Title clean-up (Phase 4: Time for Title Ban)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

07:19

BTW did you see my draft?

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I saw it, but haven't read in details. I think you've gotten some useful tips above.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Well most of it isn't there yet.

So is @tch.

Damkerng T.

Don't get this the wrong way, but I think the post (about How to Title Your Questions) may be more accessible if you write it with a 13yo as your target reader in mind.

Including examples is definitely useful, in any case.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Not 13-yo, but an ELLer. I actually have Nima in my mind. :)

Damkerng T.

Hehe!

That may work too.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

07:25

That's why I can't put @Stoney's thingy there. "Don't write about the response, but the question."

It's too philosophical, even for me.

Then there's TC's advice.

And I can't put many abbreviations or many similes. :{

You have to start writing one to realize you're not FAQ-writing style.

Referring to my meta post whenever a crappy title is edited is my goal.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M nods -- I guess you have that in mind.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

10 hours ago, by inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Then we'll prolly have a chat event or meta post for burning down bad titles . . . Then we'll discourage stupid titles with a pop-up . . . Then . . . Oooh I have so many devilish plans . . . >:D

Still, we have 1600 results for "[X] is [Y] grammatically correct?"

K. Cracks knuckles

BTW what does "put returns between paragraphs" mean in "How to Format"?

Damkerng T.

07:44

How about: (And, oh!) Don't forget to press ENTER between paragraphs.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I'm unfamiliar with "return"'s this meaning.

Damkerng T.

It's from "carriage returns", I think.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Why am I not surprised? There's not even a title in meta.ELL. Facepalm

Damkerng T.

:D

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

BTW some nice conversation we had about it with TC and S.L. yesterday:

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, 14 hours ago, by inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Guyses I'm looking for something I can link to in the meta about limits in question titles.

Damkerng T.

07:51

Ah, a demo!

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, 14 hours ago, by tchrist

10

Q: Request for aggregate data regarding deleted questions with subjects containing CORRECT, GRAMMA, or RIGHT

This support request will require the assistance of a Stack Exchange employee, probably a kindly Community Manager. As shown at the bottom of this answer, I present some SEDE results on just how many non-deleted questions’ titles contain any of “correct”, “gramma”, or “right”. I used queries lik...

Huh? It's gone!

ell.stackexchange.com/search?q=is+this+grammatically+correct

This query shows a lot of good (um, actually less than good) examples.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

10

Q: Request for aggregate data regarding deleted questions with subjects containing CORRECT, GRAMMA, or RIGHT

This support request will require the assistance of a Stack Exchange employee, probably a kindly Community Manager. As shown at the bottom of this answer, I present some SEDE results on just how many non-deleted questions’ titles contain any of “correct”, “gramma”, or “right”. I used queries lik...

support deleted-questions blacklisted-keywords

@DamkerngT. The link was broken.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Thanks!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Bows

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

10:37

BTW @TCh I included what you said there.

Answer the questions below. If the answer is a "no", you perhaps need a better title.

- Do a search. Is there another question with a title similar to yours? (Say, do 4 or 5 words exist in both titles?)
- Read you title again. Can you find out what the question will be judging from the title?

Answer the questions below. If the answer is a "yes", you perhaps need a better title.

- Does your title contain the words "what" and either the pairs "grammatically" and "correct" or "meaning" and "difference"?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

11:29

@Dam you here?

What would be a good antonym of "overly"?

Damkerng T.

I can't think of a good word. Maybe barely or scantly.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I ended up using "unduly" vs. "inadequately".

Yup.

@DamkerngT. It's a header. Fancy headers are more interesting than infancy headers. I don't use any non-upgoer five thingy in explanations, I think.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

14:55

@Stoney @Cat now I don't know how to categorize. Logically, better title tips should come first, but then at last I want to respond to "side" questions like "should my title be a question?" and stuff but then having better title tips and the "side" questions together is better.

So, should I first say what titles are bad, or what titles are good?

