English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Matt Эллен

17:02

time to travel on home

Robusto

@MattЭллен I didn't know you had time travel in England. Sounds convenient.

What's this stuff about "secret" hats?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Hats!

2

badass

you look like a ninja judge

Robusto

Hats to you too!

There. Have a hat.

Now you can be a cute kitty instead of a somber British judge.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

17:18

Do the chat stars have to be unique? i.e. two different starred messages?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Robusto =^_^=

Robusto

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Wait. You were a cute kitty all along?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Robusto no! I swear!

Ste

I would like a cute kitty. :(

Robusto

You have to say something cute.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

17:21

@badass you look like a kosher badass.

Robusto

I am perfectly happy to kittenize you, but you have to say something clever, like "Hats!"

Andrew Leach

Ooh. Hats!

3

Ste

@Robusto - Gimme a minute, that's not my forte. (not forté, either).

badass

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 :D

Ste

Hats!!

2

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

17:22

giggles

Robusto

See, the extra exclamation point makes it uniquely your statement.

But poor @cornbread only has a single star, when hers is the canonical entry.

Such injustice.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

passes judgement

badass

:-)

Robusto

passes understanding

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@badass O_O

Ste

17:23

I have kittenised @cornbread. ( I think)

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

passes around a plate at the end of it all

Robusto

BTW, if you haven't upvoted my paraprosdokian yet, it lacks but three votes of 100.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

You mean two.

Robusto

I mean two now.

Thanks, btw.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

;)

Ste

17:25

I already had. I intend to come back tomorrow to further help with hats.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

waits for kitten

Robusto

Try shift-refresh.

Nah, you're still too judgmental.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

disrobes

Andrew Leach

Kittens are judgemental. Haven't you seen them?

badass

O.o

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

17:27

!!afk cornbread ninja bathroom

KitSox

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Just go already!

badass

!!Truth

KitSox

@badass Were you trying to invoke me? Use the help command to learn more.

Ste

My kitten has not arrived but I did just get Chuck Yeager.

Andrew Leach

Off home. Bye all.

Robusto

17:29

@Ste What do you get that for?

Ste

@Robusto I think I answered a question within 5 minutes of it being posted.

Robusto

Oh. Why is it called a "secret" badge then?

Ste

Because until I came into chat today I had no idea it existed.

Can you keep a secret or have I ruined it for everyone else...?

Robusto

I can keep a secret.

The best way to keep a secret is by telling it to everyone, right?

Ste

Good, because I've told you now.

And yeah - that seems to be my approach to the whole secret-keeping...

Still no kitty - I think I need another message to be starred...

HATS!!

Robusto

17:39

It only takes one. But there is some latency involved.

tchrist

What’s our position on “Thanks!” comments?

Robusto

I dunno.

@Ste You don't appear to have an account on EL&U so I can't check your kitty status.

JSBձոգչ

has anybody else here seen this before?

rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk

Ste

@Robusto - I don't?!

Robusto

@Ste I clicked on your popup profile and got a 404.

Ste

17:43

Ste, Sunderland, United Kingdom

4k 10 36

Robusto

Ste

I'm as confuddled...

Robusto

Huh, weird. It 404s when I try it in chat here, but clicking on your link and it's fine.

Ste

At least I exist. That is the main thing.

Robusto

I reread the rules. You need two stars and 10 posts in chat.

So there's your other star.

Ste

17:46

Standing by for kitty goodness

Woohoo!

Robusto

Math is hard. Sorry.

Ste

:D

@tchrist - I just shamelessly rolled back one of your edits so that I could get the Rollback badge. I have since reapplied your edit.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

ninja cat / ninja cat / cornbread ninja in a kitten hat

KitSox

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Oh, it's you again...

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@KitSox damn right.

tchrist

17:53

Badges schmadges.

We need hatties.

Robusto

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 You are a cute kitty, but I still like cornbread a lot. Kittens don't taste as good with maple syrup, for example.

Ste

Well I was going to edit some posts but I couldn't find any that you hadn't already amended!

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Robusto have you tried a Maine Coon?

Robusto

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 I don't know how to respond to that.

Paraprosdokian needs One More Vote!

And two more votes gets me rep-capped for the day. Or is it rep-hatted? A cap is a type of hat.

Jesse: Going gets tough, you don't want a criminal lawyer. You want a criminal lawyer, know what I mean?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

Better call Saul.

