EL&U 2014 Election

12:01 AM

I should be going too, I'm afraid. talk to you later!

ok, good to chat! CU

Any user who has a question for the mod candidates, please post it with @(no space)medica, and I'll see to it that it is readdressed to all the mod candidates. Thanks!

Yoichi Oishi

1:29 AM

Mari-Lou. To answer your question, I love English words, "Love," above all, then "Generous," "Open-minded,""Flexible," "Democratic," "Equality,""Intelligence" and "Human."

The word I most hate is "Bigotry" and "Off-topic," which I think is the symbolic word manifesting speaker's arrogance and narrow-mindedness.

MrHen

2:05 AM

@YoichiOishi You think the word "off-topic" is symbolic of arrogance and narrow-mindedness? Or do you simply think that the way people here use the word is arrogant and narrow-minded?

Yoichi Oishi

3:04 AM

@MrHen MrHen. Yes I think so. Tis is based on my conviction - We are each other human. We are not God nor judge. Everybody has the right to ask question, unless he / she gives malicious or wilful question.

Cont.If you are school teacher or father, you cannot snap back student's or kid's innocent question. We are human, and I think we should behave like human with spirit of modesty, generosity - Love others, innocent others. I said the English word that I like most is Love in response to Mari LouA's question to me. You shouldn't turn it down by saying it's a stupid and off-toic question.

Cont. We should respect others no matter how silly they, including me, look to you. Confucious said, those who don't know a thing is not vice. Those who don't know that he don't know a thing is vice.

Yoichi Oishi

3:26 AM

My latest question about English word equivalent to Japanese Bureiko and Chinese Bu fen zuo ci reflects my conviction of freedom of speech, mutual respect and "Don't blame rule" of others' statement as silly, low level, and off-topic on the blanket.

@MrHen. I saw your elaborate answer to the above-mentioned question about English equivalent to Bureiko. It's very thorough and helpful input. Thanks a lot.

medica

5:44 AM

-6

Q: What's a 'Basic Bitch' and a 'Bad Bitch'?

I would like to know the difference between a 'basic bitch' and a 'bad bitch'. terms referring to certain types of young women. I believe these are recently created idioms. I suspect these terms are better known to university students and I expect the correct definitions will come from college st...

@MrHen - last night a post appeared (above). Say you are a mod. What is your opinion of this post, and would you do anything about it?

@MattЭллен - last night a post appeared (above). Say you are a mod. What is your opinion of this post, and would you do anything about it?

@phenry - last night a post appeared (above). Say you are a mod. What is your opinion of this post, and would you do anything about it?

@Manhax - last night a post appeared (above). Say you are a mod. What is your opinion of this post, and would you do anything about it?

@YoichiOishi - - last night a post appeared (above). Say you are a mod. What is your opinion of this post, and would you do anything about it?

@AndrewLeach - last night a post appeared (above). Say you are a mod. What is your opinion of this post, and would you do anything about it?

@oerkelens - - last night a post appeared (above). Say you are a mod. What is your opinion of this post, and would you do anything about it?

@FracturedRetina - - last night a post appeared (above). Say you are a mod. What is your opinion of this post, and would you do anything about it?

medica

6:09 AM

Any user who has a question for the all of the mod candidates, please post it with @(no space)medica, @(no space)MrHen, @(no space)phenry, @(no space)MattЭллен, (or the @name of any mod candidate you have a question for) and I/we will see to it that it is readdressed to all the mod candidates. Thanks!

Andrew Leach

6:20 AM

@medica I believe it's been correctly closed. While slang is on-topic, very new slang is still evolving and I don't believe it can be tied down in the way the question asks. There is another question about beast as a verb (as occurs in military slang), which I have offered an answer for as that's more settled after 400 years.

That said, I would only have cast vote number 4 or 5 on it.

Are you going to ask yourself the question? :-)

medica

@AndrewLeach - I saw that and was a bit more pro-active, which I'm now wondering if I should have been.

May I ask your opinion?

Andrew Leach

On what?

medica

I saw that and immediately thought it didn't belong; I didn't see any value in the question, no currency in that question.

So after close voting, I took it to chat. Just to see if there were people there who wanted to close it as well.

My thought being that it didn't belong on the front page for a great length of time.

Andrew Leach

I was beaten to the last vote by a couple of seconds.

medica

Now, I'm thinking that I may not be as objective as I thought I would be as a mod...

