Scenario: My friend John has a personality disorder, intensely paranoid for example.
Can I say:
There were three events last year that told me John had a problem.
or can I say:
There were threee events last year that told me John has a problem.
"The surname Tolkien is said to come from the German word tollkühn ('foolhardy'). German writers have suggested that in reality the name is more likely to derive from the village Tolkynen in Rastenburg in East Prussia (after WWII Tołkiny, Poland)."
@RegDwight — But people like the symmetry of the explanation involving the oxymoron. Who are you to try to confuse us with fact, Commie propagandist!
@Martha: Regarding our discussion of finding trollish sabotage in our code, do you ever work through trying to find a reclusive bug and discover a piece of code that makes you wonder how it ever worked at all? I have.
But then I've also had this strange experience: the Web has robbed me of my memory and made me lazy. Instead of trying to remember the fine points of an API method call, say, I will simply Google it and read about the arguments and their data types, etc. But twice lately my Googling has pointed me to my own accepted answer to a StackOverflow question, which I didn't recognize until I saw my gravatar at the bottom. Scary.
@Robusto Posters who don't accept answers; should there be an algorithm that delays the amount of time you can ask another question based on that acceptance rate?
Or posters who ask unmotivated questions without answering any, should there be a delay rate as well?
There is a slight one based on rep at the beginning, remember.
Under 200 rep you can't ask one question more than every 20 minutes.
If someone is going to be a tight-ass they're going to be a tight-ass. For example, I upvote every answer to one of my questions that has a useful response, but some people don't.
The NOAD reports that witan (another term for witenagemot) derives from the Old English plural of wita (wise man).
In that case, you can say there is another word that is related to the Old English wit.
At the time I saw that you just made the comment and I had 0 upvotes for that answer. Plus the accepted answer which came an hour later simply cribbed my comment. Just sayin' ...
@Robusto It's pretty unsporting of you to say that Alain just "cribbed your answer." He included information on the dual meanings of wit- and their indistinguishability at the time of the PIE, as well as gave two other words that used "wit" as a prefix. AND he included witan. So what?
Posters who don't accept answers; should there be an algorithm that delays the amount of time you can ask another question based on that acceptance rate? Or posters who ask unmotivated questions without answering any, should there be a delay rate as well? There is a slight one based on rep at the beginning, remember. Under 200 rep you can't ask one question more than every 20 minutes.
Then again, I think there should be a pop-up message that explains clearly why they are delayed; but, knowing that, they can just accept a few random answers and go ahead.
Well, my point is that it would work to have them accept more answers, but would it stop them from posting new dubious questions? I doubt it; and their accepting more answers isn't really what we're after, is it?
I mean, whether an answer is accepted or not doesn't really matter that much for this website...
Right; there are alot of mechanisms available to let errant users ask a question even when their first attempt is lacking.
But this is more than just "errant." We had vgv8; we have ArthurRex now, and nicolas, a couple of more could really cut down on the morale of the site.
Right. But it can disambiguate, I think, between egregious cases and not. A la the downvoting algorithm.
(Actually, I wonder if that algorithm is not just a myth? Like a mystical potluck o'er the rainbow? Something the devs say so we can believe it's true and not freak out when someone starts systematically downvoting us?)
It can't do anything about "stealth downvotes" and "uncharitably not upvoting a user you dislike's answers", but it can do somethign about the egregious cases,.
It might be a myth, but so far I am inclined to believe it; not based on any evidence, but because it would be beneficial to the site, and because it seems doable.
Yeah, it certainly seems implementable, but then again, it's often a canned response to downvoting questions given by the mods. Combined with that meta joke about how they often say "six to eight weeks" to placate users over functionalities they haven't implemented yet, you can see my suspicions.
Has this ever happened to you: You write a question, include a list or two in the discussion, and then come back to edit that list because the order doesn't sound "right"? Off the top of my head, I can remember it happening to me twice here on English L&U: I changed God, man, and nature to r...
I'm always uncertain whether or not I should use "the" and "that" in the following cases:
There is no guarantee (that) measurement values are the cause of . . .
and
Which will lead to (the) correct evaluation of the measure . . .
Yes or no?
