a room meeting and you are intruding.
@ZeroPiraeus What I was getting at was that I could constantly post questions that meet all the requirements we've laid out just by hanging out in the Python tag, but by focusing on Flask and SQLAlchemy I end up posting fewer requests
[Meta: should we start wrapping up the CV discussion?]
I have a rough outline that I'm typing as people put forward ideas. Ideally I'd like to finish this point in the next 11 minutes at most to get onto the next part (don't want to get bogged down ideally).
[Meta: @DSM great minds thing alike and all that]
... so you're suggesting less-frequented tags get a little more leeway?
yeah, because we give them more of our (good) attention
To davidism's point, I don't see posting CV pls on sqlalchemy/flask as being exclusionary of tending to the greater garden of the python tag.
Can I just clarify my understanding: after the 10 minute grace period, any Python-related question is fair game right? So after 10 minutes, if OP isn't responding. We just cv-pls and close it.
Whether it's POB or TB or TO or whatever.
We can cv before 10 minutes, we just can't post it here before then
In general as regulars we know who the experts are, and I think we strike a good balance at bending the rules a little for people we trust to know what they're doing.
I'm more lenient on less commonly trafficked jinja/flask tags because the answers tend to be non-numerous, e.g. this
Can you post a final result on this topic before closing it?
When to cv and when not to
@Bhargav yeah will do :) I'm going to make a wiki post on the subject.
I do have one more related topic
Thanks. :)
hmm sometimes it has been good that the cv-pls does appear hhere
My understanding: for improvable posts, we call attention to them for constructive comment, and then after ~10m cv-pls.
How about this for a summary 
All cv-pls should be Python-related or be truly, awful. Questions not specifically tagged Python are fair game as long as they're Python related (for example, Flask, Django, scipy-stach, etc).

cv-pls requests should have a 10 minute grace period, this allows the OP time to edit and also gives people time to comment and ask for further clarification etc. Exceptions to this rule are:

Typo
Dupes (and looking for hammer targets)
Spam
Offensive
Resource Request

After the 10 minute grace period, everything is fair game. If an OP isn't replying/editing then cv-pls it and let the room close it if they wish (and it isn't closed already).
for example zero asked cv-pls for the google imap question, it had 3 votes already bc of resource request
To further avoid seeming like a mob, let's avoid piling on snarky/less-than-helpful comments to questions posted here.
@davidism +1
[edit: non helpful!]
Unless you're going to be completely direct and polite in helping improve a post, don't comment.
Can we still vent frustration in chat though?
of course
I think "of course."
Excellent.
We're not free TAs
@tristan stop thinking my thoughts :)
@davidism so we're going to keep being a little more lenient on the lesser used ecosystem of flask?
hello
@ReutSharabani we're in the general meeting, about done on item 1 sopython.com/transcript/3/winter-2015-general-meeting
Ok. One final thing on cv-pls (unless anyone else has any comments): Let's stop the GOOOOOOOOOONG joke. It was funny. I loved it like a child. But it could lead to people racing.
Can we still gong the gong after 10 minutes?
I'm not sure what that means so I'll just watch the chatlog
And remember children: your votes are your own. You do not have to cv-pls if you disagree.
and do state your opinion if you disagree
Do not feel pressured into voting, especially if you're not sure.
I'll resurrect the gong somewhere much less visible, but I agree, there's no reason to say "done" or "closed" or "gong" when a post is closed
I'm going to keep gonging the gong sometimes. Y'all ain't my real dad.
Definitely. If you're unsure or actively think "No, this is wrong..." then say so.
Instead, use the cv-pls extension which will cross items off for you.
oh, and no more "cv-maybe"
Yeah. We're replacing cv-maybe with cv-possibly.
either "cv-pls" or don't at all
If you're not sure, ask a real question and describe what you think, don't just tag the link
One thing: what is "calling attention"? oneboxing? attention? Something else?
Is this really that big of a deal or are we just obsessing over it right now because it's an item on a list?
@tristan the worry is that we appear as a mob. We can be a mob, but we can't appear to look like one.
@tristan it's bothered the ros for a while, that's why it's on the list
Fair and fair, was an innocent question.
Right unless anyone has any pressing comments, let's move onto Help Vampires.
