English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

alphabet

00:11

@MetaEd I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make. Do you think our site should be limited to askers and answerers who are currently employed in a relevant field? That's certainly a consistent position, though it would lead to quite a large decline in our user base.

MetaEd

@alphabet What happened to EL&U, in hindsight should have been obvious. It was intended to foster a community of experts in the field, and it did in fact attract some amazing people, such as the late, great John Lawler.

But within a world population of more than a billion English speakers, the number of experts is vanishingly small. A site like SO didn't have that problem. Outside the expert programming community, you don't have another billion people with a casual knowledge of C or "C as a second language". EL&U is overwhelmed like no other SO network.

@alphabet I think it's too late. The genie is out of the bottle. So I do partly agree with you.

But arguendo, if you wanted to make a renewed effort to foster a community of experts, something would have to change.

alphabet

@MetaEd I wouldn't say it's "overwhelmed"; I'd say it's serving its current purpose, which is a resource for a variety of people with reasonable questions, not limited to a tiny circle of professionals or experts.

There is a small contingent of users who want to restrict this site to a much smaller group; Edwin Ashworth is among them. They're in the minority, and I hope that they stop closing questions in a misguided attempt to "improve" things.

MetaEd

@alphabet Yes. But remember that the whole purpose of spinning up the Stack Exchange networks was to pull together those professionals and experts into communities. So while EL&U is helping people, it has failed in its stated purpose.

Maybe Edwin Ashworth thinks there is still a chance of creating a viable community of experts. I don't know.

@alphabet Another factor working against the original purpose of SE is, the people at SE itself who used to care about the purpose of the site are largely gone.

alphabet

A "community of experts" would, I think, be kinda useless, since it would exclude the vast majority of people who have reasonable questions about the English language.

MetaEd

@alphabet Not at all.

I would expect the body of work of a community of experts to be more grounded in facts, scholarship, and more useful to the English speaking population overall. And I don't think anybody has ever said questions should be closed to experts.

alphabet

00:24

@MetaEd I thought you were saying that questions should be limited to experts. Sorry if I was misinterpreting you.

I do have problems with answerers who don't cite reliable sources or understand the basics. But that's a separate issue; dealing with such answerers does not require limiting the community to people with actual jobs in the field.

MetaEd

@alphabet Right, no not at all. But they should be questions that you would ask experts. You would not, for example, collar an expert because you wanted a dictionary definition read to you. That just wastes everybody's time.

alphabet

@MetaEd Whose time does it waste? If answering such a question feels like a waste of time to you, you can just choose not to answer it.

MetaEd

@alphabet Sure, but what that means is you need many of your community, and certainly your moderators, to be actual experts, so that actions taken (from votes to mod actions) keep the bar raised high on answers. Once your community is overrun by people who don't know an actual good answer when they see it, things are kind of over. And your experts will disappear.

@alphabet And that's the crux of the problem right there. When you have a billion people (figuratively speaking) adding to the question queue, most experts will just stop looking at the queue and go do something different with their time. The problem with such questions is not just that they're a waste of time, the problem is that signal to noise ratio is so bad on the question queue that your experts give up and go away.

A problem to which I don't think there is a good solution, for EL&U. Because as I said above of its uniqueness in having a billion users, basically.

alphabet

@MetaEd You'll note that the biggest actual linguistics expert on this site--Araucaria--has (I believe) been quite critical of Edwin Ashworth on this point, and indeed commented on my answer to that Meta post to agree with me.

MetaEd

:65212706 Oh, no doubt there is a whole spectrum of opinions about this

alphabet

00:36

Our community has developed a reputation for being unwelcoming and hostile--Laurel has talked about this before--and that also drives away new users of all types. Overly aggressive close voting is a big part of that.

MetaEd

@alphabet There's a world of difference between aggressive closevoting and hostility. Nobody should be hostile to a new user, or make them feel unwelcome.

The problem is that first-timers perceive closevoting as hostile, when it's really feedback that the question doesn't belong, or doesn't belong yet. The same is true at SO -- it feels very uncomfortable as a first-timer to show up with your question and find out you need to go back and either read the fine manual or provide a lot more information when you post. But that's how you learn. And it certainly should not be taught in a hostile way.

It's always a good idea to give constructive suggestions along with a closevote that might take some of the sting away.

and I have to head home. Chat later!

alphabet

@MetaEd One possible answer here is to use "easy" questions as an opportunity to give a more detailed explanation of a topic; then future related questions can be closed as duplicates. Not a perfect solution, but I think it's more useful to users.

@MetaEd Yeah, part of the issue is that some people can be rather...unconstructive. If there were a way of forcing close voters to give constructive feedback, I'd be less concerned about our high question-closure rates.

:65212729 Indeed; thanks for your perspective on the matter.

Robusto

02:11

Watching YouTube "reaction videos" is like watching someone play air guitar to a song.

Vikas

02:42

@Robusto They look exaggerated and scripted to me.

alphabet

@Robusto Often the real point is to subvert copyright by making money off of other people's content.

alphabet

03:33

OK, here's a question for you: is he'll a homophone of heel or of hill?

I only pronounce it like hill. But many dictionaries only list the heel pronunciation.

A look at YouGlish suggests that both are common in AmE; in BrE both are found but heel seems to be a bit more common.

Robusto

05:16

@alphabet Yeah, it's shady all around.

alphabet

xQc Is Stealing Content (and So Are Most Reaction Streamers)

►

Robusto

Heh.

CowperKettle

05:56

@Robusto I wrote a paper on him in my institute, as part of our philosophy course. About the Myth of Sysiphus

Or Sisyphus

About the absurdity of life.

@Robusto I don't get it

alphabet

06:18

Presidents' Day

Presidents' Day, officially Washington's Birthday at the federal governmental level, is a holiday in the United States celebrated on the third Monday of February. It is often celebrated to honor all those who served as presidents of the United States and, since 1879, has been the federal holiday honoring Founding Father George Washington, who led the Continental Army to victory in the American Revolutionary War, presided at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and was the first U.S. president.The day is an official state holiday in most states under various names. Depending upon the specific...

CowperKettle