Language Overflow

Eddie Kal

00:00

I didn't know you could hide accounts. How do you do that? I still don't see your ELL profile. It may appear to people you don't have an ELL when they visit your profile.

user435118

@EddieKal Yeah, I fixed that (I think)

Eddie Kal

Okay never mind. I found the "hide communities" option

M.A.R.

00:14

I would like to ask a followup question to #4. If you have a user who is posting mostly comments and no answers and refuses to change their behavior even after you've asked them to convert comments into answers, what do you do? For example, we once had a user with one answer and 215 comment-answers in a relatively short period of time. — ColleenV 10 hours ago

Imagining @Colleen holding the presidential debate

Eddie Kal

> I would like to ask a followup question to #4. If you have a user who is posting mostly comments and no answers and refuses to change their behavior even after you've asked them to convert comments into answers, what do you do? For example, we once had a user with one answer and 215 comment-answers in a relatively short period of time. – ColleenV 9 hours ago

How come I can't keep the username and time hyperlinks...

Pardon my noobing

M.A.R.

@EddieKal If you copy the time stamp, "9 hours ago", and paste the link as the only content of a chat message, it will turn into, well, my thing up there

Oh that's the username. But that's also magical, see

Eddie Kal

I would like to ask a followup question to #4. If you have a user who is posting mostly comments and no answers and refuses to change their behavior even after you've asked them to convert comments into answers, what do you do? For example, we once had a user with one answer and 215 comment-answers in a relatively short period of time. — ColleenV 10 hours ago

M.A.R.

They're two links

Voila

Eddie Kal

there you go

M.A.R. for the win!!

M.A.R.

00:24

Alas, I've been playing the role of the heavy that rides into the sunset with a gloomy expression for quite some time now

Eddie Kal

lol I always picture you staring at me with one eyebrow raised like in your profile

M.A.R.

Now that you mention it, I can't keep my eyes off my avatar

It's gazing into my soul. We are one

AIQ

00:49

ah

userr2684291

@M.A.R. You have my vote this election.

AIQ

01:12

May be we could have Question 1 (Answer Candidate A, Candidate B, and Candidate C), Question 2 (Answer Candidate A, Candidate B, and Candidate C) ...

Instead of Candidate A (Question 1, Answer 1; Question 2, Answer 2; ...), Candidate B (Question 1, Answer 1; Question 2, Answer 2; ...)

Because it would make comparing easy - it's too had to scroll up and down to compare the answers now... :/t

userr2684291

All I need is the first sentence in the little introduction thingy to decide who I'm gonna be voting for, to be honest.

Mainly because that's where candidates state their names, so I know who I'm voting for without having to scroll down.

AIQ

01:29

I am talking about the questionnaire in Meta. People might have a different view - but usually I like to read the first debate question, and then read each candidates answer to that question.

not that it is a debate, but I still want to hear everyone's answer for each question at a time

may be subjective

userr2684291

I know, I'm just clowning around.

I had the same idea as you, but I realized it's much more important that the candidates are active or semi-active on the site, and I think most candidates satisfy that criterion. I don't think anyone's gonna be doing anything radical here.

userr2684291

01:45

Daniil-san has managed to collect enough rep to be allowed into the bullring.

And inside you're either the bull, or the matador.

Then again, the bull that wins, loses... so there's that.

Kinda confusing, and not at all applicable.

ColleenV

01:59

@AIQ I don’t think it would be helpful to compare that closely. I think it’s best to read each candidates post all the way through to get a feeling for what type of mod they want to be, then realize that most of the details will change as soon as they start learning the job.

@M.A.R. They would never let me. It would end with people crying and cursing and storming off the stage.

It’s also why they never let me sit on a jury.

There are certain things where no-one wants the engineers involved no matter how much they think they love facts and science

AIQ

02:44

@ColleenV I see.

AIQ

02:56

@ColleenV You asked an interesting question, now please answer: What did you do about the 215 comment-answers?

AIQ

03:26

@EddieKal I am cringing at my Q&A. Have you taken a look at this? 2016 Moderator Election Q&A - Questionnaire - Nathan Tuggy, ColleenV, Snailcar, and M.A.R. all in one.

Eddie Kal

04:13

@AIQ Interesting! First time reading those answers. I see a kindred spirit in snailcar. lol. We are in agreement on editing questions!

I think you did a very good job

Apparently you have been spending more time on the site and mulling over things than I have.