/me gets out the garlic
Help vampires in this room, not in general
2. Help Vampires: Better Than Twilight But Still A Pain
had one unpleasant on weekend
no ro's were available so he kept pinging me for quite some time
(can we add garlic to the salad lang meaning "don't help the help vampire?")
Isn't that behavior regular flaggable @AnttiHaapala?
(sidebar: sopython.com/salad/?highlight=Garlic)
@tristan ?
@tristan the flags have no context and no explanation and show up in all rooms, so it doesn't work well for that
@Ffisegydd should mean "kicked"
@Vampire garlic
We can debate the meaning of "Garlic" in AOB :P
(thanks, again, didn't know)
we could have a help vampire post on sopython, that could be linkable to the help vampires
@AnttiHaapala if you ping me, I will get a notification on my phone a few minutes later
basically the cleaner version of saying "f... off"
That's not a bad idea. (and yeah if people really need an RO, ping me too and I'll get it on my phone)
If Kevin were here, he might say "dealing with people who have map-territory confusions can be tough", but in a more amusing way. To handle a recent visitor to the room we had to tag in and out because the confusion was so deep-rooted. It might have been better for us to cut our losses earlier.
I think cutting your losses and not getting involved if they're showing HV behaviour is important.
The more you help them, the more they tend to expect it, and so the more they'll ask.
Especially because I keep telling myself "if I can just get him to understand this one point.."
"I...I can change them...make them a decent SO user..."
If it takes more than one screen of messages, and the point is still unclear, you need to recognize that and stop
This is getting all fifty shades...
What gets me is that a problem will often be interesting, but solving it for that specific user will not be rewarding at all
I've been kicking more often, but I think we could stand to do it even sooner.
The first two kicks are one minute warnings, it's not a huge punishment, just a wakeup call
yesterday, by interwebz
help
Don't be afraid to turn people away if they're being annoying.
What to do with users that choose to participate in feeding the HVs?
Throw them to the kittens?
If they're not disrupting the chat with it, maybe just let them learn the hard way?
Should HVs get kicked?
The problem with that is that the HV may come back expecting more help @Jon
For all of us, I think a gentle reminder of house policy would suffice. But if actual progress is being made, so that the conversation has a sensible flow, we should obviously let that go.
HVs must be told small answers here, for long ones use the main site
cbg
The one-page rule is probably a decent guide.
Yep +1
@JonClements It can be hard to extricate yourself. Maybe a codephrase? "@vampire I don't think this room can help you" or similar to signal to someone getting pulled in that it might be worth disengaging.
cbg @Benjamin, we're having a general meeting right now: sopython.com/transcript/3/winter-2015-general-meeting
cbg @BenjaminGruenbaum
@davidism the advice Shog gave me is to kick often since it's just a minute.
Been working real great for us in the JS room, improved signal to noise a lot.
Don't be afraid to ask people to go away and research/google stuff. Though do it politely (no LMGTFY links).
We discussed HVs in the JS room, pretty much the conclusion we came up with is that ^
Also, to ignore them hen we can.
If you see someone else helping a vampire, remind them to take a step back and realize what they're doing.
The ROs have done that for each other a few times :)
I think a wiki page to be able to point them to might be useful.
"So you want to be a help vampire"
@davidism in the JS room we do that in a separate room - we've come to a consensus to argue between ROs in a separate room to not send mixed signals and or cause more OT discussion.
In these docs docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.7/topics/forms. Do I have to insert my form name in place of form(.subject). And if so, what would the subject be?
Been working out real well for us.
@Benjamin we do the same, we've got a Trello board for ROs only.
@Ffisegydd that's nice.
List of troublemakers and such. davidism himself was top of this list after his &quot;accident&quot;
:-|
Uhm, is it over already? I was in a surprise meeting >_<
@poke nah. Discussing Help Vampires.
@IbrahimApachi Sorry, we're currently having a room meeting - can it wait for a bit?
Though I think we're coming to the end of that?
I think you guys should post an illustration of a chatlog iwth an HV and send HVs to read that.
Summary: be polite. Ask them to research/Google stuff. Point them towards a wiki page once we've got one. For users helping HVs, politely point it out to them.
Do we have a concise definition for help vampire?
"Are you a Help Vampire? Answer these questions to find out..."
Does that sound reasonable?
3-7 should move along relatively quickly, I expect.
