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18:00
Kind of defeats the purpose of a community site if there's a SE employee doing it...
i'm a little confused. i heard about the CHAOS team on the podcast... but they're making interns into diamond mods now?
@z7sg Basically, we have junk all over the network. We have active users, but we're still volunteers - we clean up what we see but taking the time to go through everything is a massive undertaking for the users. An undertaking that subtracts not only from your ability to contribute to the site, but to your own lives.
Kit
Kit
@JSBangs No, I prefer elfin brunettes without pitchforks or other sharp objects.
@JSBangs All employees have diamonds.
ah, well, i'm not going to complain about somebody else doing the scut-work for once
@Kit /me takes note for future reference
18:01
The point of this effort isn't to overturn the community - their job isn't to do anything on the level of community management. They're just doing basic spelling/grammar fixes on a global level, is what I hear.
For reference, full time employees are here:
ok, so i shouldn't correct minor spelling mistakes etc. because that is beneath me, there are paid drones to do that... ok i can live with that :)
Kit
Kit
Now if only she'd clean up my code for me.
user19161
Does anyone see black horizontal lines across the screen in chat? If not it's just my Fedora.
@JasperLoy it's your fedora. never trust a hat
Kit
Kit
18:02
The dotted lines?
user19161
No, thick black scary lines.
I don't see any
Kit
Kit
Nope. Just you. You broke the Internet.
@z7sg If you want to stave off entirely on it, you're entirely free to, but keep in mind this is probably a one-time process.
@Kit And no long nails either.
18:05
It's like radio silence
-1
A: Is this the right way to use past perfect?

FumbleFingersOP's example sentence should probably be rephrased as For the last 3 years I have been in contact with somebody. But structurally it's the same is For the last 3 years I have been having sex with my girlfriend. This is perfectly good English.

Kit
Kit
@aedia Yes. Definitely sportingly short finger nails.
@Kit you would like my sister-in-law
@Kit Short hair or long hair, though?
Kit
Kit
Hang on, I'm on the phone.
@JSBangs I'm having no luck finding it. Mostly because all of the older mods are absent right now.
user19161
18:06
I will log out and log in to see if it goes away.
@GraceNote that's okay. i'll take your word for it.
user19161
It has gone away. Yay!
@JasperLoy ...for now
user19161
@GraceNote Ya it's like those vicious viruses hiding somewhere...
user19161
0
Q: "I drive an car" vs "I drive a car".

AlexI'm confused, when do I use "an" and when "a" ? I see some people are correcting my questions and changing a with an. I drive a car sounds much better than I drive an car :|

