ELL's Cabin

Araucaria

00:18

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Hi old chum

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. ... Can I ask you something old bean? Have you ever disagreed with your parents about something? I always did. But it's GOOD to disagree with people, because you learn stuff about them, you learn stuff about how they think, about how people think in general and that's good ...

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I understand why you want to make tags better - but I don't have the same ideas as you about when a tag is useful or not :) That's ok!

Even though I don't agree with you, I still respect what you're trying to do, and I think it's a good thing. But, I hope, you don't want me to just be quiet and not say anything if I don't agree with you about whether a tag is useful?

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. To me, you don't seem like that kind of person at all!

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. So, what you need to do is persuade me :) Or - even listen to me and think about whether I'm being silly, or perhaps whether I have something useful to say. Probably not! But it's probably still good to listen to folks you don't agree with anyway. If you understand why they're worried or upset, you can show why it's ok and they don't need to worry! :)

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. And you can also explain to them why they're wrong. I really appreciate your trying to make this site better. But I hope that no one ever is going to try to make the site better without listening to people who have different ideas/ Even if those are wrong.

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. So - from me, completely to you - keep up the good work! And let's listen to all the different ideas too :)

Crazy Ninja

04:58

Good Morning !

Anonymous

12:21

I'm surprised we don't have a postpositive tag of some sort.

tchrist

@snailboat Don’t you mean you wonder why we don’t have a tag postpositive? :)

Anonymous

13:07

Hee

Nihilist_Frost

13:42

-1

Q: What crosses your mind when you hear the word: 'jobattractor'

I wonder what are the most common associations with the word 'jobattractor'. Can this have a meaning of a person, who is that good in what he is doing professionally, that job offers literally attack him?

so off-topic

Anonymous

Whew, another careless mistake on my part. Luckily I noticed and edited it before my 5 minutes were up :-)

Nihilist_Frost

13:54

Snailboat, you remember that SOS is not an acronym for anything?

Anonymous

Uh-huh?

Araucaria

14:22

Nice question here:

2

Q: The subject of an interrogative sentence

What is unusual about Angkor Wat? What is the real subject of this sentence?

sentence-structure

Anonymous

15:05

> What is unusual about Angkor Wat?

Anonymous

> What about Angkor Wat is unusual?

Damkerng T.

15:42

For a second, I thought the answer might be "(that) there is no monk in the wat".

Then I realized that it was a grammar question. :-)

> "What is unusual about Angkor Wat?" "That there is no monk in the wat is unusual about Angkor Wat."

Anonymous

Hmm.

Damkerng T.

> "What about Angkor Wat is unusual?" "???"

Anonymous

"What about Angkor Wat is unusual? → What is unusual about Angkor Wat?" "That there is no monk in the wat is unusual. → It's unusual that there is no monk in the wat."

Damkerng T.

I feel a little weird that the full answer of "What about Angkor Wat is unusual?" seems to have "What about Angkor Wat" deleted, or else we have to move "about Angkor Wat" to after "unusual" again.

> "What about Angkor Wat is unusual?" "It's unusual that there is no monk in the wat."

> "What about Angkor Wat is unusual?" "What's unusual about Angkor Wat is that there is no monk in the wat."

Anonymous

I think the two questions have the same answers.

Damkerng T.

15:57

This could lead to similar and more complex questions, like, what is the subject of "What is he doing in our project?"

Anonymous

That one's probably easier :-)

Damkerng T.

Ah, I see. The in-situ alternative of the question is obvious.

("He is doing what in our project?!")

Anonymous

Right! :-) In that question, the interrogative phrase is not in subject position, so it's been fronted and the subject and auxiliary have been inverted.

Anonymous

In the Angkor Wat question, the interrogative phrase is already in subject position, so there isn't any inversion going on.

Damkerng T.

It's clear what is the subject of "Those people in the house are having a party", but what about "Those people are having a party in the house."

@Araucaria I agree with your answer, but I doubt whether "The news from Italy came" is the same as "The news came from Italy".

For example, "He came from Rome" cannot be rewritten as "He from Rome came".

Hmm... maybe we can. At least it could work in poems.

Araucaria

16:30

@DamkerngT. I've changed the example! It's now "The news from Italy was the same" and "The news was the same from Italy" :)

Damkerng T.

Ah, thanks!

Nihilist_Frost

I'm sorry for the bad answer.

I'm very inclined to delete the whole thing.