(I have been wondering about that)
@ReutSharabani there's a standard article I link them to: skidmore.edu/~pdwyer/e/eoc/help_vampire.htm
Of course I can wait. Sorry for interrupting :P
@poke something like
@IbrahimApachi No need to apologise, you weren't to know ^^
"When I do 2 + 2 in the shell, I get 4" "Great... how do I make it say 5..." "okay, so how can I take that 5 and make it 6" "what if I want to put leading zeroes on that" - "okay, can I print that in hex..." "can I write that to a file" "can I write it to a file in sorted order?" "can I then rename that file?"
@Ffisegydd I think that sums it up
@davidism that's a good link to give them :)
Any other comments? (@poke you came in late but we can always come back to it later in AOB or something if you get chance to read through the transcript)
3. Create a Trash room specific to Python, so that we can “untrash” stuff.
Suggested Python Trash room name: The Rotating Knives.
Can we even do that?
@ZeroPiraeus that was my first question :)
I like this idea. As long as it's obvious that tis not a real chat room.
@DSM all the trash rooms are just normal rooms, so I assume so?
Yeah, I was going to create a room
reopenv-pls stackoverflow.com/questions/28564187/…
Make the ROs here ROs there so they can migrate messages back?
We room-closed that earlier, OP came back and edited their decorator.
I'm not happy with the current trash rooms, they don't have a good description and we don't control them
So yeah, I was going to create a room with the same owners, with a good description of why the message was moved.
@davidism as in, stuff can't be moved back?
I think it needs the word "Trash" (or similar) in there somewhere. So maybe "Python Trash - The Rotating Knives" ?
I think we all agree it's a good idea? I mostly brought it up here so we'd all be aware of it.
I see no harm in giving it a go
+1
Aye.
Ayuh.
OK, I'll create it and pin it after the meeting.
It'll also be handy as we'll have a log of stuff we've decided to move out... and it'll be easier to at a glance see what we're moving, and look back on moved messages for why/any previous moves occurred...
Exactly
+2 - let's go for it
4. Events feature. Making use of it and possible ideas?
I agree that we under-utilise the feature, and it'd be nice to do some more with it.
Burninationfests?
Are there really a lot of potential events?
Yeah, I wanted to get some suggestions of things to do. The events show up on the chat page and make us more visible.
@ZeroPiraeus I'd rather have "fun" "nice" things :)
Some random thoughts... code sprints / planned tag clean ups (let's not invited David though - we know what happens there :p) / the JS room seems to have events for competitions (how's that working @BenjaminGruenbaum)
See, based on our 1st item on the agenda :P, what do people think about closing events? I don't mean closing new Qs, but rather going through old content that may need to be closed but isn't getting attention.
@JonClements it worked very well for 2-3 months but then it sort of stopped working - we're planning to discuss it when we have a meeting on Saturday.
Or trying to burn down the close vote queue for instance (focusing on Python tags)
coding challenges, python golf :d
It can be all sorts of things: "let's work on sopython together", "watch me livestream making a Flask program", etc.
This is our last meeting notes btw: gist.github.com/MadaraUchiha/7cd466190c3245a490e2
@Ffisegydd how about since there's already a closing room - we focus on more neglected content - and have a re-open event?
@davidism Ooh, a "SOPython Presents" series of livestreams sounds kinda cool.
"Today, we're going to learn about how einsum can simply your code!"
SOTV :)
[I'll ask later whether anything happened with that.]
Excuse me one second, puppy need wee wee
@davidism SOPyTV - has a much more (cough) grown-up feel ...
cbg
What about code review events?
Of sopython or of random packages?
Both/Either?
I think it's more helpful to see code written than to see code reviewed
So far from people I have:
Livestreams
Code sprints
sopython event
Tag clean ups
Tag wiki clean ups
Burnination
JS competitions
Close/reopen events
Python golf
Code review
"What choice should I make" is at the least more engaging, if not more educational, than "Why did that choice get made."
@Ffisegydd "let's make a canonical question"
Yeah definitely.
Oh yes nice :-)
where we pick an under-represented / not-satisfyingly detailed dupe and clean it up / create one.
Vote rings ...
pokes in late on item 3
Where did the rotating knives name come from?
Monty Python skit apparently.
montypython.net/scripts/architec.php
Zero did link it.
check.