Kit
Kit
18:10
@GraceNote Depends. If I had to choose, probably short.
user19161
Oh dear!
@JasperLoy ...general reference, it looks like to me.
@JasperLoy dup dup dup dup dup
@Kit Intrigue.
Kit
Kit
@GraceNote raises eyebrow How so?
18:11
@JasperLoy — This is a super-duper dupe, but try searching for "a" or "an" ...
Kit
Kit
@JSBangs Would I? She probably lives in the Midwest though.
@Kit Oh, not in any bad way. I personally have always found short hair cuter (though I always entertained the thought of having long hair for myself)
@Kit no she lives in seattle... and is newly married. my other sister in law is still unmarried, but she lives in romania (and is somewhat less elfin)
Kit
Kit
@JSBangs Ah, Romania. I had the hugest crush on a Romanian physics student when I was in college.
Jul 1 at 13:03, by Kit
I used to have a gigantic crush on a Romanian physics student.
Kit
Kit
18:14
@JSBangs Yep. Thought that I was repeating myself.
user19161
@JSBangs Thanks for the confirmation.
Kit
Kit
Vampire physicists.
@Robusto I know the best thing would be if we could get a better search system, but failing that, has the community considered getting a compilation of all of the really common unsearchables for quick reference?
It won't help all that much in preventing the tide of these duplicates, but it'll probably speed up closing a whole bunch.
@GraceNote — I already have a job.
@GraceNote Don't they show up on the faq page, mostly?
Kit
Kit
18:15
@JSB Was your Romanian student also a physicist? I can't remember.
Kit
Kit
@GraceNote Do we have a faq tag?
Arrgh meeting time...
@Kit um, that's your romanian student. the romanian i married was not a student, at least not of mine. (she was finishing up her uni at the time we met)
@aedia You still have to sift through all of the ones which aren't difficult to find, though.
@Kit I believe you do, I think Gaming was the only place that got shafted out of it at first.
Kit
Kit
18:17
@GraceNote If they are difficult to find, we should re-title them. And faq tag them.
@GraceNote — I don't mean to be curt, but the only time I can devote to this site is while my code is building or something like that. I don't have time for projects such as that would be.
Kit
Kit
@JSBangs Well, my Romanian student wasn't my student either. We were classmates.
@Robusto Oh, I don't find any issue with that at all. You shouldn't burn extra time here.
I mean that with all sincerity, too.
@Kit right. i think i'm being unclear. anyway, she was a student technically, but i was out of college, and in any case she was studying business communication rather than physics
@Kit The issue is that the key words are stop words, which makes search incapable of locating them. I'm not sure how else you could properly identify the questions without those key words.
Kit
Kit
18:20
@GraceNote I'm not sure I follow. You mean that you can't search for "a" and "an"? Then we use a title keyword that can be searched for.
@Kit i found the dup by searching for [indefinite-article]
@Kit If you know a suitable keyword that y'all can conveniently use to find these easier, that'd work great and would save the trouble of a compendium.
Kit
Kit
Like "Comparing indefinite articles"
But also a tag for filtering.
How do questions get on the faq page?
And yes, you can't search for "a" or "an", they are stop words that are automatically discarded because it's, quite simply, beyond difficult to distinguish a question in which "a" is a key word and when it's just a word in a sentence.
@Kit Number of links to the question from inside.
Kit
Kit
18:22
@JSBangs Yes, this is what I'm saying.
user19161
And those who ask this probably don't know what an article is, except the one in the newspaper.
We don't actually appear to have a tag at the moment.
Kit
Kit
So we combine with and find the question.
Kit
Kit
@JasperLoy The point is to make it easier for us to find.
18:23
Ooh, I would be careful if you are talking about faq as a tag on the main site...
@GraceNote right, that's a meta-tag, which is a no-no
Kit
Kit
@GraceNote OK, then, not faq. But something useful like it. As in, at least one person asks this question once a week.
1 min ago, by JSBangs
@Kit or just go to http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/articles?sort=faq
It might be a meta tag, but it would an extremely useful meta-tag.
Kit
Kit
@JSBangs That's what I'm getting at, but so you don't have to sort through all of those.
Or if it doesn't show up there.
18:25
@Kit what's to sort through? there are basically two important a/an questions, and they're the top two results on that page
and they're #2 and #3 on the overall faq page (english.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=faq)
Kit
Kit
I mean for all of our common dupes.
Sniff. Our site must really suck.
Oh, right, there's already an automatic "faq" tab.
2
Q: Who is Lauren Ψ and why is she changing posts? (Introducing myself)

Lauren ΨI just wanted to let you all know that I'm a StackExchange employee and I'm working on improving the English Language site. Basically, that means I'll be correcting things like grammar, spelling, punctuation, and trying to make titles clearer (and represent the actual question better). Of course,...

@RegDwight you're late. we already talked about this
Kit
Kit
18:26
@RegDwight We've already covered that topic.
@JSB Jinx!
consensus was: Lauren is hot, but Kit prefers brunettes
Kit
Kit
Redheads are crazy.
30 mins ago, by simchona
0
Q: Who is Lauren Ψ and why is she changing posts? (Introducing myself)

Lauren ΨI just wanted to let you all know that I'm a StackExchange employee and I'm working on improving the English Language site. Basically, that means I'll be correcting things like grammar, spelling, punctuation, and trying to make titles clearer (and represent the actual question better). Of course,...

