ELL's Cabin

Anonymous

00:01

@DamkerngT. See, on meta.Japanese, Andrew Grimm argues that the cause of comment-answers is people not being supportive enough (= downvoting and saying that answers are incorrect)

Anonymous

People are afraid of being downvoted and people pointing out errors, and so they write answers in comments. This is actually true, and some comment answerers on Japanese.SE have said so.

Anonymous

But, well . . . in general, I think they should try to write better answers, but there's no real politic way to say that

Anonymous

People have other reasons for writing comment answers, of course.

Anonymous

But the community often flags these comments, links to the meta discussion, and so on . . .

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

00:03

ELL.SE inherited its attitude toward comment answers from English.SE

Anonymous

When ELL was established, many English.SE users felt that it should be run in precisely the same way, unfortunately

Anonymous

It's only natural, since so many of the users were the same as on English.SE.

jimsug

@snailboat Sometimes things just need to be said.

I mean, if you're a moderator on a site... maybe someone else should say it, but still.

Anonymous

@jimsug Users can and do rage quit when people say things like that. Sometimes, as much as I hate to say this, the site is better off when they do.

jimsug

... you're making very good arguments for it ;)

"Write good answers" shouldn't be something that people ragequit over, and if they do... as you say, the site is better off.

It's kind of amazing how attached people get to imaginary internet points.

Anonymous

00:05

In general, I've tried to advocate criticism in a healthy way, with a neutral tone.

Anonymous

One unfortunate thing is that users don't all get the same tone from a written message.

Anonymous

Some messages seem perfectly neutral to me, but other people view them as rude.

Anonymous

I think in some sense, telling people that they're wrong is viewed as rude by many people no matter how you do it.

jimsug

I don't think you need to tell people that they are wrong.

Just say "you need to be more right" ;)

Anonymous

The best thing to do, I think, is to neutrally point out facts.

jimsug

00:07

yeah.

Anonymous

Definitely one of the worst things to do is to talk about the author of the post.

jimsug

Oh, when giving feedback always comment on the behaviours and not the person doing them.

Anonymous

Maybe I should try to come up with a meta post with guidelines for how to write neutral comments.

jimsug

Your comment used abusive language vs You're a dick

pardon the French.

Anonymous

I've been gradually getting better at it as I use SE more.

Anonymous

00:09

I'm not really what you'd call a people person myself, so people skills are something I have to actively work on ;-)

Anonymous

That's one reason I think J.R. does a good job as a moderator. He actually has those mythical people skills so many people try to develop.

Damkerng T.

In any case, things could get worse quickly if they took objective comments personally.

jimsug

Yeah, this is true.

Anonymous

Even though there've been times when I disagreed with actual decisions he's made, he does a really good job keeping things positive and keeping the community running.

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. Which totally happens.

Damkerng T.

00:11

@snailboat I think he plays the mod card very well, too.

(As far as I can tell)

jimsug

oh look, I finally got the enthusiast badge on MSE

Damkerng T.

Nice! Congrats!

jimsug

87 days, 30 consecutive :\

Anonymous

I've never gotten enthusiast on ELL.

Anonymous

That's on purpose. I want more gold badges on Japanese.SE than on ELL. :-)

jimsug

00:15

You mean Fanatic?

That's the only gold badge I have on ELL

Anonymous

Oh! Yes, I mean Fanatic.

Anonymous

Which one is Enthusiast?

jimsug

Silver, 30 days

Anonymous

Oh! 30 days.

jimsug

Also, it's kinda crazy that only one person has a gold tag badge on ELL

it's StoneyB, so it's not surprising who it is, but still.

@snailboat consecutive days, mind.

Anonymous

00:16

@jimsug Most beta sites don't have gold tag badges at all.

Anonymous

Japanese.SE recently got its first, though!

Anonymous

Because like on ELL, we tag every question grammar ;-)

jimsug

Yeah, I've been paying more attention since they added the dupehammer on gold tag badge holders.

Anonymous

I'm exaggerating when I say every, of course, but having a tag like grammar on ELL is really not the norm across sites, as I understand it.

jimsug

It's very close to an intrinsic tag.

Damkerng T.

00:19

Oh, talking about tags. Do we still have word?

Anonymous

Nope.

Anonymous

3

A: Can we please remove the tag 'word'?

