hey @Flimzy, when you've got some time, can you change the questions feed from ticker to chat messages please?

wow there was a lot of arguing about what kind of questions are acceptable here

not necessarily arguing, more like having a heated discussion ;)

In my experience, people struggle with rules and principles because they cannot visualize the application of the principle

I would like to suggest that instead of making rules its better to provide examples of acceptable questions

People can see the question and follow its example

This is much more practical for people than rules

Make some questions that are good

make some questions that are bad

and let people form their own personal rule about how to ask a question

People have a hard time following directions but they are really good at copying someone else's example

all of the downvotes wat

did I maked somebody made

there are no comments on the questions

are the quesitons spam?

I don't know; they're not my downvotes

they seem good questions

woa everything just went positive on my questions

I think i'll lie low for awhile

don't want to make that thing mad

@Quill hey man save some of the questions for someone else

nevaaaaaa

@Quill you don't have to answer all of them

@DarrinThomas I upvoted the questions

thanks. I think I'll stop asking for now

also @DarrinThomas, you can answer your own questions btw ;)

I'm pretending to be dumb to help you guys out

so if you want to make good content for the site, you can write the question and the answer before posting

as long as you don't downvote my stuff

teachingenglish.org.uk/article/concordancers-elt

wat

@Quill Done. (I didn't even know I could do that... heh)

Awesome :)

Yeah, moderators have powers everywhere on Chat, and Room Owners have room specific powers (except moving messages; they can move them anywhere)

@DarrinThomas: What's with all the terrible questions?

@DarrinThomas Please don't pretend to be dumb. It makes you look like a troll. :/

And it pollutes the site with really bad questions.

oh is that why I lost points

whats bad with the questions

they all have one answer

no need for opinion

They can all be answered by Google in 5 seconds.

They show exactly 0 research effort

that's my point

They are more basic than basic.

good questions can be answer by google

So your point is you want to ask bad questions?

that's not true.

because they have one answer

Good questions require knowledge.

really good questions require critical thinking

which is the formation of an OPINION

If a question can be answered by the first Google link, then you haven't done research, and your question, by definition, ought to be down-voted.

Questions with one answer doesn't make them either good or bad, but questions with little research required are low quality

if you want great questions you have to be open to opinion

@DarrinThomas That's not true. Some good questions may require critical thinking, others not.

Critical thinking is irrelevant to the definition of a good question, though.

It's purely incidental.

hmm I am not sure about that

open ended questins have mutiple answers

"How many bathrooms are there in all the language schools in new York?" this requires critical thinking. But it's a terrible question.

multiple answers means you have to express why yours is good

Open-ended has no correlation with critical thinking.

"How many bathrooms are there in all the language schools in new York?" this requires critical thinking. But it's a terrible question.

what???

What part confuses you?

this question has one answer

so it's not critical thinking at all

just count the toilets

Okay, so what is the answer?

buy me a plane ticket to new york with room and board and I'll have an answer in 1 week

No you won't.

HAHAHAHAHA

It would take months, if not years, to get that answer by counting.

Which is why it's used as a prototypical critical thinking exercise in job interviews.

okay I don't want to make you made

*mad

It's not about being mad

well it's hard to read emtions when people type

it's about, you seem to not grasp what makes for good and bad questions.

well, i'm only a teacher for ten years with advaced training in making assessment

So you are probably right that I don;t know what i am talking about

That's great. Did you learn to use google?

what that?

More importantly, did you learn to use SE?

huh I thought this was a google site?

Or mouse-over the down-vote button on a question, which says "This question does not show any research effort"

This is why I'm downvoting all of your "pretending to be dumb" questions

they show no research effort (at your own admission)

We don't want dumb questions

Nothing personal

we want smart questions

I'm not taking it personally.

I'm suggesting how you can improve your questions.

Well maybe you should answer all of them for me

And why creating a bunch of bad questions at once is a terrible idea.

Creating an amazing answer doesn't make the questions okay

I'm not going to answer your questions, I'm voting to close them all, because they don't belong here. They make this site worse.

Since it's so easy

All right, I will stick to answering quesitons

@Flimzy yeah.. doing that kinda thing is a great way to get banned

I will refrain from asking

What @Quill

That's true. @Quill has a point.

you were helping me out byy answering

and you said the questions were okay

You can get question banned if you ask a lot of Low Quality questions

People who repeatedly ask bad qeustions get auto-banned by the system.