I figured it was just something that can easily chop cabbage....
Can only ROs make events?
We could put together a wiki post where people can suggest things/we can plan out future ones.
(My answer to everything today has been "make a wiki post" :3)
@ZeroPiraeus name approved! :-P
I like the canonical question suggestion. During this meeting, I saw yet another "missing return in a recursive function", which I know Kevin and I have discussed in the past. We could either write a new one or edit a good existing one into perfection.
Another event: dupe target hunt (simiar to canonical Q creation but more about filling out canon list)
Only ROs can create events, but others can ping us if they want to suggest something.
@Ffisegydd Shouldn't that be more - review the quality of dupes suggested by nidaba? :p
What time of day is convenient for people?
@Ffisegydd it can be any time, let's leave it up to who's running each event
I don't mind staying up a bit late in the evening so they could be in US evenings too.
Saturdays work better.
Alright cool.
3+ UTC
@Ffisegydd given the spread of TZs - this time - we probably don't want to suggest weekends... and everyone gets bored at work, surely? :p
@JonClements we do want to suggest Saturdays. I just did. :-P
@Martijn okay we - 1? :p
Okay. I will (or someone else can if they want to volunteer) put together a starting wiki page and we can start getting ideas ready/plan the first few.
@Ffisegydd I’ll read it up later, and may end up comments afterwards. Don’t have the time to keep up at the moment… (meh)
Sorry…
@poke no worries mate :(
Okay, unless there's anything else let's move onto 5.
5. Do we have enough RO coverage between midnight and 6am – if not, should we be concerned about it?
This is something that's been brought up before.
... by which we mean 00:00 - 06:00 UTC, right?
^ My impression from the past is that there is surprisingly little activity during European nighttime, so there is not really any need for further RO activity
Is this motivated by things which have happened or just looking out for potential difficulties?
I think it's still ok, in fact I've seen less participation during that time then the last time this was brought up.
Unfortunately we can't guarantee an RO will always be on :( (as @Antti found out the other weekend) but if you do need something then you can ping me and I'll probably answer if it's during the European day (at least).
We all seem to have weird hours at some point that overlap.
Yeah... just thought I'd raise it again...
There's either no-one about so it doesn't matter... or once or twice been a lot happening with no intervention
I am around moderately often until 0300ish, and sometimes through the meridianish night.
@davidism Yeah, very weird ones. I remember Jon coming online before I went to bed at some days…
but since it's mostly the former, I'm not overly worried...
Are we happy with the number of ROs in general? (Not just WRT timezones)
And our timezones are one hour apart :P
(plus I have strange hours... so sometimes I'm about during those hours anyway)
@Ffisegydd 1 in 3 seems to be a fairly reasonable ratio...
Alright, cool.
7. Room language
Salad.
I think we can move on, as poke just won this conversation.
(7? Was there some item added in between?)
People have to use Salad with propa grammer and puntuation though .
;_;
but not spelling obviously ^^^? :p
I for one deplore the recent additions to Salad of words which actually make sense as metaphors. This goes against the whole history of the Salad language.
But on a more serious side: English and salad are our main languages. Greetings or single words e.g. are not a problem in other languages, but people should chat in a way that doesn’t exclude other participants.
I've backed off a bit on complaining that people can't type. But I think we do need some standard level of communication skills for posts made here.
I think if someone is not able to spell well enough so that people can understand them, people will point them out automatically.
A lot of this is going to come down to taste. I imagine we'll get solid consensus on SHOUTING, but for me, it seems a little unfair to pick on e.g. spaces before periods now that we know it's a result of a widely-used English text in India.
I don’t think we need an actual “rule” for that.
Common sense.
I think if people's posts are so bad that they're illegible then just ask them to try to make more effort. It's not easy as for a lot of people English isn't their mother tongue.
If new users come in with txt spk, poor grammar/spelling, etc., it's hindering at least my ability to communicate with them.
cv-pls stackoverflow.com/questions/28566198/…
Resource req.

The English Language

Communication skills are important. Stack Overflow is an Engl...
Come on guys...one final gong...
Before the meeting is over and rules come into effect ;_;
I actually ended up creating a room to invite people to so that I could explain what they were doing incorrectly.
@Ffisegydd g... g...
And so it ends, not with a gong, but a whimper.