Tag word is no more. It looks like a moderator turned word into a synonym of word-usage. So this time around it wasn't burninated, but it's gone forever nonetheless. Thank you, J.R. or WendiKidd! :-)

Damkerng T.

Yay!

Anonymous

3

A: Answering: correctness vs. practicality

It is best practice to find a dictionary definition that supports your use of the word regardless of your native language. This helps support your answer and helps the asker feel confident in it. As a fellow native speaker, I've found this can be difficult but not impossible. You may not find a ...

Anonymous

@Catija Awesome and awful! ;-)

Anonymous

00:21

They both started out with pretty much the same meaning, but today they're used like antonyms.

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Almost 1500 questions tagged with word-usage!

@snailboat Oh, no! Not this pair! :-)

Anonymous

> Working forward from 1200 to 1600, a certain word went through something like the following sequence of meanings (as given in the OED): "Happy, blissful; fortunate, lucky, well-omened, auspicious"; "Spiritually blessed, enjoying the blessing of God"; "Pious, holy, good"; "Innocent, harmless"; "Deserving of pity or sympathy; pitiable, miserable, ‘poor’; helpless, defenceless"; "Insignificant, trifling; mean, poor; feeble"; "Frail, worn-out, crazy"; "Foolish, simple, silly".

Anonymous

Can you guess what word that is?

Catija

@snailboat Very true :D

@snailboat Ooooh, tell me.

Anonymous

Silly!

Damkerng T.

00:26

Hah!

Anonymous

I stole that paragraph from Language Log: languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=453

Damkerng T.

I was guessing 'goofy'. :P

Catija

@snailboat Wow, that gives an entirely new meaning to some of the Empire literature that I'm sure it's included in... Doesn't someone call Elizabeth's younger sisters "silly" at some point in Pride and Prejudice?

Anonymous

Oh, I can't say that I remember . . .

Damkerng T.

William Grant White wouldn't have had to fight against dirt if he had tried vegetables in China. :P

Catija

00:35

> "They have none of them much to recommend them," replied he; "they are all silly and ignorant like other girls; but Lizzy has something more of quickness than her sisters."

~Mr. Bennet, about his own daughters.

But, that's the early 1800s, so I guess it has the same meaning then as it does now?

Damkerng T.

Nice!

3

A: rock-zapping -- meaning?

I'm not sure why the comments above are not answers, because they are valid. "Zap" is an onomatopoeia for the sound that high voltage electricity makes when it ionizes air. As such it's been used in science fiction since at least the 1940s to represent the sound of laser based weaponry. It is us...

The "rock-zapping ChemCam laser" refers to the laser fired by Curiousity's rock-vaporizing laser gun. From Zap! Laser Sparks Fly on Mars in Curiosity Rover Video: NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars has set off some fireworks on the Red Planet with the zap-zap-zap of its high-tech space laser. — Damkerng T. 9 hours ago

Catija

@DamkerngT. I don't think that deserves a VTC.

Damkerng T.

Oh! -- I think I didn't VTC, but VTC is reasonable for me.

Catija

I don't know who did, it was just in the close queue.

Damkerng T.

BTW, I'm an expert at writing answer-comments as non-answer-comments. :P

I still don't know why the OP don't know what "rock-zapping" means.

2

Q: Breaking parachute

Example with context (news story Russian bomber crashes in Pacific region, both pilots killed): The two crew members were unhurt in the accident, which the Defense Ministry said at the time was caused by a failure of the plane's breaking parachute. What is that exactly? Does that mean that ...

meaning

Judging from the above question, I think he know how -ing can turn a verb into an adjective-like word.

jimsug

00:48

@DamkerngT. It's not always apparent. Not all languages allow onomatopoeia to be made into an adjective.

Damkerng T.

@jimsug But zap the verb is easy to find in dictionaries, I think.

Also, context clues for Curiousity's ChemCam are abundant, I'd say.

(There are lots of articles, news, etc. showing how it works or looks like.)

This left one possibility, IMHO: the OP wasn't sure about the X-Ying pattern. But that would be quite a surprise for me.

Anonymous

01:07

@Catija Okay, I wrote an answer because you made me :-)

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. . . . zappingly! ;-)

Anonymous

Oh my god, the green thingy went away. I clicked it???

Anonymous

T_T

jimsug

@snailboat Are you accumulating reputation?