Oooh I summoned the guy. Hullo @Stoney!

StoneyB

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M The way I do that sort of thing is just slap everything down on paper every whichaway, then worry about structuring it when I know what I'm going to say.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Seems legit.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

16:58

@Dam do you know SQL?

Damkerng T.

Generic SQL, yes. Probably a little rusty.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

So you know how to write queries in SEDE?

Damkerng T.

If I know the schema.

(Basically, the table names and column names.)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

The schema is available on the right when you right a query.

So I wanna separate ELL's Q titles.

(Then discuss on how they could be better, and then add it to thy title FAQ)

Damkerng T.

Like tchrist did in that demo post?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:00

Lemme look back.

Something better.

First, we have to find out what strings (or whatever they're called) are common on ELL.

Damkerng T.

In the title?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I've found "Xvs.Y" and "Xgrammatically correctY".

@DamkerngT. Yup.

Damkerng T.

What would you like? The titles of all questions?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oooh this is exciting. Mixing analytical science with the sense of charity towards ELL's quality and detective sense in finding bad titles.

tchrist

I would see a title ban or title popup placed on “grammatically correct”, the way occurs on SO.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:05

@DamkerngT. So that the sum of the questions in all of the strings gets to like, 90% of the questions.

tchrist

Where if you try to put problem in the title it blocks you and if you try to put regex in the title it pops you up a confirmation box.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

The problems are, we should make sure posts aren't counted twice.

And

How to find such strings that have almost zero overlap.

@tchrist That's the next step.

Damkerng T.

@tchrist Can we have that (after the election)?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

1. Make sure people know how to write good titles.
2. Edit bad titles in a dramatic event.
3. Warn users of bad titles they're possibly writing or ban the very-bad-title signs.

tchrist

The election doesn't really affect it. I believe but am not positive that you have to have a meta post with a concrete proposal to this effect, backed by hard data, and which you have community buy-in on. Otherwise the CMs won't do it.

Damkerng T.

17:08

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I think you're thinking of text analysis. Queries could do something useful, but not everything.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist I'm positive about that.

tchrist

It’s rather dispiriting collecting the data.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

But it doesn't make sense to just issue the warning and/or the banning.

tchrist

"just"?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Because we have many, many bad titles floating around.

tchrist

17:09

You can clean them up.

But the questions are probably low-quality to start with.

This is the real problem at the core.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist They're too much to be cleaned by a single internet entity.

@tchrist Yyyyyeah, that's hard to define on ELL.

tchrist

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M What is an &internet; &entity; anyway?

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Not so sure about that.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

google.nl/…

tchrist

No.

Tell me.

Tell me what you meant.

Don't tell me what other people are saying.

Do you mean by one person?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist Thing is, we have many meta posts. But we don't have many consensus or FAQ thingies.

@tchrist A person.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

tchrist

17:12

Why would you not say a person? :(

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

It's not as exotic.

tchrist

Blah.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

And

I've been reading horror movie plots on Wikipedia.

tchrist

I got hard data on the closure and deletion rate for ELL questions with that crap in their titles.

More than 50%.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

:O GIMME GIMME GIMME!

tchrist

17:14

But even if you block “grammatically correct” — and you should — you’re back to the same problem with “Can I say this?” questions.

You aren’t going to be able to do extended sentiment analysis to detect boolean questions using the technology available to us. Unfortunately.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Don't we have lots of them too? :-S

Damkerng T.

data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/360302

tchrist

Billions and billions served.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist I already covered boolean type thingies in dont's.

Damkerng T.

So we have 18595 questions at the moment.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:15

Yep.

+-1 or something, since that number is cached.

tchrist

It’s a static snapshot, not a live one.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. NOW, we need to sort them somehow.

tchrist

Sort them by length.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Good idea.

Damkerng T.

Shortest or longest first?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:17

Then culprit strings will pop up.

