English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

6:25 PM

I will have a look

@RegD: When you get here, can I talk to you? I can't flag twice but I want to talk about a question.

lol at Stackunderblow's answer

Hi @Rob, @JSB

Hullo.

Q: What is a word that means "to railroad the conversation by intentionally misleading"?

@MattE -- I know. I loled

@Reg--This question

-1

For example: Person A says "Stop -------ing" because the Person B person was intentionally trying to railroad the conversation. If it helps, I think the word I'm looking for starts with a D and ends with "ing". The original question clearly described "digressing", as that's what I was thinkin...

single-word-requests

6:29 PM

Them still doesn't has me new nick.

The OP won't let me make it cohesive. She rolled back on my edits, and then said that it shouldn't have been closed.

As it is, it's a horrible fit for EL&U--it asks one thing, and accepts another as an answer.

They might be looking for deflecting. @Reg, you're our deflection master, why don't you take this one.

@Robusto She accepted "digressing". Her original word was "dissembling". This is why the question got closed.

She also wants to open up a chat about this, so if one of you could join?

@Robusto I could deflect it to /dev/null.

Discussion between Sharon and simchona

Imported from a comment discussion on english.stackexchange.co...

6:31 PM

@simchona — That is so not an answer to the title question.

@Robusto Look at the changes I made --

I made the question fit the answer she accepted, and took out the paragraph about how she was thinking of some other word.

I made it, I thought, fit EL&U standards

@simchona — You can lead a horse to water ...

@Reg, please do something.

> This kinda sucks, because I posted this question yesterday late in the afternoon. I didn't receive any new notifications until this morning that there's a problem. I would have edited the question earlier if I would have known there was a problem. Instead the question was closed...and NOT because it wasn't a real question. It clearly IS a real question.

Yeah, I read that.

well, I think there are 3 reasons
1. The question is asking for a synonym for railroaded, which is gen ref
2. The answer they are looking for is not an answer to the question. (dissemble is not a synonym for railroad) so the question is not answerable (hence NARQ)
3. We are not a memory jogging service.

6:35 PM

@Reg: Viele Kühe machen mich müde.

@MattEllenД But I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10!

IT WAS ALABAMA!

:D exactly

@MattEllenД "railroaded" in this context is a specific enough term that i don't think it counts as "gen ref". however, i agree w/ reasons 2 & 3

Sigh. She thinks her question wasn't treated fairly.

i wouldn't waste too much time arguing with one sore user

6:39 PM

indeed

Can someone else edit her question? It makes no sense now.

Or...can we delete it? It's really not improving.

it's not bad enough to deserve deletion

@JSBᾶngs It's misleading.

Mar 9 at 3:45, by Kosmonaut

I read through this question a few times and now I feel like I don't understand English anymore.

how do you view previous revisions? I'd like to look at the original version, but i can't find it any more

6:43 PM

On a question, whenever it says "edited X mins ago"

click on the link

@JSBᾶngs english.stackexchange.com/posts/36853/revisions

@Reg: Happy Birthday! Narwhals

narwhals!

@MattEllenД I have it running in the background anyhow.

I'm aiming for a Guinness record.

!!

6:47 PM

the more i look at the edit history for this question, the less i'm inclined to touch it

the current state is at least comprehensible. but let it be closed, and remain closed

@JSBᾶngs She says "people can handle ambiguity". I say this is why questions were closed

is she actually in that other chat?

@JSBᾶngs Yes

@simchona sometimes you just have to let people be wrong

it's hard to do

I'm forever correcting people

and then finding out I'm wrong

Q: Does this situation have a name?

@simchona and what exactly does she want? to have the question reopened? i don't see any benefit to doing that at this point. if it's just that her feathers are ruffled, make some polite noises and close the chat

0

My coworker's wife is Margaret Elizabeth G... (I'll withhold the last name to protect the innocent). The joke is that the shortened form Margaret is Meg and her initials are also MEG. I hope this doesn't get closed as a stupid question but this situation feels like it might have a real name i...

single-word-requests acronyms proper-nouns

oh, come on now. this is a stupid question.

6:52 PM

@JSBᾶngs I wasn't sure, I don't know all the words, but it did seem that at first read

@JSBᾶngs It does remind me of another acronym, though. Except that I can't remember the acronym.

A name for some programming language or platform or technology.

a backronym?

Basically of the form XINY, which resolves to "XINY is not Y".

"recursive acronym" is sort of the thing.

GNU's not unix

6:57 PM

@MattEllenД Yeah, something like that.