@Quill you said the questions were okay

what changed

I have the opinion that lower quality questions are okay, creating an authorative source for a easy research point is good

@Quill you should have warned me

I don't want trouble

For some values of lower quality

I saw a big argument over questions

I developed clear one answer questions

Now the questions are being closed and there is talk of banishment

@DarrinThomas: I'm sure you can ask some good questions.

Let's be cool about this

I can ask questions that are impossible to answer but wha'ts the point

"What are the benefits of Task-Based Language Learning?" could be a good question.

that's opinion

(assuming you've done your research, and know the basic)

It's good-subjective.

but you guys are barking about opinion

Not really.

It's not really about opinions, either.

I ask nonopinion questions and I get spanked

You can list all of the potential benefits

and then each reader can decide if they apply to their situation

@DarrinThomas A) you're not being banned, the system will do it if you post like three -4voted questions in a short time (you didn't do that) B) Flimzy has a right to VTC whatever he wants, he's not a moderator and he needs four other people to back him up in his decision

but the benefits are opinion

"XYZ Language learning is good because it provides: Apples, Oranges, and Pears"

Whether an apple is a benefit is of course an opinion. But each reader can decide for himself.

Well I just want to apologize before things get ugly

Just in case several people agree with mr Flimzy

@DarrinThomas Benefits are not opinions, really. But if you feel that way, feel free not to post any questions.

people use to say smoking was good for you

I thought you were trying to understand what makes a good question

Now I think you're just trying to be pedantic.

and they had data

So I'll let you be pedantic on your own time, without wasting mine.

that's why benefits are opinon

Have a good day.

@Quill should I delete the questions

I dont want people upset

Don't do anything rash

Low quality questions generally inspire others to post low quality questions

he sounded upset and I don't want trouble

Flimzy wants a high quality for the site, and I commend him for that

okay I'll wait and see. but I don not want to cause trouble and everyone needs to know that

I have the opinion that on "little research required" questions, if we make the answers absolutely amazing, then they're good, they inspire well written and high quality answers

I hope others see it the same way

For now I sit in silence and see what happens

For example, this is a "no research required" question, but the answer is so amazing that the question becomes a good one

On another note, the pro tempore moderators should be announced soon

There's five nominations on the Meta post, with three possible slots

that's good

I'm sad to note that three of them haven't been around in nearly 2 weeks

clear leadership will help

Not that people can't lead without being a moderator

I'm trying to do that at the moment and it's going pretty well :)

yeah but its always good to know who is clearly the one for psycho9logical reasons

Time to end work... see you later

@Flimzy to answer your toilet question in new york

you can't count all the toilets

it's almost impossible

instead you count one borrough or a neighborhood

and you use that to estimate how many are in the entire city or state

in other words you take a sample to know about the entire population of toilets in NY

@Flimzy I will make a better effort in trying to support this site

When a question is a low-quality, one should consider whether it could be improved. Yes, voting to close is one possibility. But one should note that "Low Quality" isn't a VTC ground. Downvote is more legitimate.

However the really good approach, and from my perspective the only acceptable one at this stage for the site, is to try to make a constructive criticism.

Many questions can be improved by commenting on it.

Downvoting can be done any time

Downvoting first and not leaving any comment is not responsible, and should be avoided at this stage of the site development

@bilbo_pingouin I want calirification on the opinion matter

do we want opinions are not?

How is this going to be decided

is it by voting or does the elected leadership call this

we won't get any elected leadership for at least a year. And I'd surprised if we get it in one year from now.

so how do we make decisions here

It's good to disagree but eventually something has to be decided

pro-tem moderators will be selected by the SE staff, but they are not elected.

so the mods call the shots?

Any decision should come from a conscensus.

That's not the idea.

Ok i'm going in circles

pro-tem mods should be there to ensure that things stay clean.

how do we get to consensus?

Well, after discussing the different point of views, we would hope that a common view would come up

you guys aren't doing to well at this?

