English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

4:29 AM

[ SmokeDetector ] Email in answer: "Your chance to dream has arrived" - National Lottery. How do you read this? by kelvin on english.stackexchange.com

Robusto

10:05 AM

0

Q: We should use comma before "and"?

Which one is correct? 1. We should use a, b, and c. 2. We should use a, b and c. We need comma after b or not?

@tchrist: Occulted "which is correct" question. ^

Also a dupe.

tchrist

Never ends.

Robusto

Ah, he did the right thing after all.

That statement makes no sense in any context I can imagine that does not include fractured, non-native English or weird science. — Robusto 10 secs ago

tchrist

10:21 AM

> “Why are Hindi languages so rude that they have special words to discriminate against particular castes of people instead of treating everyone equally?”

Also, because we don’t carry around those funny little head boards used for kowtowing.

Robusto

0

Q: Is this sentence from an English news correct?

From http://typographica.org/typeface-reviews/neue-haas-grotesk/, I saw such a sentence: Art critic Jerry Saltz said of a recent exhibition that the artist had “done what an artist ought to: open the floor beneath my feet, and take me places I didn’t know were there.” Is "take me places...

grammar

And here we go again!

tchrist

And why are noses are not brown and shit-smelling.

@Robusto NO! HE’S BACK!?!?!

He so fucking is.

Bold italic.

Die in a fire.

Robusto

Who he is?

@tchrist Bold italic "in quotes" no less.

tchrist

s¯uuoʇɹoИ

Robusto

OMFG.

tchrist

10:24 AM

Norby is unbanned, and this is an SO user.

I think I’m about to go on a serial CLOSE voting spree.

Start from the bottom, I’ll DelV the closed ones and CV the lame ones. Can’t downvote them though, or it will be reversed.

Robusto

Why will it be reversed if downvote?

tchrist

Because I would downvote too many.

The user journey looks bad.

It is not chancing upon them at random.

It is coming at them from the user page.

So it looks like revenge.

So don't do that.

I never use all my delete votes.

Almost.

Perhaps today shall be that day.

I already moaned about running out of close votes.

Robusto

Another occulted WIC:

0

Q: Past Perfect And Present Perfect In One Sentence

==> Until more recently, Product XYZ had not been ready but Provider XYZ has made changes to the product a while ago that address the issue and markets are now embracing the product. Is this sentence grammatically correct? My thinking was: 1) Had not been / past perfect --> It is ready ...

past-perfect

tchrist

Shog9 who hears his name wherever it is spoken has SO data saying running out of close votes is rare. I say he needs to check ELU instead and notice how common it is.

He is nervous about giving people more close votes because that just makes more work for other people to approve or dismiss.

He is less averse to granting "stronger" close votes to those with very good records.

Not binding, but something like two CVs from superclosers would suffice.

Despite being the top CV reviewer there, I "seldom" use the CV queue on ELU because then I run out right away. Yes, I get a few more but I still run out of CVs there on most days I'm an active voter. I bet if you look at the site stats, you'll see this isn't rare. I try to treasure them up and look for canidates in the 10k queue as need be. Just too many need closing to squander my CVs, which means I don't use them enough as much as I should. But burn out? Maybe; think CORRECT GRAMMA. — tchrist 7 hours ago

I have like 5 left today, and it isn’t even fucking dawn yet.

Delete votes scale with rep; why not close votes?

But today, xmllmx gets what meagre wad I have to blow on him.

Hm, that doesn’t sound good.

38

A: We need more close votes!

I've been thinking about this for a long time... Hitting the cap is frustrating. That said, very few people hit the cap regularly - in the past 90 days, only 160 voters have hit the cap even once, and only one person on Stack Overflow has used 100% of their close votes every. single. day. Looki...

"Few"

The only way not to run out is to wait until 23:58 UTC.

78

Q: What privilege should 30k users get?

The last time we lifted the level cap was in 2011. Last year, we added a unilateral close-as-duplicate power for gold tag badge holders, but no new reputation level. So we've been thinking about giving users more reasons to keep playing. (I've answered this question with some circumstantial evide...

feature-request privileges

31

A: What privilege should 30k users get?

Unlimited close votes At 30k on graduated sites (and 10k on beta sites) grant users the following powers: Unlimited close votes (like moderators currently have). Unlimited reviews in the Close review queue. The main way to keep the high quality of Stack Exchange is to fight the waves of low ...

