English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

simchona

6:00 PM

Kind of defeats the purpose of a community site if there's a SE employee doing it...

JSBangs

i'm a little confused. i heard about the CHAOS team on the podcast... but they're making interns into diamond mods now?

Grace Note

@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

@JSBangs No, I prefer elfin brunettes without pitchforks or other sharp objects.

Grace Note

@JSBangs All employees have diamonds.

JSBangs

ah, well, i'm not going to complain about somebody else doing the scut-work for once

@Kit /me takes note for future reference

Grace Note

6:01 PM

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.

simchona

For reference, full time employees are here:

stackexchange.com/about/team

z7sg

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

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.

JSBangs

@JasperLoy it's your fedora. never trust a hat

Kit

6:02 PM

The dotted lines?

user19161

No, thick black scary lines.

simchona

I don't see any

Kit

Nope. Just you. You broke the Internet.

Grace Note

@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.

aedia

@Kit And no long nails either.

simchona

6:05 PM

It's like radio silence

-1

A: Is this the right way to use past perfect?

OP'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

@aedia Yes. Definitely sportingly short finger nails.

JSBangs

@Kit you would like my sister-in-law

Grace Note

@Kit Short hair or long hair, though?

Kit

Hang on, I'm on the phone.

Grace Note

@JSBangs I'm having no luck finding it. Mostly because all of the older mods are absent right now.

user19161

6:06 PM

I will log out and log in to see if it goes away.

JSBangs

@GraceNote that's okay. i'll take your word for it.

user19161

It has gone away. Yay!

Grace Note

@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".

I'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 :|

american-english

Kit

6:10 PM

@GraceNote Depends. If I had to choose, probably short.

user19161

Oh dear!

Grace Note

@JasperLoy ...general reference, it looks like to me.

JSBangs

@JasperLoy dup dup dup dup dup

Grace Note

@Kit Intrigue.

Kit

@GraceNote raises eyebrow How so?

Robusto

6:11 PM

@JasperLoy — This is a super-duper dupe, but try searching for "a" or "an" ...

Kit

@JSBangs Would I? She probably lives in the Midwest though.

Grace Note

@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)

JSBangs

@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

@JSBangs Ah, Romania. I had the hugest crush on a Romanian physics student when I was in college.

JSBangs

Jul 1 at 13:03, by Kit

I used to have a gigantic crush on a Romanian physics student.

Kit

6:14 PM

@JSBangs Yep. Thought that I was repeating myself.

user19161

@JSBangs Thanks for the confirmation.

Kit

Vampire physicists.

Grace Note

@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.

Robusto

@GraceNote — I already have a job.

aedia

@GraceNote Don't they show up on the faq page, mostly?

Kit

6:15 PM

@JSB Was your Romanian student also a physicist? I can't remember.

aedia

english.stackexchange.com/questions?sort=faq

Kit

@GraceNote Do we have a faq tag?

aedia

Arrgh meeting time...

JSBangs

@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)

Grace Note

@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

6:17 PM

@GraceNote If they are difficult to find, we should re-title them. And faq tag them.

Robusto

@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

@JSBangs Well, my Romanian student wasn't my student either. We were classmates.

Grace Note

@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.

JSBangs

@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

Grace Note

@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

6:20 PM

@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.

JSBangs

@Kit i found the dup by searching for [indefinite-article]

Grace Note

@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

Like "Comparing indefinite articles"

But also a tag for filtering.

How do questions get on the faq page?

JSBangs

@Kit indefinite-article or articles

Grace Note

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

6:22 PM

@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.

Martha

We don't actually appear to have a faq tag at the moment.

Kit

So we combine articles with faq and find the question.

JSBangs

@Kit or just go to english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/articles?sort=faq

Kit

@JasperLoy The point is to make it easier for us to find.

Grace Note

6:23 PM

Ooh, I would be careful if you are talking about faq as a tag on the main site...

JSBangs

@GraceNote right, that's a meta-tag, which is a no-no

Kit

@GraceNote OK, then, not faq. But something useful like it. As in, at least one person asks this question once a week.

JSBangs

1 min ago, by JSBangs

@Kit or just go to http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/articles?sort=faq

Martha

It might be a meta tag, but it would an extremely useful meta-tag.

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.

JSBangs

6:25 PM

@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

I mean for all of our common dupes.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…