ELL's Cabin

12:01 AM

@tchrist peace of such men, I'd think, since they accommodate singularity, too, in tanti viri.

@StoneyB Sure, I'll buy that. Tantus should be such. I don't know why I said so many; it's just such in the daughter languages, too. 5 hours sleep.

Damkerng T.

2:11 AM

40

A: Why does this documentation use "or" instead of "="?

In this document, "or" is being used according to the fifth definition listed by the Oxford Learner's Dictionaries: used to introduce a word or phrase that explains or means the same as another geology, or the science of the earth’s crust It weighs a kilo, or just over two pounds....

Though it's not a bad answer, it has received 40 up-votes.

Maybe this is a model question/answer of ELL.

Nathan Tuggy

HNQ strikes again?

Damkerng T.

Yes.

Nathan Tuggy

I have a decent, but not (if you'll pardon the pun) stellar answer on SpEx that got 50 upvotes from HNQ.

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

Nathan Tuggy

50

A: Why do deep space probes have to be sterilized?

Tardigrades can survive vacuum, low temperatures, and moderate radiation for quite a while. They're multicelled organisms. How tough is the toughest hypothetically viable single-celled extremophile? How sure are you that we've found all of them on Earth already? It's a matter of caution. Contami...

I think that's pretty much my only "golden shot".

Damkerng T.

2:14 AM

On one hand, I know that some people do have a real problem with this kind of word or phrase (the "or" one) in their own languages. On the other hand, it's a bit sad.

@NathanTuggy I'm really bad at HNQ.

Nathan Tuggy

I have it hidden all the time. ;)

Damkerng T.

@NathanTuggy Oh, an interesting stack!

I guess one day, we could have a question, "What does 'I' mean?"

Nathan Tuggy

@DamkerngT. Guh.

Damkerng T.

:P

Nathan Tuggy

But yeah, SpEx has some interesting stuff. They've got an awful lot of chat events, too.

Damkerng T.

2:19 AM

(As a mock-up question: "I know that 'I' means 'I', 'myself'. But yesterday I saw a character in a TV series use 'I' when it was clearly that she meant another person. Why did she use 'I' instead of 'she' or 'her'?")

Nathan Tuggy

Hmm. Details Please! :P

Damkerng T.

LOL

@NathanTuggy Interesting! Is space tourism on-topic?

jimsug

^ Except it's not. — underscore_d 14 hours ago

Am I the only one who finds this comment patently useless?

I was very surprised to find this question still on the HNQ list.

At the very least, if the comment after it was true, it should have been edited to be clearer.

Damkerng T.

I kinda agree that the question is not really about Perl, though the confusion is clearly in the context of Perl (or math or programming). I also think it's not really about English. It's cross-language.

jimsug

The title, and the body of the question, is misleading.

Especially the title.

Damkerng T.

2:27 AM

To be honest, I think the tag is also not correct.

jimsug

Well.

Damkerng T.

But I wonder how the community would react if I edited it to programming or perl.

jimsug

One expects a certain kind of question where the title is Why does this documentation use “or” instead of “=”?

It's not even really either of those, though.

Damkerng T.

nods

jimsug

I now agree, and have retracted my close vote. Also I'm going to delete my comment, partially to expose how useless that comment is, alone.

Oh look, now that comment just looks silly.

sigh

Damkerng T.

2:29 AM

Oh, right!

jimsug

ColleenV's comment, immediately after it, is useful.

41

A: Why does this documentation use "or" instead of "="?

In this document, "or" is being used according to the fifth definition listed by the Oxford Learner's Dictionaries: used to introduce a word or phrase that explains or means the same as another geology, or the science of the earth’s crust It weighs a kilo, or just over two pounds....

Nathan Tuggy

@DamkerngT. They seem to be.

jimsug

Kind of a shame that they got all these upvotes in a day.

Reputation-wise, that is.