Shortest first, but that doesn't matter.

tchrist

Shortest equals worstest.

Damkerng T.

Revised: data.stackexchange.com/ell/revision/360304/464672/…

tchrist

The thing is, most of those should have been closed and deleted that pop up on top.

Of course, nobody ever deletes stuff.

It’s a network-wide problem.

Damkerng T.

The shortest ones:

> Usage of "onto"
“It” vs. “that”
the first to do
To use or using
Meaning Of "On"
live VS. living
for vs. because
Then once there

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist "You'll lose good content" and that stuff.

@DamkerngT. "Usage ofX"!

tchrist

17:19

I was thinking of grabbing all the “grammatically correct” ones and sorting by length ascending.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist First, we need to find all the buzzwords in crappy titles.

tchrist

Meaning?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Huh, I thought "meaning ofX" is no more.

Damkerng T.

Revised: data.stackexchange.com/ell/revision/360307/464675/…

tchrist

What sorts of buzzwords?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:21

@tchrist Things like Xgrammatically correctY, Usage ofX etc.

Damkerng T.

Maybe I should include Id in the results.

tchrist

s/([XY])/ $1 /g

@DamkerngT. Yes, please.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

213+155 for "Usage ofX" + "Xusage ofY"

Damkerng T.

Done! data.stackexchange.com/ell/revision/360308/464676/…

tchrist

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Pleasestoprunningwordstogether!

> "“Usage of X” and “X usage of Y”.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:23

@tchrist No, I want to indicate there isn't necessarily a space. Take a look at the last queries running.

tchrist

When you don't put the space there it is very confusing.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/edit/360306

tchrist

@DamkerngT. Good, thanks!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

WHAT? Usage of "buttocks" Haha!

Damkerng T.

We've got that!?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:24

Uh, hullo @Stan! Sorry, but this room is gallery. Meet ELL's Cabin for conversation.

4

Q: Usage of "Buttocks"

Is it decent to the word "buttocks" in writings? Is there a better decent word to mean the same? Is Butt is considered more decent and acceptable than "buttocks"? I want a word to mean the same thing, but it should decent enough and commonly used.

word-usage

Again, it could have a waaaay better title.

1

Q: Usage of "Hey you!"

My understanding is that we can use "Hey you!" to call someone whom we don't know. Can I use "Hey, you!" to call someone when I'm very angry at him? Basically, my question is whether "Hey, you!" can be used in context of anger?

sentence-usage

Facepalm

Hmm, check:

tchrist

Oh, you need link.

Also, hm, well maybe I'll muck about with it.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

> Don't treat your question title as if the question body is its continuation. Treat the title as a standalone short piece of writing.

Damkerng T.

Good point.

I wonder how our learners write their emails.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I'll include it in "further tips" section.

Eh, "grammatically correct" is only 121?!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:43

@Dam I noticed something.

Damkerng T.

Yes?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. Some crappy question titles (especially Cookie guy's) aren't accompanied with a buzzword or such.

They're a phrase that has puzzled him.

Ahmad

Thanks, then you are going to edit question's titles?

thats a huge task

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Ahmad I suggest you do your own's, but yeah, after writing a FAQ for titles, we're going to go on a crazy edit spree.

And it's huge indeed, but if we don't do it now, we won't be able to do it later.

@Dam - [...] which makes our task harder. We have to make sure we have less than 2k questions to make a case-by-case analysis on.

Ahmad

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M How do you prevent it in new questions?

Great! Leave my questoins as my share

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:47

@Ahmad After the bad title burndown and the FAQ are done, we're gonna ban some words in the title.

And warn users for when they write some other words.

@Dam could you also make the username available in the query?

Damkerng T.

Username? Let me look...

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

BTW @Dam I recommend logging in. The Captcha's really annoying.

Or signing up. You could be John.Doe12345678 if you want; it's not related to SE in any way in /login.

Damkerng T.

Done! data.stackexchange.com/ell/revision/360324/464693/…

Oh, I see.