Damkerng T.

@snailboat Aww...

Anonymous

01:09

@jimsug Well, it was almost to 8000 . . .

Anonymous

I don't know what happened.

Anonymous

Now I'm sad.

Catija

HA HA HA. Did you see Nicael's rep? S/he had the same thing but had a 5 digit number.

Anonymous

Oh! :-)

Anonymous

That's funny.

Anonymous

01:15

I could swear I didn't click on the green thingy.

Anonymous

I've clicked on it a bunch of times now though :-)

Catija

Sorry :(

Anonymous

Oh, I'm not really that sad about it.

Anonymous

It was just a green thingy.

Catija

I like green thingies.

Anonymous

01:18

I do too. It's so fun clicking on them. I don't know how I managed to quit my green thingy clicking habit for a full day.

Catija

In your "is this just spelling" section, you might consider including a version without an article? *I have three other books." Maybe? I'm not certain.

jimsug

Step 1 - delete all network profiles possible

Step 2 - create profile on EVERY SE site.

Step 3 - ???

Catija

@jimsug Glory in the green thingy.

Anonymous

Well, if it needs more editing, I'll have to do it later :-)

Anonymous

Sheesh, that answer turned out a lot longer than I intended . . .

Anonymous

01:21

By the way, I'm using ellipses all the time because of how fun it is to use the ellipsis I added to my input method.

Anonymous

It has Non-Breaking Thin Spaces™!

Catija

I did a personality quiz one time... it was "What kind of punctuation mark are you"... I got "ellipsis".

2

Anonymous

' . . . ' 　 ←　Now 100% more Non-Breaking, with 50% extra Thinness!
' . . . '　←　Look how less shiny this regular brand ellipsis is!

Anonymous

Typing  . . .  is so fun :-)

jimsug

@Catija blogthings.com/whatpunctuationmarkareyouquiz/results/…

Anonymous

01:24

@Catija I think that's one of the best punctuation marks out there.

Catija

It's a very nice ellipsis. :D

jimsug

I am a colon: I can elaborate on ideas.

Catija

Nice. I should take that one and see what I get.

> You can't stand it when people are:

**Close minded**

I'm so bugged by this.

I need to put the "d" in there.

I just... can't

jimsug

I would have chosen that but didn't.

Catija

blogthings.com/whatpunctuationmarkareyouquiz/results/…

jimsug

01:28

Really?

Apparently I get along well with the semi-colon.

Damkerng T.

@jimsug I'm a Colon too!

> (But they're not always up for the intense inquisitions that you love!)

LOL :-)

Oh, the page didn't refresh automatically.

That was for Question Marks.

> (But they are a little sick of you being right all of the time!)

LOL!

Anonymous

Sometimes I feel like an exclamation point!

Damkerng T.

> You are a bundle of... well, something.

! :-)

Anonymous

I've spent quite a while trying to train myself to write periods instead of exclamation points :-)

Anonymous

But I think one of my most frequently used punctuation marks is the smiley face!

Damkerng T.

01:40

Oh, there is no parenthesis on the list.

Anonymous

That is, most unusually frequent.

Anonymous

I seem to use more smileys than everyone I know :-)

Anonymous

I've spent years trying to kick the habit, but I just can't do it!

Anonymous

I don't use nearly as many exclamation points as I used to. That's progress, right?

Damkerng T.

Punctuation marks are like snow to me.

Anonymous

01:41

@DamkerngT. (Oh! I use parentheses a lot, too . . . )

Anonymous

Heck, I'm just an all around overpunctuator.

Anonymous

I put commas where they don't go―and I put em-dashes all over the place!

Nathan Tuggy

@snailboat That, I think, is a matter of ... opinion.

Catija

@snailboat Are you aware of Terry Pratchett's opinion on the overuse of exclamation points?

Anonymous

@Catija Oh, I miss Terry Pratchett!

Catija

01:42

@snailboat :( Yeah.

Anonymous

He did something I really loved―nesting footnotes inside footnotes!

Anonymous

@NathanTuggy Yay, an ellipsis!

Anonymous

> That! Is!! Not!!! My!!!! COW!!!!!

Nathan Tuggy

@snailboat Had I been slightly more with it I would have used the actual ellipsis character … like that.

Anonymous

@NathanTuggy Oh, I use … all the time! I've long been in the habit because of Japanese.