!!afk cornbread ninja lunch

KitSox

17:57

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Why are you leaving me!?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@KitSox lunch, dammit.

KitSox

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 You saw that whore again, didn't you!?

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@KitSox not yet.

Robusto

It's only a matter of time.

Jon Hanna

@RegDwigнt I'm sure I'll find some time for answers over the holiday period.

KitFox

18:00

Is there some kind of standard "search results should return X rows in X seconds" kind of thing?

Or do I need to make that up?

Robusto

Searches should return all non-trivial results in under 7 seconds.

Cerberus

@JSBձոգչ That sounds very LW.

KitFox

@Robusto Is that standard performance, or an illustrative example of the typical language?

Robusto

@KitFox That is under extreme load, not counting transmission difficulties.

badass

I am a badass
skullpatroling
scholar

Robusto

18:02

In other words, if you can't get it to the user in under 7 seconds, get them a piece of it.

KitFox

nods

Robusto

It's a "user won't wait that long" limit.

KitFox

Is that a guideline somewhere?

That is, something I can point to besides "my friend who knows this stuff told me."

Cerberus

Why not give us a small piece in 1 second if possible?

Robusto

It's been a UX guideline at just about every place I've ever worked. Some have said 8, but usually 7.

KitFox

18:03

Great. Thanks.

Robusto

@Cerberus Most pieces come in milliseconds. You need a really big chunk of data to take 7 seconds. Or a really overloaded server, or database, etc.

KitFox

So something most people who do this stuff would expect, right along with 'don't disable the back button'.

Robusto

Yes.

Cerberus

@Robusto So...then why wait 7 seconds before you present a first piece?

KitFox

I love knowing people who know stuff.

Robusto

18:04

Personally, I don't like to make anyone wait longer than two or three seconds unless there is obviously some sort of progress indicator.

Cerberus

Yes, a progress indicator is always good.

KitFox

This search takes a ridiculously long time. I don't understand why.

Cerberus

I would rather have 1 Google result in 1 second than 7 results in 7 seconds.

Robusto

@Cerberus Staging some requests can make the whole process take longer. It depends on what you want to do. Also, loading data asynchronously means sometimes a second request gets there before the first one, which is annoying.

Cerberus

I would rather have 2 results in 2 seconds than 14 results in 7 seconds.

Robusto

18:06

You are not everybody.

Cerberus

@Robusto Right, it all depends.

Also on how often you have to do the search.

Robusto

@KitFox Usually you gate it at 100 records because people can't digest more than that in a few seconds anyway.

100 records takes milliseconds, normally.

And if they need more, you get them more.

That's where lazy loading comes in handy.

Cerberus

Unless the results are like
no
no
no
no
no
no
no
no
no
no
maybe
no
no
no
no

Robusto

User asks for 50,000 rows of data, so you show them the first hundred, and as they scroll down you load the next 100, and the next, etc.

Cerberus

Sounds good.

Robusto

18:10

@Cerberus You would be better served by searching for "maybe" in the first place then.

Cerberus

Yes, if you can.

Or perhaps it will say any long animal name instead of maybe.

Robusto

I had to make a typeahead for municipalities in the U.S. by state. Before I gated the results, Ohio, Texas and California all were beyond acceptable limits. But Rhode Island and Wyoming came back like lightning.

Cerberus

What's also good is loading 100 results immediately, then loading 101–200 as well, then wait; once the user is at result 101, start loading 201–300, etc.

Robusto

Also, you have to think of searches as trees. You keep paring down the result set every time you add a new qualifier.

Cerberus

nods

Robusto

18:12

@Cerberus Not really. If they're not going to look at > 100 you don't need to load that.

Cerberus

If.

Robusto

You have to have some indication that they want more.

Cerberus

If you're sure, then don't.

KitFox

@Robusto 2.52s to get, return and format 145 rows.

Cerberus

What I'm talking about is basically buffering.

Robusto

18:13

@KitFox That is way too lonig. It should be more like 25.2 ms.

Cerberus

Which you can do if the process is one-dimensional.

KitFox

@Robusto I agree. It looks like maybe something Ajax-y, though, because I can see the first part of the recordset before it finishes loading, although the final styling isn't applied right away.

Robusto

Yeah, but why buffer 9,900 rows if they are happy with the first 100?

@KitFox Is the hold-up in the request/response or in the DOM manipulation?

