2015 ELL Moderator Election

jimsug

00:01

@DamkerngT. It's in fact in every Help Center help/dont-ask

Loong

@DamkerngT. :

Good Subjective, Bad Subjective

Robert Cartaino on September 29, 2010

Stack Exchange is about questions with objective, factual answers. We've been crystal clear about this for as long as I can remember, even back to the earliest, pre-beta days of Stack Overflow. It's right there in the standard Stack Exchange FAQ:

2

jimsug

@Loong Heh, the blog post refers to the FAQ, and the FAQ refers to the blog post:

Damkerng T.

Hehe! Thanks both of you, anyway. :D

jimsug

> For more detail, read about our guidelines for great subjective questions

@jimsug ... in order to understand recursion ...

@jimsug ... one must first understand recursion ...

StoneyB

@DamkerngT., @Araucaria: Seems to me the answer to the need AND the potential problem lies in carefully delimiting your topic and carefully selecting your discutants. What we have in these parts is a fair number of people on both the learner and the teacher side whose personal experience we can rely on (because we have the evidence of their posts) to have been tempered by objective reflection. We should be inviting their expert opinions on specific learning topics.

jimsug

00:06

@Araucaria Honestly, I think the community is going to decide how these questions are received. Even mods have limited power in this regard, or at least, should exercise them in limited ways. Especially when it comes to keeping things open, it's not always so straightforward. Could a mod just keep reopening a question indefinitely? Almost certainly. Should they? Almost certainly not...

The way forward, in that case, is through discussion on Meta - and sure, there might be a handful of people who can, and would answer these types of questions with evidence-based research. And that's great! But my anecdotal experience is that these questions tend to attract lots of low-quality answers.

And a community discussion is the right way to (re)evaluate whether we should be excluding them altogether, or whether there are better ways of ensuring that they get good responses. Yes, the existing voting system works to an extent, but many users are more hesitant to downvote a bad answer than they are to upvote a good one; even if they weren't, these low-quality responses create more noise and work for the community.

StoneyB

@jimsug I think the community will reject the "How do I use X to improve my English?" sort of questions. Moreover, I think they're right to reject them: they don't fit the Q/A format at all well, on Main or Meta. What's been tabled here is the question of whether we have some way of getting around the format, through chat or a blog or whatever, in order to give the audience what they need and want.

jimsug

@StoneyB We could ask for a community blog, though I'm quite sure they've been discontinued; we could make it a semi-regular/structured chat event, which I think has the potential to work quite well, once the format and structure is worked out.

Chat is notoriously messy, and confusing for new users. I imagine the end result would be not unlike a Reddit AMA, if it were sufficiently focussed.

Damkerng T.

@StoneyB The more common questions, iirc, would be "(Please tell me) how can I improve my English?", "What is the best way to improve my English?".

jimsug

There would be other ways of making it work - make a chatroom gallery-only for a bit - long enough for someone, or several people, to do a short intro bit, posting the topic of the chat event.

> Our chat topic for today is the *present* perfect.
We usually use this when ...
Here are some examples ...
So, what do you want to know about it?

You'd need to coordinate time schedules for a few experts to be available, and maybe run it in shifts and over a day, but it's definitely doable.

StoneyB

@jimsug I'd love to overhear a roundtable between, say, Shoe and Araucaria on the teacher side, and, say, DT and oerkelens on the learner side, talking about -- what? learning English from TV/YouTube vs learning from novels/monographs.

jimsug

00:21

@StoneyB See, that's not a bad idea. It's the kind of question that would almost certainly get shot down on Main, but is really interesting to most learners, and heck, even native speakers. I'd love to know more about that.

So then, would you have it be in the format where their chat is read-only, and general chatter about it can go in the Cabin? I'm tempted to go this way because it would keep the main topic more focussed, but still allows meta-conversation.

StoneyB

And we'd most all of us be learners there. At least I would be! I've never learned English; I was just born into it.

jimsug

@StoneyB Although, having learnt about many other languages, I'm glad I was born into English, of all of them.

If only I'd learnt Mandarin as well.

StoneyB

Maybe pick your four people -- send em away, maybe with a facilitator, to sort out a framework -- give em a timeslot to talk to each other for an hour, whatever, Live from ELL - then open it up to questions from the 'floor' -- which could be sorted into a queue to be answered at leisure. AND as you say, let the audience chat about it while it's going on, like spectators in a Brechtian theatre.

Damkerng T.

^I like the idea!

StoneyB

@jimsug I wish I'd had Greek instead of Latin; though Latin's more useful for English.

jimsug

00:30

@StoneyB Oh, for me it's more of a regret type of thing; I had the opportunity when I was younger, and it would have (by all accounts) been so much easier.

Damkerng T.

