your link works @Kit

Sweet. Thanks.

Thanks for checking that.

Good luck in the election.

Did you see how I mentioned I voted for you all?

Yes! Thanks :D

it's like you voted for none of us!

You're very welcome.

Of course, since you're the only one here right now, I voted for you.

of course :D

But don't tell everybody, OK? It's a secret vote.

I'd hate for it to be a matter of public record.

I shouldn't tell everyone you've voted for all the candidates?

understood

shh

Discretion. Excellent quality in a moderator.

touches nose

taps nose

jinx!

hee hee

@KitFox thank you! his is great!

My nose is great?

grand, even!

Oh medica is here.

I voted for you too.

Wait, I said that already.

yes, you did...

very fair of you, but even moreso, generous.

Well, I didn't want anyone to feel left out.

KitFox and the grand schnoz of the greater metropolitan area

I even voted for Oishi-san twice.

(or get 0 votes! O_O

Just to make sure.

No!!! You have 10 votes!

Oh, wait. I only have nine. SO I must have not voted for someone.

Last I looked, Oishi-san hadn't posted his answers.

Must have been StoneyB. I am pretty sure I did not vote for him.

@medica I don't think he knows how to access Meta.

I would have voted for him, and Mitch.

And me, I would assume.

@KitFox of, dear...

should someone tell him on one of this questions, like in a comment?

Or let it stand?

I don't know.

Which is why I haven't said anything.

Retina hasn't posted answers either.

I don't know how much of a difference it will make; some people will have decided already how to vote.

@KitFox is my name being taken in vain? Or jest? Or umbrage?

@StoneyB In homage

It's being taken to the bank

I was declaring that you must have been the one I didn't vote for, since I voted for Mr.Hen twice.

And I only have nine votes.

Wait. Oishi-san.

@KitFox !!!! It chang3es continually. Wiley.

I am having trouble keeping my story straight.

Well, you couldn't vote for me, because I'm not running.

but are you standing?

You are so very clever. That's why you should be a mod.

we made a fake page and you did volunteer, did you not know? Your answers sounded exactly like KitFox's

I am very clever, and know it, which is why I should not be a mod. Among other reasons.

It's me, innit?

I could change my skin and still you would spurn me.

I can't help being a fox.

swoons daintily onto nearest couch

Do I understand we get ►9◄ votes each?

How could I type a 3 instead of an e? I must be dyslexic.

@StoneyB No. Just mods.

@medica Too much work with IPA?

:)

The Moderator and the Mundanes sounds like a reasonably good book.

Modera-trix to you.

huffs

You would need to spice it up (that right there would do it) because there isn't enough drama and tomfoolery here.

I'm trying, but there has been little reaction to my utter and fantastic lying.

Or should I say "creative rendering of the truth"?

The Moderatrix and the Mundanes sounds like a more interesting book.

Well. I'm off for home. Have fun!

I am conflicted. If I vote for the clever people they will stop answering questions. But if I vote for the solemn people they may become even more zealous and continue answering questions.

thanks!

@StoneyB actually, I think you might be right in this. It's a dilemma.

I have seen that two or three candidates are answering (and/or commenting) more right now. I have answered much less. But, anyway.

It's sort of like Who do you make head of the department? Obviously, the one who contributes the least research - which means the research people lose a voice in administration.

Over on ELL three of the four mods have virtually disappeared since they were appointed.

Yes. I lost my Internist that way.

He became first head of the department, then more admin dutieds.

Bright guy, excellent doc. Now solves non-medical problems. Shame.

English Departments always appoint nice guys (of either sex) who haven't had an original thought since 1974.

Haha! That's a mixed blessing!!!

Or maybe the least admirable solution.

Maybe they should retire.

Which brings us to that "tenure" topic.

They do, but nobody notices for a decade or so.

:)

then it was the right decision.

Do you (pleeeze) have a question for us?

Sure. Lemme think.

"Should punctuation be on-topic?"

Great question.

Answer in 200 words or less without mentioning the Oxford comma.

But I love the oxford comma!

You may employ the Oxford comma freely.

Now there's a man who employs the Alabama comma.

I think it is and has been on topic already. However, there's only so much punctuation, and I think we have a rich source of answers punctuation. We have many posts on commas, full stops, and semicolons; colons, ellipses, etc. So I think they would be answered as dupes, mostly, and not if the question asks only to proofread.

Very diplomatic.

Question 2: "What is your campaign slogan?"

Hmmm, that's a hard won/ er... one.