@Kit have a coke
Sorry @all! I promise I will never commute again!!!
18:27
I do like her website, by the way.
I will just live in the transcript, like @Grace.
A very novel design.
Kit
Kit
@Cerberus Are there naked pictures?
@RegDwight i really wish that @all would actually ping everyone. on the entire stackexchange network
18:27
@JSBangs Huh, it doesn't?
@Kit More like an error page, because she filled in, I quote: NYC.
@simchona Ah, well spotted.
Kit
Kit
@Cerberus I retract my earlier assessments then. I would totally do her.
user19161
@Kit Now you are MSU!
@simchona — HB stands for "He's baaaaaack ..."
@Cerberus Thanks.
@Robusto Noooooooooooooooooooooo
F'x
F'x
18:29
regarding Lauren: in the Circles of the SE Inferno, I'm sure being assigned to EL&U is considered the Ninth Circle of Hell!
@Kit A certain saying about dumbness comes to mind, which I know only in Dutch, and which I could not possibly translate without violating propriety.
@Fx I'm sure it is!
@Robusto didn't we agree to call him 3I? i'm going to be very confused if we're always going to refer to him by his second-to-last alias
Kit
Kit
@Fx I thought the burning plain was the eighth circle?
But, you know, perhaps she got 99 % on her GMAT too.
F'x
F'x
@Cerberus you Sir can be considered an authority on Hell, can you not?
18:30
Certainly!
I think the problem is not what @z7sg said, nobody forces you to volunteer. The problem is when an employee meddles with the volunteers. The employee has a different status.
We are pretty low (why do you think I was ever assigned to you?).
@Kit Hot people shouldn't be in the business of fixing typos.
i would not be quick to assume that there is a problem
@JSBangs That's what certain things do to us.
user19161
18:31
@Fx In my culture, we usually call it the eighteenth level of hell.
Appropriately enough, 3I's new screen name anagrams to "hunts rage" ...
Kit
Kit
@RegDwight I didn't say she was hot; I said I would do her. There's a big difference.
@RegDwight well, yes, there is that
@Kit Sorry. Let me rephrase. People whom Kit would do shouldn't be in the business of fixing typos.
Or "thus anger" ...
18:32
So basically, all typos left behind.
Perhaps the fact that he is easy to spot this way would help convince him to remove that website of his...
user19161
@RegDwight Oh dear this got starred immediately.
Or "great shun" ...
Kit
Kit
@RegDwight I'm not sure what that means.
@JasperLoy Yeah my stuff gets auto-starred. I thought I mentioned that. ★
18:33
speaking of hot people
asks bad questions, but has such a cute profile pic i'm willing to forgive her
Kit
Kit
F*ck me.
@Kit I think it requires the context of the following message
@JSBangs I disagree with your taste
Kit
Kit
Sorry, what were you saying?
@JSBangs — She's in Europe, so she might not be that hot. They measure hotness in Celsius over there, so the bar is way lower.
18:34
Except at -40
I was saying that a) hotness != grammer and b) MySpace angles.
@simchona well, obviously she's a redhead and therefore too crazy for Kit. is this whole place anti-gingerist?
user19161
The aliens measure hotness in Kelvins.
Kit
Kit
@GraceNote You think that @Reg thinks I'd do anybody?
@JSBangs I prefer Asians
18:34
@JSBangs Isn't Kit the only anti-such?
@Kit That was the implication I got from Dwig, aye.
@GraceNote well, i pretty quickly got Kit and Robusto and simoncha disagreeing
Kit
Kit
@JSBangs I could make an exception in her case...
user19161
This room is confusing me again...
On gingers:
I look nice from certain angles, too.
Feb 16 at 10:56, by RegDwight
user image
18:35
You are ugly.
@JSBangs That is true, though how much springs from the hair?
@Cerberus Thank you.
user19161
@RegDwight Image not there
@JasperLoy (I think that's the point)
@RegDwight Ehh... right.
user19161
18:36
Oh sorry it is there now.
@GraceNote what other feature are people objecting to? glasses? europeanness? non-asianicity?
@Cerberus Hey I banged the Queen. And not the Freddie Mercury one.
@JSBangs Seems like the middle one.
I object to dumb questions that weren't googled
@RegDwight Is Charles your son?
18:37
@Cerberus I never asked.
Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin ( ) ( – ) was a Russian mystic who is perceived as having influenced the latter days of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, and their only son Alexei. Rasputin had often been called the "Mad Monk", while others considered him a "strannik" (or religious pilgrim) and even a starets (, "elder", a title usually reserved for monk-confessors), believing him to be a psychic and faith healer. It has been argued that Rasputin helped to discredit the tsarist government, leading to the fall of the Romanov dynasty, in 1917. Contemporary opinions...
Kit
Kit
@RegDwight Don't you mean the czarina?
user19161
@simchona Because you are one yourself?
@JasperLoy Part, yes
@Cerberus But the current Russian Prime Minister is, going by the name alone.
@RegDwight Ah! I knew it! So you found the elixir of life...
18:38
I didn't have to look. It was right in Queen's boudoir.
Hehe.
And not the Freddie Mercury Queen's.
She is holding out rather well, isn't she?
@RegDwight You've made suspiciously specific denials of the same Queen twice now. That's doubly suspicious.
Um, sorry everyone else, did Cerberus and me just kill the conversation?
user19161
18:40
@Cerberus Who?
@JasperLoy Lizzy!
@GraceNote I am not affiliated with Freddie Mercury Industries.
And isn't it "holding up rather well"?
Or did you mean Bea...
The Queen Bea?
18:41
@Martha I was thinking of her not giving up the throne for Charles...
Lekker middageten!
Nooooo.......
Jun 25 at 17:26, by RegDwight
Yes, yes,
Or isn't Lizzy under pressure? Beatrix is.
@Cerberus OIC.
18:42
Wait, isn't it tradition in England to keep the King until he dies? In Holland, they usually abdicate when they get old.
@Cerberus Under Pressure is a song by David Bowie, not the Queen.
user19161
@cerberus I know where that photo came from. I'll keep it a secret!
Do you really think I would know things...
For the record, Lauren will only have her diamond for the duration of the cleanup, by the way.
@Cerberus No. I would never think that. Not of you.
18:43
@JasperLoy What, which photo?
0
Q: Is there a difference between "elfish" and "elvish", or "dwarfish" and "dwarvish"?