Speaking of Mandarin, I wonder why we don't have more users from China.

StoneyB

@jimsug Yah; I tried to pick up Hebrew in my late 40s and just bogged down. On the other hand, my wife's now a full-time student, and she's picked up the fundamentals of Latin, Old Norse and Old Saxon in the last year. And she started OE last week.

@DamkerngT. Can you tell? "user#####" doesn't give a whole lot of insight into linguistic background!

Damkerng T.

@StoneyB Unless they're very fluent/proficient, and a good portion of our users aren't, I believe I can tell somewhat, though not very reliably.

jimsug

@StoneyB I would expect certain kinds of questions to be more common with Mandarin speakers than others

Questions about tense/aspect/number, for instance.

But maybe that's just me pigeonholing them.

StoneyB

W e l l . . . my experience is that nobody gets tense and aspect, or modality, including most of the native speakers!

Damkerng T.

00:40

Learner English: A Teacher's Guide to Interference and Other Problems (Michael Swan) discusses common problems that learners from various first languages will struggle with.

jimsug

@StoneyB True. Actually, I've found that a reasonably reliable source of technical grammatical knowledge are those people who are both native speakers and have learnt a foreign language in a formal educational setting.

StoneyB

(And that includes the professionals -- TAM is still very much a work-in-progress among linguists. Unfortunately, the language itself is changing faster than the pros are catching up.)

@DamkerngT. I'll have to get hold of that. Of course there's a huge gulf between the learner problems caused by first-language categories and the learner problems caused by pedagogic categories!

@jimsug Absolutely. I learned how to write translating Caesar into English and the Declaration of Independence into German.

@jimsug So what brought a law student to ELL?

user116848

Hi @StoneyB.

StoneyB

Hi @Arrowfar

user116848

Hmm election time. Nice!

jimsug

00:55

@StoneyB Oh, I was on ELL long before I was on Law, and long before I started studying law.

Damkerng T.

@StoneyB jimsug was the one who made those nice spectrogram charts in some of our questions.

jimsug

Oh, those were fun

I mean, not sure how useful they were pedagogically, but lots of fun.

But, to answer your question - I did my undergrad and Honours thesis (Australia does things differently) in Linguistics.

During that time I spent a lot of my "spare" time on ELL.

Rather than Linguistics, which always seemed far too serious for my liking :P

StoneyB

@jimsug Yeah - Damkerng taught me how to read them.

jimsug

But also ELL seemed a more appropriate use of my education.

Damkerng T.

@StoneyB Hah! I can't recall I taught you anything! I might've helped you with it only a little.

StoneyB

01:01

@jimsug Yeah - I was very lucky to get back into linguistics as a John Lawler groupie. His generation seems to have had lots of fun epateing the bourgeois.

@DamkerngT. You pointed me to the right sources, and answered my questions, which is all really a teacher can do.

@jimsug the field seems to have gotten a lot graver since then.

Damkerng T.

@StoneyB It was more like sharing than teaching, imho. Anyone would do the same thing. :-)

StoneyB

@DamkerngT. But only somebody who knew his shit could do the same thing.

@jimsug Were you around for the Coalface battle?

jimsug

01:32

@StoneyB No, I don't think so

user116848

@StoneyB I am clueless too.

user116848

Hi @jimsug.

jimsug

@Arrowfar Hello

user116848

@jimsug I didn't know you had a degree in linguistics. That is awesome.

jimsug

@Arrowfar Haha, it's not something I advertise, unless I'm looking for a job and it's relevant :P

user116848

01:37

I see :)

Damkerng T.

Huh? I didn't downvote the answer. I remember it was at +3, now it's at +2 (3 up, 1 down (votes)).

Anonymous

02:00

I dunno. I just upvoted

Damkerng T.

If I may ask, I think mods can access the email addresses of all users on their stack, can't they?

jimsug

@DamkerngT. Yes, and access to PII is recorded. It's strictly for moderation purposes, as per the moderation agreement.

Damkerng T.

What if they break the agreement?

jimsug

That's a good question. I would assume that their moderatorship is revoked, for starters.

It would then be up to SE and the individual whose information was abused to take further action, afaik

Could be a good MSE question.

Damkerng T.

← 8 messages moved from Language Overflow

jimsug

02:10

@jimsug Though I don't know that you'd get a concrete response; I assume the actions taken would be highly situation-specific.

StoneyB

[apologies, all, for breaking off in mid-discourse. I got called away to feed my son.]

@jimsug Anyhoo, if you enjoy academic politics at its snarkiest - in your field, on your homeland - Google "Huddleston Coalface"

Damkerng T.

@jimsug I posted my concern.

