ELL's Cabin

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

07:39

@HarryCBurn Because The last message was posted 10 hours ago.

Damkerng T.

10:44

test

HarryCBurn

11:14

Yeeeah. :p

I think the room's doing better since it became one room again. @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M.

user116848

@HarryCBurn Hi Harry ~~Potter~~

user116848

I'm glad you chose to stop by here :)

user116848

@jimsug @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Hello guys!

Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn What room are you talking 'bout? :-)

BTW, hello!

HarryCBurn

11:33

Hey everyone :)

@Dam This one!

Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn Yay!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Arrowfar \o

HarryCBurn

I think neither of them got enough traffic.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@HarryCBurn Hmm, not sure how I'm supposed to understand that.

HarryCBurn

Well, when the rooms were split, for the rooms to remain as active as the first was, there would need to be twice the visitors, right?

The issue is that when the rooms were split it needed the attention of more people to be successful.

Damkerng T.

11:52

I thought you were saying that this room is the one room.

user116848

@HarryCBurn You talk very diplomatically :)

HarryCBurn

12:15

@Arrowfar Thanks! I think :)

@Dam That depends what you mean by "the one."

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@HarryCBurn No, he meant you're gonna die.

HarryCBurn

D:

Damkerng T.

1 hour ago, by HarryCBurn

I think the room's doing better since it became one room again. @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M.

I thought you meant that.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

. . . of an old age 700 years later.

Damkerng T.

To be sure which room you were talking about, I asked. It was clear that you meant this one.

44 mins ago, by HarryCBurn

@Dam This one!

Now I don't know what your point is. :(

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

12:21

@DamkerngT. Maybe he doesn't have a point, and is trying to be smooth.

Damkerng T.

Nah. there must've been some points.

40 mins ago, by HarryCBurn

The issue is that when the rooms were split it needed the attention of more people to be successful.

This made it sound like this room is not successful, which was a surprise to me.

So I'm confused! -- HALP!

In any case, I think this room is doing okay.

HarryCBurn

I think that this room is successful, but it was less so when the two rooms were split! @Dam

Sorry for the slow replies.

Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn Why would you want to combine it together?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Lemme ask him.

@Harry are you pointy?

HarryCBurn

I do have a point c:

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

12:29

@DamkerngT. I think he means "English Language Learners" and "ELL's Cabin", not "Language Overflow".

Hullo @Ruchir! Welcome to the chatroom!

HarryCBurn

Right, okay. When the two rooms were split into the ELL Cabin (this room) and the ELL learners room (the original one).

Yeah, @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M has it right.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I think we can't combine the frozen room with this room.

HarryCBurn

Hry @RuchirM!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Misspelling.

@DamkerngT. I know, he's saying now it's better.

HarryCBurn

*Hey (can't edit on mobile.)

Damkerng T.

12:30

This room replaces the frozen room, iiuc.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Harry it should be haz.

@DamkerngT. If I umbrella correctly?

HarryCBurn

@Dam Yeah, which is good.

Damkerng T.

Hehe! I'm no Alice. :P

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Is it just me or you don't understand what you're saying either?

HarryCBurn

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M That depends on who you're talking to.

Damkerng T.

12:32

Oh, wait, no. This room doesn't just replace the frozen room. This room both replaces the frozen room and covers the original goal of this room (which wasn't very successful, as it turned out).

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I'm talking to the wall.

Damkerng T.

Are you suggesting that we should disband this room and revive the frozen room?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I don't think he's suggesting anything.

I'll choke him to find out.

HarryCBurn

Noooooo. I'm saying that this setup is the best. My point is that I think the way it is now works best.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I see. Well, you could do that!

HarryCBurn

12:35

O.o

Damkerng T.

Ahh

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Chokes @Harry

Damkerng T.

1 hour ago, by Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn Yay!

HarryCBurn

Screeches

:P

Damkerng T.

Oh, I've been curious about this for quite a long time... What's the verb for that thing those young girls do in concert? Scream, squeak, screech, or what?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

12:39

@DamkerngT. Shriek? I dunno what they do in concerts.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M They go crazy when good looking members of a boy band show up and do some cool things.

And they keep ______ (screaming, squeaking, screeching, shrieking, or what).

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Going crazy?

I vote for what.

