How to migrate from EL&U to ELL

They should know what the ELL close reasons are, for one thing.

terdon

1. Define good questions using the network-wide quality standards. Don't migrate crap.

2. Clarify that ELL is not the dumping ground of ELU.

3. Explain the site's scope.

4. Don't migrate crap.

> The best questions are those that have specific answers; ELL is not a general discussion forum. In general, ask here if you have a question which covers:

Word choice and usage
Grammar
Dialect differences
Spelling and punctuation
Practical problems you encounter while learning English
This is not the right site for questions about:

Etymology, evolution of the English language, or historical English - see english.stackexchange.com instead.
Writing advice - see writers.stackexchange.com instead.

If you just need to run something past a native speaker, make sure it isn't proofreading or asking "is this correct?" yes/no questions.

someone came and went! who'd I miss?

Do we care about fixing tags? I guess that has to happen on the receiving end.

2:10 PM

yeah. where there is no overlap, tags disappear. fixing tags on our end can't hurt, though

Often the ELL tags have different names than ours for the same thing.

Q: Should we have an official ELL -> ELU migration path?

Related-ish - the corollary discussion:

6

As a follow-up to Should we begin migrating questions to ELU?, (and counterpart to http://meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/7128/should-we-have-a-migration-path-to-ell). Now that ELL is a full-fledged non-beta site, we're allowed to establish official migration paths to other network sit...

We should all keep an eye on the migrants to help keep them in good shape if possible.

These two points (mentioned above) are the most important ones, IMHO:

> Writing advice - see writers.stackexchange.com instead.
Questions that can be answered by a quick dictionary lookup (these are off topic on ELL, and there are many free dictionaries available online)

I am somewhat concerned about this:

I mean, 10% rejected isn't necessarily bad, but that's where moderator intervention is required.

2:12 PM

10% is really quite good, actually.

Look at SO.

SO stats are rarely comparable to other sites, aren't they?

@tchrist Good for a start.

I think SO -> Prog.SE is a good analogy

@MattE.Эллен They've fought so hard to clarify that.

2:15 PM

good work :D

2

Some SO'ers thought programmers is their dumpster.

Just like how some ELU'ers think that way.

Hi.

\o

Let's make sure to have positive directions not just negative ones.

2:16 PM

yes

:o That's so hard.

Hmm.

I'm not opposed to opening the pipe. It should run both ways.

Historically there aren't many ELL->ELU migs.

That makes sense

2:20 PM

But I agree.

@tchrist I think proofreading and GR might be the most likely questions to be mis-migrated to ELL.

Basically, we'd have less mod review of the migrations. I'm OK with that.

Well, you're doing about one migration a day.

Has anyone pinged JR yet?

It would be good to know how many flags for migration to ELL are rejected.

Let me see if we have that.

2:21 PM

@tchrist I have

@tchrist No. Because mere mortals can't ping him.

I haven't super pinged him, though

I mean yes.

Should you just ping them in TL and point them here?

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M you can invite anyone to a room :)

2:21 PM

You should say:

@J.R. We're talking about you. :)

Done.

ELL mods: COME TO THIS CHATROOM OR I'LL . . .

...trail off menacingly!

Maybe even in a more interesting way.

Other mods or no?

2:22 PM

yes, I'll invite wendikidd and... Malik, is it?

MaulikV

Much as I hate to say it,

I won't say what I was gonna say.

@MaulikV @WendiKidd you are being talked about

Done.

*backbit

We're looking for positives here.

2:24 PM

+

^ I found one.

Well, it would save a lot of moderator intervention

I wonder whether the migrate selection should have some do&don't text next to it?

You'd probably pipe some other closes to ELL that would otherwise be off-topic.

I can't remember how to look at flag summaries. Maybe we can't?

@tchrist Can it?

2:25 PM

So, what does an ELL question look like? What are its key characteristics?
- Written in English
- ...

about learning English.

