I think the site is wonderful and fun, but there are some gaps that could make it more successful. You have brought up some good questions, and they deserve some discussion.
I think we should prioritize our efforts based on maximal effectiveness. To that end, I would suggest this order:
1. Deci...
@MrHen and others... In your answer, you asked 'Are we attracting the right kind of new users?' As a community, do we have a consensus on who is right kind of user?
@psmears I think Jeff took action because he perceived a consistent lack of action. (I'm not judging whether or not that was true). I think the reaction shows the community cares about the site to take action, so I don't think the same situation would occur again. </2 cents>
@psmears I understand your feelings; I don't want our actions to make Jeff feel justified either. If we resolve our own personal feelings about how the site is run by agreeing on what we do here to manage the site as a community, I think we will have a much better time of it should he decide to stir up trouble again.
@Kit I have had similar frustrations with this... I previously asked if something was on topic, I got the go ahead to ask the question, then the question got closed as off topic.
@RebeccaChernoff Thanks for that... I have total confidence that the community cares about the site, and indeed that it was taking action (whether that was noticed or not). My concern is that, if any lack of action is perceived in the future (again, justified or not) - will the belief be that the community needs another good kicking? (I know you can't answer this... I'm just saying how I feel...)
And what's even more frustrating, I keep hearing that this site is for professionals... so since I'm not a linguist, am I not supposed to ask questions?
And that logic could go for any of the SE sites... I'm not a mathematician, so am I not allowed to ask on Math about my homework troubles? I don't write Science Fiction, so is it not kosher for me to give my <2 cents> there?
@RebeccaChernoff Ok, so then wouldn't that make it so no one other than proffessors or linguists are allowed to ask and answer questions... Which would make the site not very productive if no random user could ask a question...
by accepting an answer. by putting it in the faq. by acting on it on the main site. by commenting on posts when it isn't followed to teach the community.
In a song video made by an American acquaintance, there is a joke that I don't understand.
I am not a native speaker, and I guess most English speakers would understand what makes his joke funny.
Is it on-topic to ask what is the meaning of his play on words?
As asked by Jeff Parker, here is...
@Kit Also don't consider any decision super-ultra-final would be my suggestion, but there's other things at play here than simply that, so I won't get into that.
You know the funny thing is, when I asked my meta question about if I could ask a question a certain question... the person that gave me the go ahead to ask was also one of the people that voted it to be closed.
Don't dwell on some kind of unanimous consensus. Gaming is infamous for our ability to fail to reach any kind of consensus, but we still churn forward with policies as needed.
@Kit Develop the Meta process of your own. This is your community, after all. Use Meta to have your discussions, to see what focus points there are, to see what does or does not need looking at. How to come to a decision can be obtained by rationalization, not by relying on systemic or mechanical cues.
@GraceNote Thanks for popping in. BTW there is not a perceived issue about coming to consensus within the community - usually that happens much more smoothly here than I've seen on other sites!
@GraceNote — We have heard the "this is your community, after all" argument quite a lot lately. The issue is the cognitive dissonance that arises from actual evidence that this is not our community. Words vs. deeds.
@OghmaOsiris Your meta question was whether you could ask if a specific phrase was polite, but your actual question was asking for a polite phrase. One is open-ended and the other isn't.
The issue is more that there is, after, err, "recent events", a lot of uncertainty in the community about what it means when we have reached that decision... i.e. (some of us at least) thought we thought we did have a consensus, and were sticking to it... only for that to be reversed by a bolt from the blue
@MichaelMyers But, it is an example of inconsistancies in moderation. And even if my question was not very good, there was no comments given when the close votes were cast, so any other user could have (including me) been really confused and then still post further questions that were similarly 'bad'
@Kit It's not intended to be fluffy. I'm serious. Everyone keeps saying they were under the impression that they ran the place, that they knew the site better than anyone.
Whenever I am faced with a soliciter/someone selling something, I am always really uncomfortable because I can never think of a phrase or something to let the person know that I'm not interested in what they are trying to sell me/get me to sign/ask for a donation/etc.
I usually lie and say I alr...
@psmears Things weren't handled as smoothly as I think they could have been. Not saying they were. Fyi, I did link Jeff in hopes that he replies on meta.
I'm looking at the FAQs and I'm trying to see if this has already been answered...Can't find it anywhere.
Is asking if a phrase is polite on topic? Wouldn't subjects like this be too subjective to personal opinion on what's polite and what's not polite?