KitFox

@Robusto Firebug suggests that about half that time is 'receiving'.

The other big part is 'waiting'.

Robusto

@KitFox That's still a part of the response.

Cerberus

18:15

@Robusto Sure, so bugger rows 1–200.

Bugger, haha.

Typo.

KitFox

@Robusto I'm not entirely clear on what those phases are.

Robusto

@KitFox Yeah. It's a server-side/database issue then.

@KitFox Waiting means the time after you've sent the request before you hear anything back.

KitFox

But the receiving?

Robusto

Receiving means the time after you've started to get a response until the response is finished.

KitFox

Oh, OK.

I'm going to recommend that we limit the number of returned records to curtail that delay a bit.

The results thus far are not paged.

Robusto

18:18

@KitFox 145 is a trivial number of records. It shouldn't be taking that long.

KitFox

I agree.

RegDwigнt

Hey Joseph. Y u has only three hats even on Philosophy?

Matt Эллен

thunder! thunder! thunder hats! Ho!

Robusto

Hattie McDaniel

Hattie McDaniel (June 10, 1895October 26, 1952) was an American actress. She was the first African American to win an Academy Award. She won the award for Best Supporting Actress for her role of Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). In addition to acting in many films, McDaniel was a professional singer-songwriter, comedian, stage actress, radio performer, and television star; she was the first black woman to sing on the radio in America. During her career, McDaniel appeared in over 300 films, although she received screen credits for only 80 or so. McDaniel has two stars on the Hollywoo...

RegDwigнt

Hottie?

Robusto

18:23

Hättie.

I'm still stuck at 7 hats.

RegDwigнt

Wut.

Have you edited a random CW post yet?

Robusto

i no rite

I edited one a little while ago.

RegDwigнt

Hm. Was it one of your own?

Robusto

Wait, it says I revised it.

RegDwigнt

I think you should edit someone else's.

Robusto

18:25

1

Q: Expression choice: 'conclusion', 'taken as a whole', or 'regarding'

I am wondering if it would be more effective to use another construction: Taken as a whole or Regarding instead of In the general framework of the leaf photosynthesis limitations associated with drought stress, we may conclude that leaf assimilation could have been reduced by i...

phrases expressions writing-style expression-choice

It was someone else's.

RegDwigнt

But it wasn't CW.

Go fix some typo here.

Robusto

I just reformatted this one.

Now we wait.

Still 1 vote shy on paraprosdokian.

RegDwigнt

Rob. CW = Community Wiki.

You are editing regular posts.

Follow the link I posted, it should get you two hats at once.

Robusto

Oh.

RegDwigнt

One for editing a community-wiki post, and one for editing something that's OVER 90 days old.

Robusto

18:30

Oh.

3

A: What are your favorite English language tools?

I'm an English as a Second/Foreign Language teacher, and I like to use the Cambridge Dictionaries Online. It has different levels of definitions from Learner's (which used to be basic or beginner) to Advanced Learner's. I find it's not only helpful for me when I need to find a way to define a...

Editeded.

Matt Эллен

!!define omake

KitSox

@MattЭллен omake A portion of video that complements an episode of anime.

RegDwigнt

You misspelled !!Rob omake.

Robusto

!!define harem anime

KitSox

@Robusto No definition found.

Robusto

18:31

Haha, shows what you know.

RegDwigнt

He can tell you about han sābisu, too.

And han's solo.

Robusto

That's a bingo on paraprosdokian. Now I just need one more upvote to get the rep-cap badge for the day.

That's just like me, always asking for more, ne?

Cerberus

"I'm an English as a Second/Foreign Language teacher" v. "I teach English to foreigners".

Which is more efficient?

Matt Эллен

"You learny the Englishy from me, okay?"

but, um , the second one

Robusto

I would go with "I teach English to the scum of the Earth, bitches!"

RegDwigнt

18:35

@Robusto go flag the two comments here and the two comments here as obsolete.

Cerberus

@MattЭллен Agreed.

Brevity.

Robusto

@RegDwigнt Gemacht.

Cerberus

Ah! There is a button "I hate hats".

RegDwigнt

There you have your two new hats.

A few flags more, and you'll have yet another.

@Cerberus please do not click it.

Cerberus

Why not?

Too late...

RegDwigнt

18:38

You are free not to wear a hat.

@Cerberus you can unclick.

