The linked article says they already determined "What to do with the “rm -rf” hoax question". What the article is asking is what to do with the fake internet points.
What to do with the “rm -rf” hoax question
51–60 of 71 posts
Re: What to do with the “rm -rf” hoax question
#52It's not a "hoax" in any sense. Just a plain lie. A hoax has to be fairly large-scale and affect a lot of people (negatively). The original question contained no hyper-links at all. (Ironically, one was inserted by subsequent editors). The question is plausible. I once deleted a /lib directory due to a misspelled variable in a script! Recovery consisted of copying libs from another installation of the same OS. Server…
> I once deleted a /lib directory due to a misspelled variable in a script! Ah yes, the old "rm -rf $TEMPBASEEDIR/lib" bug. It is so easy to have that happen. Or like I did, write a script that assumes a certain environment variable is set outside the script... and then forget to set the variable before running it! To prevent these problems, use "set -u" at the top of your bash scripts. This will halt the script inst…
That is a great article. I just strictified the cheeky shell scripts that automate deployment of my current project.
Re: What to do with the “rm -rf” hoax question
#53Apart from the SO moderation question, I'm quite bugged by a bigger one: How the hell this ended up in mainstream media? Can't we just ban every online buzz outlet from talking about programming, hardware or computers until they actually understand what they are talking about? I know what I'm asking is beyond impossible, but I'm really annoyed by the amount of buzz-impinged-naiveté blossoming everywhere each time som…
And then please let's ban them from talking about science and anything science-related too. Exaggerated IT stories are annoying, exaggerated science and scaremongering with "scientists prove X causes cancer!!111" is socially damaging and actually kills people.
It's been known for a long time that X is a dangerous virus that causes cancer. [1]
[1] http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/x-windows/danger...
Re: What to do with the “rm -rf” hoax question
#54If you're curious what the hoax post was (the answers have since been merged onto a different question) -
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:6y3HTYv...
Re: What to do with the “rm -rf” hoax question
#55It's not a "hoax" in any sense. Just a plain lie. A hoax has to be fairly large-scale and affect a lot of people (negatively). The original question contained no hyper-links at all. (Ironically, one was inserted by subsequent editors). The question is plausible. I once deleted a /lib directory due to a misspelled variable in a script! Recovery consisted of copying libs from another installation of the same OS. Server…
I think it has affected a lot of people. hundred of thousands read that question. friends who are not programmers sent me links to that question and asked me to not do the same. people lost their time answering and finding solutions.
it was a hoax. a troll. not very far away from screaming bomb on an train.
Re: What to do with the “rm -rf” hoax question
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an extremely popular narrative that seems to pop up every time a Stack Exchange post geta onto the HN or proggit front page. The problem with this narrative is that it is almost never substantiated. So instead, let me posit an alternative hypothesis, as someone who has gotten his hands dirty on the various Meta sites: The reason most people feel that SE has a moderation problem is because the moderation proce…
I don't think the moderation itself is the problem, it's the rules. There are certain kinds of questions that are interesting and useful, and get shut down. That of course makes people upset. The moderators are perfectly fair and consistent in enforcing the rules, but the rules are stupid.
All rules are arbitrary, though, and if you want to participate in a community you have to abide by the rules. If the rules are stupid enough, anybody can splinter off and say they're starting their own community, especially on the internet!
I mean, look at HN here. I'm on my third account: the first, I have no idea why I got hellbanned; the second, I know exactly why; the third, I don't really care about. But it's interesting to read the stories and ideas I fundamentally disagree with, and occasionally I post something detrimental to my fully participating in this community. Those are the rules.
Re: What to do with the “rm -rf” hoax question
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I came in to work after the break, and everyone was freaking out because all their code was gone. What happened next? This cliffhanger is killing me.
I honestly don't know how they recovered from it all. I think they were able to recover parts of it from some people's workstations, but still had to rewrite an awful lot of their code.
Once again proves, you have to A) look at what your scripts are actually doing and B) test them manually at least couple times somehow, otherwise this is plain unprofessional (in one of the many ways sadly and funnily possible).
Re: What to do with the “rm -rf” hoax question
#58What was the hoax exactly?
This question http://serverfault.com/questions/587102/monday-morning-mista... was posted to server fault. It has since shown to be a marketing tactic ( http://www.repubblica.it/tecnologia/2016/04/15/news/cancella... ). The author did not delete his server, merely claimed to do so to get attention. Server fault community is now indignant about using their community ( which is for answering real questions ) as a decept…
@simula67, that's not the correct question that is the hoax.
Re: What to do with the “rm -rf” hoax question
#59Firstly, let me say I find StackOverflow's trigger-happy attitude as annoying as everyone else. "Not a real programming question" for questions needed to solve programming problems or blocking comparisons ... #fail. Now that I've said that, I do think this hoax question should be closed because one of the principles is that it should be based on real problems people face, which is a good way to keep the signal-to-noi…
its not so much "Not a real programming question", its more "Not able to be answered objectively". Stack Overflow is meant to be a wiki of questions and answers, and like a wiki, it wants to only present facts and not opinions.
if one wants subjective questions and answers, there are other sites in stackexchange for that
Re: What to do with the “rm -rf” hoax question
#60Apart from the SO moderation question, I'm quite bugged by a bigger one: How the hell this ended up in mainstream media? Can't we just ban every online buzz outlet from talking about programming, hardware or computers until they actually understand what they are talking about? I know what I'm asking is beyond impossible, but I'm really annoyed by the amount of buzz-impinged-naiveté blossoming everywhere each time som…
probably because the original guy submitted it to the media