The advice I was given on asking a subjective answer was: "Great subjective questions...
1.... inspire answers that explain “why” and “how”. 2.... tend to have long, not short, answers. 3.... have a constructive, fair, and impartial tone. 4.... invite sharing experiences over opinions. 5.... insist that opinion be backed up with facts and references. 6.... are more than just mindless social fun."
So getting back to what I said that @Robusto has questioned, when I talk about acting as a community, I don't mean some kind of liberation front or support rally. What I mean is, pool your understanding.
@RebeccaChernoff Thanks. I know you're probably now all too painfully aware of how we feel! Just trying to give @Grace a far-too-brief sense of what the issues are, to save her from reading days worth of chat logs.
@psmears Thanks. To paraphrase something you said earlier, I do not want to reward behaviour I personally regard as unacceptable. Staying would do that.
I'm not here to charge in like Jeff did and assume to know what changes will work best on the community. All I'm here to do is hopefully assist in helping people figure out how they can make their own decisions, since consensus seems to be the issue at fault (for what I'm specifically targetting, not for the problem at whole).
Or we could maybe just ban ourselves for, say, a month, then come back and see what has changed. Actually 40 days. To establish or break a habit, I've heard, takes 40 days. Maybe a 40-day moratorium on EL&U?
@RebeccaChernoff It's on the near end of the spectrum on the far end of which is the ethical question "Should we use Mengele's medical data?" For me (and I accept that bullying is a trigger issue for me that doesn't necessarily apply to others), it's far enough along to get an unequivocal "No." Ergo, using SE is no longer ethical for me.
@GraceNote OK - it's just that (maybe I'm misreading them but) your comments seem to be imply that we have an issue reaching consensus. Which a number of the regulars here have expressed that they don't feel is a big issue - which I think is why your comments are causing a little friction.
I'm not saying that we don't have an issue with reaching consensus - I didn't think we did, but I'm prepared to be convinced otherwise - but I think the advice on how to deal with that problem would go down better afer showing us the evidence that we do have it :-)
Nobody responded to my 40-day moratorium comment. Well, fine. But I think at this point, right now, talking about this is not helping. I think we all need to take a step back and see how we feel. I'm serious.
@Robusto Good advice. The only reason I'm not taking it is that I've been in situations like this before, and I know very much what my principles require me to do.
@Rhodri: Obviously, to stay or go is your decision. You deserve to (and should) make that decision how you see fit. We'd rather you stay, naturally, but you make your own call.
@GraceNote Mixed signals - sure. And it changes with who's here. But I think there are enough people that would appreciate an explanation (from anyone) on what they perceive as the lack of consensus. For instance, I don't see the raging comment debates that appear elsewhere... usually I've seen there is one answer with a few upvotes, which is close enough to consensus for the sort of action you're recommending...
@MrHen I don't like the word "threatening". It's not a threat (not from me at least)! It's just one of many options I'm considering - and whatever I do, I hope it won't harm anyone else.
But in essence - someone made a request on Meta, Jeff replied very violently and said some very nasty words. That really didn't go over well, but the following day he apologized, noted that he was frustrated but that even that isn't an excuse to have been so rude.
@GraceNote Sorry, I wasn't very clear. Would I have needed to be a 10k user to have seen the original response at the time? Do I need to be a 10k user to see the retraction now?
@Rhodri I understood, I'm saying "I don't remember". I can't find it very easily (which does indicate strongly that it may have gotten deleted), and I honestly don't remember if it was just a revision of his original words (you would not need 10k to see) or if he deleted his original answer and posted a new one (you would need 10k to see)
@RebeccaChernoff I wish he does, honestly, I actually like all what Jeff has done for all the SE sites. And I do like Kosmo (did I already say that?). I hate to see all this autodestruction....
@AlainPannetier Shrug "Hasty" would be if I had left yesterday without giving Jeff a chance to take things back. He's had more than enough time to notice that the community disagrees with him.
@GraceNote For sure, communication is the key. (That's why I'm coming out with lots of stuff - I don't mean to be hostile, and I'm sorry if it comes across that way. I'm just very conscious that it was a lack of communication that got us into this mess in the first place...)
To answer for @Rhodri, the post is currently deleted, but Jeff's hurtful comment is in the body of the question, while Jeff's apology is in his own answer.
> there will be no further discussion on this matter as far as I am concerned. Take it elsewhere, or leave entirely. I don't honestly care which.