This is for a greater good.

Robusto

W00t! Got my Great Answer Gold. There should be a hat coming shortly.

Cerberus

Then I'd have to click "I love hats!!", which would be a lie.

RegDwigнt

You don't need to wear, but if you hate on them, you ruin our stats.

Robusto

Didn't get a Reversal gold yet, though.

Cerberus

@RegDwigнt Which is?

All right, very well.

RegDwigнt

18:39

That, my friend, is your own failure. For not listening to me.

@Cerberus thank you.

It is easy and you get flowers.

And others get to wear the hats you hate but you don't.

Cerberus

Flowers, too?

RegDwigнt

It's a win-win-win-win.

Cerberus

Now I have like 15 hats.

RegDwigнt

@Cerberus Well are you not in Amsterdam?

Cerberus

Whatever "have" means.

We trample any flowers in sight here.

RegDwigнt

18:40

You can sell them off of eBay come 2014.

Robusto

I have Mr. Peanut Monopoly McDuck now.

Cerberus

Really?

Robusto

One more up vote anywhere gets me another hat.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto that's for the gold badge.

Robusto

I know.

RegDwigнt

18:41

Ah okay.

Robusto

Ah, OK. I should get a rep cap—er, hat—shortly.

Meh, someone took it away.

MετάEd

If I want a smartphone mount for my car, do I just get one of those cheap Walmart ones that clip to the vent? Or had I better get something better?

Robusto

Smartphone mounts are problematic.

The suction ones tend to fall off in the heat.

RegDwigнt

We are 13th.

Slowly but steadily.

Now let's kick some seasoned advice-ass.

41 to go.

Cerberus

@MετάEd I'd get a branded one from Ebay.

Robusto

18:47

Elder has a slightly older (no pun intended) feel to it. A little more elevated, stilted, whatever. — Robusto 45 secs ago

Cerberus

Liar.

RegDwigнt

And that sneaky @hugo is now in the top 5 across the entire network.

Matt and tchrist are 11th.

Robusto

I want a cosmonaut helmet. How do you get those?

RegDwigнt

Is that for real or you jesting again?

I've not seen one yet.

Robusto

For reals. It says secret.

RegDwigнt

18:50

Oh.

Robusto

mplungjan, Netherlands

14.7k 28 53

meaning single-word-requests word-choice phrases meaning-in-context grammar grammaticality

Check out his hat.

RegDwigнt

That's Chuck Yeager, the Soviet pilot.

Robusto

Yeah. How do you get that?

RegDwigнt

That one is answering a new question real quick. Within the grace period.

Don't pass this knowledge on. We figured it out in this room.

Robusto

Oh. But I'm retired.

Cerberus

18:52

...

I smell vacillation.

RegDwigнt

I think it's okay to go on hiatus from retirement for a hat. Check the 3rd Amendment.

Robusto

I will have to discuss this with my family first.

RegDwigнt

Besides, you could post and answer your own question. That'd get you this hat and another one.

Robusto

I'm #6! I'm #6! I'm #6!

RegDwigнt

#4 is what I'm seeing.

Robusto

18:55

Now that I force-refresh, I see you're right.

Stupid server-side caching.

RegDwigнt

It's very slow to update, yes. Force refreshing won't get you far.

We need more breadth. We can only have so many veterans with 20 hats. We need a division or five of cannon fodder with 5 hats each.

Robusto

I should get a peanut gallery hat soon. Which will tie me with @MetaEd.

Oh, wait. I have to make four more 2+ comments. groan

RegDwigнt

Oh you keep track of that?

I just post my usual shit and hope for the best.

Actually I've been posting exceptionally few shits today.

BRB posting more.

Robusto

I haven't been doing that much.

KitFox

i haz so few hatz.

3

Robusto

19:01

Well, let's get you started.

RegDwigнt

I offer free help. And seven-layer dip.

Late to the hat game? You are not! Ping me. That you have 3 hats now doesn't mean you can't have 13 in a minute. (Starred by satisfied customers.)

10

Robusto

@RegDwigнt "1,357 users from this site have earned a total of 1,518 hats!"

That's on the order of one per user.

RegDwigнt

It's getting better.

This morning it was 13-hundred-something earned a total of 13-hundred-something.

Really like a difference of some forty.

Robusto

But we're getting beaten by cooks!

RegDwigнt

Well they do have the rolling pins.