PHP Hypertext Preprocessor

@JSBᾶngs ah, yeah, that one's a backronym (originally PHP meant personal homepage)

a recursive backronym

indeed!

Heck, perhaps it was even "Linux Is Not UniX"...

6:59 PM

:D

acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/Linux+Is+Not+Unix

nothing to do with LINUs Torvalds

Well, don't tell me.

@Reg will you help me get out of this conversation mess?

@MattEllenД — Perhaps you meant LINUs TorvaldX?

7:00 PM

@Robusto I always misspell his name. I guess that's why he doesn't return my calls

He's like that.

Also, I don't think C++ is the worst language ever.

I'm pretty sure he hates people who say that

Apparently StackUnderblow isn't 13.

0

Q: Entomology of shitfaced?

Where does the term shitfaced come from? I'm aware that it means to be totally drunk, but I'm not sure how "shitfaced" describes being drunk.

entomogoly

@simchona I like how it's tagged entomoGOLy.

@RegDwightѬſ道 I retagged. But it was great for lulz

7:14 PM

Yeah, everyone knows the proper spelling is entomongolia.

Q: Dictonary lookup using a variable

Ent! O m golly

I would be shocked if I saw a walking, talking tree too

I know this is off topic but the way this question is phrased makes me wonder if I understand English

0

Can a dictionary of type string and CheckBox be parsed by a variable string in such a way that should the variable string find a dictionary entry that matches it, it will set the corresponding checkbox to true?

c# string dictionary compare

Well...my brain hurts

I've read it 5 times and I think I understand

but I'm not confident

7:34 PM

Hey, why don't we get the fancy network-wide outage warning, if it's allegedly network-wide?

I blame Jin's friend who made the site

must have missed off a div

but it's ok, the outage is on the 8th of June

so we've got over 10 months

user19161

@matt Nice hat!

@JasperLoy thanks you :) I thought I'd dress for the occasion

user19161

7:50 PM

@simchona Horror moveis usually have deserted hospitals, not schools.

@JasperLoy Harry Potter had dessert in school

(I sneak them in when Martha's not here to thwack me)

user19161

@MattEllenД This is very creative. The party hat has made you smarter.

I'm going to take in the night air. bbl

8:19 PM

@Jasper on an editing streak?

user19161

@simchona Indeed! Matt's hat is very cute, don't you think. Maybe we should put one on too, but I'm too lazy!

Which questions are you editing?

user19161

@simchona *Occurence

You googled a misspelled word?

user19161

@simchona Not google, search in this case, since google is not really involved I think.

user19161

8:27 PM

BTW drm one took out all the 'thanks!'

darn

are you just searching for words? how do you make sure they're not in the title (like "thanks")

user19161

@simchona You search and then you read each post individually to see if the edit is needed.

closed questions too?

user19161

@simchona Yes, closed questions should be edited too since they are still visible.

user19161

@sim I see you are on an editing streak as well?

8:38 PM

@JasperLoy "Thank you"

user19161

@simchona Hey welcome to the crazy club!

user19161

Actually it's not a bad idea. Bounced questions get looked at, get more answers and then more votes.

user19161

But it seems you are going a bit too fast!

user19161

Oh dear I must catch up with ya now!

Its a race!

user19161

8:50 PM

@simchona It's. Having said that, we shouldn't do this kind of thing on the other sites, and do it only if you have 2k so that you don't cause a nuisance to the approvers, and stop if anyone complains it is bouncing their stuff off.

@JasperLoy So we do it bc we don't need approval?

user19161

@simchona We do it but try not to cause inconvenience to others I mean. And note that changes take time to be registered so even after editing the error could still show up on the search engine.

i'm done for now

277 edits

i'll edit more later

user19161

@sim congrats you have exceeded me, and you are the only name on the front page.

user19161

Take a screenshot!

8:56 PM

Whoops.

user19161

Poop!

hello

user19161

@Jez Hi!

user19161

Welcome back @matt!

thanks :)

8:59 PM

why does matt have a hat?

hi @Jez

EL&U Birthday party

5 hours ago, by Matt Ellen Д

ah

it's a year old today?

yes :)

user19161

Jinx

why do people have weird characters after their names?

user19161

9:03 PM

Same reason.

user19161

@matt Did you take booze on your walk?

user19161

I'm staying at home.

@Jez You're behind.

@JasperLoy no no. I went for some fresh air

I might have a glass of bourbon on ice in my hand now though :)

@Jez — Because we cool.

Q: What's up with the strange characters in some display names?