Anonymous

01:44

Though in Japanese, it tends to appear like this: ……　←　six dots

Catija

> 'Multiple exclamation marks,' he went on, shaking his head, 'are a sure sign of a diseased mind.

Nathan Tuggy

Huh.

Anonymous

> どうやらふたりのあいだで、なにかいさかいがあったようだが……。

Nathan Tuggy

@snailboat I have a friend who's been in Japan for years and a lot of FB statuses end up with hollow periods.

Catija

I wish we used the hollow periods. They're so much cuter.

Anonymous

01:45

Yeah! They're sort of copied from Western punctuation, but they've got their own distinct style.

Anonymous

See how the comma is different, too?

Anonymous

Although some Japanese publications actually do use a Western-style comma.

Nathan Tuggy

@snailboat Is the comma the little backwards straight slanty thing in about the middle?

I.e., "、"?

Catija

@NathanTuggy Yeah, it looks like a tick mark but lower `

Anonymous

Yep! Like Catija says :-)

Nathan Tuggy

01:47

@Catija I didn't know that。

Catija

I don't speak Japanese but I took it for two years. I can read what snail posted but I've no clue what it means.

Anonymous

They're called dōten and kuten in Japanese. They can be considered close relatives of the comma and period.

Anonymous

It means "It seemed somehow that the two of them had had some sort of falling out . . . "

Anonymous

Here's an example of Western-style commas in Japanese text:

Anonymous

Anonymous

01:49

But Japanese-style periods (kuten).

Nathan Tuggy

Unrelatedly, I was curious how often various of us check 2k tools for possible deletions

and what strategies are common in picking new questions/answers to VtD

Anonymous

Very rarely.

Anonymous

In fact, I've never done it before.

Catija

@NathanTuggy VtD?

Nathan Tuggy

@Catija Vote to Delete

@snailboat Really? Huh

Anonymous

01:53

@NathanTuggy Well, I've done it on other SE sites.

Nathan Tuggy

:P

Anonymous

I'm not really in the habit of clicking on those tools.

Catija

@NathanTuggy Is that different than VtC? I don't ever see VtD when I go to the review tools.

Nathan Tuggy

@Catija ell.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=delete ?

Anonymous

Click on the tools tab, then click on delete

Catija

01:55

I have never done that... I didn't even know it was there.

Anonymous

Yeah, it's kind of hidden.

Catija

Oooh, hey, that's my answer:ell.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=stats&daterange=today

Nathan Tuggy

@Catija Yup, it's very ego-boosting at times

Catija

0

Q: Could I have some questions about TOFEL?

___ touching in O. Henry's stories is the gallantry with which ordinary people struggle to maintain their dignity. A. Most is B. It mostly is C. Is it most D. What is most I'm confused why the solution is D __ substances include various forms of silic...

grammar

What does this mean "Migration rejected"?

Is it because it got voted to close after being migrated?

Nathan Tuggy

... OK, I guess it's a sign of my personality that I've already set up a 1/day schedule to open /tools :P

@Catija Yes.

We threw it back.

(It will get auto-deleted, on both sites, in a little while.)

Anonymous

01:58

@Catija Yeah. The process is complicated and broken.

Anonymous

When a question is migrated from site A to site B, it's locked on site A.

Anonymous

That means no can change it at all.

Anonymous

The goal there is to keep there from being more than one active copy of the question at any time.

Nathan Tuggy

There's a bunch of ideas for fixing migrations and it looks like Shog wants to kill them, mostly, so maybe things will be better in some sense soon?

Catija

There's actually a good Meta.SE topic about adding the ability for a site to accept a migration before it getting migrated. I would really like that.

Anonymous

01:58

When site B closes the question for any reason, even if it's for "More details, please!",

Anonymous

The question is permanently locked on site B, all answers are deleted, and the question is unlocked on Site A.

Damkerng T.

Is it just me, or the reasons that we voted to close that question are strange?

Anonymous

That way there's only one copy in play at a time and everything gets auto-deleted eventually.

Anonymous

Makes sense, right?

Anonymous

But that's not how it actually works.

Anonymous

01:59

In fact, it stays locked on Site A.

Anonymous

It never gets deleted on Site A. No one can vote to delete it.

Anonymous

Notice how edit is greyed out.

Catija

@DamkerngT. Hmmmm... yeah, it should have gotten a custom close reason, honestly.

