Language Overflow

M.A.R.

00:34

@AIQ Are you composing a haiku? o.o

AIQ

00:55

@M.A.R. lol

no

I am helping everyone

by not requiring their eyes to travel a long distance from left to right

CowperKettle

03:13

> That study found that when participants were shown repeating elements in a sequence, such as A-B-C-B, etc., they were automatically sensitive to certain patterns without being explicitly aware that the patterns existed.

medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-brain-complex.html

Eddie Kal

03:28

@M.A.R. No the French didn't ban masks. That's a ban on "Islamic" face veils. Gotta love the French for leading the world in "feminist" social changes.

M.A.R.

06:51

@EddieKal I knew about that one

Haha yeah, we're forcing you to be free!

AIQ

07:29

Oh, so I commented "Are you looking for answers only from native speakers? If yes, why?" -> ell.stackexchange.com/q/246394/77766

And they replied "anyone with good knowledge can answer of course. Natives usually tell what their usual way of speaking is, rather than taking help from books."

hmmm ...

M.A.R.

08:51

@AIQ it's a special badge you get, not redeemable and not awarded after birth. Sorry, you're not part of the club.

@AIQ well I literally have to pause for a couple of seconds to get to your next line

AIQ

@M.A.R. I take it you are not a fan of two-column journal articles? hmm ... me neither ... but I want to try this

here

AIQ

09:12

@M.A.R. Oh no, you have ruined my day ... how could you be so cold ...

AIQ

10:10

omg ... one user is repeatedly asking the same kind of questions (which is correct and why) despite some of us suggesting that they add details/research ...

ColleenV

12:00

@AIQ until people stop feeding the bears, this will be a problem.

61

Q: DO NOT FEED THE BEARS

A question was just asked on ELL, and it needs a lot of work. Here's a screen shot. There are two problems with this question: first, the way the initial question was asked; second, the way a follow-on question was asked in a comment. Error Identification I'll start by addressing the...

If they get their questions answered, why would they change their behavior?

If people feel sorry for them and won’t downvote their questions when they’re low quality, they won’t get throttled

AIQ

@ColleenV I know. I am honestly a bit frustrated. We have all these questions in the election about what we would do as mods if a user consistently keeps asking low-quality questions. A very important question is, What are we going to do about established users who persist in answering these low-quality questions.

ColleenV

You suspend them

for repeated low quality contributions

Asking questions here is a privilege, not a right

and I know some people think I’m an asshole, but the site will be buried in garbage if someone doesn’t play the bad guy

and then fewer people get helped

AIQ

I will ask a question in Meta about this. I don't like the fact that I keep posting these comments and then someone keeps answering the questions - where does that leave me - a villain

ColleenV

No, you are a guardian of the site

Being nice to people taking advantage of you is not a virtue

Well, letting them have their way

We can be nice even when we’re pushing back

CowperKettle

12:35

Word of the day: mouthbrooding parasite

userr2684291

13:05

@AIQ You're just making my eyes go to the next line more frequently, thus pausing my train of thought / reading more often. The overall time stays the same, but my internal reset timer is invoked more often...

I suppose it's more about being used to seeing lines of particular length. It doesn't help that other users don't shorten their lines in the same fashion.

I'd have to look at that paper again, but I'd say carriage returns and line feeds hinder comprehension more than remaining in the same line for as long as possible.

My browser window isn't that wide that I have to turn my head all the way from right to left and vice versa as though I'm watching a game of tennis, and if it were I'd halve it naturally. On my phone all of the text is basically constrained to a small area so no one has any issues with that.

So, yeah, not even marginally butter (thanks, GM Finegold).

AIQ

13:23

It was a joke userr - that is, when I gave that reason - of course I had read some discussion on it - but that is not why I broke them up ..

userr2684291

The only way you could actually try to help is by writing boustrophedonically, and I'm sure everyone would appreciate the effort and the opportunity.

The problem with journals is they use this incredibly small font, so it only makes sense to do this. I.e., reading actual newspapers/journals feels like watching a tennis match.

userr2684291

13:39

@AIQ Yeah, I know why you did it, you forgot you weren't conventionally texting your buddies. It's fine. Note how texting apps already have these bubbles, effectively constraining all text to a tiny column to whose width everyone's eyes are accustomed to.

Cardinal

16:57

Hello there.

What is the thing behind "Reinstate Monica "?

I just noticed Fumble and StonyB added that expression to their names on ell.

What idea does that stand for?

userr2684291

17:10

@Cardinal meta.stackexchange.com/a/334417 TL;DR: They fired a mod on a whim and didn't rehire them.

Well, "fired", as in, revoked their privileges. The mod in question hadn't been receiving any money or anything, they were just a mod.

Anonymous

@Cardinal It's complicated, but it's essentially over. Monica reached an agreement with Stack Exchange.

Anonymous

And even if I wanted to, I couldn't really answer the question because not all of the relevant information was ever made public.

Anonymous

But it caused a lot of drama and a lot of users left the site, changed their names, or started behaving adversarially toward Stack Exchange out of solidarity.

