Japanese Language

taylor

01:00

why is voting important?

silvermaple

@taylor well, it give people rep for one thing

it also means that the community is involved with the site

well, sorry, it shows that the community is involved

And it also shows what kind of questions we value over other ones

taylor

does it have any influence on the future of the site?

I've been voting, I've just never really thought about its importance to the site

maybe its time i finally take a look at the faqs lolz

silvermaple

I'm not sure about the votes themselves, but an active community definitely influences the future of the site

taylor

yeah okay

silvermaple

I just think it's kind of sad that there are questions with 80+ views and 3 votes

taylor

01:11

but isnt a up down voting system a little decisive for the average persons taste

silvermaple

sorry?

taylor

the voting paradigm. isnt just up vote or down vote?

sorry im new to stack exchange

silvermaple

Oh, yes, it's just up or down

I think it could be sort of intimidating at first

Like I said, I used to vote sparingly

But I think if people were to think of it less as them passing some sort of judgement from on high, to see it more as "is this a valid question? Yes? Vote up", we'd get more votes from people

taylor

yeah exactly

maybe if you changed the arrow icon to something else

to make it less suggestive as a device for judging a persons post

well in any case, the tool tips helped me when i first discovered what the arrows are for

silvermaple

Yeah

I think you can tell this system was set up by people who are used to thinking logically

taylor

01:21

u mean programmers lolz

silvermaple

yessir

find the most efficient way of doing something ==> do it that way

taylor

well it works if the only other people who use the feature are programmers too

silvermaple

Well, I think us laymen just have a higher learning curve to get used to, haha

taylor

the "accept answer" when i have to do it makes me a little uneasy too

if a better answer is provided sometime later than one that you have already accepted

silvermaple

Oh yeah, I feel the same way sometimes

taylor

01:27

than its like saying your answer is inferior and obsolete now

silvermaple

especially since there can be two answers that are totally great, and they both answer your question, but they bring something new to the table

taylor

yeah you bring up another good point there

silvermaple

but the great thing about this system is that just because there is one accepted answer, it doesn't invalidate the other answers, because you can still vote on them.

what invalidates an answer is if it's been downvoted

12

Q: You don't have to get a green check to be right, or to be helpful

This isn't a question, it's an appeal. Recently, I've noticed there has been a large increase in the number of good answers being put in the comments of questions, because people are overly cautious of putting forward an answer. And this is increasing even in spite of an existing post on meta t...

discussion

taylor

hhmm i'm guilty of this too

well at least when ive made obvious mistakes and been wrong about some things, i didnt really get negative feedback from ppl

silvermaple

That's good :)

taylor

01:39

what about up voting your own answers

is that uncouth

silvermaple

you can try it

it won't let you :(

taylor

oohh okay lolz

silvermaple

Evening, @Mechanicalsnail :)

taylor

yeah your right

i was wondering about that

silvermaple

I was just curious to see if it would let you one day

I wasn't trying to game the system or anything, haha

taylor

01:42

you cant down vote your own answers either

apparently

silvermaple

Oh, well that would make sense

taylor

would you say that most people who read the answers on this site know what a phoneme is

silvermaple

I dunno, but I only learned it by coming here

taylor

well i have the suspicious that ppl will generally understand what you mean if you say phoneme without explaning it

but dont know what allophones are

silvermaple

I also learned "mora" or whatever that word is

taylor

01:46

are u studying linguistics?

silvermaple

Nope

Just learning the language

taylor

sometimes an answer is apparent just by recognizing what linguistic thing the question corresponds to

like the phoneme, its invaluable for simple descriptions of pronunciation

i use it without reservation in my questions, but i worry that that makes it less accessible to the general publich

well, i guess it does

but then again, perhaps multiple answers each addressing different levels of detail is ideal

silvermaple

Yeah, I think so

taylor

one person answers with a technical description and some other person answers with a simplified but accurate description

silvermaple

Yeah :)

taylor

01:53

but only one answer can be accepted lolz

silvermaple

Yes, therein lies the rub

Mechanical snail

@taylor We should really add common linguistics terms to the FAQ (we could probably link to or incorporate the corresponding parts of Linguistics.SE's FAQ).

2

silvermaple

@Mechanicalsnail I second that motion

taylor

oh ive never look at the linguistics faqs

does it already have explanations of terms

yes good idea

ive tried multiple times to explain the phoneme within one paragraph

but i just cant do it justice

oh, well the phoneme is a useful pedagogical tool

even if it has already been superseded by a some better theories

jkerian

03:06

@taylor like a thumbs-up "Like" button?