I feel like I got too aggressive about it, but being able to write correctly is just as important to me as being able to code correctly.
I'm not sure this is a big enough issue to address yet, frankly.
@DSM the problem is that I'll mention to a user after a few messages "you need to work on this", they'll say "ok", then continue on without changing
Let common sense prevail. There's no harm pointing it out to someone, after all they may take it on board and then you've taught them English as well as programming :D
I find poor grammar, spelling, punctuation etc. irritating, but I think we need to make allowances. Sentences spread out three words per line and txtspk must die though.
If "this" is "improve the quality of your English", I'm not sure that's really addressable. If it's someone who knows better but is deliberately typing in l33t, that's a separate issue.
And if it's so bad that they can't be understood, then tell them they can't be understood and if they keep on posting messages that are incomprehensible and it's clogging the room then kick them.
l33t speak should die unless it's used ironically (in small amounts :P)
@ZeroPiraeus I agree, it's the one word messages, the ... spaced out ... messages
@davidism
I know you really hate it
When people type messages over many lines
And don't edit
And I agree.
It's also worth noting that one of our regulars freely confesses he has terrible spelling, bad enough that I was convinced he was based in Europe and English was his second or third language.
the ROs aren't perfect, but there's still a clear difference between how we and many of the regulars type versus how random users do
@davidism s/ro/RO
s/ro/RO/, must type the substitution correctly
"ro" is the monetary unit of Oman. I was assuming that's what he was referring to. [Oh, wait. That's a capitalized abbreviation too..]
s = s.capitalize() + '.'
(Stupid crossword trivia! Never comes in handy like you hope.)
Right. Anything more on this? If not, AOB.
AOB1. I've spoken to inspectorG4dget via email, both him and his mum are fine. She's been back in for surgery and he's still in India taking care of her.
lol i lived through whatever headcold i had on friday .... and even though i got a build no one uploaded after qa vetted it .... so glad i stayed ...
So should we use flawless English?
what is winter meeting
@Ffisegydd which is great news
For those who were unaware, his mum had a stroke before Christmas.
wat iz winter meating
thus I need to stay silent
That is all for AOB1.
Any other Any Other Business?
@Joran sopython.com/transcript/3/winter-2015-general-meeting
also winter meeting is too europe-centric :P
@Ffisegydd can you shoot me with a link to the meeting's room? (I always forgot the name of that SO-like-chat)
It is summer here
@PM2Ring would disagree
@PeterVaro: this is the winter meeting.
@Peter we've had it in here :P
(+ I will be on phone, but I will be there :))
is it over?
@Peter you've already missed it :)
Almost :P
@Ffisegydd I have an AOB2!
grr..
@Jon go for it.
It regards @tristan and @Peter - how about time-keeping? :p
:P
?
AOB3. @DSM did you wanna remove some Salad terms you think are clogging up the lexicon?
For AOB I was going to bring up a "let's avoid clever snarky comments on questions we're about to gong into oblivion" suggestion, but that's already been covered.
what about hv's ... I think sometimes its funny. .. sometimes its annoying?
whats wrong with snarky comments ... its a good day when SO makes coffee come out my nose :P
Snarky/witty comments are okay in chat I think.

♦ Python Trash - The Rotating Knives

Trashed messages from the Python room. If your message was mo...
5
Obviously, we can't make anyone do anything, and so if they do wanna leave snarky comments they can do.
No ... I didn't have a serious AOB2... besides, we've over-run by 40 mins...
@Ffisegydd: naw, me and the other fellows of l'Académie de la Salade will just mutter in the corner.
@Ffisegydd why are we talking about this over and over again, when at the end we always come up with the same conclusion?
I do think some of the newer "words" need to be removed
They're not salad related
@Peter it was basically brought up again to remind people.
@davidism Can we move HVs to the trash and tell them they will get answers there?
@davidism you just don't like "Malevolent Editor For Life"
if this is an issue, we should do something, if we can't (I think that is the case) I think we should avoid it putting back as one of the agenda
@BhargavRao: that doesn't seem productive.
@Ffisegydd I see..
(I'm still reading back)
@BhargavRao no, please leave dealing with vampires to us
hi @PeterVaro
@Ffisegydd I think it's over, want to call it?
Yeah. Meeting over. Go forth and teach Salad to the peoples of the Earth.