@KitZ.Fox Which kind?

@KitZ.Fox Well.

Not necessarily.

@tchrist It won't.

@tchrist I was wondering if we can see how many flags are declined or dismissed by reason.

I guess flag for migration is custom anyway.

I dismissed a lot of those early on.

They got better though...or maybe Andrew and Matt got to them first.

2:26 PM

ELLers: what types of questions do you get?

Which is more likely.

Yeah, it's a custom flag so I dunno.

@MattE.Эллен ELL questions. What do ye mean?

@MattE.Эллен ell.stackexchange.com/questions/greatest-hits

@tchrist See?

2:27 PM

shrugs and questions like those, I guess.

If they were bored, I bet a CM could run a query on the custom flags and get some data, but I wouldn't want to ask unless it were important.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Saw.

@tchrist Kill.

@jimsug Huh. Looks like EL&U.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I guess if you had to say "most of our questions fall into these categories, some of which overlap", what would those categories be?

ELL people, please describe what goes into making a good ELL question.

2:29 PM

Reading comprehension.

Preferably in a way that distinguishes it from ELU.

Y NO ARITCLEZ?

@KitZ.Fox Those are just the greatest hits, though. Most of our questions are...

^ yeah, that.

Y ARTICLEZ?

@jimsug We have canonical questions for that.

2:29 PM

And these are our good ones. :P

Tense stuff.

Q: The difference between using a comma or a full stop

Would we keep something like this?

0

What's the difference between "I see, I see" and "I see. I see"? Can one use a comma in between? The first sentence could be used in formal writing, right? What about this one: "My house, my rules" instead of "My house. My rules"? What's the difference between these two sentences and are both g...

meaning comma sentence expression-choice

> What is the difference between "I'm killing him" and "I killed him"?

@jimsug Um.

I'm not sure even a language learner would ask that. O.o

ELU receives infinitely many questions about tenses that are not interesting to native speakers or to linguists.

I'm just trawling through questions with on ELL/English Language Learners in comments.

@MattE.Эллен I would say that, imho, the best questions are about learning English (usually as a second language) in a sensible way.

2:32 PM

In the guidelines Matt's putting together, to counter the buzzkill of stuff we'll say is bad anywhere, point out the two chat rooms as an alternative.

That's a good plan.

Well, chat is meant to be more or less on topic, but I wouldn't object to seeing more foot traffic in chat.

People on ELL hate chats for a reason.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Which is?

Which which is?

2:33 PM

We regularly advise ELU offtopickers to come to chat instead.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M ELL users who don't use chat don't hate it, I believe. They just simply don't use it.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M What reason is it that you think ELLers hate chat cuzza?

@tchrist No sites I visit semi-oftenly have ads for chat.

While on ELL we had to build one.

I didn't say an ad.

It's not hatred, prolly, but shyness.

2:34 PM

In the migration guidelines.

So you need friendlier chat?

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Or "busy"-ness.

> OH NO MFG i HAZ NO GOOOD ENGIHS SKILLZ.

@DamkerngT. I'm not saying they should live in chat. :P

I don't know what criteria CMs use for whether a migration path is working.

Nom nom candy, anyone?

2:36 PM

On topic, por favor.

Has a migration path ever been removed?

@tchrist I thought it was boiling down to reject percentage?

@jimsug Not sure, but they say they're open to do so.

You have to look more closely than that. Dupes shouldn't count.

Dupes don't count.

They don't reject.

@jimsug the one from SO to Prog.se was removed for a while

in fact, it still is closed

2:38 PM

Maybe under 25% is good, 25-50% needs active intervention to improve, and over 50% is yankbait.

Or maybe it's <15, 15-30, 30+. Dunno.

Off the top of my head, the main characteristic of a good ELL question is about "a real problem" a learner faces in their real life; be it in their work, in their studies, or in their exams.

2

@tchrist It's more like this one.