@Mechanicalsnail I started working on a FAQ for linguistics terms here. There are some real stumbling blocks for Japanese though, since alot of linguistics terminology is surprisingly divisive among linguists. I'll try again as soon as work gets slightly more sane again.

@silvermaple Something like that... when you click the "share" button, your userid is incorporated into the link that it gives you. It counts the incoming hits provided by your link and gives you credit (in the form of those badges).

silvermaple

Oh, I see

I don't have twitter, but I have other things

jkerian

I tend to redirect unanswered (or badly answered) questions on other Japanese forums

jkerian

03:32

Heh... I never actually noticed this: blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/03/…

silvermaple

03:59

@jkerian haha, really?

I never read the blog post as to why it changed, it's kind of interesting

Troyen

04:16

I suppose we could replace the up and down arrows with something less judgmental, like a thumbs up and a gavel (respectively)

@taylor Voting helps the site in a few ways: 1. People who get their contributions upvoted tend to be motivated to contribute again. (That doesn't mean you should upvote everything, but if a question is a good question or at least the author has put some thought into it, I generally give it an upvote. If an answer is clear and correct, I generally upvote that too.)

2. Voting grants reputation, reputation gives people privileges to help curate the site. This is a problem on some other sites, not enough people have the rep to close topics or edit tag information, for example.

3. Votes also help show off good content. Someone coming in from Google might not know how StackExchange works, but they'll see a bunch of numbers next to questions and answers, and higher numbers (for most people, I think) imply "better". High question votes help JLU readers spot potentially interesting or useful questions as well.

4. And of course, there's always the dark side of things. Downvotes are useful for helping people spot bad questions ("please translate this twitter feed for me") or incorrect answers. Remember, if someone edits their post to fix it after you downvote, you can change your vote (or at least remove the downvote). So it can be used to encourage people to improve their content if used wisely.

Though many people take downvotes personally, so be careful on how you apply them.

silvermaple

@Troyen I think the important thing to note here is that downvotes are (theoretically) supposed to come after pointing out why the question/answer isn't appropriate for our site

Stack Exchange TeX Blog: Voting Up, Voting Down

Andrew Stacey on April 22, 2012

(This is by Joseph Wright but he’s having difficulty logging in to the blog so I’m posting it for him.)

Voting is an important part of how StackExchange works. Voting for answers means that good answers are easier to identify, which is vital when you don’t know the best way to do something! Voting for questions is also important, as it helps to sort out the good questions from those that are less clear. When you are searching for help, what you want is to know that you are reading the right questions and getting the right answers. …

And yeah, those are all good reasons >^.^<

jkerian

04:37

@Troyen I kinda wish you were notified when a post that you downvoted was edited

@silvermaple I got some pretty substantial pushback when I posted that chart a few months ago.

Mechanical snail

@jkerian Is it posted on the site?

jkerian

not yet

Mechanical snail

@jkerian Post it on Meta so others can help fill it out?

jkerian

The problem with FAQ articles like this, is that it's hard to redirect them if they head off in a disorganized direction

It actually was started, just never got very far

Mechanical snail

We should also give the Japanese translations, since some people like to use those.

jkerian

04:45

The format basically needs to be: {japanese term-kanji w/furigana} - {english linguistics term} - {short example or description}

the trick is not so much in collecting them, as in categorizing them

There is are some huge battles being fought over how to categorize some of this stuff... apparently

Japanese can't even decide how to describe different levels of "formal" speech...

There's at least 3 different categorization methods

Troyen

06:12

@silvermaple I think that's a little excessive. Sometimes I see questions with no effort, not even an attempt to use proper grammar or punctuation in English. Not being a native speaker is one thing, but it's easy to tell the difference between someone who doesn't know English and someone who just didn't try. And in those cases, I'll downvote without a comment.

After all, the downvote description is "this question doesn't show any effort, is unclear, or not useful", which pretty much explains the downvote and invites less retaliation than posting "-1 because your question sucks"

On the other hand, downvoting an answer doesn't make much sense without explaining why an answer is wrong since the point is to get the right answer, but I don't have often enough knowledge to know right vs wrong on JLU anyway.

@jkerian See meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/1751/…

Though I can see that being a little spammy after tossing out lots of downvotes over time.

gibbon