0

A: 2015 Moderator Election Q&A - Question Collection

Besides ELL, what are other sites, social networks, or communities similar to ELL that you're currently actively participating in? And what role or roles do you have in those communities? If you're a key person in other communities, how will you manage those communities and our community, ELL? H...

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

06:22

@Arau I agree with you, somehow. I disagree with you, somehow.

Let's note:

1. Not all good subjective questions can fit the SE format.

(I remembered them saying "our format just doesn't work well with this; it's not the question's fault")

2. People sometimes do close because they don't understand how to answer.

(Which caused the recent meta thread about closing)

3. Learners do have different needs, and they have different skills and weaknesses, simply because they come from very different backgrounds.

4. But it doesn't change the fact that some problems are (more) canonical than others among learners.

5. I also sometimes feel weird when I see a question that isn't about "is this sentence grammatically correct?" or "what's the meaning of haha in hahaha?". Some people think if it's weird, it's not what we should have on ELL.

(While it's usually because it's a less popular or less asked question, or one that doesn't fit the template of normal ELL questions)

(I myself got a VTC on one of my questions once, because point 2 and point 5 I reckon; I asked "why is at the least less common than at least but at the very least is more common than at very least?")

Now, @Arau I believe you need to first open up a meta discussion and ask people to cooperate. I know how ridiculously impossible it is to fight the closure of a legit question on a case by case basis. And a mod's job isn't to convince people about closing trends. Sure, the mods are usually the norm. What they do is what the normal members should do, not must.

Another thing a mod should do is to teach. Teach people how to close, and what to close.

But being a mod isn't everything.

6. What chatrooms can do better shouldn't be covered on the main site.

Then again, time will tell if chat, meta, ELL itself or a blog would be better for these.

\o @San @Jim @Dam; Sorry, I'm doing a monologue here!

That said, @Arau, I believe there's a problem with the closing system on ELL.

Part of it is because a site as big as this shouldn't have the VTC threshold so low.

Then again, I've seen people with more than 10k rep to unjustified-ly close stuff, and do it regularly.

Be a mod or not, I'm gonna write some meta so we clarify this. IMO the main problem is people don't know what to close.

What we mostly need to do is teaching.

jimsug

07:07

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Increased rep thresholds, when that happens, should help with this.

There'll just be fewer people with VTC privileges, which should partially alleviate the problem, I think.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@jimsug Yes, that's my point.

Catija

@jimsug Yes, but for right now, anyway, the rep privileges don't come until we have a site design. That may change in the future, but it's how they've structured the system right now, so we need to be flexible enough to do something about it.

... considering the length of the design queue and their shortage of designers, I'd bet we're still waiting on a design a year from now.

santiago

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M (removed)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@santiago (removed)

jimsug

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M @santiago the best way to get moderators to read your message is to delete them :P Also they're not the same colour as truly deleted messages.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

07:18

There you go @Jim.

jimsug

Hahaha.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I can't make it in a different color though.

santiago

@jimsug really?!? say it isn't so

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hullo @Rigor and welcome to the chatroom!

Rigor

Hello @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M and thank you :-)

santiago

07:21

well, I would vote for you @inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M if I were a member here

Catija

@jimsug I want that magical power... I forgot about that one...

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@santiago Give me a hug again!

santiago

ewww

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

An internet hug. Pretty sure contagious sicknesses can't go through the cables.

santiago

you have not seen my cold...

jimsug

07:23

@santiago Hmm. I thought it was documented somewhere, but apparently it isn't :3

santiago

dang

jimsug

15

A: Can a User/Non-Moderator see deleted chat messages on StackOverflow?

Yes: In addition to moderators and the originally posting user, the room owners (of the particular room) also have access to the history of deleted messages. However, unless the message's (removed) stub is right there visible in the chat room (in which case you can click "history"), you'll have ...

santiago

bwahahaha

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

OH SO THAT'S WHY I see some message histories sometimes.

santiago

bwahahahahaha

Rigor

07:26

It adds to the "read between the lines" idea :P

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Ahhhhh who knew deleting messages would be so much fun?

Now I totally wanna be a mod.

(removed)

Rigor

I really

(removed)

you

:D

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

DOUBLE (removed) ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)

Rigor

:O

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

$\Huge{\mathbf{:O}}$

Rigor

07:32

-_-

J.R.

09:17

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Just a point of clarification, about the "closing" system: Questions get put "on hold," not "closed." (I realize that's semantics, but the system was designed that way for a reason.)

Just something to think about, when you're writing that meta post :-)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@J.R. I know that one can always improve the question or comment so it won't get closed.

But we can teach people not to spill milk in the first place.

J.R.

I agree. But if you don't acknowledge that openly in a meta post, that will be one of the first places the discussion goes.

By being more accurate with your terminology ("voting to put a question on hold"), you can avoid that rabbit trail.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Right.

