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Last week, a proposal was announced on Meta Stack Exchange to address the growing workload of the CM team, and for them to actually start addressing community requests and feedback again: Our Commitment to Responding to Meta and Moderators.

Long story short, if something requires review by a CM, we should tag it and they will get to it when they can. This new system is set to start soon, following a short trial period beginning March 16.

I thought it might be a good idea for us to review some of our old and , to see if there's any that we should bring to SE's attention. Note this is not a guarantee that these bugs or requests will be approved, or handled in the way we want (in fact I'm pretty sure some below will be flatly denied) - but bringing them forward for CM input will at least provide a way to get some closure.

What we need from you

Pick one of the following posts (or perhaps even a different one we missed) and post it as an answer with your reasons for wanting it addressed. One question per post please, votes on these answers will be used to decide what our priorities are. (Of course if the one you want addressed is already posted, upvote it instead). At the end of this process, we will pick the top 5 and add the tag to them:

Feature Requests

Bugs

Migration Path Requests

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  • 1
    How large is the pool of 'users' having site modification privileges, anyway? Is it only direct employees of Stack Exchange, Inc.? Can't we have a dedicated back-end developer, for example, or one shared with a few sister-pages? Some of these bugs and requests are more than five years old, and never have seem to garnered any attention.
    – Joachim
    Commented Mar 15, 2020 at 16:29
  • 1
    @Joachim I don't have exact numbers but my understanding is that both the CM and Dev teams are fairly small, and are swamped as far as I am aware. This exercise in itself is an attempt to prioritise, organise and reduce their workload as much as possible.
    – Robotnik Mod
    Commented Mar 15, 2020 at 22:42
  • I addressed the meta header issue there. I think the changing of the graphics will be easy and swift.
    – Joachim
    Commented Mar 16, 2020 at 18:53
  • Is the sprite sheet mentioned in this post still available, or has it been replaced by multiple other ones, or different methods?
    – Joachim
    Commented Mar 25, 2020 at 10:31
  • @Joachim I imagine the sprite sheet referenced in that question is long gone - but that doesn't mean there isn't a newer one in use for the site. Although, given the SE theming rollout it's likely the site doesn't use a site-specific sprite sheet any more.
    – Robotnik Mod
    Commented Mar 25, 2020 at 13:04

4 Answers 4

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as of 7th Dec, 2020. Announced on Meta Stack Exchange.

Markdown support for tables

I'd personally like to see a neater way of handling tables. Our current workaround is to use <pre> tags* to render the table in the preformatted format (example).

Some sites have access to the MathJax extension, and can use it's table formatting. Here's an example from RPG.SE:

Table in RPG SE

But, MathJax markdown is clunky - and enabling the entire library for tables (and maybe the occasional equation) would be overkill for our use case. MathJax is primarily built to be a formatting library for scientific/math purposes, that just so happens to support rendering tables because that's a common use case in the math world.

So if SE is going to do this, they should do it right. Rather than enabling MathJax here, SE should add markdown support for tables in the manner described by the Markdown Extended Syntax:

Markdown extended syntax example

* This is visually the same as code blocks, but code blocks insert both <pre> and <code> HTML tags, so they are semantically different.

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  • We could probably use MathJax, if we're being perfectly honest. It's not exactly rare to find a question or an answer discussing a game's formulae.
    – Wrigglenite
    Commented Mar 25, 2020 at 9:29
  • @Wrigglenite I mean, we could, but our use case for MathJax is a lot less than other sites. A lot of formulas that are linked here are either simple enough that code formatting solves the case, or if they are complex (like, the Pokeball catch/shake mechanics), a screenshot usually suffices for our needs. It's not often we need to write, tweak and maintain large formulas.
    – Robotnik Mod
    Commented Mar 25, 2020 at 13:07
  • Screenshots are not exactly accessible to everyone, so I'm all for improving that where we can.
    – Wrigglenite
    Commented Mar 25, 2020 at 13:08
  • @Wrigglenite True. Perhaps we could use MathJax then - but I'd still prefer a nicer way of doing tables than using MathJax as it is quite a heavy plugin. Perhaps consider writing an answer for this request?
    – Robotnik Mod
    Commented Mar 25, 2020 at 23:44
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- The Photo widget is now live on Arqade

Photo widget

From the thread: Do we want to enable the photo widget for our site?

Advantages (partially and shamelessly taken from that thread):

  • It adds visual interest to the main page.
  • It adds a sense of community to the website as well as the network.
  • It will add an increase participation in the website's possibilities.
  • It will lead more users to the Meta counterpart of Arqade.
  • It shouldn't bother users that aren't interested.
  • It opens up a slot in the 'Featured on Meta' widget.
  • I reckon it's not hard to implement, since it's a dedicated <div> with class="s-sidebarwidget mb16 photo-of-the-week", presumably with dynamic content based on upvotes of threads with a specific title - my point being that it won't be hard to maintain.

Here's a mockup, made by copying the <div> from Photo.SE to Arqade, and using the last 'Screenshot of the Week' winner (showing, by the way, that the aspect ratio is neatly maintained):

Photo widget mockup

And, to address Booga Roo's concern: it seems the widget supports APNG files (I copied an APNG link from Imgur to the widget, and it works perfectly fine. GIF doesn't, though..).

Disadvantages:

  • It does not (yet) seem to support (animated) GIFs.
  • It might get boring to see the same screenshot week after week. 3 This means a script of rotation might have to be implemented, and linked to other threads (shuffling, for example, through the current contest, and showing the winner(s) of the last thread(s)).
  • The only other sounds of protest had nothing to do with the widget itself, but with the longevity of the 'Screenshot of the Week' feature, which I think should be a concern for later, and, all the same, I'm sure we will find ways to make interesting use of the widget.
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  • I realize this shouldn't be a priority, since there are years-old bugs that really need attention, but it was the first on the list, and I felt like giving it a go to get the posting started :)
    – Joachim
    Commented Mar 15, 2020 at 16:30
  • The same screenshot for weeks? What? If it's a weekly screenshot contest, how will that happen?
    – Corsaka
    Commented Mar 17, 2020 at 9:09
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    @Corsaka Currently the contest accepts entries for a week, then it accepts voting for another week to give all entries a fair chance. So, a winning entry may be up for a couple of weeks if only winners of the previous "week" are featured.
    – Booga Roo
    Commented Mar 17, 2020 at 10:21
  • @Corsaka What Booga Roo said ↑
    – Joachim
    Commented Mar 17, 2020 at 12:24
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Update: This has been marked by a CM - likely following the (re)addition of underlines to link text

Visited hyperlinks are hard to distinguish against plain text

Accessibility bugs are important, plus this one is (as far as I am aware) site specific unlike some of the others.

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Update: This is now !

Arqade Meta should say 'Meta' in the header

Community member Joachim has stepped up and done an excellent job with the design already, so this should be an easy one to knock off.

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