I was seconds away from a nervous breakdown.

I feel like it's my worst answer I've ever done.

Insert more rage

Araucaria

@Nihilist_Frost Why? It was an honest answer. I don't think the question was as simple as it looked. And I'm not certain that my answer is correct! Yours might be!

Nihilist_Frost

I was ticked off.

I am editing the answer right now.

Araucaria

@Nihilist_Frost I started writing an answer that said the same as yours, but then I realised that some of my examples were coming out wonky so I had to have a rethink ...

@Nihilist_Frost But there's still an issue with my post ...

If you've moved a phrase out of the Subject noun phrase, maybe it isn't part of the Subject any more ... And then if that's correct, so's your answer!!! ;)

Nihilist_Frost

16:41

I think I should just add "bare" to my mentions of the subject.

should patch up the "the man that I saw yesterday came over" problem.

Araucaria

@Nihilist_Frost Got to rush off to take Students to the pub (hard life). Have fun. Yes, or you could say 'ultimate head', or something too!

Nihilist_Frost

"is" is also intransitive; may help

Damkerng T.

If we have only two boxes to choose, transitive and intransitive, I think "is" is intransitive.

@Araucaria Very tough life indeed. ;-)

@Nihilist_Frost nods

Nihilist_Frost

My whole answer was basically based on "is" being intransitive.

Anonymous

17:08

Be is always intransitive, meaning it doesn't take an object as a complement. Of course, it does take a complement, just a different type.

Nihilist_Frost

the complement is "unusual about Angkor Wat"?

Anonymous

Well, that's the question, isn't it? :-)

Nihilist_Frost

Eventually simple questions can result in extremely bloated answers...

Bloated answers are Araucaria's specialty.

I don't like writing bloated answers often.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

19:42

@Araucaria It's not you. I'm tired of explaining why I do what I do for the nth time here. Surprisingly, it doesn't happen in other metas. And yet I run to people insisting on their foolish ideas. (Again, I don't mean you) I . . . just decided that I should do what I want, since that's what others are doing.

Araucaria

20:11

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Just keep doing what you're doing, 'cuz you're doing it well :)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Araucaria I certainly am not doing it well.

Well, they don't let me do it well.

I just dropped the meta headache.

Ice Girl

Hi :)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@IceGirl Hullo!

Sorry for the monologue, I'm a bit annoyed.

Ice Girl

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. oh why?

Araucaria

@Nihilist_Frost Yes, that's true, it's a bad habit of mine. Sometimes I do it 'cuz I'm a teacher and I want to get right down into the basics of the grammar and give lots of examples and stuff so, hopefully (maybe it never happens), it'll help people with other type questions too ... We need short succinct answers too, like the ones you give ...

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

20:14

@Nihilist_Frost I believe the only person here with unnecessarily long answers is me.

Araucaria

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. You know, they say if it's not difficult it ain't worth doing! So don't give up because of a few hiccups :)

@IceGirl Hello

:)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Araucaria There's a difference between giving up and giving up on ELL.

Ice Girl

:)

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Good point

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I'm the guy who gets downvoted, since it's not my meta posts that are speaking about how nice ELL is.

Araucaria

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I think you do a good job here, why give up?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

20:16

@Araucaria My back's breaking.

And I'm losing it.

The only sub-community on ELL that cares about site quality is the chat anyway, so no point in wasting my time on meta.

Araucaria

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Maybe just take a break from meta, and enjoy being on chat??

Btw, why don't you give more answers on here?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Araucaria I'll be on meta for sure, I just dropped trying to help the tag system.

Araucaria

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I think if you give it a bit of a rest it might come round your way anyway ...

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Araucaria Lack of knowledge.

Araucaria

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. You're pulling my leg right?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

20:19

@Araucaria I doubt that'll happen, but let's hope it will.

@Araucaria ?

Araucaria

'Pulling someone's leg' means teasing them

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I know. I wasn't meaning to do it.

Slaps hand

Araucaria

You've got too much knowledge. Time to share it around with some good helpful answers...

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

You're pulling my leg right?

Seriously though, I don't know enough to answer good questions, and don't see value in answering the other ones.

By "other ones", I mean something like this:

-2

Q: Past tense contrast

I'm studying the past tense contrast (past simple, continuous and perfect) and I want to know if my answers are correct or not. went. traveled. got off. walked. came. had never seen. was playing. were dancing. was walking. stopped. turned. had gone. had written. walked. asked. answered. heard...

past-tense

AKA the ones that the OP doesn't even want to know the answer.