But those answers from 2016 really show a great deal of time and effort

AIQ

yes I finished mine in like 30 min because I had to work on my thesis deadline

next time I will write in detail

Eddie Kal

I started writing mine after midnight, past my bedtime, and didn't wrap up until 2 in the morning.

We both could use more time

M.A.R. and Colleen both talked about the messy tag system in a way I very much agree with.

> I'm proud to be one of those community members. Tags have shown to be problematic in language sites, and ELL is no exception. We have a messy tag system that was even messier before. I tried to do some cleaning but people didn't trust my judgement, and it took me considerable time to persuade them. Frankly, so much was spent on meta talk that wasted my whole energy, and the job was left undone. -- M.A.R. 2016

lol

Um... can someone tell me what this is?

@AIQ My favorite line of yours "But we have to maintain some standard here, this isn't Quora."

AIQ

04:46

haha thanks, Eddie Kal are you in any way active in ELU?

that place for some reason scares me

Eddie Kal

I used to post there occasionally. Not any more though. I try not to go there after I lost a lot of my ELU posts. I feel you. ELU can be terrible for newcomers

To be honest, I keep talking about being nice and friendly to new users on Meta.ELL, but a lot of it came from the terrible experience I've had with some ELU users

AIQ

I think one of the best places in SE is the chatroom for Seasoned Advice - it's filled with pictures of food...

I love food ...

Eddie Kal

Same here!

The other day I asked on Season Advice what kind of rice I should use to cook firni and shole zard. Disappointed no one actually familiar those desserts/cultures has answered

CowperKettle

05:10

Word of the day: culvert

Decapitated Soul

Ah

AIQ

@EddieKal For firni, ground Basmati rice

Decapitated Soul

It's already been posted. And as far as I remember, we have also discussed it's 'obscure' etymology and origin.

Culvert*

Eddie Kal

@AIQ Sweet! Thanks!

AIQ

The special kind of rice we use in South Asian countries to make firni is called Aromatic Chinigura rice

it is already grounded

Basmatic has great texture but doesn't have a nice aroma like Chinigura

@DecapitatedSoul You don't seem to have an ELL profile!?

Eddie Kal

05:33

@AIQ Wow this is very helpful. Chinigura seems extremely hard to come by in the U.S.

I see another rice cultivar mentioned alongside Chinigura: Kalijira. Are they similar?

AIQ

@EddieKal My gf says you can get them mostly in NY - because of a big community of southasians who owns grocery stores

@EddieKal very similar. The hungry philosopher

Eddie Kal

05:54

@AIQ Interesting! I have only lived in NYC very briefly. Does your gf live there? Hope she stays safe and healthy!

Decapitated Soul

@AIQ english.stackexchange.com/users/365490/decapitated-soul

AIQ

@EddieKal Yes, she lives in Queens, Jamaica

Decapitated Soul

I do have ELL profile but is noobish. :P

I mostly post on ELU

AIQ

So which SE site you frequent often?

oh okay

Decapitated Soul

ELU

I've been super active on ELU lately. Even, my rank is #1.

AIQ

05:58

oh

nice

So our potential-mod Glo--- is in Chess.

Decapitated Soul

06:11

:D

CowperKettle

06:54

Word of the day: nictitating membrane

Luc

07:26

@Daniil I think an an apology is in order. I did not know stackexchange was so uptight about the age thing, that's ridiculous. Your account having been deleted by a moderator was a major red flag, but you may have found the only legit reason I can think of and others corroborate the story. I'm sorry for speaking out against you without knowing all the facts.

AIQ

@EddieKal I just looked at your profile - you have so many gold badges ...

Luc

@Daniil I feel you, I'm so sorry (for the situation and injustice I mean, though also for what I said of course) :/

AIQ

that is incredible

Luc

@Daniil yes, nice job. I noticed this too, that your ELL account is the only one and I can't say that it helped the feeling of a fresh, throwaway account

Eddie Kal

@AIQ Some of them are from reviews.

btw, I don't why but I have been prompted to review flags from sites I have never visited

Just now

AIQ

07:39

how that happened?

Eddie Kal

Happened a couple times in the past few hours

AIQ

08:24

Do we say "this paper draws on research and analysis from some of the country's leading experts" or "this paper draws on research and analysis by some of the country's leading experts"?

There are mixed results. And not many with that construction ...

Anonymous

08:40

I’d say from, but both seem perfectly fine.

Anonymous

@EddieKal 10k users can see chat flags. You have enough network reputation to see them now, but because a lot of other people meet the same requirement, the flags usually get handled very quickly, so you might not see them too often.