If opinions in lets do it

if opinions out lets do it

but right now some want opinion some don't and we can't even agree on what is an opinion

for crying out loud

there are two problems with that. 1) there weren't many discussions on the subject, so no common view is established.

and 2) more importantly where do you draw the line on opinions vs non-opinion

that's called good subjective and bad subjective

drawing the line on opinion is also an opinion

but where is the border

i'm getting dizzy

but an opinion we vote is the law of this place

we have to draw a border

it will never be perfect but it provides some stability

start a meta post to address it, people will be able to express their views, and others will vote

will if the meta post gets down voted 10 times i'm in trouble

you are part of the community, and a such you are as entitled as anyone to lead that discussion

it won't.

All right Ill have some guts

if am banished it was nice meeting you

don't obsess on that. You won't get banished for asking to set a definition on opinion-based

however, don't expect too much from it

1) there isn't much activity on the site these days

first you encourage then you discourage

2) we don't have much material to draw our conclusions from

so the bickering is because were still a baby site

I'm saying if you want an answer now, that's the way to go

I have some opinion about why there is some bickering, but that's not particularly constructive.

There isn't a generally adopted view, because we are a "baby site".

sory my opinion came out again

can't help it sometimes

The idea is that the scope, approach, tone, definitions, etc. of the site has to be defined by the community. But at this time the community isn't clearly formed.

For one, it is troubling that 3 out of 5 nominated for moderators (and thus reasonably active users) haven't been around the last 2 weeks as reported by Quill.

We see that only few people got the entudiast badge for coming every day in the last 30 days of the site.

well IMO (again that opinion) it's hard to identify what is unique about this site

It seems that the SE sites are becoming narrower and narrower in scope

When you go niche there aren;t a lot of people in this small markets

When there;s overlap there's cannibalism

I haven't much experience with new sites, but it is normal that a site needs time to find its right balance and right place at the beginning. That's the whole idea behind the "beta" part.

And that was the problem that I expressed yesterday, that I see that Language Learning seems to be going more to a single subset of Linguistics. And thus would be essentially useless. But it's not single persons opinions that matter on that, it's the sum of everyone's opinion that does.

there has to be something here because you survived area 51

There are more than 150 sites already there, it's to be expected that newer ones focus more on a niche.

the site has been defined, committed to and beta

but with the niche thing it's hard to get the traffic

SE has the same requirements for all sites when it comes to stats

SE gives an opportunity for a community to form and push their site. If they don't they'll close the site.

wow this is tough

no wonder people are stressed

I don't think people are stressed due to a pressure from SE to build something...

I agree but it's seems there stressed about something

but discussing opinions/views/... with people you don't know, from a background that you don't know, on a medium where, as you mentioned, emotions are hard to transmit, in a language that isn't necessarily your own...

can lead to some heated exchanges

one should try to keep civil at all times, and as far as I've seen, that has been kept.

yeah everything is polite from a US view

but I can't talk like that where I live

@bilbo_pingouin thank you for your advice I hope to do better here as I learn

Well I don't know where you are from, so I can't judge on that. But if you see something that crossed a line for you, do flag it.

Be it on chat, on any site, directed to you or not... flag it and a moderator will review it.

In the middle of a discussion people might forget their normal care.

@DarrinThomas no problem. No one was born a 20k user.

Yeah, Flimzy and I have been around on SE for a while

Yeah, I wanted to add that many people on the chat are long-termed SE users, active on other sites

@DarrinThomas That's the right way to answer... and that requires critical thinking.

looking at the starred table on the rights, Quill, Flimzy and Gilles certainly are active since some time

@bilbo_pingouin AFAIK, EL&U and ELL are the only graduated language sites (and elections come with graduation). And we've had some around for 6-7 years... So you're right. If we get elected leadership, it'll be quite a while :)

CR, WB, SR... and a few others are graduated as well...

does not change the rest of your comment though...

@bilbo_pingouin Ah nice.

@bilbo_pingouin On this subject, I'm worried that some of those nominated-no-show users are gonna get the mod emails and totally ruin our leadership

@Quill Pro-tem nomination is a manual process by the SE staff. They aren't likely to invite people who aren't active (and constructively so). And if someone stops being active, they can be removed (this happened on Spanish.SE).

I trust the CMs to make the right decision, however it does still worry me slightly

I'm honestly worried about the lack of extensive SE experience among the nominations.

well, it's hard to make such decisions... there are many parameters to take into account... you might consider nominating yourself Quill, to give them more choices :)

I see a lot of enthusiasm, but not a lot of SE experience.

@Flimzy Yeah... you're the only candidate with good experience

I thought of nominating Quill, actually.