Weird, it says "jon.doe20311"!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Now you can change your avatar and username.

(If you want)

Damkerng T.

I didn't notice that I had to log into SEDE separately. I thought they were all linked together.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:59

SEDE isn't.

Hmm, so now, could we make the buzzword thingies appear first, sorted by length, then the other, remaining titles?

@Dam ^?

Damkerng T.

That's quite difficult. What do you mean by buzzword appear first?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Like, first "Xgrammatically correctX" questions appear first, then "usage ofX", then the rest.

While we also have a ascending len sort on each?

Damkerng T.

That's too complicated to write practically.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Aha.

No problem; we could open a query for each of the buzzwords.

Damkerng T.

This is a little more flexible than previous versions: data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/360326/…

You can have up to 3 keywords (type % for non-used keywords).

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

18:09

Hmm, we could do a or instead of and.

Damkerng T.

It's strange that gramma*anything* returns only 351 rows.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M What search do you have in mind?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Having a collection of buzzwords; so KW1 would be "gramma", 2 would be "correct", 3 would be "usage of" etc.

Damkerng T.

You can simulate a simple or with gramma%correct.

Wait, that's and!

Better make it or.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hmm, "question" and "problem" could also be buzzwords, with a few false positives.

Damkerng T.

data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/360328/…

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

18:14

Also "difference between"

tchrist

data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/360329/lame-english-titles

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. (づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ

Oh, and please.

@tchrist Hmm . . .

Damkerng T.

Updated: data.stackexchange.com/ell/query/360333/…

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

So now, @Dam if a question has both "gramma*" and "usage of", would it show up twice or once?

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Only once.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

18:17

Now that's what I'm talking about!

tchrist

?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist Now a mega-crap with two or three buzzwords will only show up once, instead of more than once.

tchrist

lame_title = /gramm?a/i && /correct|right/i;

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

So now, @Dam what will happen if we sort them with len?

Damkerng T.

It's already sorted by length.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

18:20

@tchrist There's also "usage" and "difference between" and "please" and "question" and "problem"; with a few false positives.

Damkerng T.

Oh, Id as [Post Link] is cool!

tchrist

@StoneyB For a good time, compare I saw the sandwich being eaten with I saw the sandwich get eaten with I saw the sandwich got eaten. Notice how the get eaten passive works better than the be eaten one. Why?

@DamkerngT. You’re welcome. :)

Damkerng T.

@tchrist Many thanks!

tchrist

Crud, now I have to reverse time.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

How great . . . Our troll is responsible for a lot of "usage of" buzzword hits.

tchrist

18:24

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Just trick him into the daylight and he’ll get stoned.

I’m frankly surprised people put up with it.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist Many don't know he's trolling.

They answer his question, and then there are follow-up questions to the degree that the guy vomits.

tchrist

Then they haven’t looked at his acceptance rate or upvote count.

Which are wholly dispositive of trollery.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Not many people do, considering the "focus on the content, not user" slogan of SE.

tchrist

Of course, the 17 other things are enough.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M You start to get a feel for it. When you hit 20k, I’ll mail you a checklist.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Soooo, back to the buzzword hunt.

tchrist

18:27

What is the goal again?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Finding words used in several crappy titles.

Damkerng T.

Can I delete old revisions of my queries?

tchrist

You believe this to be predictive?

@DamkerngT. I don't know.

I doubt it.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist We have found some of them till now.

@DamkerngT. Dunno. Don't think so.

tchrist

Basically, you are looking for a quality metric.

Right?

Damkerng T.

18:29

It's okay. I just don't want to clutter the main page up.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Something like that.

@DamkerngT. There's no "active" page.