AIQ

hello snailcar, how was your day

Anonymous

I just woke up a bit ago. I was hoping to get back to sleep, but that seems difficult at the moment.

Anonymous

By the way, diamond moderators can see chat flags from across the network, even if they don’t have 10k reputation. Personally, I prefer to only handle problems on ELL and Japanese, so I generally ignore chat flags from other sites.

Anonymous

I consider myself first and foremost a member of these two communities. I don’t usually think of myself as part of the larger community of SE moderators across the network.

CowperKettle

08:52

Word of the day: paroniria

user435118

@Luc No problem :)

Decapitated Soul

09:30

Good luck. @Daniil I've chosen you as a second mod (or what's its specific lol)

user435118

@DecapitatedSoul Thanks :)

Decapitated Soul

No probs :D

user435118

@DecapitatedSoul So would you say ELU is for more advanced speakers of English?

Decapitated Soul

09:42

@Daniil, ELU is for everyone.

user435118

@DecapitatedSoul No, I mean what's the main difference between ELL and ELU?

Decapitated Soul

Ah, ELL focuses on questions that are easily answerable. ELU is for serious question about linguistics and grammar etc.

Mostly linguistics questions.

There's also Linguistics SE but ELU focuses on linguistics questions about English.

We also get easy questions on ELU but those questions are often downvoted :P

Questions on the following topics are welcomed here:

-Word choice and usage
-Grammar
-Etymology (history of words’ development)
-Dialect differences
-Pronunciation (phonetics and phonology, dialectology)
- spelling and punctuation

english.stackexchange.com/help/on-topic

user435118

Ok, interesting

Decapitated Soul

The most famous tag on ELU is 'single-word-request'.

user435118

Used to have around 300 rep on ELU as well

Decapitated Soul

09:49

😆

user435118

I prefer ELL more

Luc

@Daniil fwiw, I did change my vote. Not sure it feels right to say how exactly I voted before the results are known, but I'm happy the election isn't over and I can still reconsider my choice with new information :)

user435118

@Luc Thanks :)

user435118

I would post more about my previous account in my nomination but characters are limited

Luc

10:02

oh, didn't know that. Maybe a link to another post would have been good where this is explained, but yeah it's tricky to argue for yourself like that, it would kind of have to be someone else (with more history) that claims it

and then still, people have to read that far and care that much. I think I take this thing more seriously than most, looking up post histories and trying to find meta posts about what is currently an issue in this community

user435118

Yeah, I had like 5 characters left

Luc

stackexchange knows what the average attention span is I guess ^^'

ColleenV

10:52

@AIQ I don’t think I handled the “only wants to write comments” person as well as I might have because they ended up deleting their account. They weren’t contributing much value, and resistant to changing their behavior, so that probably was for the best, but I would have preferred it if we could have persuaded them to at least try writing answers or to expect that their comments would be removed when someone writes a real answer.

-1

Q: Someone is deleting my comments

... for no other reason than that they are mine, or so it seems. I must have offended them. This makes it pointless to go on contributing, so if it's actually a technical problem, please let me know.

@Luc I’m glad you are getting informed, because moderator positions last for as long as the person elected wants to serve. You want to be sure the person you choose best reflects how you think the site should be moderated.

CowperKettle

12:53

Word of the day: prepotently

What happened to megabyte in 1990?

It went downhill

ColleenV

13:30

@CowperKettle Gigabyte drives got affordable for non-commercial users?

I remember when a game was huge if it was 100 MB, now most are over 10 GB.

Mobile devices (where MB still matter) have more storage, and people worry less about it now that they come with free "cloud" storage and often unlimited data plans (at least in the US)

CowperKettle

13:54

I remember when a game was huge if it was 40 Kb

SABOTEUR (ZX SPECTRUM - FULL GAME)

►

ColleenV

14:08

This art showed up in my Twitter feed and made me very nostalgic:

interceptov.cgsociety.org/d0fx/16-bit-memories

I loved my Amiga and hated that metal lamp desk lamp :)

Although with LED lights now they might not be so bad because they wouldn't get so hot.

G Warner

It reminds me of stuff I would see in a Games magazine. And the person who identified items or references to the topic (the 80's) won something. Like a T-shirt or a years subscription. @ColleenV

loderunnerwebgame.com/game

LodeRunner, some of them 16bits have managed to be webinized

CowperKettle

14:24

@GWarner Cool game!