Usually, it'd be around something like, "I want to say this, but I don't know how", or "I read this, but I don't understand", or "I want to write this in perfect English, but I'm not sure about my grammar".

@DamkerngT. Yeah, we also get many "how can I say?" stuff.

Have we got any examples of questions that are very similar, but one is better suited for ELL and the other for ELU? A minimal pair, as it were?

2:40 PM

It's kinda like ELU's SWRs.

@jimsug Not sure, but we had a question which would've been better for both, and would've received different answers on both.

Mm, that's true.

If we want this to work, we need to be available to help it along.

Well, the extra work will mainly be on the receiving end.

We have a healthy number of reviewers, for now.

"Work" means intervention to improve the questions and if needed to gently guide would-be migrators.

@tchrist Well, my first statement still applies.

Or... I don't know, is the custom to clean up questions before or after migration?

I think I've seen it both ways.

2:48 PM

clean up a question before you send it over

that's just good manners

Well, in that case... the reverse, I suppose.

I have one question about something I've noticed in some migrations. I'm not sure if the comments we post on ELL after the migration will notify the OP who isn't an ELL user.

I think they get supercollided into the inbox.

@MattE.Эллен It is, and everyone here now would do that even if the rest of you aren't quite as OCD on editing as I am, but I don't know that that is necessarily what the general closers will think about.

I mean, if the system won't notify the OP, maybe we should try to clarify the question with the OP before migrating it.

2:50 PM

@jimsug do you know the feelings at ELL about EL&Uers being able to send stuff your way?

or any other of you ELLers

A: Should we have a migration path to ELL?

Personally, I don't mind too much, but don't take my opinions as representative - I'm a reviewer most days, and don't post excessively as I have Law to take care of these days, too.

There's this post on your thread:

5

As a regular user of ELL I would request that migrations to ELL continue to be handled by the moderators of ELU. SE is, in general, very reluctant to create migration paths because they tend to be abused. When should we consider adding a default migration path? Almost never. Trut...

That's a safe viewpoint, given that "very reluctant to create migration paths because they tend to be abused" seems to be the general CM perspective.

@MattE.Эллен I don't have any particular feeling about users, but I usually wish to see a question migrated in a better shape. (I don't mean that most of them are not in a good shape, just some of them.)

Maybe we should ask on metaELL about the pathway, before we get ahead of ourselves

@MattE.Эллен Seems like a good idea.

2:54 PM

Other than the one above you mean?

That's an EL&U meta question.

what one above? I thought that was about ELL -> EL&U?

Oh I see.

Oh, the other above one. That's... yeah, ELL>EL&U

At the risk of sounding like a subversive marketeer, having a bidirectional path is going to look better.

2:56 PM

:D

But we migrated one question in the last quarter to EL&U

One.

Q: Preparing for ELU to start migrating questions to ELL

12

As ELL has matured over the past hundred or so days, I think we're now reaching a point where ELL is big enough, mature enough, and has enough dedicated high quality answerers that the biggest impediment to growth is the number of ELL-style questions on ELU being consistently answered on ELU rath...

discussion

Doesn't really make a good case for setting up the return migration path.

maybe this shows consensus that ELL is happy about the idea?

It's so hard to get people involved in meta.

2:58 PM

well, holding an election helps that.

In other news, ELL dropped from 98% answered to 97% answered just before the election.

That was two years ago, though.

@jimsug true

A: Notify author of a posts migration in the inbox, audit trail for migrated posts

Ah, here it is

3

status-completed sort of. We're not putting notices into the inbox of migration, but if a migrated post gains a new comment (or answer, if its a question) then a notice will still go into your inbox; with proper links and all that. This will go out with our next deployment.

> if a migrated post gains a new comment (or answer, if its a question) then a notice will still go into your inbox; with proper links and all that.

I think you asked about this @dam

Yes! Thanks!

