@kiamlaluno & @Cerberus: To throw my hat into your discussion, I have to say that I think questions about the reliability of resources are definitely on topic. ELL exists to help people learn English, which they can hardly do if they have unreliable teaching tools. It's like when you're in school, and they teach you which websites are reputable for sources in history or english papers--
".org and .gov are usually more reliable, Wikipedia can be edited by everyone so it shouldn't be your only source for a piece of information, getting info from actual published books is also a good idea..." etc. If you're never taught what sources are reliable, you might use misinformation and learn something completely wrong. So I think it's very important to answer those questions.
Oh, no. I think all sites should be able to be discussed; it's very important in my opinion that if anyone wonders if a source is useful, they should be able to ask
@Mistu4u You should definitely do that! It would be good to have a knowledge base of what sites are reliable and not. @Cerberus Hi!
Plus during this discussion you might find a resource you'd never heard of--I'd never heard of lang-8 (or something similar, I have it bookmarked now) until I saw it in a question the other day.
@Mistu4u That's a good idea, I think there's an old post on stackoverflow that CW and has lots of programming books in it somewhere. It would be valuable here as well.
Haha. I mostly just lurk on SO lately. I was active for a while but posting answers over there is hard--it's so active that by the time you post an answer someone else already has!
(And on SO if the code is right, there's no need for another answer, unlike here where multiple answers can be useful)
@WendiKidd I had always doubts regarding this issue. In Area51 it is always a criteria to have multiple answers to a single question and they keep the track of it.
But in some sites it is really not that important like you pointed out.
@Mistu4u Yeah, I guess it depends on the site whether or not multiple answers are useful. Assuming the first answer is correct, sometimes it's not necessary (like on SO). But I suppose part of the 2.5 answers-per-question thing is also that it's unlikely that the first answer will always be right.
@StoneyB ...why would anyone close that question? I fail to understand the desire to close questions that are "too advanced" and say they should belong on ELU. If someone is learning English and they have a question, that by definition makes it an ELL question. For one thing, how is someone to know if the question is advanced or not if they're learning? For another, who cares if there are advanced questions?
@WendiKidd What is really infuriating is snarky remarks about Jane Eyre. Do people think the only reason for learning English is to write business plans?
@StoneyB Haha. No, definitely not! I wasn't much a fan of Jane Eyre when I read it, but as I was 14 and forced to read it in school and answer ridiculous questions so that's probably why. Regardless, I'd never judge someone else for their reading choices.
And I know it's hard to read novels in other languages, I used to speak a decent bit of Spanish, but trying to read a novel that was recommended to me in Spanish was very difficult. I didn't make it all the way through, so I applaud those who read novels in other languages.
@Mistu4u Oh, I won't act until it actually it is closed, and perhaps it won't be. But I'm not holding my breath. There are too many people around here who think that less-than-perfect English means inferior minds.
Yes, it was originally in Spanish. There's also an English translation, but my teacher told me that a lot was lost in translation and I should try and read it in Spanish. Unfortunately it was too difficult for me.
Ah, maybe we're talking about something different. Let me look it up.