He will understand that I was not joking.
He will understand I was not joking.
Which of the sentences is correct? Are there any specific rules about the use of "that" in the sentences I reported as example?
What are some of the rules surrounding the word "that" and its inclusion or omission in a sentence? For example, "My boss mentioned that you needed help," vs. "My boss mentioned you needed help." Is either form more correct?
Sorry if this seems rudimentary, but I've always felt a little self-con...
Some times I find myself leaving out the 'that' that binds two parts of a sentence together, because it reads 'smoother'. Here's an example:
I'm at that point towards the end of a book, where you suddenly realize you're reading part two of a trilogy and too much of the plot is left for a sati...
Really? What I especially do not like is going through 10+ pages of questions that match search criteria; reading all answers, trying to think of reasons why they should not be completely the same, and deciding whether the difference is enough; and while doing all this I need to have ten tabs open to read back and forth. And often a newer question will have an answer that is better than most of the answers in older questions. What then? I can never make up my mind.
@Cerberus Well, making up one's mind can be tough. Hunting down dupes can suck huge balls. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the actual merging after you have hunted it down and made up your mind. That can be quite satisfying, I tellya.
At least to me.
I can totally imagine that there are people who couldn't care less.
A joke is a question, short story, or depiction of a situation made with the intent of being humorous. To achieve this end, jokes may employ irony, sarcasm, word play and other devices. Jokes may have a punchline that will end the sentence to make it humorous.
A practical joke or prank differs from a spoken one in that the major component of the humour is physical rather than verbal (for example placing salt in the sugar bowl).
Purpose
Jokes are typically for the entertainment of friends and onlookers. The desired response is generally laughter; when this does not happen the joke is...
Not getting the chicks, and probably not getting the bucks either, as they don't make enough sense.
No way, a Joke??
The only way your joke would make any sense would be if I interpreted it thus. I know, this is killing. You are a moderator, therefore you are obliged to do the work, but, as it is your job, you also get paid, and your position plus money get you girls. Which are both also farm animals. Then again, I assume you are not getting paid. So that was supposed to be a joke too.
Considering all this I still doubt whether I got your joke, as it doesn't sound like a real joke. Well, whatever it was, I'm sure I have killed it.
I have no idea what you're talking about. really. My jokes are never that sophisticated. My jokes are never sophisticated, period. If that's still too long: my jokes aren't.
Because I have no idea if that question actually discussed him vs he, them vs they, whom vs who, or accusative vs nominative. But what I do remember is that nohat and Kosmonaut had a side discussion about labelling photos.
Yeah, well, I am usually reduced to trying to find questions I have never seen before, based on the assumption that a topic is so common that there must have been similar questions in the past, which is usually true.
It will, but I usually find questions when I try. I am talking about very common topics, like using hyphens and the possessive 's.
The problem is this. Suppose I see a question that reminds me of an earlier question I remember. Should I simply mark it as a duplicate of that? Or should I search on for even older questions? With very frequent topics, I feel that I should.
@Cerberus But to answer your question: if you think that it is an obvious dupe and should be closed as such, then vote to close. I know from your previous comments that you sometimes fear it might be some kind of rocket science, but it really isn't.
You don't need to stop and think, oh, but how would X vote, what would Y do, how would Z comment? X, Y, and Z will voice their opinions themselves. You don't vote on their behalf. It's your vote, so you get to cast it as you see fit.
The worst worst is when somebody asks you to correct some code, you ask who wrote such crappy code, and you discover it was code you wrote 2 years ago.
Scenario: My friend John has a personality disorder, intensely paranoid for example.
Can I say:
There were three events last year that told me John had a problem.
or can I say:
There were threee events last year that told me John has a problem.
Has this ever happened to you: You write a question, include a list or two in the discussion, and then come back to edit that list because the order doesn't sound "right"? Off the top of my head, I can remember it happening to me twice here on English L&U: I changed God, man, and nature to r...
Some times I find myself leaving out the 'that' that binds two parts of a sentence together, because it reads 'smoother'. Here's an example:
I'm at that point towards the end of a book, where you suddenly realize you're reading part two of a trilogy and too much of the plot is left for a sati...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…