"Vote for The Return of the Summer of Love>"

Oh, that one is Soooo much better!!!

(I starred it) (blushes at being caught stealing intellectual property!)

Maybe I should take it off, It might look like an endorsement, Sorry. I didn't think.

Sex, Drugs and Right-Node Raising?

I will ask kit to take it down.

lol

this seems to be a gift of yours.

It brings just the proper register to the elections.

Oops. Boss just got back. Gotta go work. Persevere.

Thank you!

@phenry "Should punctuation be on-topic?" - StoneyB

@MrHen - "Should punctuation be on-topic?" - StoneyB

yes.

@MattЭллен - "Should punctuation be on-topic?" - StoneyB

or were you wanting more than that?

@phenry My answer too!

@phenry that seems to be adequate.

@AndrewLeach - "Should punctuation be on-topic?" - StoneyB

most punctuation questions are probably dupes by now, but there's still plenty of room for new ones, if a bit esoteric.

@Manhax - "Should punctuation be on-topic?" - StoneyB

I see no reason to stop it being on topic

@phenry I believe that's true, and those that aren't should be educational for all. I will not accept them if they are merely requesting proofreading, though. Admittedly a fine line.

we should encourage people to ask questions about weirdo punctuation marks like § and «» and ‽.

@MattЭллен - Question 2: "What is your campaign slogan?" - StoneyB (this is not a necessarity serious request)

@phenry - Question 2: "What is your campaign slogan?" - StoneyB (this is not a necessarity serious request)

Vote for me. You'll be sorry if you don't.

@phenry how did you type that interrobang?!

@phenry lol!

@MrHen - Question 2: "What is your campaign slogan?" - StoneyB (this is not a necessarity serious request)

@medica - I got it from the Character Map program in Windows.

:D

¤Ω╛♥א

@AndrewLeach: Question 2: "What is your campaign slogan?" - StoneyB (this is not a necessarity serious request)

yeah, that's my slogan. "¤Ω╛♥א".

Cool! I have a mac, no windows :(

You should use it more often.

@medica - you have a program like that too, but I don't remember what it's called. Key Caps or something.

I will google it. It's worth it just for the imterrobang.

@YoichiOishi: Question 2: "What is your campaign slogan?" - StoneyB (this is not a necessarity serious request)

@FracturedRetina: Question 2: "What is your campaign slogan?" - StoneyB (this is not a necessarity serious request)

"Let me help you unlearn English"

@MattЭллен - that's a good one.

@phenry "Vote for The Return of the Summer of Love"

@medica - I like that one.

thank you!

sorry, I was away

@medica If the question is useful or interesting, sure. I don't see a purpose behind "How do I use interrobangs properly?" but asking what to call a particular symbol or punctuation mark in English is fine. It can be hard to look those up. We also get a bunch of questions about whether this or that comma is correct. I don't have a problem with those either as long as the question hasn't already been answered elsewhere.

@medica "I hate fun."

That probably won't get me elected though.

@MrHen no, no, that one isn't very magnetic. I'm not posting that! :0 You'll have to try again.

@medica "I hate magnets."

lol! You're determined to throw this motto to the lions, I sww.

More seriously, I don't really have a motto.

@MrHen If you could sum up your entire platform in one phrase, what would it be? My most valued "contribution" would be to make this a user-attractive site, to hopefully attract and keep potential good contributors. You have many well-thought-out positions. Do you have one that most represents you?

@medica I am here to protect against drama, prevent contributor burnout and attract new users.

@MrHen That's a very good platform.

What is this for, anyway?

The wall. ----->

Oh, well in that case: "I hate politics. Vote for me and I'll get shit done."

@medica Sorry; been out at a committee meeting. But I got no pings; perhaps something is broken.

Punctuation should be on topic, but I'm sure that there are lots of duplicates.

@AndrewLeach Here’s a thought-experiment for you. Can you think of any manner of (non-duplicate) punctuation-related question that would not be a good fit for ELU? If so, why would it not be a good fit?

@tchrist "How do I pronounce 'comma'?" ;)

Anyone with questions they'd like to ask the candidates, here is the place to do it. Just leave your question; we will answer them as soon as we are able.

@MrHen I think I could commacerate.

More seriously: I think that really simple, introductory questions about punctuation such as question marks, periods, commas and so on wouldn't be a good fit for ELU. I'm not sure if we'd really need to close them, though.

@MrHen This hearkens back to an unanswered question from yesterday that I am someone gunshy to revisit.