Damkerng T.

theguardian.com/music/2012/dec/07/…

Looks like The Guardian uses "scream".

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Well, why would there be something special for it?

You're looking for a word that has some sense of jumping and some sense of screaming?

HarryCBurn

Oh, fan-girling.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

12:44

If so, I recommend get terrified.

Damkerng T.

Crazy Girls Screaming before a One Direction concert

►

HarryCBurn

Can also apply to males doing it.

Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn Nice suggestion!

HarryCBurn

Yeah, I'd use fan-girling. c:

Damkerng T.

in English Language Learners, Mar 6 '13 at 18:17, by WendiKidd

Chaaaaaat why have you diiiiied

Let's hope that won't happen here!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

12:52

Too late . . .

Chaaaaaat why have you diiiiied

It just happened.

Damkerng T.

Argh!

0

A: What does "drink like a professional" mean in this context?

A professional drinker should drink from professional drinkware. Check out the Crystal Whiskey sets, wine goblets etc.. All hand made hand carved in Poland. polandirect.com.

Huh?

polandirect.com?

HarryCBurn

13:08

Sounds like advertising to me.

Damkerng T.

nods -- I flagged it as spam.

It's interesting that they use only one d.

HarryCBurn

I assume polanddirect.com was taken.

Damkerng T.

Makes sense.

Catija

14:27

Why do I feel as if F.E. always wants to be rude to me?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

What now?

Catija

2

Q: Can "either " be used for more than two items?

The Judiciary also uses a special type of monitoring through the General Inspection Office and Bureaucratic Justice Court. Additionally, either of the three powers have internal supervision mechanisms. Is this use of "either" correct in the above paragraph?

I don't understand why he feels the need to undermine the other users of this site like that.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Catija I only see an answer from you, which is downvoted.

(I dunno why, I haven't read the question or the answers)

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M There's an answer from J.R... is there not?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yes.

jimsug

14:34

Honestly, those comments should be deleted. This answering in comments thing is waaay too annoying.

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I'm talking about the 8 comments he made, starting with a rant about how you shouldn't trust people on anonymous sites.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh?

Lemme take a closer look.

Catija

Your type of question does come up now and then on grammar forums and sites. Your best bet to get decent grammatical info is to use vetted grammar sources. Anonymous posters on grammar sites like this one will often provide dubious or outright bad info. Sometimes good info is given by answerers, but hopefully they will provide some links or excerpts to vetted grammar sources to back up their opinions. Since your question is relatively a frequent one, you'll find out that a decent usage dictionary will usually discuss this very issue. (cont.) — F.E. 18 hours ago

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

K, I dunno if that's really rude or not.

Nobody on the internet knows I'm a molecule.

Catija

He's essentially telling someone "this site is pointless, don't bother asking questions here".

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

14:42

I can see that has a lot of room for misinterpretation, while it has some facts behind it.

Alas, F.E.'s behavior there isn't acceptable.

So many comments there, for what purpose?

Answering?

Woo I hit 7k rep!

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M YAY!

I don't understand why he didn't just write it as an answer.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Me neither.

Damkerng T.

I'm a little uncomfortable with discussion about behavior of our fellows in this room. (The other room is probably better?) I'm more interested in the points raised in answers and comments in general. I understand that it started out like a bit of a complaint. So what's done is done. (I can't delete anything anyway.) I hope that this room can keep staying conflict-free. At any rate, this doesn't mean that I agree or disagree with any messages above.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

15:04

← 25 messages moved from Language Overflow

Damkerng T.

15:17

← 1 message moved from Language Overflow

Nice! (I moved my test message over here to test the feature. Hope you don't mind.)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh!

HarryCBurn

15:31

Guys, mind giving me some help with some writing? I think my paragraph sounds clunky.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Of course it does. Gimme the paragraph.

Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn I wonder if I really can help!

HarryCBurn

> I stand up, pushing my chair back sharply as it clinks over the tiled floors, and walk towards the door, coffee in hand. I reach the businessman, his face still turned towards the tills, and crush my polystyrene cup into the side of his head. The coffee forces it's self down his neck, seeping into the collar of his suit as I carry on walking out the door, in the opposite direction to which he looks for me.

Course you can!

It might need context.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Waiwaiwait.

Is this supposed to a story?

HarryCBurn

waiwaiwaits

Yeah.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

15:33

Should it sound Sheakespearian?

