EL&U Mod Privileges Summit

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KitFox

00:37

Lines. It needs bold lines. Stop overthinking the grey areas. Just make some lines that we can show people.

(please)

OK, good night.

2 hours later…

KitFox

02:39

OK, I came back.

I have thoughts in my head that are keeping me awake.

I think that ELL was closed because the distinction between the two sites was left as

ELL:
basic

EL&U:
advanced

This isn't sufficient for the community team to understand how new questions will be sorted and frankly, I don't see how we could understand it either.

I think a lot of us have thought we'd make the rules once we got there, but that's not going to fly.

So here is a preliminary sketch with broad strokes, to define what we mean by basic and advanced.

ELL:
article usage (a, an, the, no article)
preposition usage
verb tense
basic, common syntactical structures
meanings of slang terms and common idioms
SWRs in the vicinity of "how is this concept/idiom expressed in English?"
standard writing etiquette

EL&U:
complex syntax
unusual or academic structures
origin/history of words and idioms
meanings/usages of obscure or archaic words
SWRs in the category of whatever you guys thought was appropriate
interpretation of jokes/puns
boob and poop humor

I am sure there are a lot more categories that can be sorted, so I suggest we do that.

And when we are roughly in agreement, we can put it up on ELL as an appeal.

And of course there will be grey areas, but let us not get bogged down with those sorts of things. That is the kind of thing that can be hashed out after the fact.

I also want to make sure that you all understand that I am interested only in getting the ball rolling. I am not set on having the sites divided in this way. I only want to provide a starting point to help you all figure out what you want to do.

This is just an example.

Or a suggestion.

Of what might be done.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

03:02

Just to play Loki's advocate: who are the answers of the ELL site? Are they the same people we already have here? If so, what is the point of splitting the site? If not, how do we get those people to go there and do the work we don't want to do here?

KitFox

Gah.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

My opinion is that if we have ELL + writers + linguistics then we don't need ELU.

KitFox

I don't know the answer. Should we push MetaEd and the academics to Linguistics?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

I'm not really sure.

KitFox

I feel like I could contribute more to ELL because I'm more qualified to answer basic English questions than advanced ones.

But I don't know that I'm very interested in doing so.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

03:05

Exactly! I was just typing that when you beat me to it.

I feel that on ELU I am a sort of mechanical turk doing dictionary, ngram, and COCA searches. And that's only when the answer doesn't meet the arbitrary threshold of "too basic".

In the old days I could have added "etymonline" to that list; now we close as GR anything that can be looked up there.

KitFox

In order to attract more interesting questions, we will have to offload the majority of the kinds of questions we get now.

I would like to do that and encourage our high rep users to post one good question every week on EL&U to help boost the impression of the site (as well as the content).

We have gotten diluted with basic questions because basic questions fill our pages.

If we want higher caliber questions, people coming here have to see higher caliber questions.

They need examples, a standard to reach for.

So we should be making sure that the kinds of questions we wanted to have asked are asked every day.

Otherwise, users come and see "Is it reason with or reason to?"

And they think "I have a question like that!"

And they pile on.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Hm. Well, I don't really know how we can prevent bad questions such that we only have awesome, expert-attracting questions on the front page.

Unless you needed, say, 300 rep to ask.

otherwise you have to ask on ELL

KitFox

Hahaha.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

or if new questions had to be vetted. or if users had to be vetted.

And by vetted I don't mean "someone happens along to close it", I mean "it isn't visible until it's approved".

KitFox

We'll still get "bad" questions, but fewer, and it will be easier to point to why the question is not acceptable on EL&U.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

03:21

I think we have a catch-22 though. We don't have expert questions because we don't have experts because we don't have expert questions.

but we have tons of basic questions, even some of our basic questions are only properly answerable by experts, and basic questions easily attract more basic questions.

KitFox

So we come back to the question: do we redefine our site or define a new site?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

And we have the hugely flawed reputation system, where casting votes attracts more vote-casters and people play it like a game.

KitFox

And I can't answer that.

Cerberus

I really don't think we will get many more academic questions if we kick out all the basic/SWR questions. What evidence do we have of that? Linguistics is like that, and we get very few questions.

KitFox

Do we want lots of questions?

Is that our measure?

Cerberus

03:23

I personally don't care about the quantity.

A greater number of interesting questions, sure that would be good.

KitFox

So we need to figure out our goal, and that will help us figure out the fundamental question of whether or not the site should be split.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus Maybe we should have "English Help" and "Linguistics" then, as two different sites, and all of us "advanced" people can just move over to THAT chat room.

Cerberus

Right.

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 To Linguistics?

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Cerberus yeah

KitFox

And now nobody else will read that missive because you've scrolled it out of view.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

03:26

Are they friendly there? I never go

Cerberus

@KitFox The question is, do we have a goal that people will agree on, and can we achieve it at all with our current means?

@Mr.ShinyandNew安宇 It's usually Alenanno, Otavio, and I.

A few others come in regularly.

KitFox

@Cerberus No, that's not the question.

Cerberus

Fine.

KitFox

The question is what is the goal that the majority of the 3K+ users will agree upon?

Because we already know that people won't agree.

So let's just let the site devolve naturally and we'll shift all the academic stuff to Linguistics.

Cerberus

@KitFox That sounds nice.

KitFox

03:28

Why fight the tide?

Cerberus

What do you mean by "unusual or academic structures" exactly?

KitFox

To put it in Dutch terms, I rather feel like we're trying to put our finger in a hole in a dike.

Cerberus

And how about interpreting some complex/vague sentence? I do enjoy those questions, provided that the author is skilled (not some weird sentence from a Chinglish website).

KitFox

@Cerberus Those crazy inverted sentences we were arguing about. Zeugmas. Stuff with multiple clauses.

I don't know.

Cerberus

Okay, so is this different from syntax?

Oh, well.

KitFox

03:31

I don't know.

Cerberus

I generally think your categories are good.

As to the tide, I have no problem at all with the way the site is now.