Very, very few people hit the current limits on a regular basis; not sure this is much of a privilege. Also, unlimited non-binding votes potentially just creates more work for other users. I'm pretty sympathetic to the desire to make close votes more effective for trusted users, but more weak opinions isn't likely to accomplish much. — Shog9 ♦ Apr 4 at 16:05

I’m not wholly convinced that having more CVs of the same 1-in-5 strength makes more work.

He’s probably thinking of something I’m not.

Another option is to bump up ELU’s quota.

On SO, the moment you get to CV, you get fifty of them!

On ELU, that number is 24.

And it stays 24 forever.

CV Option 1: Increase the high-traffic but non-SO sites from 24 to 36 CVs.
CV Option 2: Delete votes scale but close votes do not. Fix this: Award +1 CV for each 3k over the 3k minimum needed until a max of 100 CVs is reached on !SO sites, or 200 CVs on SO.
CV Option 3: Grant "very" high rep users with a very good track record of being right about closure "higher weighted" CVs, so double-strength (counts as 2x) for the good but not absolute best ones and triple-strength (3x) for the very highest by the rep+record metric, so that that way it takes 3 votes from the enhanced power-closers and…

Robusto

11:42 AM

@tchrist I think close votes should be weighted at 1:20000 in rep. That is, for every 20K you get, you get that many close votes per post, up to 5.

Maybe 1:10000 even.

Robusto

11:55 AM

Actually, what might be a better idea is to have a certain pool of close votes per day and be able to choose how many from that pool you wish to use on a certain question. Say you have 50 close votes a day. You could apply one vote each to 50 question, two each to 25, or spend full 5 votes each and outright close 10 questions.

tchrist

12:16 PM

I have an idea.

Double-badger superpowers.

3

A: Give extra close votes, only accessible via /review

TL;DR: Give holders of CVRQ Steward + silver tag-badge holders double-weighted CVs in that badged tag Give holders of CVRQ Steward + gold tag-badge holders triple-weighted CVs in that badged tag. More Close Votes — and Double-Badger Superpowers You make good points. I worry that unless th...

Mind you, I would still run out.

But it would feel less frustrating.

OFFS moar crap

Robusto

0

A: Give extra close votes, only accessible via /review

It might make sense to broaden the pool of close votes so that high-rep users (say 30k to 100k, TBD) could parcel out their close votes from a pool. Currently if you have 25 votes, one vote each may be applied to 25 questions. Under my proposal the high-rep user might be trusted to spend however...

Meh, already a down vote on my proposal.

tchrist

Wow, tough crowd.

Thing is, alone of all metas, reps are real on metameta.

Robusto

Heh, your "double-badger" description brings to mind vicious furry creatures fighting it out.

tchrist

This might happen.

Robusto

12:31 PM

How much rep do you need on meta to see up-and-down votes?

tchrist

checking.

stackoverflow.com/help/privileges

Oops, wrong meta.

meta.stackexchange.com/help/privileges

250 on MSE.

Robusto

I lack but three votes of that. Can't remember the last time I participated in MSO.

tchrist

And on MSO.

But MSO uses SO reps.

MSE does not.

Robusto

MSO and MSE? I thought there was only one Meta for SO.

tchrist

Ah no.

MSO is SO's meta so uses its rep.

And rep does not count on any site meta.

MSE is different. There rep counts, and it is not shared.

I’m confused.

Robusto

12:38 PM

OK, then I have never used MSO, only MSE.

tchrist

It says you have 974.

Shouldn’t you be able to see up/down votes?

Robusto

It does. What is confusing about that?

No. I need to get to 1k for that.

tchrist

Oh, 250 is for view close votes.

Sorry.

Robusto

Disculpate.

tchrist

I could give you it but it wouldn’t stick.

Order matters. :)

Robusto

12:41 PM

Te disculpo?

tchrist

Yes.

Although that seems somewhat formal.

-3

Q: Is this sentence correct in the aspect of grammar?

"The volume of exports of goods and services from the U.S. are higher than all time." In this sentence, Can we put "at it's highest of all time" instead of higher than all time?

grammar

WTF?

Asswipe.

ELU needs an IP block on the entire Subcontinent.

Good-bye, Kris!

terdon

65

Q: "View Vote totals" without 1000 rep

Screenshot About The vote counts are a great tool to determine whether an answer is disputed or not. Unfortunately, not many of us have enough time to join all Stack Exchange websites and get 1000 reputation. This script unlocks the "View Vote counts" feature for those who are not logge...

script chrome-extensions greasemonkey bookmarklet

tchrist

Ooh magic.