There are only single queries.

tchrist

You need to check false positives and false negatives based on your metric.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

And it's okay, since it always is cluttered up.

tchrist

Which means you need a gold standard to compare them with. What is that gold standard going to be? Score? Sum of score of answers and question? Various other things?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

That's not what I'm getting at.

tchrist

18:31

waits

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I'm checking the recent titles on ELL.

tchrist

Are you looking for candidate titles to be edited?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Bad title is a bad title, and in ELL's case, it's not hard to be objective rather than subjective.

@tchrist Yep.

But there's no time for editing yet.

Damkerng T.

Actually, I don't mind a title such as "in the plate" or "on the plate", but Past simple Or past Particple? could have a better title.

tchrist

It is interesting that if you switch sites on my Lame English Questions query from ELL to ELU and then click the arrow on the Score column by score, ELU is much less receptive of these titles than ELL is.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

18:33

Oh shoot. "meaning" has many false positives and many false negatives.

tchrist

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I’m not terribly surprised by that.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Makes sense. I was just trying to see where you were going with this.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. My standard title is a title good enough to be left alone.

It doesn't need to shine like a diamond. I just don't want it to be rusty.

Damkerng T.

nods -- And Past simple Or past Particple? is never good on its own.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Gimme the link, but first guess is it lacks enough details.

Damkerng T.

(That's a real title on ELL, BTW.)

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

18:35

Of course it is.

tchrist

You know, we have a lot of X vs. Y questions on ELU.

@DamkerngT. We have a tag for it.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist 352 instances on ELL.

Damkerng T.

Ah, right!

tchrist

I’m somewhat surprised no one has question the term “past simple”.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

1 hour ago, by inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

> "Haha" vs. "Hehe"

1 hour ago, by inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

is a bad title, while

1 hour ago, by inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

> "haha" vs. "hehe": which has more positive connotation?

is a good one.

tchrist

18:37

That’s for French, where one distinguishes passé simple from passé composé. It is completely silly in English to say past simple.

Damkerng T.

It's a little late. I think I should retire to my bunk.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Note that those questions are usually "simple" vs. "continuous"; which usually have decent titles.

tchrist

It is an affectation.

But it is common. That isn't the problem that needs unbugging.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. zzz; you helped a lot! Thanks!

tchrist

@DamkerngT. What time is it for you?

Damkerng T.

18:38

1:40 am.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

2 a.m.?

Aha.

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Glad I can help a little. It's fun to write queries once in a while. :-)

o/

tchrist

@DamkerngT. Good night; sleep well.

Damkerng T.

Thanks! Good night, everyone!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist It could also be because a good portion of ELLers have RTL L1's, and a good portion of GRAMMER textbooks don't discern between the two.

Night!

tchrist

18:40

It should just be past.

Not simple past and certainly not past simple.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Well, maybe postposed adjectives.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Definitely postposed adjectives.

Like in Persian.

tchrist

present, past, past participle, present participle

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

And Arabic.

@tchrist At least we/they don't call it "nude past". :)

tchrist

French likes them very strongly. Spanish and Portuguese use postposed adjectives a lot.

But it is not mandatory there, and it is meaningful to switch them.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M parola nuda

Or perhaps I'm thinking of verba nuda. I forget now.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Sheesh, I wish Cookie Monster met chat.

His question titles are crap.

tchrist

18:44

You know.

ELL only gets a couple dozen new questions daily.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

And they're undetectable with buzzwords, since they're a copy of the bewildering (for him) message.

tchrist

All it would take is a few people scanning the incoming question titles and fixing them. A little at time done daily by more than one person on just the new things would scale with growth.

Something like a broken window policy.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist Yes. I was thinking of a weekly chat event or something similar.

tchrist

The backlog is a different concern, and might be divorced from that effort.

Oh, I wouldn't wait a week. I would do it every day, like brushing your teeth twice a day.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I meant the event be intended for the backlog.

tchrist

18:47

Ah, I see.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist We'll start that tomorrow.

I mean not brushing the teeth, but brushing the titles. :)

tchrist

I have a flossing stick five inches from my hand.

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Title clean-up (Phase 4: Time for Tit…