3:01 PM

@FumbleFingers If you’re around, you might want to drop in. Thanks.

If it only one post migrated per day, then there should be absolutely no trouble making sure it it’s been groomed. Heck, even if it’s ten. The change would be that it’s async migrations by the zillions of 3kers instead of synchronous ones by mods who know to do the grooming.

@tchrist You have ~300 with the rep to closevote.

But that is not the number of active close-voters, just the potential pool. Very different figures there.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

rather than zillions of 3kers :P

But your point is understood.

Now, what about the other way?

How many in the potential pool?

In the ELL --> ELU direction?

3:07 PM

400 now, 70 post-elevated thresholds.

ish

I think we shouldn't have a migration path from ELL --> ELU, at least for now.

I was just trying to make it seem fairer.

But the pre-elevation numbers are high.

nods

I detect a drop in quantum energy levels.

I’m going to drop into the background and do actual $work.

Oh, @snailboat! So pretty!

Q: Whould you like some of EL&Us questions?

3:20 PM

0

A couple of years ago this meta talked about taking question from EL&U: Preparing for ELU to start migrating questions to ELL There has been more than one occasion at EL&U where their community has wanted to be able to send questions here. The topic has been revisited recently, as ELL came out ...

discussion migration

You gonna fix that typo?

I may have a bad understanding of the migration system, but what I understand is that the ELU mods often "delete" questions that get migrated to ELL so that if they're rejected, they can't be repaired on either site... is it possible to stop this practice (at least for user-migrated questions)? My understanding is that this deleting of the question is not required...

That's standard, automated.

It leaves questions in limbo, though...

If a migration is rejected, the question is deleted.

So you shouldn't vote to migrate unless you think your site should not have the question.

3:24 PM

Then maybe the practice needs to be changed on a Meta.SE level... realistically, if ELL puts a question on hold, it's because it needs detail, not necessarily because it is off topic but the system views any close reason as a rejected migration.

@KitZ.Fox Which is why my point in my answer on the ELU question about this is that it's much better policy to only close the question and tell the user to ask it themselves on ELL than to migrate "borderline" questions.

@KitZ.Fox lol

@MattE.Эллен better. you probably want an apostrophe there too though.

yeah, I just noticed...

[I'm around, but I'm at work on the day job :( ]

(same)

3:27 PM

@AndrewLeach fair enough :)

Wait, migrations delete questions... is that actually right?>

@jimsug Yes.

After a month IIRC

Not right away.

@tchrist But it's deleted from the original site.

The placeholder sticks aorund.

@Catija No, it's locked.

The deletion is much later.

3:28 PM

Yeah, that's what I thought.

SE really never wants the same question going on more than one site.

I have a few migrations where the stub is still active.

@tchrist But locked might as well be deleted. If the migration is rejected, it's not as if it unlocks it on the original site.

@jimsug any closed question with 0 or less total votes and no answers will be deleted by community (I think it's 0 or less)

@Catija Yes, it does.

3:29 PM

after like two weeks or something

Well.

Roomba works a bit different.

The point is that the original sticks around, locked, long enough to see if the migration worked.

If it fails, it unlocks.

The nine-day Roomba only affects closed questions without an accepted answer where no post is over 0 and the question has no more than one comment.

A: Enable automatic deletion of old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?

204

Just to formally document the exact policies we have in place to remove old abandoned / dead questions, the Community user will delete questions in the following circumstances: If the question is more than 30 days old, and ... has −1 or lower score has no answers is not locked ...or... it ...

That's the annual Roomba.

it's also the monthly one

ah

3:32 PM

If the question was closed more than 9 days ago, and ...

not closed as a duplicate
has a score of 0 or less
is not locked
has no answers with a score > 0
has no accepted answer
has no pending reopen votes
has not been edited in the past 9 days

... it will be automatically deleted. These are "abandoned closed".

I assume that doesn't exclude migrated questions

but maybe it does

Look at the pinkies here

Looks like the 30-day Roomba gets most of them.