Nathan Tuggy

@DamkerngT. Yeah. Too broad would have been better.

Damkerng T.

nods

Anonymous

02:00

Try voting. You can't.

Anonymous

8

Q: Rejected migrations (deleted from the original site) are incorrectly locked

When a migrated question is rejected, the destination copy is locked to prevent two copies of the same question being in play at the same time. This is a good thing. Locking is a tool, and this is one possible reason to use it. However, in many cases the question is deleted from the original s...

discussion migration

Nathan Tuggy

@DamkerngT., how often do you check 2k tools? I'm doing a poll ;)

Catija

29

Q: Create an Accept Migration voting mechanism for migrated questions

tl;dr - Let the target site vote on whether or not to accept a migrated question into its community in order to help enforce the Don't Migrate Crap idea. Even with limited migration paths, quite often (that is, far too often) a question gets migrated to a site when it really should have just b...

feature-request vote-to-close migrated-questions

Damkerng T.

Um.. Never. (Now I feel a little guilty. :P)

Nathan Tuggy

@snailboat That's bizarre.

Anonymous

02:01

The whole "lock" thing is kind of a hack that doesn't really work. Check out the above meta post.

Nathan Tuggy

@DamkerngT. GUILT! GUILT ALL THE 2KERS!

Anonymous

I programmatically compiled a list of erroneously locked posts.

Damkerng T.

:D

Anonymous

I haven't done that in a while, but I'm betting we could find some if we looked ;-)

Anonymous

Anyway, it's been broken for years.

Anonymous

02:02

It's a little confusing. I hope I said it all correctly. I might not have.

Anonymous

It'd be nice if they fixed the migration system.

Nathan Tuggy

@snailboat I got the essentials but I think I was confused about where the locked copy ended up until reading the meta post.

Anonymous

The meta post is about a slightly different migration problem.

Anonymous

In this case, site A migrates to site B.

Catija

Seems the easiest way is to go to this page and look for anything marked as "on hold" or "closed"?

ell.stackexchange.com/tools?tab=migrated&daterange=today

Anonymous

02:04

Site A deletes their copy of the post immediately (as that's what the ELU moderators tend to do when migrating to ELL), and . . .

Anonymous

Site B rejects it and ends up with a locked copy forever.

Anonymous

Oh, well, you wouldn't want to look for stuff by hand.

Anonymous

That smacks of effort.

Catija

@snailboat Particularly when you only have one mod...

Anonymous

Effort is for stuff like this: meta.ell.stackexchange.com/a/2536/230 - Thanks, @NathanTuggy :-)

Nathan Tuggy

02:05

@snailboat :)

Anonymous

@Catija Look! A wild had went! ell.stackexchange.com/posts/52685/revisions

Anonymous

I think being sick is driving me crazy. I have way too much energy :-)

Anonymous

Isn't it supposed to work the other way?

Anonymous

So I end up talking and talking and talking, like this. But I'm going to go take a break so I don't break the chat :-)

Catija

@snailboat HA HA HA.

@snailboat Awww, I didn't know you were sick. :(

So... @NathanTuggy What's the purpose of delete voting vs leaving closed?

Nathan Tuggy

02:10

@Catija Well, I'm hardly an expert, since I only just got 2k tools for the first time, but as I understand it from assorted metas, it's basically to throw away stuff that is now, and will always be, thoroughly unsalvageable

… and that the roomba won't delete on its own

Catija

Hmmm. Interesting.

Nathan Tuggy

most dupes don't need deleting

and a lot of too broad or unclear don't either

Catija

What's the "2K tools" rep requirement on non-Beta sites?

Nathan Tuggy

although if a question lingers after its owner is long gone, that's probably fine to blow away

@Catija 10k

Catija

Ah. So I still have a way to go if I want to keep them if/when the site gets graduated.

Nathan Tuggy

02:12

Yes. Lil bit.

Catija

2K seems really low... to be honest. I know Beta number have to be low to be attainable but that's really low.

Nathan Tuggy

It's one of the lowest relative to full sites, although proportionally CV at 500 is even lower

Most of the high-end privileges are 1/4 rep, dropping to 1/2 rep at edits and (nearly) full rep when you get further down

I think the idea is that you really do need people early on who can, if needed, reverse the roomba

or augment it

Catija