ThursagenThe dictionary seems to think that they are the same. Here are their definitions: Elfish: elflike; elfin; Elfish: Just provides a link to "elfish" I know that "elvish" can also refer to the language of the elves, but what I'm asking, is there a difference between "elfish" and "elvish" in ...

@GraceNote Seriously!?
@Cerberus Yes, seriously.
There is a "clean-up" going on?
Interns gonna intern.
user19161
18:43
@Cerberus The one you flashed to me, remember?
2
Q: Who is Lauren Ψ and why is she changing posts? (Introducing myself)

Lauren ΨI just wanted to let you all know that I'm a StackExchange employee and I'm working on improving the English Language site. Basically, that means I'll be correcting things like grammar, spelling, punctuation, and trying to make titles clearer (and represent the actual question better). Of course,...

@Reg, would you keep an eye on what she is doing?
Did we get so hung up on her face that we lost track of her purpose?
Jul 15 at 12:29, by RegDwight
Déjà vu all over again.
@Cerberus Right. Like I have nothing else to do.
@simchona Uh, I'm pretty sure that's a dupe.
18:44
You can see her activity on her activity page. Keep in mind, she gets a special privilege that her edits do not bump stuff.
I she is deleting questions...
@RegDwight Only when the mood strikes you, of course.
Since, y'know, she's supposed to be plumbing through the entirety of your site, after all.
@Martha The elvish part is.
Not the other one.
@GraceNote Why not?
user19161
@GraceNote Why don't we have that privilege?
18:45
@GraceNote Her edits DID bump stuff earlier
Im in ur ELU bumping ur stuffs.
3
@simchona Well, they're not supposed to, supposedly.
@GraceNote sounds dirty
@Cerberus She's really deleting things?
@JasperLoy In general, there's a lot of reason that we have bumping. The only reason it is bypassed here is for the explicit volume of work.
user19161
18:46
Does she have a degree in Eng or sth?
@simchona She shouldn't be, no.
Joel even notes that they only get the "do not bump" if they are only editing the title, and that English actually has a lot of good titles anyway.
@JasperLoy Would that help? Degrees in English are almost always about Eng. Lit. rather than the language itself.
@Jasper you are not employee
user19161
My guess: she has a major in EL and minor in home improvement - that's why she's on these two sites!
@simchona No, I meant "if". I have looked through her edits, and so far she is doing good work.
18:48
am I alone in keeping an eye on the poster formerly known as HB?
@Cerberus Yeah, her title changes did help
@simchona You've got a mod right here. What gives?
@simchona He's probably doing what he always does, and not much we can do about that...
I never said you weren't, it was just kind of rhetorical
Also, I have nothing else to do
Wow, you're in this chat and have nothing else to do? That's special. Not even, like, work?
I'm at work...making folders
18:51
Hahahahaha.
I'm just an intern, and everyone is gone
@simchona No, she's not. Or at least she hasn't so far. You can check the 'activity' tab of her profile to see what she's been up to.
I see eeevverything!
user19161
@simchona I make folders on my comp too. :)
user19161
Just a right click.
18:51
I only delete folders other people created.
@JasperLoy I am literally making folders.
Folding, putting pockets in
I actually sometimes delete actual folders, too.
It makes like WWWWWRRRRRRRRRRROOOOOMMMMMM!!
@RegDwight That's impressive
user19161
Some folders on Linux are very hard to delete: you need to sudo rm -rf XXX.
Preemptive warning: no XKCD.
18:55
@RegDwight You spoil all my fun!
I am here to...
user19161
Poop.
Well, in a way.
"I'd rather not go into the common room; I'm just not qualified to work with ginger people."
Catherine Tate can be freaking brilliant.

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