Nathan Tuggy

@DamkerngT. I don't think either of those fits, although the current mathematics is not helpful either. I am really not sure any existing tag clearly expresses the problem in a way that doesn't presume the answer.

Damkerng T.

@jimsug I have the same feeling. It's quite sad that this exemplifies our questions.

@NathanTuggy reading-comprehension, perhaps, then?

jimsug

2:33 AM

I really don't think programming or perl is any better than mathematics. It's really just something to do with the incorrect assumption by a learner.

Nathan Tuggy

@DamkerngT. Mayyybe.

jimsug

It's really word-meaning, methinks.

Damkerng T.

That works, too!

Nathan Tuggy

Maybe conjunctions as well.

jimsug

Although the title uses the symbol, the confusion has arisen because the learner does not know one of the meanings of or

And has then equated it with equals.

Nathan Tuggy

2:35 AM

... or =.

(Sorry. I think I've gotten my daily fit of self-demonstrating wit out of my system now.)

Damkerng T.

@jimsug I very much doubt it. I mean, I can't imagine someone haven't heard of a similar expression with or in their own language in their math classes.

jimsug

Well. The question you would ask is is there a fundamental misunderstanding of the symbol, or the word that the symbol represents?

Damkerng T.

@NathanTuggy Looks enigmatic!

jimsug

Part of it is certainly because or has a specific meaning in programming languages. Or rather, it has a meaning in English that isn't used in programming languages.

Nathan Tuggy

Several of them, even.

jimsug

2:36 AM

So actually.

@DamkerngT. It really is as though they've come from a language where or does not have the meaning the same as...

Damkerng T.

I wonder what language that is.

jimsug

Because they're approaching it not from whatever non-English language it is, but Perl, where or can't mean equals

Damkerng T.

In my first language, something equivalent to "or to put it in another way" is commonly used.

jimsug

Pretend their native language is Perl, and the source of their confusion becomes much clearer.

Damkerng T.

nods

Nathan Tuggy

2:39 AM

Anybody know whether this is a construction that Mandarin uses?

"Wang" sounds vaguely Chinese to me.

Damkerng T.

I'm quite sure that Mandarin can use a similar expression.

Nathan Tuggy

Well, never mind that idea then.

Damkerng T.

(At the core of Thai, it operates pretty much like a variant of Chinese.)

Nathan Tuggy

(Imperialism at its best?)

jimsug

Anyway, now that I've resolved that dilemma in my mind, this question is very much on-topic.

tchrist

2:41 AM

@jimsug Talking about me again? :)

jimsug

:P

Damkerng T.

@NathanTuggy Probably not quite like that, or if it was related to that it was probably almost a thousand years ago, before the land of Siam came to exist.

jimsug

@tchrist No, I was just trying to wrangle the confusion that that question caused, in my mind.

Nathan Tuggy

@DamkerngT. That sounds about right.

jimsug

0

Q: Are sentences number 3 and 4 grammatical?

We can say these two sentences. He is a better person than him. Person better than him should behave excellently. My question is, can we swap them like this? He is a person better than him. Better person than him should behave excellently. I think sentence 4 is wrong...

grammar

bad title alert

tchrist

2:43 AM

Bad presumption alert.

jimsug

We seriously need a Bad Title Bot that posts bad titles here for people's attention.

tchrist

Just post them all. God will know his own.

Most will be bad.

jimsug

Yeah.

tchrist

Upvote please:

2

A: Why does "ow" have two different sounds

The words now and snow have never rhymed in the history of English. Both of them are native English words; they did not come into English from Dutch or German. (Rather, English, Dutch and German all descend from a common ancestor, Proto-Germanic; that is why these three languages have similar wor...

And they say questions don't get good answers after five years.

Damkerng T.

