Japanese Language

Troyen

12:04 AM

yikes, someone made jkerian a moderator!

congratulations though

jkerian

thanks much... it's funny how much I miss the ability to just 'vote to close' :/

Troyen

134

Q: Add a way for moderators to cast a normal, non binding vote

I think moderators should have the ability to cast a normal, non binding vote like if they were a normal user (while of course retaining their ability to cast a binding vote where necessary). This can be used in "grey areas" where a moderator can choose to give his or her opinion but not make a ...

jkerian

I was tempted to close the ようで question earlier today, but I think it's been reformed into a question that is okay

Troyen

Dono helped a bit with that.

I thought I understood what the question was (and ended up being right, I guess?), but if I'm not 100% sure I try to hold off on large-scale editing.

jkerian

I had started a large-scale edit... but held off due to getting distracted by work

Troyen

12:17 AM

It's weird not having to have my edits get approved any more

jkerian

If it's a choice between "vote to close" or "rewrite the question", always lean to the latter :)

Troyen

I usually avoid casting the first close vote just in case I misunderstood something, unless it's obviously wrong.

Hey, now that you have the mod dashboard, are you able to pull up the results of the community evaluation?

Or is that only visible during the actual evaluation?

jkerian

Hmm... I'm still floundering my way around the new controls... let me look

Troyen

it's probably hidden next to the "delete all content on the site" button

Anonymous

I still don't really know how to use the "moderation tools" that are available to non-moderators

Troyen

12:28 AM

@jkerian You could ask in the Teacher's Lounge, since it was a number of other mods that originally talked about viewing the results.

Troyen

12:46 AM

I was worried that some of our not-so-great questions would be on the popular question list, but it doesn't seem that way. Most of the ones I've randomly sampled have decent formatting and spelling in the question and answer.

Some of the ones on that list are closed, but that's a different problem.

jkerian

Ahh, Shog pointed me at the list (still no idea how you find it from the main control panel). It's a bit tricky to post, since I can't just copy and paste. Someone else linked me a script to "nicely" post it to meta, I'll look into that as soon as I get back (off for a meeting right now)

jkerian

4:22 AM

0

Q: Results of the Site Eval

A few people have asked for the results of the recent "Site Eval" that was conducted through the new review(http://japanese.stackexchange.com/review) during the week of Feb 2 - Feb 9. For some reason they're only available to mods at the moment, but a moderator from another site gave me a small ...

discussion quality-evaluation

jkerian

4:49 AM

@Dave: hey, was wondering if I should edit in links to at least the "Don't do this here" meta question on the site FAQ

Troyen

5:40 AM

I'm a little worried about that question. The "what stack overflow is not" question spawned a few fights and had to be deleted by the SE dev team.

jkerian

hmm?

Troyen

MSO had a question to define what was out of topic for SO way before we created ours.

And eventually it got deleted by shog or jeff atwood because it was "too negative" or people were just posting links to that topic and nothing else when something was out of scope

We don't have that problem now, but I worry if we start relying more on "What JLU is not", we might end up in a similar situation

jkerian

Yeah... we have a relatively focused FAQ entry for that already though

8

Q: What questions are not allowed on Japanese Language and Usage?

Most of the questions that we have downvoted and closed as off-topic on JLU since the start of beta have been in one (or more) of the following categories. No Resource Questions No Study-method Questions No Direct Translations No Tech Support Questions No Purely Cultural Questions No Questions ...

discussion faq allowed-questions

Anonymous

Oh, the question about marking pitch accent is tagged faq

jkerian

6 months without any real issues so far

I'm just saying we should add it to here: japanese.stackexchange.com/faq

Troyen

5:44 AM

I know, I'm just saying, the SO equivalent of that question got closed and deleted by the SE dev team.

jkerian

Slightly different environment there, though

Troyen

true

jkerian

I wrote up that thing because there was no indication on the site, anywhere... that "Resource" questions were going to get closed

But we were closing them... and that just seemed silly

And that one is pretty contentious

Troyen

I changed my opinion on that one since our initial vote

jkerian

I have too... I just haven't decided what I've changed it to :)

Troyen

5:49 AM

now that I know SO also covers questions about programming tools, I feel like we could apply the same standard here - questions about language resources, if specific, could be ok

jkerian

That was my proposal... but I hope people realize how much heat is going to come out of that decision

Troyen

of course, most of our resource questions don't fit that category, "what is a good kanji dictionary" I don't think makes the cut

jkerian

There are going to be fairly loud disagreements

I'm currently exercising restraint with my newfound powers. The temptation to go back and force some of those is fairly strong. I'll probably let them lie unless they become an issue though

Troyen

but wasn't there a question asking about skip code classification? I've seen a few kanji that aren't counted quite the way I expected (like 1-3-7 instead of 1-4-6, despite having the same "4" pattern as some other 1-4-x) - that is on topic, I think

I think Dave struggled with that too when he was starting out. Dave vs Dave M.G. These days I think he waits until 3-4 other people vote just to show it's not a unilateral decision, even if he wants to close up front.

jkerian

That one might be on-topic regardless. Since skip code works based on stroke-counts and radicals, the question would be "I'm sure this kanji has X strokes/this radical, but SKIP code is Y... what am I looking at wrong"

@Troyen I think in the particular case you're remembering, though... it's a bug in kanjidict, so any free tool that uses EDICT/kanjidic (+t?) sees it

Troyen

5:53 AM

A ...bug? I thought that book was compiled manually.