9:07 PM

5

I assume it's not just me: Why have some users added special characters to their usernames? The list includes: Kit (now KitΘδς) z7sg (now z7sg Ѫ) JSBangs (now JSBᾶngs) Martha (now Marthaª) aedia λ Alain Pannetier Φ Rhŵdri RegDwight Ѭſ道 ♦ Matt Ellen Д Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

discussion users

@Robusto Speaking of, you need to add yourself to the list in the meta question.

We real cool. We
Left school. We

Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We

Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We

Jazz June. We
Die soon.

@Marthaª What list?

@Robusto That one. That I just linked to. Staring you in the face.

(Also, I still don't see your new name in chat. How long has it been since you changed it?)

Done and done.

@Marthaª (I think Robusto might have been referring to his avatar)

@Marthaª — Like 6 hours.

user19161

9:10 PM

Then sth is wrong.

oh no, nothing's wrong. the character is after Robusto's EL&U name, which is not his parent profile

so it won't show up in chat

@MattEllenД Nope:

@Marthaª yeah, sorry

user19161

@MattEllenД Actually what shows up is what account you use to come here right?

hmm

it's not showing up for me :(

user19161

9:14 PM

I toggled the star on the top right for favourite roo. Wonder what will happen now. Maybe some prize.

@MattEllenД That's gotta be it: if you click on his name here, it links to his SO user profile, not to EL&U.

So, @Robusto, you need to change what profile is associated with this chatroom. Then you'll truly be one of the Cool Kids.

@Marthaª — How does me do dat?

user19161

@Robusto Maybe just log out of all your accounts, log in with EL account and use that to come here?

Click on your avatar, click on "user profile" (the plain one, not the one that says stackoverflow), click on the "change" link next to "parent user".

IDK. Sounds like a lot of work for a little payoff.

9:17 PM

@Robusto Lazy.

I think this guys has enough characters for all of us

user19161

And remember to refresh the browser if necessary.

abbreviations word-choice verbs punctuation period grammaticality

βӔḺṪẶⱫŌŔ, Australia

113 2

@Robusto初夢 (Note that you do NOT need to log off and back on.)

OK how ya like me now?

9:18 PM

@MattEllenД Well, he's made himself effectively unpingable.

@Robusto初夢 Woo-hoo!

@Marthaª — Some users are best left unpinged.

GODDAM I WISH SAFARI WOULDN'T CORRECT MY FREAKIN' SPELLING!!!

someone has to

@Robusto初夢 So, stop using Safari.

►

user19161

@matt As of now I have 8914 just like you. Spooky!

9:20 PM

(I think any spelling checker that proactively changes what you wrote is evil.)

@JasperLoy !! we're almost twins

(And yes, that includes the one in my iPhone.)

@JasperLoy 8914 whats?

Nah, it's OS X Lion that's the culprit. But I found the solution: defaults write NSGlobalDomain NSAutomaticSpellingCorrectionEnabled -bool NO

user19161

@MattEllenД We are born in the same year by the way.

1981?

user19161

9:22 PM

@Marthaª If you see the number that comes with your avatar on the LHS when you post several rows at once.

user19161

I think that's like your total SE rep in some way.

user19161

@MattEllenД Yes!

@JasperLoy yup, across all sites, even ones where you are under 200

user19161

@MattEllenД So that's kind of like cheating.

@JasperLoy You mean the 8904 under your name?

9:23 PM

@JasperLoy I increased mine by 101 by joining server fault! Yeah kinda cheating

user19161

@Marthaª Yes, it should turn 8914 soon, some time delay.

Now, I have a degree in math, so my arithmetic might be off, but isn't 8904 different than 8914?

Can I write unpinned now? YES!

Can I write unpinged now? YES!

Can I write unhinged now? YES!

Can I write unhinged now?

jinx

Can I write unhinted now? Yes?

Can I write untinted now? Yes?

Can I write untinged now? Yes!

I think I'm done.

9:25 PM

Can you test out all of those words in one post now? Please?

Too lazy.

user19161

It is a quiet night on chat, everyone is out drinking.

I switched back to SO as parent and it still keeps my hatsuyume.

He was untinged when they untinted his windows, but unpinned when I got up. They unpinged me so I was unhinted about how unhinged I am.

user19161

@rob So now you are initial dream as your name says?

9:29 PM

but I use firefox, so that wasn't as much of a challenge

user19161

@MattEllenД I had to think a while about what you meant!

@JasperLoy Mmhmm.

9:44 PM

Angry Birds should come with a health warning

seriously addictive ;-)

WARNING: Playing Angry Birds while pregnant may cause you to miss your child's birth

2

11:02 PM

bah. when ever I come up with a question it's already been answered