@Quill And a lot of people don't like me... so :)

My rep is horrible though

Just look at Monical Cellio on WB

she has 5k rep when many are in the 20-30k and was quite easily elected

moderators do not have to be the highest contributors, IMHO

Monica Cellio is Monica Cellio though... some mods are just amazing

you are active on meta, chat, etc.

and that's, in my book, worth some rep for moderator selection

meeting TTYL

See you later

There... you're nominated now

:)

@Quill Don't forget to edit the question and accept the nomination... if you want to accept :)

I literally can't edit it <_<

ha

then you can comment, and someone else (me?) will edit your reply into the answer

my comment sounds like generic filler ;-;

"I accept" doesn't need to have a lot of substance :)

If you ever think a candidacy needs substance, just watch modern American politics.

haha

"Make Language Learning Great Again!"

@Flimzy you should have done it as a community wiki

@bilbo_pingouin I never think of that. But I've made it CW now.

@Flimzy is that politics? I thought it was a humour talk show :D

@bilbo_pingouin I wish :/

@Quill I just checked and all the moderators candidates have been on the site in the last 24 hours.

And our top user hasn't posted since April 21

And about the lack of SE experience, well, apart from the two of you, PythonMaster and Tom Au seem to have quite a bit of it

@Quill I checked when was the last time he was seen

which was 13 or 14 hours ago

going back to SE experience, fi12 might be on the lower side, but Hatchet has maybe a bit more...

@Quill on meta he last posted on April 29... that's still some time, but less :)

@bilbo_pingouin PythonMaster has been around a lot, but he has made a habit of doing things not the SE way. Maybe that's not serious.

I guess I just have the impression that a lot of PythonMaster's contributions are of newbie quality. They're not ill-intended... he's clearly enthusiastic and with a positive attitude. I just see a lack of experience. (He is young--not that I hold that him against him)

I think Quill is young, too.

I just saw that PythonMaster indicates an age of 14... but I don't know if that's true...

@bilbo_pingouin Heh... if that is true, it could explain things.

anyway, I'm not the one making the calls... and the CM have some experience behind it...

Indeed.

and it's a 3 spots...

so having an active enthusiast moderator could be balanced by a more cautious, experienced one

@bilbo_pingouin Yes, that's possible.

hm.. I just realised that someone starred your "and a lot of people don't like me" line... I'm not sure how to understand that

@bilbo_pingouin haha

That was me

That's like a Facebook like for "My cat died :("

I think flimSy made a typo

Everybody loves him

@Flimzy it is :)

@DarrinThomas No, the z in flimzy is not a typo

@Flimzy I'm 17, yeah

I meant your typo about hate

Young != newbie necessarily, there's awesome mods like Doorknob that are younger than me

Anyway men don't talk about feelings where I live

Quill you look about14

thanks man

The mod should be il

IOld enough to vote

@DarrinThomas In which jurisdiction?

According to us Philippine and thai law

And Mexico

18

I've met some users that feel that younger users are somehow inferior to older users, some of them have even attacked me personally in the comments...

A mod needs maturity

@Quill If you haven't been personally attacked on SE, you haven't been on SE long enough :P

haha

The ability to handle conflict wisely

@DarrinThomas Maturity is a fluid thing... You can meet grown adults that are less mature than children

Nobody in this room is qualified

@Quill get married bro and well talk

status-declined

Haha

I really do not understand people upvoting answers by merely copy pasting chunks of web pages without citing their sources. If questions can so easily be answered by a mere google search then they should not have been asked in the first place. Not asking to close these types of questions and not downvoting their answers (eg : languagelearning.stackexchange.com/questions/588/…) does not help build a good reputation for the site.

@Laure I agree.

@Laure I agree. But in that case, the sources were there.

@ANeves even with my glasses on I can't see them, invisible to my eyes only? Anyway they're easily found by copy pasting the answer in google.

I'm downvoting so much tonight I'm be able to stay here long... but glad to see a few (not many) agree with me.

You can only see a really small and not-visible "From here".

@ANeves Righto! Well I'm been around SE for quite a while and sources are generally more"visible". Doesn't change my downvotes though.

It's hard not to agree with that. :)

@Laure I'm working on fleshing them out at the moment

I hope I can change your mind on them, although if I cannot, I have no problem with your downvotes