ColleenV

yeah there are a lot of games being saved

I just got all three of the original Bard's Tale games on the XBOX

I have a lot of games in my GOG library too

CowperKettle

And you can play Z online. My favorite game of the 1990s

playclassic.games/games/real-time-strategy-dos-games-online/…

I still have Wing Commander III, the four CDs, somewhere in my flat

It played well on 486 DX2 66 MHz, and it has a lot of video!

ColleenV

Wing Commander is a classic

G Warner

@CowperKettle And unlike the original, your progress is saved. I never could get to the end of the original game until it was on the web.

ColleenV

I still play the first Diablo sometimes

G Warner

14:28

Oddly the only old game I actually have a copy of is Chip's Challenge.

ColleenV

I gave away/sold/threw away all my hard copy stuff when I moved

G Warner

And well OK, I have the original Dragon's Lair on a CD now. Never was 'skilled' enough to play it then AND now.

ColleenV

My sister loved Dragon's Lair, I .... didn't

It was not my sort of game

G Warner

The only skill involved was your timing.

Anonymous

I still have lots of Atari and C64 games.

ColleenV

14:31

Oh but I loved Marble madness even though I sucked at it

@GWarner Not really, you had to remember the sequences

Well, if you could remember the patterns, the timing was easier

Anonymous

My brother borrowed my Nintendo games years ago, and somehow his ex-wife took them as part of the divorce settlement, so I never saw them again.

ColleenV

@snailcar Oh that is awful

G Warner

I mean after just remembering sequences. It only seemed to matter that you click or move at the right time.

ColleenV

We had my husband's Vectrex that we sold to a retro gaming store before we moved

G Warner

Zelda, Mario Bros., after that I think I would have to see them to remember them

ColleenV

14:35

@GWarner Yeah, you had no control over the story which bothered me

G Warner

I dunno why I havent tossed it yet.

ColleenV

14:52

Oh wow, the mod project where my husband and I met is still around online

moddb.com/mods/elemental

Eddie Kal

15:26

I thought I was a gamer...

@snailcar I wanted to ask you a question about a nihongo dictionary website. Thought you might know. Would you mind if I asked it here?

AIQ

@EddieKal Do you want to hear something that is interesting and awful at the same time?

Eddie Kal

yeah?

AIQ

Okay here goes. So I tried running parts of my essay (a few paragraphs at a time) in some online plagiarism checker.

And I got flagged for 90% plagiarism.

Eddie Kal

lol. doesn't it also depend on the subject?

I imagine it'd be different if you are writing about, say a new drug, than if you are writing about common psychology

AIQ

The reason is more specific. Few of these websites provided links to the source where they think I plagiarized from.

@ColleenV Please I need some advice.

Guess where clicking the links took me?

Eddie Kal

15:41

your own sources?

AIQ

It brought me to my own questions in ELL and ELU. And my other account in Word Reference

ColleenV

@AIQ Well you can't plagiarize yourself then ;)

Eddie Kal

lol

AIQ

Most of the questions I asked here in SE are related to my essay. So the software flags those sentences because they are a 90%

I am about to turn in my draft to my committee

Anonymous

@EddieKal You can certainly ask in the chat room for the Japanese Language site. We do also maintain a list of online dictionaries.

AIQ

15:44

and I am worried if they run the WHOLE paper through a similar software it will flag for plagiarism. And they don't have the time to investigate sentence by sentence

Should I make my committee aware of this?

ColleenV

Why wouldn't you?

Unless your thesis is about English grammar?

Eddie Kal

Yeah it might be a good idea to modify the examples you use in your future questions. What if you later decide to submit your papers to a journal/conference and get some lazy reviewers

AIQ

I have a lot of questions in WordReference (where I can be lazy and don't need to show research effort).

ColleenV

You could always list the online identities you write under so that anyone checking would know it was your post.

That's a bit intrusive in some ways but better than an academic plagiarism accusation

AIQ

Okay good advice thanks ...

I will provide links to my profiles

phew ...

CowperKettle

16:07

@AIQ That is prepotently peculiar

AIQ

Pardon me, I didn't get you

It has me a bit worried

CowperKettle

I was just joking

When they ask me to provide my CV in order to get hired as a translator, I include the links to StackExchange and Multitran as a kind of credentials.

I add translations to the Multitran dictionary

G Warner

I take that back.. It's there... somehhow I ended up somewhere I dodnt have it yet..

CowperKettle

@ColleenV I did not even hear about this console. Looks odd

It included a specialized monitor!