I believe we have a rich store of answers from which to mine an appropriate response. Some might be a better fit for ELL; the '#' question, though, was very interesting to me, and on-topic.

@tchrist Which?

@medica I think the '#' question was more of a GR issue, wasn't it?

I think there are a bunch of questions that get stuck under GR when people really mean "Too Simple".

It was argued to be, yes.

But the history was interesting, and so much controversy over it's origin was generated that clearly, to my thinking, it was not GR.

@MrHen GR was originally meant to cover any matters too basic for a site intended per the charter for linguists, etymologists, and serious language enthusiasts. Limiting it to linkable online wordbooks or treasure-books would be a major departure from that.

@tchrist The site has certainly changed, then.

@tchrist That was my original impression, too, but it makes me wonder why the reason wasn't listed as "Too Basic". Would that have been too inflammatory? We had a discussion earlier in this chat about what various candidates think fits under GR and no one I heard was using what you wrote as their starting point.

"Do I really have to end a sentence with a period?" "Why do I have to bother making subjects and verbs agree?" "Can I just use only regular verbs so that I don't have to learn the irregulars?" "Is it ok to write in only all-lower or only all-upper case?" "What's wrong prefixing a past-tense verb with a modal?"

@MrHen That bothered me.

I read it.

Hence my timidity regarding firearms.

The reason I bring this up is that the number of possible questions of the "TOO BASIC" mold is without bound, and as more and more nonnative learners of low experience, education, and basic mental firepower gravitate here, the numbers of such questions will only keep rising without bound. We already see that happening.

@tchrist I can understand that. I think GR is the current representative issue that splits people between the "be nice" camp and the "avoid crappy work" camp.

Everybody wants to learn English. Many are just beginning. Many ask questions that absolutely any book on English Grammar would answer for them.

@tchrist Yes. Right now, I am of the opinion that close reasons like GR have helped stem the worst of it. We have a very good answer rate and most of the questions that get stuck in the Unanswered queue aren't the stereotypical Too Basic questions.

But I would like to hone the system a bit to try to keep questions interesting enough to read.

The quality of questions just gets worse as these proliferate. The initial culture of a well-crafted question being rewarded with an equally well-supported answer has given way to one-and-done drive-by questioners that do little if anything to help people who come later. They are too simple and too localized and infinite.

@tchrist Yes, but many regulars also constantly rip on the typical grammar books.

Hm.

@tchrist I think Too Localized was a great close reason and am kind of sad it disappeared.

We got the proofreading close reason, though, so that still helps.

Ah, so this is where the cool kids are hanging out.

blows trumpet

hearkens to the clarion call

@tchrist You were already here... :P

Good.

But you're already here.

Jinx.

@tchrist The one-and-done issue is troubling, I agree. I haven't run queries on this yet but I plan to (someday).

It's part of the annoying-to-measure burnout problem.

Who wants to read a front page full of basic questions and rapid-fire answers posted by rep farmers?

Yes, it exhausts me.

It gets old.

@Cerberus Il bianco e dolce cigno / cantando more, ed io / piangendo, giung' al fin del viver mio. / Stran' e diversa sorte, / ch'ei more sconsolato, /Ed io moro beato. / Morte che nel morire / M'empie di gioia tutt' e di desire; / Se nel morir' altro dolor non sento, / Di mille mort' il di sarei contendo.

People on ELL want to.

@Cerberus Does this serve the greater good, or merely the selfish one?

Something I really do want to help focus on is giving the "bored old timers" something interesting to play with. Part of that will be continuing to tune the closing patterns and part will be finding a way to get the few interesting questions we do get some better visibility.

Not that I have great ideas on how to accomplish that just yet... but it is certainly something I care about.

@tchrist Where did that come from?

@Cerberus People here want to too. The issue isn't really that the questions don't get answered by willing participants.

@tchrist I don't know, I used to be addicted to answering fairly easy learner's questions on another website.

@MrHen Either way, those interested can answer them on ELL.

@Cerberus An old Renaissance madrigal about a dying swan. It was a common metaphor about the loss of feminine virginity.

@Cerberus So your suggestion is to move all the "too boring" questions over to ELL?

@tchrist Ah. I didn't know we were talking about virginity.

@tchrist Is that related to "swan song"?

@MrHen Yes.

Interesting.

@Cerberus English-language virgins.

@MrHen Just the ones that are typical learner's questions.

@tchrist Aptly quoted in Italian, just to confuse everyone. :)

@MrHen Non é vero!

