To grammar, or not to grammar

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

10:07

Please vote: meta.ell.stackexchange.com/questions/2811/…

This is the problem. How would you decide those few? Those few must have fallen into some tags other than grammar! Then the question is why are these okay for grammar tag and others are not. That is the reason I said that it is better to educate users than taking the tag itself down. — Maulik V ♦ 8 mins ago

Welcome @MaulikV!

Maulik V

yes, so I was telling it's either this way or that way

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

No it's not.

Well, you said that you want the tag to remain.

Maulik V

if you tag a few questions with 'grammar' how do you decide those questions at first!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Then in the other post, commenters like Colleen indicated that it'd be good to let learners choose this tag in the future.

Maulik V

As those questions must be falling in other tags' categories

buddy, I'm telling that only!

say you precisely chose 10 questoins

perfectly falling into grammar tag...right?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

10:11

So we're letting the tag remain on few questions, so the learner may choose them in the future.

@MaulikV Wait, lemme explain please.

Maulik V

but then what? this site belongs to learners and you cannot expect learners to know the tags like 'subject verb agreement'

okay

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@MaulikV No, it should be easy to decide which questions this tag remains on.

Maulik V

proceed please

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

We'll let the tag remain on questions which are only about "grammar" and general related linguistic terminology.

I haven't looked at all the 3.5k questions tagged with grammar, so I can't tell for sure "what is meant by "grammar"?" is the only question with those.

Maulik V

so, adverb modifies verb and not* nouns/pronouns is **the grammar lesson, isn't it?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

10:13

@MaulikV That's why we're letting the tag to remain.

@MaulikV Yes. The problem is, many, many questions on ELL are about grammar lessons. So it's not useful to categorize them using that anymore.

Maulik V

The only questions with 'word request' 'phrase request', meaning, meaning in context etc are not grammar, IMO

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

We're not saying what someone studies isn't related to grammar, we're just saying that it's not useful anymore to use that to categorize the questions.

@MaulikV Exactly.

Maulik V

But put yourself into learners' shoes .. not all are @Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@MaulikV And that's why we let the tag be.

Future questions from learners can use the tag.

Maulik V

Agreed..but tell me one single reason to remove the tag from my question

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

10:15

It's just our job as an editor to tag it out.

Maulik V

in fact, I see 'grammar' tag the most appropriate for it!

here, nouns, pronouns etc are general!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@MaulikV It doesn't classify your question well.

@MaulikV I didn't mean general like that.

By removing grammar, we're not saying "your question isn't about grammar", we're saying that "yeah man, we know it's about grammar. What else is it about?"

Maulik V

If you tag it only with adverbs, then it becomes quite irrelevant. What if someone is searching for 'the placement of an adverb in a sentence', 'is some word adverb or adjective' and so on.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Maulik people use tags for searching. So over the time, because many different topics have been treated as subsets of grammar, it's not useful for me to just look for grammar questions.

Maulik V

Simple it is.. friend... put this question to anyone OUTSIDE ELL...and ask them to define the question's category. I'm sure 8 out of 10 would quote it 'grammar question'.

yes, so let's start cleaning the questions that are not precisely about grammar

say word request, idioms etc

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

10:19

@MaulikV Again, because it's useful there to categorize it as that.

On ELL, it's not useful, since for some learners everything is grammar.

Maulik V

Yes, so better have a canonical post about 'WHEN TO USE GRAMMAR TAG' and redirect the user to that link

you seem to have studied this a lot...write a post!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@MaulikV Do you really think that will work? Look at the highest voted meta post.

Maulik V

Sure it will...because active members like you and me just need to 'educate' that user for once

and it'll be done!

Here, in this way, you keep on struggling with the problem

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@MaulikV That's the sad part. It won't be done.

Maulik V

The biggest difference in our opinions is - you want to 'remove', I want to 'educate'

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

10:22

They don't care. That's why we have to decide something more fierce than we otherwise would've done.

@MaulikV The problem is, you can't educate them the first time. Lemme elaborate.

Maulik V

Okay, then tell me... you succeeded in removing all tags of grammar and keeping them only on 10 questions. Then what?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

You see, ELL was created because ELU was flooded with a questions a learner would've asked. They were mostly rudimentary, and bothered the regulars.