HarryCBurn

I think I messed up with tenses somewhere.

Not really.

But the character/antagonist is sophisticated.

Damkerng T.

it's self -- I found one!

HarryCBurn

Found a what now?

Damkerng T.

Shouldn't it be itself?

HarryCBurn

Oh, is it meant to be itself?

Ah, beat me to it.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

15:34

Or at least its self?

Damkerng T.

:D

HarryCBurn

I think so, yeah.

That's a bad habit of mine c:

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@HarryCBurn Looks at or for?

The last few words.

HarryCBurn

for-- the man with coffee in his suit is searching for our antagonist.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh.

Now I have a hard time imagining the scene.

Damkerng T.

15:36

You're invisible, I think. :-)

HarryCBurn

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M ^ What I worried about.

I'll explain it in a message, give me a sec.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

SE question of the day: cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/10833

Highly recommended reading.

Damkerng T.

I think @HarryCBurn could've said, "Give me five minutes." :P

HarryCBurn

@DamkerngT. sorry, took longer than I thought to do something ;p

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I gave him 300 seconds. Nothing happened.

Damkerng T.

15:41

@HarryCBurn I was kidding. :D

HarryCBurn

So the antagonist walks up to the man in the suit, and pushes the cup of coffee into the right side of his head, then walks to the left of the businessman. The businessman looks to his right for who did it.

Maybe it's a bad idea.

I'll change the scenario a bit.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh.

Damkerng T.

Like playing trick to the businessman or something?

Sounds like a cool thing a magician or a trickster would do.

HarryCBurn

@DamkerngT. That's the idea. I want the antagonist to be sly and clever.

> I stand up and push the chair backwards with the backside of my legs, the chair's legs grating against the ceramic floors, beginning to make my way to the suit, and when, in a few seconds time, I arrive, I force the cup of coffee into the side of his head. He looks to his right, and I exit to the left of him, leaving him searching for a culprit.

Damkerng T.

I think I should've said 'playing a trick on' instead...

HarryCBurn

15:46

Not sure about the word culprit.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Now this is too obvious.

HarryCBurn

@DamkerngT. Yep! I didn't even notice.

Damkerng T.

I think 'culprit' is fine.

HarryCBurn

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Gah! ;p

> He looks to his right with pain, and I exit to the left of him.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

You could've left out some details out, so the reader finds them themselves when trying to imagine the scenario.

Darn I should become a writer.

HarryCBurn

15:47

^ ;p

I actually didn't include that many details.

Damkerng T.

I think I get what @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M said.

It seems like the narrative follows the first-person POV too closely.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

OMG then I should run away.

Damkerng T.

Let me twist it a little...

HarryCBurn

@DamkerngT. Sure, always happy to hear ideas!

Damkerng T.

> I stand up and push the chair backwards with the backside of my legs, the chair's legs grating against the ceramic floors, beginning to make my way to the suit, and when, in a few seconds time, I arrive, I force the cup of coffee into the side of his head. He looks to his right, searching for a culprit hopelessly, unable to see me leaving on his left.

HarryCBurn

15:52

@DamkerngT. Oooh, I like it!

Damkerng T.

Thanks!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

It's good. NOT GOOD ENOUGH.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Leaving some parts out and having the reader fill in the gap using their own imagination is a great technique too. Too bad I don't know how to do it in a short scene.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Well I would've been writing a book if I knew how to do that off the top of my head.

HarryCBurn

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M If you leave out too much you run the risk of having a bland area.

Although there's more behind that.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

15:56

That is also correct.

Also, not all audiences are good imaginers.

HarryCBurn

Draft of the excerpt. ^

True. It's hard to find a good balance.

Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn Hey, page 35!

HarryCBurn

Yup! Haven't written in ages.

Not sure what the end will be yet. Depends on how long I want it to be.

Damkerng T.

@HarryCBurn Already longer than most things I've ever written. :p

Eww... maybe I shouldn't've eaten something too spicy this morning.

HarryCBurn

Same here!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

16:00

@DamkerngT. Did you eat lubricant?

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Is that spicy?!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

\\!robot DEFINE SPICY

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Kaeng som

HarryCBurn

self.spice_eaten = True

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

\\!robot TRANSLATE@LAST_COMMAND INTO ENG

Damkerng T.