The OP originally asked, "Why does "or" mean "=" in Mathematics?" (or something very similar). That is the issue I addressed. My point was precisely that the meanings in Mathematics have nothing to do with the meanings in everyday informal settings. There is, of course, the other issue he raised, namely, "what do the statements in the manual mean?". I did not address that issue. — David Carraher 7 hours ago

I think he has a point.

jimsug

2:55 AM

Apologies for that interruption.

Nathan Tuggy

... what on earth is an invitation to Trash for? :P

Damkerng T.

Ahh... that's how the system works, I suppose.

I didn't understand it last time.

jimsug

When messages are moved, those affected are invited to the target room.

Probably because all the @-mentions are kept.

tchrist

Hm.

jimsug

@tchrist I just shouldn't have brought it up. Anyway. Back to the matter at hand.

@DamkerngT. Yeah, this is true. But I think part of the problem is that 1) the OP asked a mathematics question on an English site and 2) the answerer answered the question from a mathematical stance rather than an English one, on an English site.

Eg on Law we get lots of questions that could be answered with common sense instead of legal principles, but that doesn't mean they should be.

Damkerng T.

2:59 AM

Agree on both points.

jimsug

Wherever it's possible, answers should attempt to find an on-topic answer to the questions.

Even though you could answer it some other way, doesn't mean you should.

Nathan Tuggy

@jimsug (Although occasionally this will manifest in deeply unintuitive ways; on SO, software-rec questions are explicitly off-topic, but software-rec answers are perfectly fine and dandy.)

Damkerng T.

@jimsug I think this happens all the time.

jimsug

Yeah. And it really depends on the site's culture, I suppose.

Also, how far removed from the site's topic it is.

jimsug

3:57 AM

Hmm... ~~531~~ 507 unanswered questions. (questions with no upvoted or accepted answers)

Jude Niroshan

4:59 AM

Prepare for the graduation ELL !

Good Morning buddies!

Nathan Tuggy

@JudeNiroshan At least we aren't hitting privilege threshold yet....

Jude Niroshan

What's privilege threshold

Nathan Tuggy

That is, going from beta privilege rep requirements (1k for editing) to graduated (2k).

Jude Niroshan

so; where are we right now?

jimsug

Just had elections -- yay!

Nathan Tuggy

5:09 AM

We should be getting "beta" removed any day, or even any hour, now.

Jude Niroshan

Should be appreciated the Thanks giving speech done by @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M :D

Nathan Tuggy

Probably site footer listing.

Maybe migration paths.

Jude Niroshan

^_^

jimsug

It'll be interesting to see what they decide to do... are we the first to undergo the decoupled graduation process?

@NathanTuggy Oh god. I hope not.

Nathan Tuggy

I think Magento is first.

Their election finished a week or so ago.

@jimsug LOL.

From your lips to His ears?

jimsug

5:11 AM

ell.stackexchange.com/tools/posts/migrated/stats

Nathan Tuggy

@JudeNiroshan Oh yeah, and community ads, I guess.

jimsug

requires 2k - but 15% of the questions migrated here from ELU have been rejected.

Nathan Tuggy

@jimsug 15%... that's a lot lower than I was afraid.

Still.

jimsug

Yeah, but that's when moderators are required to migrate it here.

Nathan Tuggy

True enough.

Jude Niroshan

5:12 AM

hehe

jimsug

If a migration path is set up, any five users with closevoting privilege can migrate it.

Regardless of their familiarity with ELL.

Nathan Tuggy

I think at least half of those are mistakes made when there simply isn't enough info in the question.

... you'd think that would be easy for anyone on any SE site to spot, but oh well.

jimsug

@NathanTuggy Possibly; but you won't have fewer mistakes when there's a migration path.

Nathan Tuggy

Well, no, obviously not.

33% failed meta is amusing.

DISABLE THE META MIGRATION

jimsug

13

A: When should we consider adding a default migration path?

Almost never. These paths have a place when two conditions exist: There is a clearly-defined topic that is wholly inappropriate on one site and wholly appropriate on another. That topic is asked about daily on the former site. This is pretty rare. Especially if the first site isn't Stack Ove...