@MaulikV Then we'll have the sharp eyes on new questions with the tag and remove them whenever we saw them.

AIWS, ELL was created for those questions.

But still, ELU gets the learner questions, because you can't educate them the first time.

And now ELU still looks bad and they're desperately trying to "fix" ELU.

Maulik V

hhmm

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

The biggest difference our effort will make is that we won't advertise a "default" tag.

Maulik V

So, you mean to say let the new users tag it grammar initially, we'll change it later?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

10:26

And most importantly, we'll improve searching.

@MaulikV Yes.

Maulik V

I'll have to think now!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

We'll improve searching by doing this effort, and hence make stuff more orderly, hence learners can find info more easily, hence ELL will grow faster.

Maulik V

Food of thought it has become now...

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I completely agree that most of the times a learner of a language doesn't know how to tag, but if you lemme do what I do best, then we'll only leave one tag for the learner to avoid getting in trouble, and still have a clean tagging system.

Maulik V

Okay, give me some time..I'll be back on this.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

10:29

OK.

Maulik V

hhmm

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

I'm just trying to clean the mess of a room!

Maulik V

:)

Okay, back to work now... we'll be in touch!

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

BTW @Maulik please delete the comments on the answer when you got back.

Maulik V

fine

Damkerng T.

10:40

I thought we were going to wait for the poll.

Anonymous

@MaulikV If we want ELL's questions to be tagged well, established users will have to edit almost every new question on the site. We can't count on new users knowing their way around the tag system, it's true.

Anonymous

That's just a few questions a day, though, and we have lots of users who are willing to edit tags.

Anonymous

Are learners really not taught terms like subject-verb agreement, by the way?

CopperKettle

Good afternoon, @MaulikV!

Anonymous

I know there's some variation in terminology, so we should try to add more synonyms to the tag system.

Anonymous

10:44

@CopperKettle Love your hat :-)

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Yeah, it looks like toothpaste.

CopperKettle

@snailboat Thanks, Snails! This hat goes well with the beautiful kettle you drew. (0:

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Hey, it looks like a Russian flag!

Almost.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Yep. I was right.

CopperKettle

or the Russian flag..

pesky articles.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Hehe that's what you become for studying too much articles.

CopperKettle

10:46

Maulik has left the building.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

Hullo @user3364120! Are you here for discussion on the removal of the tag grammar?

CopperKettle

@MaulikV You must've been watching the latest Star Wars film. (0:

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

11:16

Hullo @Ruchir! Welcome! Please start reading from the beginning until the end of the conversation with @Maulik.

He had the same issues, and I clarified.

Ruchir M

Yes Sir. I read this. Thank you.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@RuchirM Welcome! Please remove your comment under the answer.

Oh, you did already.

Usernew

13:36

We can remove the "grammar" tag easily I think @_@

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

14:00

@Usernew Let's hope that!

Jasper

19:15

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. -- We are now under 3,600 questions in the grammar tag. It was once over 4,100 questions. It reached 4,000 on October 24, 3,900 on November 14, 3,800 on November 30, and 3,700 on December 15.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Jasper See the new meta question?

I'm gonna start speeding stuff up.

Jasper

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Do you mean meta.ell.stackexchange.com/questions/2811/…?

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Jasper Yes.

After we get a yummy "yes" from the community, I'm gonna hold a retagging event.

Jasper

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. Yes. I had not realized that Maulik was not fully on board yet. I am glad to see that the meta post brought things closer to a consensus.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Jasper I'm sleeping well tonight also!

Jasper

19:19

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. I look forward to it.

It would be nice to get my tag badge for grammar. I was very close before this project started. My badge progress has gone backward since then.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Jasper >:)

I'm feeling evil.

Jasper

@Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ. That emoticon can be read two different ways.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Jasper No no, I meant I look evil, not that I look like a jellyfish!

Jasper

I have been systematically re-tagging questions that had a bunch of poor tags, like the trio grammar grammaticality sentence-construction.

Ϻ.Λ.Ʀ.

@Jasper Have an eye on meaning too. At the very least it's replaceable with one of its cousins.

Transcript for

To grammar, or not to grammar