Do you think it's appropriate to alert other users to offensive or very low quality posts?

(I'm thinking that as a mod, I should definitely avoid this type of behavior.)

(It has the appearance of pushing a private agenda.)

(But it is also possible to look at chat as a place to discuss this type of question with other users.)

Andrew Leach

6:29 AM

I don't see anything wrong with doing that. Questions are referenced in chat quite regularly. And it can be useful to gauge a bit of community opinion (although the sample size is quite small, so that needs to be taken into account).

It is more often used for obviously poor-quality Qs or spam.

[Dear me, chat doesn't work very well on an iPad]

medica

OK. Thanks, That was my initial thought, but I wasn't sure of the dynamics of doing that.

@AndrewLeach As a mod, I would not hesitate to delete spam.

but lower quality... If I say I will let the community decide, then that's what I should do.

Thank you for your answer and your advice.

Andrew Leach

OK... I won't answer that (removed) question! The answer's probably guessable anyway :-)

Matt Эллен

7:36 AM

@medica Seems like an OK question. I am vaguely familiar with the idioms. Seems like a fair question about terms that are not readily defined in reputable dictionaries. I would prefer that he shows some research, i.e. looking in urban dictionary. If I were a mod and I saw this I would consider censoring the title, as per SE standards.

Yoichi Oishi

7:59 AM

Mari-LouA. Though it's too late now, I wonder why didn't you raise ｈａｎｄ for EL&U moderater candidate. You deserve much more than me for the role.

Mari-Lou A

8:09 AM

I see that oerkelen is online, can we ask him to answer medica's question. @oerkelens I would very much like to hear your opinion on the recent closure of a controversial question.

@medica @oerkelens please see medica's post here

@YoichiOishi That's very kind of you, but I feel it's a position of responsibility, and it would limit my freedom. I am not suitable as a mod, as the saying goes: "Know thyself", and I know me pretty well.

@medica He was back, but he's been suspended for a year now. Can't say I am sorry, unlike Thursagen english.stackexchange.com/users/8183/thursagen whose contributions I keep bumping into. Suspended for two years, was he? His parole is due shortly. What did he do exactly that warranted such a lengthy suspension?

Three years?!? That's like a life time ban, not even sexual abusers receive such sentences. I guess that @MrHen was referring to him in one of his questions.

Matt Эллен

9:32 AM

@Mari-LouA I believe, at least to begin with, he admitted to being too young to use SE. (noöne under 13 can sign up to SE) There may have been quality issues and behaviour problems. I can't really recall.

Matt Эллен

9:44 AM

in English Language & Usage, Aug 3 '11 at 20:42, by Thursagan

@JasperLoy I'm five

Thursagan purported to be Thursagen's niece

Thursagen has another alias: Ham and Eggs. I think basically he did bad things with multiple accounts.

Mari-Lou A

11:04 AM

@MattЭллен He was twelve!? Precocious little man.

Matt Эллен

11:27 AM

Indeed :D

KitFox

1:06 PM

@Mari-LouA Sexual abusers receive much stiffer penalties than three years in the clink and most of them don't survive their first year in prison.

So maybe a less dramatic comparison is warranted here.

The short version of the story is that he admitted to being underage and so is suspended until he is old enough. The long version is more complicated and less interesting.

Shog9

@medica oh, good grief... Another "this is urban dictionary with less ads, right?" post.

KitFox

Hello, @Shog.

You've been hanging around a lot lately, but The Evan Carroll™ isn't even running this time.

Shog9

He always runs in my heart

KitFox

Mine too.

KitFox

2:01 PM

:16176068 Not much really.

I find it concerning that there are so many deleted messages in this chat room. If messages can't stand on the public record, perhaps they ought not be posted.

4

I think I will pin this.

tchrist

2:18 PM

@KitFox That was bugging me a bit, too.

MrHen

@YoichiOishi Thank you. I'm glad you found it helpful.

@medica It looks like the community took care of the post rather quickly. I don't think any further action is necessary. Personally, I think the "unclear what you're asking" close reason would have been slightly more accurate since the question does not give us any references to the terms' usage and is asking about two different terms at once. The users' history does not suggest that they post questions like this frequently.

@medica I think it is appropriate to draw attention to posts that are "borderline". Closing and flagging is part of the community's responsibility and encouraging regulars to participate in discussions about posts like these is a good thing.