@Robusto No te preocupes.

I think I am about to be halfnaughty.

Robusto

@tchrist He is from there?

tchrist

@Robusto Yes.

Robusto

12:56 PM

Whoa.

tchrist

However, he appears to be one of the 125k native English speakers there, like Salmon Rushdie.

For every native speaker of English in the Hindia, there are a thousand pineapples.

Robusto

@tchrist I think you're lowballing that a little.

tchrist

@Robusto No, I am citing Wipikedia

Robusto

Two or three of the subcontinental colleagues out of all of the ones I have had could express themselves well enough not to require repeated requests for clarification.

Either orally or in writing.

tchrist

Oh, wrong way.

I misread your lowballing.

I did not mean to imply that the pineapples didn’t sound like shit.

Robusto

1:01 PM

They sound like ananas.

tchrist

I’m sure a more colorful simile could be devised.

Robusto

@tchrist He is a badmash, that one.

Maybe a dacoit?

tchrist

Hijra.

Robusto

Dunno about that.

tchrist

Just the cattiness.

He did make one homoerotic comment, that says nothing. It might have been cattiness.

Robusto

1:12 PM

People don't generally do things over again unless there is a reason, and that reason usually is to improve, for whatever reason, something that had been done before. Whether one revises, reformulates, reorganizes, retools, or whatever, it is always out of the hope to make things better this time. — Robusto 9 secs ago

tchrist

Man, embedding LEFT-TO-RIGHT EMBEDDING control characters sure sends Safari on a long strange trip.

Robusto

One wonders why you would even attempt that.

There is a town near here named Ayer, and I can never look at that sign the same way since learning some Spanish.

tchrist

Because I was trying to trick SE into letting me do something they wish I wouldn’t.

Shameless whoring now prepended:

5

A: Give extra close votes, only accessible via /review

⁢ ⁢ ⁢ ⁢ Double-Badger Superpowers ⁢ Photo credit: Chris Noble at The Wildwood Trust TL;DR: Give holders of CVRQ Steward + silver tag-badge holders double-weighted CVs in that badged tag Give holders of CVRQ Steward +...

Robusto

Dos tejones?

tchrist

Sí, lo son.

Beavers are rather easier to translate: castor.

Robusto

1:26 PM

No, debe ser dobles tejones.

tchrist

O tejones dobles. O tejones doblados. :)

Robusto

I keep forgetting that adjectives usually follow nouns.

tchrist

Yep.

But it is not like French. You have some freedom in Spanish. The point is that it means something different.

Robusto

Hay castores aquí.

tchrist

Cabe esperar.

Robusto

1:32 PM

Habrás castores dobles.

The dictionary lists hubiera and hubiese as 1st person plural subjunctive past versions of haber. I wonder what the difference is.

tchrist

2:04 PM

singular

There can only be plural for the special form hay in the present.

@Robusto Answer here.

You can always (and only!) use hubiese for imperfect subjunctive. Hubiera can also be used for polite conditionals and for a literary pluperfect.

1

A: "Habría" or "Hubiera"

You will never go wrong using either of these standard forms: Si tu hermana me llamase, te lo diría. Si tu hermana me llamara, te lo diría. That pair are completely interchangeable: no meaning changes when you switch between –se and –ra in the protasis. However, there are other, rarer scenar...

So sometimes hubiera means habría, but usually it means hubiese.

> The –se forms are always imperfect subjunctives. The –ra forms usually are, but they also have several other non-subjunctive uses you should be aware of, one of which may be operative here. One is common, one is not uncommon, and one is comparatively rare.

As noted in comments, using -ra forms for pluperfect indicatives instead of imperfect subjunctives may be more common in the northwest due to Portuguese influence. The -ra forms were the original Latin pluperfect indicatives.

This example uses all three in ways that seem to fit just right, and perhaps not interchangeably:

> Si pidieras que lo hiciese, yo lo haría.

If you were to ask (me) that I should do it, I would do so.

It doesn’t sound so formal/stilted in Spanish.

terdon

I've never quite gotten the hang of those. They are relatively rarely used (at least in Barcelona). I'd just say Si me lo pidieras, lo haría. and be done with it.

tchrist

2:20 PM

@terdon That’s perfectly fine.

The -ra forms are about 3x as common as the -se forms.

No pensaba que fuese/fuera para otra persona, de ahí que me lo comí sin pedir permiso a nadie.

Completely interchangeable. Don’t try to find a nuance of difference, as you will virtually never find one.