I have the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary, which is the smaller version of an official printed dictionary using SKIP.

jkerian

The origin of the SKIP codes is, but most people interact with them through software using kanjidic, which has "[P] the "SKIP" coding of the kanji, as used in Halpern;"

IIRC, the question on the site (or maybe it was on the meta?) was resolved as "that's a bug in kanjidic"

Troyen

yeah, but I've seen some out of place in the paper dictionary - so it's a mistake in the database they used to print it?

9

A: Is 胡 missplaced in the Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary?

Well, this is the first time I've heard of SKIP. But according to this wiki article, I think it is a mistake. 古 has 5 strokes and 月 has 4, so the SKIP for 胡 should be 1-5-4. The stroke order listed in the link given by jkerian in the comment can also confirm this.

(hey, the new search was actually helpful!)

jkerian

huh... I remember that. And remember disagreeing with closing it

Anonymous

I'm not sure that's true. I could be wrong, but I remember Jim Breen saying SKIP code was a rather unpopular way of looking up characters

Troyen

I wonder if a future edition will correct it, or if it has to be left broken for "backwards compatibility' reasons

Anonymous

5:58 AM

I imagine most people who use it ARE using the KLD or its older brother

Anonymous

I mean, a rather unpopular way of looking up characters in WWWJDIC

Anonymous

IIRC, which I might not, he said everyone went straight for the "multi-radical" lookup

Troyen

in WWWJDIC I have to resort to the multi-radical kanji lookup and guess the stroke order (or approximate range), can you even look up by skip code there?

Anonymous

You sure can.

Troyen

I get some of the radicals wrong sometimes, especially the really similar ones like 土 vs 士

Anonymous

6:00 AM

There are also errors in kanjidic's classification

Anonymous

(Since there are no strict guidelines, as kanjidic disregards the traditional definition of radical, I am using "error" here in the sense of "unexpected inconsistencies within kanjidic")

Anonymous

I remember finding an example when I looked up all the kanji containing 喬

Anonymous

(橋・蕎・僑など）

Anonymous

So sometimes it pays to try two different things in the multi-radical selection.

Troyen

if only the creators of kanji knew that one day, their careful work that looks nice in calligraphy would be reduced to a small blur in an 8pt font...

Anonymous

6:04 AM

Ha

Anonymous

Unicode also has IDS (Ideographic Description Sequences) for character decomposition

Troyen

I think the most surprising part about the evaluation is how few accessible resources there were in English for most of those topics

Or, if there were any, they were drowned out by a billion links to unrelated stuff (like that anime that started with とある)

I'm sure something better has to be out there for most cases, but it can be hard to find if you don't know the magic phrase

Of course, I'm not happy about our main tags. I saw a lot of "newest 'words' questions" from search aggregators.

Surely there's a better classification than "words".

jkerian

Our tags are an absolute mess. But I'm not sure if there's a solution out there.

Anonymous

I'm kind of afraid to retag stuff.

Anonymous

If I edit tags, it bumps questions to the top of the active list

Anonymous

6:11 AM

And that seems to take attention away from the recent questions

Troyen

at this point it'd have to be a community "call to arms" and get everyone on board

it can be done, as long as it's trickled out over a period of time

some of the other sites limit you to say 10 retags (total) a day to avoid too much flooding

Anonymous

Like for example, I think there's a misspelled auxiliary-verbs tag

Troyen

mods can also silently wipe out really bad tags without bumping, but that should be done rarely

Anonymous

What to do? "Auxiliary verbs" is a misleading description, but people use it...

Troyen

if a tag is misspelled, make sure the correct spelling tag exists and have a mod set up a synonym

jkerian

6:13 AM

@snailplane I'm slightly harsher on tags than you... I don't understand the point of a "auxiliary-verbs" tag

Troyen

but I recall a bunch of "our tags suck, but we don't know what a better system would be" last time it was asked

jkerian

I really don't get it... are people actually going to follow it? block it? what point does it serve?