The 9-day one might be picking off a few, but certainly not all.

You can find a rejection here: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/59942/…

aye. it has upvoted answers, so won't ever be deleted

Well, not by Roomba.

:D

The migrate/lock/reject/unlock/delete mechanics are going to be fine.

Sometimes I really wish there were a convert comment to answer button.

3:42 PM

Perhaps I could throw in that while closing a migrated question rejects the migration, it is possible to accept that the question is correctly migrated and remove the migration history. That stops it being thrown back unceremoniously, makes it possible to improve a correctly-sited question, and also allows more migration if that proves to be necessary.

You mean incorrectly migrated?

No, a migrated question. A migration might be correct, but still put on hold awaiting more details to resolve an ambiguity. That put-on-hold will reject the migration. That can be averted.

Q: When to use " had" in sentence?

@AndrewLeach If that's possible, then perhaps ELL mods need to have that explained to them? I don't think I've ever seen that done on ELL.

For example, this question could be fine on ELL if there was more detail given:

1

like what congress had done when it was in power. I guess 'had' is used to describe things which are already done. But here I guess there is a confusion as congress first got power then they performed so according to me sentence should be like " like what congress did when it had been in power. C...

word-usage

It is possible but would necessitate a custom flag.

That question is still on ELL.

Actually, I don't remember any ELU->ELL migration which has come back because it was closed on ELL.

Q: When to use " had" in sentence?

3:49 PM

1

like what congress had done when it was in power. I guess 'had' is used to describe things which are already done. But here I guess there is a confusion as congress first got power then they performed so according to me sentence should be like " like what congress did when it had been in power. C...

word-usage

@AndrewLeach Somehow I managed to pick a bad example... but most questions I've looked at that are closed are clearly marked "Migration rejected".

ELL bounced this back.

You have to go through all the migrations and look for those marked closed not migrated.

@tchrist :D I was just looking at that one.

It's just not very common.

On ELU, we close "Is this correct?" or "Which one is correct?" questions as proofreading.

Q: Which is correct, "I miss you", or "miss you"?

@tchrist Well... according to your data, it happens... 10% of the time? Or do you mean questions that simply need more info that shouldn't be off topic?

0

Which is correct, "I miss you", or "miss you"? Or can they both be correct?

grammaticality british-english

For us, that would not be proofreading... but the OP never even came to ELL to create an account after the question was migrated, so they can't improve it.

@Catija Yes, 10%.

3:58 PM

The percentage was higher a month ago, though...

@Catija It’s very open-ended. We don't know what they don't know. It's also a silly British tag.

@tchrist Well... that's from your end, right? That's why we asked for more info... but can you explain why such a non-detailed question would have been migrated in the first place? If that question appeared today, would you migrate it?

@Catija You’ll have to ask the migrator. :)

@tchrist I don't have a way to see that information...

Well, now that makes things harder.

@MattE.Эллен We’re talking about you, very nicely.

You really need to be able to see deleted posts on both sites for full due diligence. Everybody go upvote two of Matt's posts. :)

4:03 PM

That was an interesting close, really. :-)

> Which one is correct “I do have brochure” or “ I have brochure”? [closed]

I came to heard about this sentence and I want to know which one is correct:
"I do have brochure" or " I have brochure"

If I think about the question, "I came to heard about this sentence" implies that they've heard it somewhere, but it's unclear which version they heard.

(That could be a hint that it's probably not the real sentence they actually heard.)

@tchrist HA HA.

So, the way they phrase their question: "Which one is correct?" would likely make many users think of the question as a proofreading request.

It could be salvaged, though, imho. Just phrase it differently.

(Something like: What is the difference between "I do have brochure" or "I have brochure"?)

(and then, it would get closed as a duplicate. :P)

@Catija someone flagged it for migration, and I decided they knew what they were talking about. My mistake