Jasper

@snailcar I leave the site and change my name all the time, even without Monica, LOL.

Anonymous

Unfortunately for the community here, that means we lost a number of invaluable users.

Anonymous

17:19

Well, I'm glad to have you back, Blue Square :-)

AIQ

snailcar, you will get your mods in 3 days ...

userr2684291

17:52

@snailcar Whatever info might be missing, what is true is that they hadn't warned them beforehand. It's clear to anyone with a brain that's a wrong way of going about making such a decision, regardless of its justifiability both in the scheme of things (concerning that user's history of behavior), and in that particular instance.

Anonymous

18:13

@AIQ I wasn't just talking about our mods, but users like StoneyB and Araucaria as well.

userr2684291

ell.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5195/… What do you think of this? I think there isn't a good duplicate target because this depends largely on the verb: primarily the one which takes an infinitive or an -ing form, and secondly on the verb that can be "cast" into either of these forms.

Anonymous

@userr2684291 SE definitely messed up, no argument on that. I can't discuss the topic meaningfully, though, since I can't say what I'd need to say, so there's not much point in me typing anything beyond that.

Jasper

@snailcar Yes, reading the publicly available information already shows me that SE messed up big time.

ColleenV

Not to change the subject, but, well actually that’s exactly what I’m going to do... I see a suggested edit for the comparative tag. Shouldn’t we make that plural for consistency?

We have comparative-constructions as well, are they synonyms?

Jasper

@ColleenV Do you mean make it comparatives because there is a superlatives tag?

Now there is a superlative tag but with 0 questions.

Maybe you wanna delete that tag?

ColleenV

18:28

No, there was a discussion a while back where we agreed tags should be plural, ie determiners, not determiner

let me see if I can find it

Jasper

Yup, which is why I said maybe we should delete the superlative tag and just use the superlatives tag.

ColleenV

16

Q: Should we prefer plural in tags?

Earlier today I tried to tag a question "nouns", and the system wouldn't let me, saying that the tag noun already existed. Just a minute ago, I wanted to tag another question "adjectives", same problem: adjective already exists. I am used to the plural form from other SE sites — ELU, GLU, and L...

discussion status-completed tags tag-synonyms

@Jasper It may already by synonymized

a lot of singular tags look like they exist, but they just point to the plural

9

Q: Singular tags to pluralize

Per Should we prefer plural in tags?, for consistency with EL&U and other StackExchange sites, I believe the consensus was to use plural tag names for countables. In practice, we have something of a mishmash of singular and plural forms, particularly for terminology related to punctuation, senten...

discussion tags tag-synonyms

Maybe it’s time to review that again

Jasper

@ColleenV Oh I see. I never cared about tags on SE. I only talked about it to have a conversation with you since you mentioned it. =)

ColleenV

Click on “determiner” in that list and it takes you to “determiners”

@Jasper Thank you, it’s nice to not feel like I’m talking to an empty room :)

Jasper

By the way, I saw Monica's youtube video where she sang a song! Did you guys hear her singing?

Monica Cellio at Sinai's Got Talent 2011

►

That is Monica singing @ColleenV !

New Meta Question

20:10

0

Q: Unjustified downvoting even on a question earning three badges, notable question, nice question & popular question

I post questions and give answers on ELL & ELU. But serial downvoting on some good questions is really disappointing. A moderator should downvote a question or an answer which, he thinks, is not upto the mark. But, at the same time, he should give comments on what's wrong with that question or an...

discussion support down-votes

userr2684291

20:28

ell.meta.stackexchange.com/a/5198/3395 I did it.

"I do request to the authorities concerned to look into the matter so that learning is achieved in a joyful way." Aw. In a joyful way... Ah... : ) Yes, please look into this kerfuffle, and right those wrongs!

userr2684291

20:49

@Jasper Lol.

@ColleenV Just make it consistent if you can; doesn't matter if you're using a plural or singular form. Also, the two tags (comparatives and comparative-constructions) should be preserved: the former would be more about single words, even though I'd close all such questions as unresearched without even looking at them, and the latter would be about those tricky constructions involving than: He's better than I am (no, he isn't).

Hm, I much prefer youtube.com/watch?v=CcCw1ggftuQ to youtube.com/watch?v=fpmTe3TDdVU. The latter was somehow chosen by YouTube's shoddy algorithm, and I was like, wait a minute, that doesn't sound right. But it kinda did.

The music video is a bit of a... rubbernecking sight, if I may say so. It's weird but you can't look away.

Not sure if rubbernecking is the right word to use there.

On a superficially related note, this also doesn't get old.

I have no idea what he's saying though, just like with most songs. I think that's why I don't know any lyrics ever. I don't ... understand their English on an intuitive level. I wonder how many other learners of English have the same problem.

It's like I understand these songs on a word-by-word basis, never grasping the whole thing.

My brother can learn song lyrics fairly easily. Entire songs... but then again, he's basically a native speaker, lol. A native speaker of TV English.

ColleenV

22:10

@Jasper Neat, I haven’t seen that before.

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