@MrHen Something I really do want to help focus on is giving the "bored old timers" something interesting to play with. Part of that will be continuing to tune the closing patterns and part will be finding a way to get the few interesting questions we do get some better visibility. - MrHen

(At least, I assume that is Italian. I don't know my non-English languages.)

@tchrist I must have missed where I said something to you about English virgins, then...

I have a position. It has its supporters and detractors.

@medica Hm? You replied to me with my own quote?

I don't knowof a way to encourage good questions, exept to try to make the site inviting to more people, and close/migrate quickly.

@MrHen I don't know how to quote here. If I could get some instruction, I would appreciate it greatly.

I maintain that if the question is one that needs nothing but the ear of a native speaker to make a judgement call on regarding its viability, that it is of no interest here.

@medica "Inviting to more people" is a double-edged sword. More people coming through the doors tends to lower the overall quality of the posts.

Unless we somehow pre-train them.

@tchrist Why don't you want to migrate those to ELL?

@tchrist why is that not taken care of by ELL?

@medica You can copy the permalink and paste it into chat again.

thanks.

@Cerberus Well, I did not say that I did or that I did not. But since you have asked, I am not certain (for want of research and inquiry) that such would be welcome there either. They still show no research, propose no theories. They're just one-and-done gimmes.

@tchrist I think that is too harsh, personally. I don't have a problem helping people with questions like that as long as the question would likely apply to future visitors.

For instance, prepositions are a bitch to learn and I don't have a problem helping people get answers for those.

@medica It only shows up after you submit the chat post.

They really are too much like typo questions, because every learner will make a million of them, and almost none will be of any general applicability.

@tchrist They don't have to be, though.

E.g., "ride in" versus "ride on" is a complicated issue that I personally think is an interesting topic.

We have somehow lost the former cultural expectation that a questioner will have done their homework on the matter first, and present that to us in their question.

So I didn't mind writing up an answer on the subject.

no. remember I don't know programming.

We are now the resource of first recourse.

@tchrist Yes, this is true.

@medica Paste everything between the block http://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/16153936#16153936

(Have to go; back in a bit.)

Mind you, everything I am talking about here is something that needs addressing irrespective of the moderator election.

many thanks.

@tchrist Are you talking about things that are actually in a dictionary, or things like the oh, to... question? Because I think the latter would certainly interest people on ELL.

@Cerberus I confess that I don’t have a dozen exemplars of such questions at arm’s reach, and that I have therefore not done my own homework to back up what I am saying.

@tchrist many issues in this election needs addressing irrespective of the moderator election.

@medica And just as with any other election, once it is done, virtually none of them shall be.

@tchrist dI was just typing that same sentiment.

Let’s be honest here: how can one moderator over another make any difference in any of this stuff?

@tchrist exactly!

Honestly, I think we need moderators to help the present moderators with their work.

I expect a great deal of what we (in our residencies) called "scut work".

Somewhat.

I do scut work already, reliably so. We need more flag handlers. More ears, perhaps.

There is more that high rep users can and should do. Otherwise it won't scale.

I agree, but: I became a high rep user in a short time. I was given the tools, but honestly, no training in using them.

I really wish that I could sort this query such that the shortest closed questions came up on top. This would give us a set of possible too-short-to-bother-with drive-by questions to examine.

I didn't even know of the existence of a closed/delete? queue until 3 weeks ago.

Why do you think someone could get to 24K, 8 gold badges, and not know how to use the tools?

(and I did read through all the help pages, and some Meta posts)

It's wasteful.

The Review Queues have long had a CV queue.

a general close vote queue, yes, but not a delete queue.

This is something of an annoyance.

?

The one on the tools page doesn't tell you whether you are eligible to cast a delete vote on it, since it doesn't know whether you already have done that.

There's an MSE question on this, long unfulfilled.

So, are you saying that you agree with me that high rep users could do more if we were more informed on how do accomplish these things?

No, that's too broad a statement without discrete points.

Now, regarding flags.

The LQ review queue now gets not just auto-LQ stuff thrown there, but also NAA flags and I believe LQ flags as well. This was done to try to get nonmods working the bulk of those so take some of the burden off them.

I don't know how well that has turned out, nor whether it might be different here than elsewhere.

What I do know is that it fibs.

I no longer have access to a flag review queue.

Because it says everything there got there as a matter of being automatically flagged for low quality/content/length.

And that is not true.

I thought it was done away with recently.

The Low Quality Review Queue gets not just auto-flagged posts but also deliberately flagged ones funnelled in to it.