Robusto

19:06

I guess more people eat than speak English. Sad but true.

RegDwigнt

Nah. More people wake up earlier in the morning because they are hungry than because they are silent.

We'll get there.

MετάEd

@Cerberus Is there a particular brand of smartphone mount that's good?

Am I supposed to be pursuing hats?

RegDwigнt

Yes.

Our site is 13th. That's a damn shame.

Last year we were like 6th.

And it's not exactly hard. See Rob.

47 mins ago, by Robusto

I'm still stuck at 7 hats.

He has 12 now.

Cerberus

@MετάEd I would probably buy a mount from the same brand as my phone. But perhaps other brands are also good.

RegDwigнt

@Robusto check out their stats for a surprise. I would hazard a guess they are not going anywhere.

The 1300-something hats are sort of grandfathered in for all established sites. Everyone got that much for free.

Robusto

19:14

Too much eating, not enough hat-getting.

Cerberus

Example:

@MετάEd amazon.com/Samsung-Universal-ECS-K200BEGSTA-included-CAD300UBEC/…

Of course I couldn't be sure this one was actually good, so I'd read up on some reviews if I could find them. But I would at least expect one made by Samsung to work reasonably well with the models it mentions.

Robusto

Gotta go out and brave the cold. Latours.

RegDwigнt

CU

Cerberus

Foo cold!

> two researchers at Facebook collected information on all of the statuses that five million users wrote out but did not post during the summer of 2012.

So Facebook stores and analyses the stuff you write in their text boxes but do not post. Talk about data greed!

RegDwigнt

I only need 1198 more views on this question for a hat.

Cerberus

19:24

> Over the course of those 17 days, 71 percent of the users typed out a status, a comment, or both but did not submit it. On average, they held back on 4.52 statuses and 3.2 comments.

Cerberus

19:34

> Facebook seems to be placing increasingly heavy weight on the roads not taken: the site also recently indicated that it would start tracking minute non-interactions like mouse movements over its webpages.

Can they even do that?

RegDwigнt

Of course. There's a million sites doing that.

You can even sign your own site up for such a service, simply by including a link to a Javascript file in your pages.

ClickTale comes to mind.

Cerberus

I don't normally allow Javascript from third parties.

RegDwigнt

They then offer "hot maps" of where on a given page people spend most of their time.

Cerberus

But I shall use the mobile site with JS disabled anyway.

RegDwigнt

@Cerberus well it doesn't have to be a third party, and with FB it very likely won't be.

Cerberus

19:37

By the way, what do you think would happen if FB had voting and points for everything, like SE?

@RegDwigнt Right, the only 3rd party I saw was Akamai something.

RegDwigнt

They have enough developers to write that thing from scratch (or just steal and host it).

@Cerberus but they do.

Cerberus

Do they?

RegDwigнt

The likes are their currency.

Cerberus

The only voting is see are "liking", and the only total score "friends".

But they could turn all that into a more comprehensive system à la SE.

RegDwigнt

And it is one of the reasons they are so successful. People like to vote on stuff.

@Cerberus which no FB user would ever understand.

Cerberus

19:39

They wouldn't need to, they'd just see their score go up, as on SE.

RegDwigнt

FB users already don't understand FB. Let them have their one button.

They already waste entire days — what am I saying, lives — on watching that one number go up.

Cerberus

What I mean is just turning "likes" into points and keeping a total score, and a per-thread score, a per-day score, etc.

RegDwigнt

Pitch it to Zuckerberg. I'm sure he'll pay you a million. Or shit in your soul.

Cerberus

And badges.

RegDwigнt

@Cerberus that they have for games and apps.

Cerberus

19:41

I think that might make FB even more addictive.

@RegDwigнt But also for posts, why not?

RegDwigнt

Those game badges already are the driving force.

Cerberus

Really?

I have never seen or heard of them.

RegDwigнt

@Cerberus look, honest question. Or actually, two. What do you want from me and why do you want FB to be more successful?

Actually, skip the former.

Cerberus

I don't want anything from you?

RegDwigнt

That's some pro skipping.

Cerberus

19:42

And I don't want FB to be more successful, I couldn't care less.

Just curious whether it would work.

RegDwigнt

I see.

Well, you are the philosopher here.

Cerberus

I was thinking it might work for FB.

Not sure about the side-effects.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

19:59

MOAR hats

Transcript for

English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…