ColleenV

@CowperKettle It was basically an oscilloscope

CowperKettle

16:17

Tour De France (Vectrex 1983)

►

A bicycle simulator!

A prepotently pecurial console

M.A.R.

18:02

@userr2684291 Aww, you're so sweet!

@ColleenV I think that's the idea for presidential debates

Eddie Kal

@ColleenV I don't believe you, or anyone for that matter, could make politicians cry. How do you get under a politician's skin? With facts? Do facts matter to them?

ColleenV

18:25

@EddieKal Oh I wasn’t talking about the politicians. The level of nitpicking I’m capable of would probably drive everyone away before the debate even started

Dad (who is also an engineer) and I have driven people out of the room who weren’t even part of our debate. Arguing with engineers is like wrestling in the mud with a pig. After a while you realize the pig likes it. (That’s the mug Dad got me for my birthday)

@EddieKal You just pick apart every evasion and keep asking them to be more specific. Argue about the dictionary definition of a word instead of what they actually meant. Soon they will get frustrated and cry or scream at you if they don’t just run away like a sensible person would :)

I worked pretty hard to make my communication style more friendly, but I can turn it back on if I want to be confrontational. I usually don't though because I try to avoid negative vibes if possible.

G Warner

19:07

WOW. GDSE has some toxic users.

ColleenV

19:21

Is that the Game Development stack?

Eddie Kal

@ColleenV Lol. Or they will probably go right back at you and accuse you of prescriptivism. "Are you telling me I have to use every word in accordance with its dictionary definition? Dictionaries are not there to police our language."

ColleenV

@EddieKal Which I will pick apart by saying, That's not exactly what I said, I said ... and so on

Of course I would not be trying to actually get to the truth of anything. My goal would be to prolong the argument until I "win"

Have you ever seen the "questions" game in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead?

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (1990) - Playing Questions Scene (2/11) | Movieclips

►

One of my favorite movie scenes ever

G Warner

21:20

@ColleenV Graphic Design.

A questioner got really defensive with people making comments. Only one warranted the level of toxicity shown. And so my edit to title and body to make arguements null and void was met with scorn by the poster... sigh.

AIQ

21:44

@GWarner terrible ...

G Warner

I've been given encouragement to not have this dissuade me on participating there. Which is good.

AIQ

don't let it bother you ... there are a few users like that. I remember someone was super super eager for this election

they couldn't wait to get rid of our current mods

-1

Q: "Replace" versus "Substitute" - Sentence structure

I have a question about the words order and their effect on the meaning of a sentence when it comes to use the verbs "replace" and "substitute"! As far as I know, "to replace someone / something with someone / something else" means "to substitute someone / something for someone / something else"...

sentence-construction sentence-meaning

And 7 months later ...

0

Q: A comparison between the verbs "replace" and "substitute"

I know that when you substitute X for Y it means that you replace Y with X. According to this rule, I need to make sure whether the following pairs mean the same or not. If not, then why? 1.a. Yesterday l, I argued with the Boss and I think he's going to replace me with Sam. (The boss is goin...

word-usage word-choice word-meaning difference verbs

G Warner

the seven month itch...

So people are asking without actually checking for an answer to begin with...

but the same person?

AIQ

21:59

same person same example person

hahahha

G Warner

should i state that this has been answwered already when they asked it seven monts ago?

or is that being toxic?

i wonder why the original got a downer

AIQ

i don't know why the downvote, I haven't fully read the q

i am having a hard time keeping my eyes open

G Warner

when sleep summons, succumb to sleep

AIQ

22:20

someone took care of it

I think one of our mods

user435118

22:31

@AIQ Yes, Snailcar did

G Warner

22:58

I've chilling in the GDSE chat room besides. how did you address that seven month itch?

I've been slowly spreading myself like molasses over stack exchange. I pray I don't get too thin.

Which begs to question. Without having to look, how do I remove my participation in a forum?

M.A.R.

@GWarner I see you're beginning to understand the direty of the situation

If that's a word. It's probably not a word. Then you're not understanding it.

@AIQ one of? We have one mod left IIRC, until after the election ~~when I will be able to impose my authority on the others~~

G Warner

23:19

direty . take your pic.. location on maps, a song for sale, a movie title. and an excerpt from a book (makes my head spin with all the dialect and slang in word form)

books.google.com/…

G Warner

23:49

huskmitnavn.dk/collections/all/products/a1

Transcript for