Damkerng T.

If only the tag system was hierarchical, everyone could've been happier.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

20:26

@DamkerngT. Not famous in the big meta, so.

Damkerng T.

So someone has raised that idea before?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

But a hierarchical tag system would be useful even in sites like chem and bio.

@DamkerngT. Hmm.

71

Q: A proposal for tag hierarchy on SO

Executive summary Introduction of sparse hierarchy (partial inheritance relation) into the set of tags on SO, in order to allow more efficient question organization/filtering/tagging (especially via "Interesting"/"Ignored" mechanism). The proposal is designed to achieve its goals while adhering...

discussion feature-request tags tag-hierarchy

Relevant:

19

Q: Tag hierarchy absence - design reasons?

Possible Duplicate: Implicit tagging hierarchy I've seen some references on MSO to the fact that Jeff rejected (supposedly repeatedly) the idea of a tag hierarchy. However, my searching failed to uncover any source material (e.g. actual wording by Jeff/Joel) on the topic. As a develop...

discussion feature-request tags tag-hierarchy

Damkerng T.

I mean, for example, in Piggydb, you can define will, would, can, could, and such, as tags under modal, and when you search for modal every question tagged with any of those tags will come up.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

21

Q: Implicit tagging hierarchy

I am aware of similar requests but I ask this regarding SE-2.0 sites, as the example I will take gaming: Both answers on the question Should questions always be tagged with either a console/platform or with “multi-platform”? make perfect sense to me, i.e. on the one hand this might overuse the t...

feature-request status-declined area51 tags tag-hierarchy

Ice Girl

Hello @DamkerngT.

How are you doing?

Araucaria

20:30

@DamkerngT. Hi

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

9

Q: Another kind of tag hierarchy/relationship

Ok, now we have synonyms which is great and helps a bit more to organize the tags. But I think we need something more (in addition). I know that having tag hierarchy was proposed before and more or less declined but I mean something different. This question clearly says that synonyms like php5 ->...

discussion feature-request status-declined tags tag-hierarchy

Damkerng T.

@IceGirl Good, thanks. How are you?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

That's why I insisted that tags should primarily be good for searching purposes.

Ice Girl

Fine tnx @DamkerngT.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Same reason verb is bad, but gerund is fairly good \CC @Arau.

Damkerng T.

20:31

People think of "hierarchy" in the same way as they think of sub-directories, which is not the case in information management system (e.g., Piggydb).

Araucaria

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Yes, that's right. It's good to have broad searches and narrower searches too!

Damkerng T.

Hi @Araucaria!

Araucaria

I think a hierarchy is good ...

Damkerng T.

I use it in my personal Piggydb, and I really like it!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Araucaria The problem with verb is that it has a really deceptive name. It will be mis-applied again and again and again.

Hmm, I dunno why I'm continuing this discussion.

Damkerng T.

20:33

It's because someone overlooked something.

6

A: Implicit tagging hierarchy

I don't think adding this kind of complexity would make the tag system better.

Araucaria

I was thinking that on some sites, maybe certain tags should not be allowed to be the only tag. So, for example, 'grammar' can be a useful tag if it's not the onlytag. So perhaps we could have a system where if people put a grammar tag on, it can't be the only tag .... What d'you think?

Damkerng T.

So we're all stuck in a flat tagging system.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@DamkerngT. That guy is sometimes annoying.

Araucaria

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Because it's good to talk?

Or if people put a vocabulary tag or a pronunciation tag ...

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Araucaria It's useless to talk. We can't do something by-design, and we keep running in circles since we don't know what we want from tags. I'm just making my tired mind even more tired.

Hmm, 'tierder' is weeeeeeeeiiiird.

Araucaria

20:36

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Well maybe look at how people here use them, an then decide if the tag helps them or not ...

Damkerng T.

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. My point was that the system isn't quite perfect, so we won't win either way.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Araucaria Chuckles people here only use 'grammar' and 'usage' and 'meaning'; let's throw the other tags out.

Araucaria

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I use the pronunciation tag quite a bit to search and read ...

and filter!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@DamkerngT. There's always a best way. What we're doing today with tags is only driving at 80 mph away from the correct route.

jimsug

@Araucaria Are people askers or answerers, though? At best I'd say it's neutral for both, at worse harmful to answerers.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

20:39

@Araucaria That's actually like the best tag we have on ELL.