16:02

From Wikipedia: Kaeng som or gaeng som[1] (Thai: แกงส้ม, pronounced [kɛ̄ːŋ sôm]) or Thai sour curry[2] is a sour and spicy fish curry or soup with vegetables popular in central Thailand.[3] The curry is characteristic for its sour taste, which comes from tamarind (makham). The recipe uses palm sugar (Thai: น้ำตาลปี๊บ, namtan pip) to sweeten the curry.

I can feel my stomach wrenching now!

(not too violently, though)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Sounds tasty.

\\!robot STOP@COMPLAINING

Damkerng T.

BTW, @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M, your cogsci question has been viewed only 9 times. No comment, no answer!

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Affirmative.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

MY cogsci question?!

Damkerng T.

:D

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, 32 mins ago, by Andy

"Dear Internet, I watch a lot of porn. I mean a LOT. Please tell me if this will hurt my performance in the long run. If so, can I watch just some porn and have better performance or do I have to become the pope to fix my bed room issues. kthxbai"

-5

Q: Helping Users Figure Out Where to Post

I'm an avid forum user. For years, I have successfully both retrieved and shared information on various forums. However, I am disappointed to find that the same is difficult to achieve here on Stack Exchange. Lately, I've been told several times that my question is on the wrong forum, rather tha...

feature-request tags improve forums

This was a very constructive user. I'm inclined to believe that they're an avid forum user.

Damkerng T.

16:09

> I suggest a second tag system, called forum tagging.

!

I think that thing is called "stack" round here.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Or SE.

Damkerng T.

I mean the second tag system, aka forum tagging.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yes.

HarryCBurn

Personally, I've never had issues with finding the right site.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@HarryCBurn Which SE site should this question be posted on?

HarryCBurn

16:15

Sexuality.SE.

:p

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

That ain't a site yet.

HarryCBurn

It's a beta.

Oh, I thought it was.

Is it not?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

No. BWAHHAHHA!

HarryCBurn

Aha! Private beta ;p

7

Sexuality – sexuality.stackexchange.com

Beta Q&A site for proposed Q&A site for frank and clinical information on human sexuality.

Currently in private beta.

But Cogsci is good too.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Well, I can't ask it there because I don't watch [that-Thai-word] a lot.

HarryCBurn

16:19

Uhh. Not sure what your point is. ;p

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Dam knows.

Damkerng T.

Oh, in Thai, "porn" means blessing. :P

HarryCBurn

Uh-'kay!

(Quickly: how about "much ado about something" for the room description?)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

My point stands. I don't watch blessing a lot.

Damkerng T.

Gotta go. See y'all later!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

16:31

ICU!

Catija

Bye!

Anonymous

17:54

@HarryCBurn I wonder if that site will be excluded from hot network questions or not.

Anonymous

@jimsug I regularly delete answer-comments on Japanese.SE. Users flag them and complain about answer-comments, and there's a meta post at +17 called "comments are not for answers"

Anonymous

The culture on ELL is very much in favor of answer-comments

Anonymous

I think it inherited this from ELU

Anonymous

My biggest problem is with comment-answers that are outright wrong or misleading―or perhaps worse, subtly wrong or misleading

Anonymous

Which are not uncommon at all on ELL.

Anonymous

17:58

Unfortunately, there's no way to downvote these comments and no way to remove them (flags are declined)

Anonymous

You can respond, which is far from ideal, saying that the comment is wrong

Anonymous

Or, if you have enough time and energy, and assuming you can phrase the correct answer properly yourself, then you can leave a comment explaining precisely how it's wrong

Anonymous

But if you're going to do that, you should just write an answer, not a comment

Anonymous

And you can't always do that―you can know something is wrong without having the time, energy, or knowledge to write a full answer about what's correct

Anonymous

And people get irritated, unfortunately, when you simply say that their comments are wrong

Anonymous

17:59

When, of course, you're doing everyone a service by pointing it out. (It'd be better if the comments could simply be removed, but they can't be without the cooperation of the moderators.)

user116848

wow, you type fast!

user116848

Hi @snailboat!

Anonymous

I actually do type fairly quickly :-)

Anonymous

Hello!

Anonymous

So the path of least resistance, for me at least, is to let most incorrect comments pass without responding

Anonymous

18:01

ELL does have a lot of misinformation on it.