Nathan Tuggy

5:15 AM

Yeah, I've read that whole nest of related recent migration questions (as far as I know, I've got everything), but it does seem the "migration" perk is not long for this world.

@JudeNiroshan meta.ell.stackexchange.com/questions/2616/… has more info.

jimsug

So basically, it's a race to get to 25k reputation, so I can have all the same privileges on increased rep thresholds :P

Nathan Tuggy

Pretty much. Me, I mostly want 3k (and am fortunately very close), but 10k is oh so handy.

(I've been using most of the 2k tools daily if not more often since I got them a month or two gone.)

jimsug

5:35 AM

> Privilege Rep Count
-------------------- ---- -----
protect 3500 54
mod tools 2000 106
access review queues 350 578
close / reopen votes 250 771
edit 250 771
vote down 125 1867
flag posts 15 9898
vote up 15 9898
total 0 17188

ugh.

Eww.

There would be very few people indeed who would be trusted, or able to protect questions.

I reckon a good number of people who can protect questions is pretty important.

Nathan Tuggy

Well, protection probably doesn't matter; Community does most of that.

jimsug

I don't know.

Nathan Tuggy

That's what I've heard around, at least.

jimsug

A lot of the time, J.R. has had to manually protect questions because new answers trickle in slowly on account of the HNQ list.

Nathan Tuggy

Hmm.

Stats on manually vs auto-protected overall?

jimsug

5:42 AM

Hmm. I wonder if that's a thing that can be retrieved.

Nathan Tuggy

Put up the big SEDE rene spotlight in the sky....

jimsug

145

Q: Database schema documentation for the public data dump and SEDE

Stack Exchange releases "data dumps" of all its publicly available content roughly every three months via archive.org, and also makes that information queryable over the Internet at the Stack Exchange Data Explorer (SEDE). Over time, as new features and other bits of data are introduced to Stack ...

support faq data-explorer data-dump

Seems like it's possible.

Ah.

data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/353706/protected-posts-by-user

126 questions protected overall;

65 protected by Community.

@NathanTuggy i.e. only a little more than half the posts that are protected are protected automatically.

Nathan Tuggy

Fair enough.

jimsug

5:59 AM

I reckon 10k would be enough; 25k would be nice :)

Nathan Tuggy

640k is enough for anyone!

jimsug

6:57 AM

@NathanTuggy 640k is enough to start giving away on bounties to get others up to 25k ;)

Freddy

hee

Stack Exchange

8:18 AM

0

Q: OP un-accepts somebody else's answer and accepts yours

Is there a name for the phenomenon of an OP switching approval from one answer to another? (I am not saying or asking whether, or when, this might be a good idea) Is there a badge for writing [a certain number of] answers, after someone else's answer has been accepted, and then the OP switches...

discussion general-reference

Damkerng T.

11:11 AM

@Araucaria I want to up-vote your recent answer, but I feel awkward with this part:

> SAT tests are produced by idiots who know nothing about language and try to make language conform to the irregularities of their own ideas.

1

A: SAT sentence correction

SAT tests are produced by idiots who know nothing about language and try to make language conform to the irregularities of their own ideas. Very importantly for any language learner taking a SAT test, you need to understand that these tests are not designed for language learners. They are designe...

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

\o

Damkerng T.

o/

Araucaria

11:58 AM

@DamkerngT. Ive made my post less accurate, just for you;)

Damkerng T.

@Araucaria Thanks!

Love "Give the monkeys what they want!", BTW.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Jim Y U TORTURE ME? ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

jimsug

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Huh?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I was pinged again.

And now the messages are deleted.

And I'm now DYING OF CURIOSITY.

jimsug

~~whoops~~

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

12:07 PM

At least tell me what the messages were about.

jimsug

Ah. Right. Well, now I'm in an awkward position. Hang on.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Jim At least tell me what they were about!