Original comment
> edit: after having thought about this a bit more, there was no need for me to be so borderline rude in my comment. I was extremely frustrated with that particular question and should not have taken it out on anyone reading. I'd like to broadly apologize to the community for being unnecessarily rude, and I will send direct email apologies to those affected. Perhaps I should follow my own advice in the /faq: Be Nice.
@GraceNote OK - my point is that the nearest that most of us have seen to an apology - until your post just now - is "@kos I have amended my comment; my frustration comes from the fact that nearly every time I visit this site, I am embarrassed to be associated with the sort of banal, least-common-denominator questions that appear here. If this site is indeed intended for experts, it needs far stronger moderation", which is... not very conciliatory!
@MichaelMyers Now that is just unfair, Michael. That was the only occasion on which we had 70 flags. Ever. And that's because I wasn't around. I was in Paris with my mother-in-law. And I had warned everybody, in this room and in Teachers Lounge alike, about that. In advance. Many times over. For crying out loud!
I always try to keep the number of flags under 10. (I am failing miserably today, for obvious reasons.) The ones that I don't clear immediately are left there as a post-it to other mods.
You can't just take one naked number and hold it up against us like that.
I am supposed to be clearing the flags at my own leisure anyhow. I haven't signed anything saying that I must be on the site 24/7, or in fact at all.
@GraceNote Sorry for that. I wish our earlier attempts to drag you into here had been just as successful.
I'm looking at the FAQs and I'm trying to see if this has already been answered...Can't find it anywhere.
Is asking if a phrase is polite on topic? Wouldn't subjects like this be too subjective to personal opinion on what's polite and what's not polite?
@RegDwight I feel my training in l'humour noir is insufficient to cope with the current situation, so I am largely lurking... If you have time, I would be grateful if you would add my email address to those you pass on to Kosmo, and please feel free to let him know I would be honored should I ever have the chance to learn from him in the "real" world.
@psmears I wasn't really trying to connect the question asked to the meta question, I was trying to connect FumbleFingers comment to the meta question.
@OghmaOsiris I've taught English as a foreign language and relative politeness of phrases, register, informality etc. were important topics there and we have had many interesting questions about this on EL&U. But etiquette itself I don't consider on-topic. Actually I don't even know if that question is about etiquette... I'm not sure what it is about.
@OghmaOsiris Rude? I've not noticed that (though I'm sure I haven't seen all the comments). Overly chatty, possibly. But if you see rude stuff please do flag it, for the sake of all of us.
@Shog9 Fair enough :) But I hope to see a better explanation if it does get closed... (I said I was an optimist, right? ;) )
@psmears He has annoyed me too a few times but I wouldn't say he's rude exactly. I'm sure I have annoyed a few people myself... and I am going to try harder to be nice, as well as being right!
@RebeccaChernoff BTW I've been through all of the ten questions you mentioned. Only quickly, but comparing our top answer to the top few google results, we compare very favourably - in all but one case the google results were essentially useless (for the question at hand), and in the other our answer was marginally better. Go ELU! (Well, on that one measure, on one small sample, anyway :) )
@OghmaOsiris Good work. Ordinarily the mods would look at them very quickly - and decide one way or the other whether they think they're rude - but as I'm sure you'll understand their capacity is severely limited at the moment! :)
@OghmaOsiris That's a very complex question - and not really one I have the bandwidth to discuss right now. But when people say "that's not a word", always take it as "that's not a word in my dialect", or "...in Standard English", or "...in the dictionary I'm looking in". And if you've got a dictionary link to show them otherwise, do post it for them :)
@psmears At that particular time, I was going off a google search. I searched both terms and they both received millions of hits. Even in cooking sites, news sites, etc. So to me deshelled IS a word as it is relatively common from what I've seen.
@RegDwight Oh, I certainly understand. I just meant... I may someday get my act together about going to graduate school for linguistics, so if Kosmo stays in academia, maybe we will meet again. At least that's what I'm telling myself so I don't get too sad.
I think the site is wonderful and fun, but there are some gaps that could make it more successful. You have brought up some good questions, and they deserve some discussion.
I think we should prioritize our efforts based on maximal effectiveness. To that end, I would suggest this order:
1. Deci...
In a song video made by an American acquaintance, there is a joke that I don't understand.
I am not a native speaker, and I guess most English speakers would understand what makes his joke funny.
Is it on-topic to ask what is the meaning of his play on words?
As asked by Jeff Parker, here is...
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…
English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…