Anonymous

It'd be nice if we had methods to minimize that in place.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat \o

@snailboat Sometimes meta posts and sometimes chat events can work. But a lot of ELLers I'm afraid may not participate or even not cooperate.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Nah, those are largely irrelevant.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

There are ignorant "learners" and egotistical answerers, and then people who are passionate about ELL. And I'm in the fourth group: People who are watching all of this and nodding with sorrow.

Anonymous

The vast majority of users seeing a comment are coming in from Google and aren't searching for meta posts or chat about that comment to tell them that it's wrong.

user116848

18:07

I think sometimes comments are very useful because not all users feel like giving a proper, researched answer.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yes. I meant a clean-up process. But then we need experts to decide on that.

user116848

So some hints, suggestions and information is good too.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Well, the site has a mechanism for it built-in―voting

Anonymous

We're just voiding that mechanism by using comments instead of answers for answering

Anonymous

Ideally, very short answers would be posted as answers

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

18:08

@snailboat I meant the comment clean-up act ™

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Never happen. There are way too many bad comments to clean up now.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Salute

Anonymous

I'm not actively trying to change the site

Anonymous

I'm trying to use it like everyone else does

Anonymous

This is just a passive description, not a call to action

Anonymous

18:11

We'll keep using it the way we do now, I'm pretty sure :-)

user116848

@snailboat I'm contributing on the site too these days. But very slowly.

Anonymous

Oh yeah?

user116848

I wonder what you think about the type of comments I leave.

Anonymous

I haven't been keeping up

Anonymous

So I haven't seen your comments

Anonymous

18:12

I'm still using the site, but I don't get a chance to see every question anymore

Anonymous

You might find this link helpful: I have been eating vs. I have eaten — Arrowfar yesterday

Anonymous

I like this sort of comment

Anonymous

Pointers to resources, etc.

user116848

Yeah I felt like helping.

Anonymous

Sometimes we get comments like this:

Anonymous

18:14

water is countable as well! The waters of Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean @SF. — Maulik V 6 hours ago

Anonymous

I reply to this sort of comment sometimes . . .

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat From certain users.

I wish some people didn't assert that they're informative about a subject when they're not.

Anonymous

We're all learning

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

We are, but we shouldn't make a definitive claim when we're not sure it's correct.

Anonymous

It is good to try to put some effort into making sure you're saying something you think is correct.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

18:18

That comment could've been put like this:

> I think I have found an instance of countable "water":  . . .

Anonymous

Unfortunately, many people have fairly poor metacognition―see Dunning-Kruger

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Like me. Wait what's that?

Hah!

Totally applicable to this context.

Anonymous

Even highly knowledgeable individuals can have trouble figuring out where the boundaries of their knowledge are.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yes.

Anonymous

Metacognition is hard for everyone.

Anonymous

18:21

Just harder for some folks than others.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

And the more knowledgeable the person, the harder the signification.

It also depends on the environment.

If I were the second high-rep user on ELL, my ego would most probably have affected my meta-something.

Anonymous

Rep just means you use the site a lot.

Anonymous

Even very bad users can accumulate reputation over time if they post enough.

Anonymous

You can even build up reputation with a net negative score on your posts.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yeah . . . 5 downvotes = 1 upvote/2 upvotes.

Anonymous

18:24

And it's very hard to get automatically blocked.

Anonymous

If you manage to get through the first day or two, it'll probably never happen.

Anonymous

Besides which, people who get downvoted tend to get pity upvotes.

Anonymous

So the system is really tilted in favor of allowing almost anyone to keep participating, and if they do, they can build up rep.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yes, and the bandwagon effect ain't really strong here.

So no -10-somethings.

Anonymous

Our lowest-rated answer is -7

Anonymous

18:27

-7

A: you're out a dollar -- what does that actually mean?

It seems nobody has answered the question yet and I think it is an interesting one. What does it actually mean to say "You're out a dollar?" Is there any definition of "out" that could make this sentence make sense? "Out," used as an adverb, makes reference to a place. "Out here. Out there. Whe...

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@snailboat Don't forget that the meta-effect is to blame on this one.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Li'l bit, yeah.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Specially that the guy appeared rant-ish on meta to some people.

@snailboat Li'l bit is four downvotes.