Troyen

the ones that really annoy me are "words", "word-choice" vs "usage", "translation" vs "meaning", and the popular generic ones

I think ELU could serve as a useful model. They did a massive tag restructuring a couple years ago and seem to have a system that works.

jkerian

of course... I think that would stick us with "translation" and "meaning" :)

Troyen

I'd kill meaning personally and keep translation

Anonymous

6:16 AM

Well, auxiliary-verbs belongs to an entire category of tag you could say is unhelpful, then? I mean, whether it's the right term or not aside

Troyen

I'm torn on "particles" vs "particle-に" - the latter isn't something people would follow, but I still think is a useful distinction

Anonymous

Translation and meaning are different, I think. I don't think anyone respects that difference when choosing tags, so the distinction isn't useful

Troyen

whereas the former would be something to follow

jkerian

@Troyen but why would we want to distinguish them?

Troyen

translation encompasses meaning, I think

Anonymous

6:18 AM

As a user of the site, I think following tags is basically useless, but using tags to find information on a particle is useful because you can't just search for "particle に"

Troyen

what snailplane said

jkerian

@snailplane but if you experiment with that, you'll find it's just as good without the tags

(actually slightly better, since the tags are inconsistantly applied)

Troyen

well, you can actually search for "particle に" now with the new search, but the tag is more reliable

Anonymous

I'm stuck on a quite old computer with a browser that crashes when you ping me, by the way. (The power outage here just fried my usual computer's power supply.)

Anonymous

Fun times.

Troyen

6:20 AM

@snailplane That's unfortunate

jkerian

There are a few tags that people would actually follow: "slang"/"anime-japanese", "old japanese"... but most of them... not so much

@Troyen lol... you bastard :P

Troyen

I couldn't resist :(

jkerian

For all of the other tags, we're basically playing 'game the search engine' silliness

Troyen

well, particles usually implies an easy question, so may be worth following ;)

I noticed seven people follow...I think it's translation

jkerian

translation is, basically, a metatag... but if we were going to have it... we really want two of them "j->e" and "e->j"

Troyen

6:23 AM

I read it as "translation request", which isn't quite a meta-tag

jkerian

"what does this mean?" vs "how do I say?"

I need to stop thinking about this in abstract... looking at the front page, what would be reasonable tags?

Anonymous

The reason I said translation and meaning are distinct: translation is about two languages, source and destination, while meaning is about being able to explain what the source means

Anonymous

Though again, I don't think it's a useful distinction for tags

Anonymous

since I don't think anyone will actually respect the distinction

jkerian

"Why is this sentence grammatically incorrect"... well... that title just needs fixing...

3

Q: Question on expressing a half-completed action -- 動作が中途である状態

手紙を書きかけたんですが、まだ書いていません。 I got started on the letter, but I haven't finished writing it yet. The ending かける indicates that an action has been started but has not been brought to a finish or an end. However in this example I am puzzled by the second half of the sentence. If I break it do...

grammar

What should that be tagged? do you think?

Troyen

6:29 AM

But snailplane, meaning is generally used on the site to ask "what does this Japanese word mean in English"

We rarely get answers going from J->J and E-> is off-topic

so in the context of our site, translation covers it

It looks like a grammar question, when skimming it

jkerian

Yeah... but is there a better choice of tag?

Troyen

Does there need to be?

jkerian

perhaps... "grammar" is useless from both a search engine and a follow/ignore perspective

Troyen

I'm actually fine with the "grammar" tag because it does have a purpose, even if it is broad

It's a grammar question, so it describes what the question is about

And not quite so useless from a search engine perspective, not super-great, but not useless

Anonymous

I'm not coming up with any helpful answers for you guys.

Troyen

6:36 AM

I mean, I don't see a more specific topic except something related to verb conjugation, but I don't know if that level of detail is necessary

Anonymous

My thoughts on grammar: "people use the word 'grammar' to mean just about everything about language. It's pretty broad even when used properly"

Anonymous

More generally, I don't think people can be relied on to distinguish syntax, grammar, etc

Troyen

ELU doesn't have "grammar" on every question, see: english.stackexchange.com/tags/grammar/info

And most translation questions, for example, aren't also tagged grammar - nor should they be

Just because "grammar" is vague doesn't mean how we apply the tag has to be loosely defined. If the community can come up with a set of rules on when to apply it versus something else, that can be documented in the tag wiki/excerpt and enforced.

The danger with being too specific is people might not think "oh, I'm asking a question about auxiliary verbs", it's easier to think "oh, my question is about a grammar construct" (for example)

some of those tags - like ellipsis - I never would have guessed on my own

thus at some point, it's up to the community to enforce and teach the tagging system, whatever they decide on

jkerian

@Troyen absolutely impossible, ergo the mess we've got :)

Anonymous

Should all particles be under one particle tag?

Troyen

6:41 AM

at two questions a day, it can't be that bad ;)

That's something I'm not sure about. Do we stick with top-level classifications or go down a few levels?