Hanging on

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Well, I remember that it ended with something like "Let's soldier on."

So, let's do that. :-)

🙈 🙉 🙊 (Mizaru kikazaru iwazaru)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

How cute are those rectangles!

Damkerng T.

Hehe! Sorry about the Unicode characters!

Gigili

12:22 PM

Where are the regulars?

tchrist

@DamkerngT. Never apologize for Unicode.

Gigili

Hi @DamkerngT.

Damkerng T.

@Gigili Hi! Long time no see!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Gigili Here.

Hullo!

Welcome back!

@tchrist . . . except to me.

Gigili

Thanks!

Cheating? You no regular!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

12:28 PM

@Gigili I've been a reg here for 6 months.

Damkerng T.

I concur.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I eat lunch.

Damkerng T.

Still haven't had dinner.

2

Q: with a decade more experience

Source: The C Programming Language by Brian W. Kernighan and Dennis M. Ritchie As we said in the preface to the first edition, C "wears well as one's experience with it grows." With a decade more experience, we still feel that way. We hope that this book will help you to learn C and to use it...

comprehension

A 50-point bounty has attracted 4 more up-votes!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

30 reps to go then.

I coaxed Levy into offering a bounty on one of my questions.

My question attracted 5 more upvotes, and he lost 50 rep.

That's what I call economy.

Damkerng T.

0

Q: Is there any grammatical mistakes in below sentence, or this will be fine to forward to superiors

Please be informed that, subjected project meeting is scheduled for tomorrow at 11.30am. Panel members are requested to attend the meeting

grammar

Shot down, quickly.

(It's one of the two unanswered questions on the main page.)

Araucaria

1:45 PM

@StoneyB Ah! I think I've cracked the perception verbs -ing thingummyjig!

Damkerng T.

@Araucaria Does thingummyjig taste like gummy bear? Yummy! :P

Araucaria

@DamkerngT. Well, I suppose it's a pro-form! So it might do!

Damkerng T.

Delicious! :D

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

2:21 PM

@Arau @Dam @Stoney @TCh @Jim:

At the time, no one else was interested in writing a canonical post, so the initiative sort of dried up... I'd love to start it back up again. Would you be interested in writing one? — WendiKidd ♦ 1 min ago

Would you be interested in writing one?

Damkerng T.

Do we know enough to write one?

jimsug

Funny, I was looking at it not so long ago. Let me think about it.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Wendi I occasionally see Stoney in chat saying that they didn't reach a consensus. Of course I'd love to help, but I don't think I have what it takes to write one. Of course, we could make a team or something, and arrange it. It could be a weird new meta post, or just a friendly campfire in chat. — inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M 1 min ago

Damkerng T.

(BTW, @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M, I think all the others you mentioned can.)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Yes, they're all ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ.

Oh whoops, I forgot @Snail.

HOW COULD I?

Commits suicide

Damkerng T.

2:32 PM

Bang! :P

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

This is that idiot's soul talking.

Araucaria

@StoneyB, or any other Westpondians round here. Could you give me some style / grammaticality judgements on the examples in this post here , by any chance? If you could also check out the comments, I'd be very interested in your feedback.

Damkerng T.

Oh, yes. SAT is written by Americans.

So, it's probably an unfortunate example.

StoneyB

4:14 PM

@Araucaria My feedback's pretty useless, cuz my own written dialect is essentially mid-ocean (and in any case if it wuz me I'd rewrite the sentence to eliminate the collision of conflicting notions of concord). I do fret that you use the question as a springboard to a critique of testwriting without lingering long enough to explain that concord is a real grammatical phenomenon, however wonky the edge cases.

@Araucaria Expand! Expand!

Damkerng T.

IIRC, many of GMAT questions trick the test taker to misidentify the subject of a verb, usually by burying the test taker in a long, complex sentence.