Damkerng T.

Good point. I should use "on hold" instead of "closed" in my comments and chat too.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Well in fact, I see it has no correlation with my being a mod or not. After the heat of the election cools, I'll open meta posts to make our closures more justified.

A day doesn't go by unless I see a question with some close votes that aren't justified.

Damkerng T.

09:43

> If the only thing holding you back is shyness, or a fear of failure, then throw your hat into the ring.
http://meta.ell.stackexchange.com/a/2584/3281

Go for it, people!

Damkerng T.

09:55

I hope someone posts something under jimsug's entry on the candidates page soon.

Do we forget jimsug?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Huh? Jim nominated?

He did!

@Jim why didn't you say so?!

Damkerng T.

He was an avid contributor in some short months. He participated in several meta posts on ELL.

He sure knows how to work as a moderator.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

K K, I don't now how to write praisish fluff. That's @Stoney's job.

but maybe you can write it too.

Damkerng T.

He has both linguistics and legal backgrounds. I trust him that he will make a good call when the time calls for it, to make a right-right call.

If nobody doesn't, I will, tomorrow.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Lemme go write something.

But wait, what should I write? (Worried)

Damkerng T.

09:59

You don't have to. :D

But sometimes I wonder how easy people forget things.

Like when I revisited the ELU chat room a couple months ago. Nobody remembered me!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=NASCAR

What an eloquent definition.

J.R.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I completely agree. You don't need to be a mod to write a useful meta post.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

BTW @J.R. will the next mod team think about doing something useful with the chatrooms?

ELL is one of the SEs that could benefit from this a lot, yet we have so few regulars in chat.

user116848

10:25

Hi guys!

user116848

So anyone in good standing with more than 300 reputation may nominate themselves? That's a good thing.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hello Arrowfar. If you think you can make a good mod, please nominate!

user116848

Hi MA. How are you?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Fine.

You?

user116848

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M No, I'm not cut out for that kind of job I think, but thanks!

user116848

10:35

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I'm doing okay, thanks.

user116848

We still have three slots left, let's see who nominates.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

There are no restrictions in how many candidates nominate.

If more than three other candidates nominate, we'll have a primary phase.

user116848

ah I see.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

13:33

@Arau I forgot to mention, there are some questions that get closed; like this one:

0

Q: What's being said in this YouTube video about lifting weights?

What is this guy saying at 13:34 to 13:45 in this video? I do understand about the hip, and hamstrings parts, but rest of em kinda unclear to me.

listening

One may say "let's answer this and help the ELLer 'cause why not?"

While answering it does no harm, hugging these with open arms will reduce the quality of the questions in the long run.

Just so you'd be clear on my POV on these types of questions.

(BTW I know the questions you have in mind that shouldn't be closed are of way more quality @Arau)

Catija

15:28

So, just had a really interesting conversation with Shog 9 in the M&TV room... And what he was saying really relates to our interaction with ELU.

Yes, yes you should, @SQB. As a general rule, if the form of the question wouldn't be acceptable on your site (regardless of topic), then dropping it onto someone else's (where the author may not even have an account) is rude: it's probably not gonna get better. When in doubt, drop in a link to movies.stackexchange.com/tour and suggest that the asker read it and re-post. — Shog9 ♦ 25 mins ago

Catija

17:03

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M You have your wish now.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:23

@Catija What?

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M You wanted me to nominate.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

You nominated? Yay!

Damkerng T.

17:38

@Catija It's nice to see your name on that page. :-)

Catija

@DamkerngT. :D Thanks guys :)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Dam why did you left and why did you come back? :)

Damkerng T.

I was mentioned. :D

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh the horror! the last four messages have five smileys.

:O ;) :) :D D: :( :\ :|

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M And @snailboat isn't even here :D

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:48

We're proving to match up to her.

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M It's the only way we'll ever reach her magical qualities... we'll certainly never know as much about English as she does :P

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Well yeah, and worst of all, the biggest English books' bookstore in Tabriz doesn't have CGEL.

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Can they special order it?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Dunno.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

19:36

Stats time:

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

20:05

Descending sorting; meta activity (by the score in the first tag)

1. J.R.

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M What was the point of this?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

2. Wendikidd

Catija

Oh, just got delayed. I see.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

3. inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

4. Catija

5. MaulikV

6. Dog Lover

KING OF ALL: Jimsug

Catija

So... Shouldn't Jimsug be at the top of the list?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

20:08

You're looking at the list the wrong way around.

O.o Weird typo.

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M So... which person has the most meta activity?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

J.R.

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Then why is Jimsug "king of all"? He has the least?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Catija He has more activity than me.

It was a way of covering "I dun goofed".

Catija

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M HA HA HA... ok.

Transcript for

2015 ELL Moderator Election