@Mari-LouA No, I was not specifically referring to that user. I was deliberately being vague. :)

I respectfully disagree with you, actually. I think that some questions are not a good fit for the StackExchange site. This is not intended to disrespect the question itself but merely acknowledge that our site has a specific purpose and is only truly excellent at answering certain types of questions.

The most obvious example would be a question about mathematics. Such a question isn't one that our site has the authority to answer. I consider it inappropriate to treat ourselves as experts in all areas and noting that "mathematics" is "off-topic" is merely attempting to tell the poster that…

Caleb

2:43 PM

@KitFox Yes, this! Especially from moderator candidates I would expect the ability to A) use discretion before speaking not after and B) willingness no have their words/opinions be public record.

MrHen

@Caleb I'm sure the users involved can explain why they removed the messages.

(I wasn't there; I don't know what they said.)

Caleb

@MrHen I do. And yes they have some explaining to do.

tchrist

@Caleb Indeed? That bodes not well.

MrHen

@Caleb Oh. Uh, well, interesting...

KitFox

→ 8 messages moved to Trashcan

KitFox

3:14 PM

@phenry I agree with you. I see a lot of questions flagged for "migrate to ELL" and they are perfectly well stated questions about English grammar. We do that here. It's one of the things that's actually on-topic. Why send that somewhere else?

MrHen

@KitFox They probably get flagged because people keep calling for those questions to get migrated. :P

KitFox

Well, let me tell you what gets my panties in a knot.

Users flagging questions to go to ELL. This seems to fall generally into 1. this question is garbage, so it must go to ELL, or 2. this question is about English and I don't feel like answering it, so it must go to ELL.

There are very few that I see that look like they actually pertain to learning or teaching English.

MrHen

@KitFox Haha, great. I like (2).

That's one way to "work" on the Unanswered queue. :)

KitFox

And using a close reason of "because it belongs on ELL" really chaps my hide.

MrHen

I only flag things I think are too basic or boring.

KitFox

3:25 PM

If it "belongs on ELL", please spell out for me exactly why you think so.

What makes it a question about learning or teaching English?

MrHen

@KitFox Yeah, we had Wendi stop by and chew us out for that.

30

Q: "This question appears to be off topic because it is better asked on ELL."

A bit of background before I begin: I am a moderator on ELL, and I admit to not being entirely familiar with what is and isn't on-topic here on ELU. I am posting this discussion because I see a trend that I think needs to be addressed, and the following are just my brainstormed thoughts and opini...

discussion migration scope ell

KitFox

Because if it's because "it's about syntax that I already know", that's insufficient.

MrHen

0

Q: We had the game controlled

I have come across these two sentences: We had the game controlled. We didn't have the mental energy to finish these games. Is in the first sentence used the construction have something done? If so, I don´t understand. I thought that by means of this construction „we describe situations wh...

grammar

KitFox

You'll note that I commented on her post.

MrHen

So there is one I flagged as an ELL candidate.

@KitFox I linked it for the sake of chat, not you ;)

Do you think that migration suggestion was appropriate? (Even if it didn't end up getting migrated.)

KitFox

3:31 PM

It could go there, but since it was asked here, I think it's fine to leave it. The question could be asked more clearly, but the question was specific and answerable and about English.

MrHen

@KitFox Mmk. I'm still trying to figure out what is supposed to go to ELL. :P

KitFox

Questions about learning and teaching English.

MrHen

No one seems to agree.

@KitFox That's not a helpful answer, though. That just deflects the question.

tchrist

@MrHen Stuff that needs nothing but a native ear to sort out.

And does not provide nor solicit scholarlily elaborated explanations.

KitFox

7

A: How do I determine whether a question fits on English Language & Usage or on English Language Learners?

We brought this up in a proposal discussion. I'll copy my suggestions here. ELL is intended to be geared toward the needs of both people learning English and people teaching English. I feel these general topics encompass many of those aspects: article usage (a, an, the, no article) prepositi...

Amongst other discussion.

MrHen

3:34 PM

@KitFox That's the problem, isn't it? ;)

KitFox

Always. If they would listen to me, it would all be fine.

But clearly techniques for pronunciation and simple rules for remembering spelling and things like that are all ELL topics.

How do I teach verb tenses to Chinese speakers (who don't have tense as part of their language)?

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