Anonymous

I mean, it brought them more attention.

Anonymous

But the downvotes are probably all because it's wrong.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

18:30

Of course.

Not as many people will notice another bad answer of poorer quality cause it didn't go meta.

Anonymous

I don't really see a way to handle most of ELL's problems.

Anonymous

ELL has lots of problematic users, but all of them are convinced they're not the problem.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yeah.

@snail the bigger problem is, a very small portion of users know that there is a problem, and less care about it.

Anonymous

Well, there isn't a problem, there are a bunch of little problems. At least in my view.

Anonymous

I can't think of a way to make headway on any of them.

Catija

20:12

@snailboat can you help me decide whether it's still required to capitalize a title when you use it in place of a name? I feel like I see it both ways. EG: I need to ask mom and dad for some money. I know that traditionally, it should be capitalized but I don't feel as if it's always done any more.

@snailboat I'm so tired of seeing questions [on hold] as "proofreading" when the constructive option is "not enough detail". Can a mod change the close reason?

Anonymous

@Catija Two mods can change the close reason.

Anonymous

One can't.

Anonymous

So it'd have to be J.R. and WendiKidd right now, I think.

Anonymous

The other two mods don't use ELL anymore.

Catija

Meh. Maybe we should just get rid of "proofreading" as a default close option?

Anonymous

20:15

About the capitalization thing: I don't know. I would personally capitalize mom when it's used as a proper noun and not when it's used as a common noun.

Anonymous

@Catija It's really useful, though. I think it's always been misused at least a little, though . . .

Anonymous

I'm not sure what to do about the close reasons, but you could start another meta thread (maybe pointing to ColleenV's existing thread and mentioning that no changes have been made yet)

Catija

@snailboat yes, it's useful, just not sure how to fix the rampant misuse. "proofreading" doesn't open a dialogue with the asker. It shuts them down and tells them to go away. The "Details" close reason at least explains how to improve their question so that it is something we will address.

Anonymous

corpus.byu.edu/coca/?c=coca&q=40818500 ← Here's a search for ask mom|dad in COCA. It's case insensitive, so you can see in the results how often it's capitalized.

Catija

@snailboat So, most of the time it's capitalized.

Anonymous

20:31

@Catija That's my impression

Anonymous

I'm the sort of person who tends to forget when you're supposed to capitalize things like cardinal directions, by the way :-)

HarryCBurn

Hey again!

Anonymous

1

Q: Definite article for things that are unique to me

Can I use the definite article for things which are unique to me and I can use my before them? For example to say When I was 16 years old, the father said me ..... Instead of When I was 16 years old, my father said me .... or As I fell, the shirt teared apart

definite-article

Anonymous

I think a lot of learners really misinterpret the "uniqueness" bit.

Anonymous

Actually, I think "uniqueness" is a poor way to explain definiteness in the first place, though it's possible to use it as a concept if you define it correctly.

HarryCBurn

20:45

I don't think I've heard the rule I assume the uniqueness comes into play on.

Anonymous

@HarryCBurn If you mark a noun phrase with the, you're telling the listener "I think you can identify what this noun phrase refers to". That's the basic idea.

HarryCBurn

Right.

Fair enough.

Not sure I entirely get it, but it's not too important.

Anonymous

Things that are "unique" within a given context tend to be identifiable. For example, I could say "the moon" even if I haven't previously introduced "a moon" in the discussion.

Anonymous

@HarryCBurn Well, it's extremely important to learners. Articles are one of the hardest things to master for many learners

HarryCBurn

*Not too important [for me].

I didn't mean to imply that it's easy.

Anonymous

20:50

Oh, sure.

Anonymous

Nice design again, by the way :-)

Anonymous

My username used to be snailplane, but now it's snailboat.

Anonymous

I've been trying not to change it lately because of how many people got confused or didn't realize I was the same person when I changed it

Anonymous

But I still like snailplane :-)

HarryCBurn

Which design? c:

Anonymous

20:58

26

Q: New Aviation Site Design!

Good news everyone, it was discussed on the Stack Exchange podcast, and we now have a site design. This should be rolling out as soon as we can get the design spec converted into workable CSS. Completed layout: If you have any comments before this is finalized, please let me know. Design con...

discussion status-bydesign design

HarryCBurn

Ah, thanks ;p

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