Araucaria

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Is there a correct route?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

There might not be one, but there's the optimum route.

Imagine what would happen if you'd use 50 tags in your searches instead of 1.

Araucaria

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Is the site a means for users or an end? And are users an ends or a means?

Damkerng T.

What's really funny to me is that the system implements tag aliases, but not the hierarchy system, which could be implemented just fine with one-to-many aliases or many-to-many aliases.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Users are means, and ends.

Araucaria

20:41

@jimsug What's the "it" in the "it's" there?

@DamkerngT. Yes, absolutely ...

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. yes, agreed. It's good to remember they're an ends too, I think ...

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

We're primarily making a library, for users, by helping users; but still, we're building a library, not coddling people. That's why we don't stand on ceremony. That's why 'thanks' and 'hi' are discouraged and edited out. That's why some users are kicked out, and some are awarded digital numbers for helping with the library.

Araucaria

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. But not all SE sites are the same. Their users aren't the same. We have users who can't understand English perfectly and so forth. I think our worries about the site are a bit wonky! The most important thing for people who want to use this site as a resource for learning and information is that the info is correct! That is something we really nee to worry about. Properly

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Nice chatting old bean. Got to go home ... Ciao all!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Bye!

@Araucaria I study in my room. That doesn't mean it should be a mess.

\o @hurb! Welcome to the Cabin

Anonymous

@Araucaria I like your answers! :-)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@snailboat I like your answers!

Anonymous

20:51

Ehh, I've written some answers that are probably useful, but I really need to go through my answers eventually and rewrite the ones that aren't so good.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Which is like, all of them. Hides

Anonymous

@DamkerngT. The tag system is designed for Stack Overflow.

Anonymous

As is a lot of other stuff.

Anonymous

Like, meta? It's designed for asking programming questions on Stack Overflow.

Anonymous

Sure, it's being used for things like bug tracking and chatting, but it's not designed for that.

Anonymous

20:52

That's just bolted on.

Damkerng T.

nods -- I think there were focused on Stack Overflow, and when they extended the system to cover Stack Exchange, some things don't fit as well as they once were.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Hmm, some things are topic-sensitive.

Anonymous

I think it's okay that not everything is perfect, though.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

\o @rainbow! Welcome to the Cabin!

@snailboat But, it should be less than perfect. Not waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa‌aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less than perfect.

Anonymous

Sure, I'm dissatisfied sometimes, too.

Anonymous

20:56

Frustrated, even.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

My ideas aren't popular anyway.

hurb

Hi everyone, I really need some help with writing an accurate business email. Could you take a look at five sentences?

Anonymous

I figured out a while ago that I'm not really capable of herding cats on ELL :-) I post sometimes anyway, just because I feel like expressing myself. A lot of the time, nothing useful comes of it, but I try not to worry about that too much.

Anonymous

@hurb Hi, hurb! Welcome to ELL chat!

Anonymous

What have you got so far?

hurb

20:57

I need to know if this is 100% correct:

Thank you very much for inviting me to an introductory call. I really appreciate the opportunity. I would be available to interview tomorrow, Monday or Tuesday between 10am and 4pm (New York time). Does any of these times work for you? If I can provide you with any further information prior to the interview please let me know.

Anonymous

That's pretty good! I would say do instead of does: Do any of these times work for you?

Anonymous

I feel like there might be a better way to phrase the first sentence, too.

hurb

Thanks @snailboat, okay I'll go with DO. What is wrong with the first sentence?

Anonymous

I feel like invite doesn't go well with call. I don't know. It might be okay :-)

Anonymous

But I don't think people say inviting me to a call or things like that very often.

jimsug

21:34

@Araucaria it was the tag, but I can see how that was unclear, because I had a few specific tags in mind when I wrote that :/

barznjy

23:13

Hi

@DamkerngT. How are you ?

Damkerng T.

23:31

Good, thanks! How are you?

barznjy

I am fine.

Thank you.

could you please answer this question: do you think the second "further" in below sentence is needed?
which means that the system performance cannot improve further, even if the transmission power further increases.

Damkerng T.

I wouldn't use two furthers.

barznjy

which means that the system performance cannot improve further, even if the transmission power increases.

that sounds better with me too

Thank you.

Damkerng T.

No problem.

tchrist

23:49

@jimsug english.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/149819

Araucaria

@snailboat Thanks old bean. That means a lot! :-)

Night all

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