I don't know if it's the same in SAT.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. That doesn't work on me.

Damkerng T.

Good tide, @StoneyB!

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I know you'd know better! :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

(It's a very common practice in exams here)

(That's why I'm always ready for those kind of questions)

Fantasier

Oh, the results are out!

(I am so late lol)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

4:24 PM

@Fantasier Hello so late. I'm MAR.

Fantasier

I guess not that late.

But hello anyway.

Damkerng T.

It was only yesterday.

Fantasier

I voted, though; I'm a good citizen.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

(づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ

Vote for me in the next election.

Fantasier

Two of the people I voted for were elected yay.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

4:28 PM

Zero of the people I voted for were elected. ᕙ(⇀‸↼‶)ᕗ

Am still happy for the three. Hope they lead ELL to where it deserves to be.

tchrist

4:40 PM

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Meta posts that trigger community buy-in on site direction are more useful than not having such.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist What?

tchrist

What does "lead" mean here, concretely and with examples?

Fantasier

@DamkerngT. TIL ผัว and ผิว are probably not (and unlikely to be) Tai!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Well, it means, erm, lead, as in, lead . . .

Damkerng T.

@Fantasier Huh? What are they, then?

Fantasier

4:43 PM

@DamkerngT. Loanwords from Late Middle Chinese

Damkerng T.

(Discussing other languages is probably better in chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/24938/language-overflow, BTW.)

A-ha!

Fantasier

Oh, I thought that room was especially for serious English discussion.

So I just throw anything else here lol.

Damkerng T.

Weird. I want to write 'discussing', but my fingers typed 'discussion'.

@Fantasier That room is specifically about language, in every sense. :-)

@Fantasier That makes sense.

Fantasier

@DamkerngT. Really? I was so surprised lol

Damkerng T.

I remember that the 5th tone (the rising one) is for words from Chinese.

Damkerng T.

5:05 PM

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Could you move the conversation above to LO, please?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

(づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ Of course.

Damkerng T.

That's very nice of you!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

→ 27 messages moved to Language Overflow

Damkerng T.

5:44 PM

0

Q: "What does so special he do?" or "What so special does he do?"?

If he does some special things, what should the sentence look like? What does so special he do? or What so special does he do? or maybe What's so special he does?

grammaticality questions

In case someone wants to write an answer. (It's already there.)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

6:17 PM

@Maulik I wrote a FAQ for "how to write question titles". Would you mind featuring it?

(And removing the featured from the questionnaire?)

Stack Exchange

6:35 PM

1

Q: How can I write a better title for my ELL question?

I have an ELL question; but the Stack Exchange format obliges me to write a title not shorter than 15 characters and not longer than 150 characters. So, how do I write a good title?

discussion support questions title

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Maulik that ^.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

6:48 PM

→ 4 messages moved to Trash

Damkerng T.

I don't think that moving my messages above to trash is necessary.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Snail can I ask you something?

@DamkerngT. Not sure, since I just pinged him above.

Damkerng T.

I read the exchanges between him and me, and I think my stance is still the same.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Nice.

Damkerng T.

"And yes, I'd certainly answer that way to my ex teacher and trust me, here, they'll still like my answer!" This is interesting. I think I was wrong about thinking that teachers could raise formality in your dialect. As for me, I always feel that replying my teachers with "Same here." (with or without "Thank you."), as you suggest, is quite impolite. — Damkerng T. Jan 5 at 5:30

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

6:51 PM

Anyway, let's move on.

Damkerng T.

The current problem for me is the new answer.

Anonymous

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I'm here

Damkerng T.

I can't really decide what we should do about it.

0

A: It was nice to talk to you

Honestly texting is so 2014 yesterday's news but in a age of Ebonics and slang terms short texting and other forms of playful attitudes I would have to say that no matter how you word you context the person interpreting it may see a attitude where there was not on and so on and so forth .