English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2015-09-17

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12:24 AM

@Cerberus Kids screwing around.

@Mitch So vandalism?

yeah...well that's my take.

It's an alternative to conspiracies (which may still be right)

which are a form of luddite. luddites without an agenda

just screwing around

7 hours later…

7:07 AM

0

A: What is the real difference between direct objects and prepositional phrases?

Prototypical examples vs edge cases To start with, I must note that I believe it is most beneficial to identify and describe the prototypical examples of a phenomenon. Language is incredibly complicated, and there will almost always be edge cases, but most of the time you can come up with good e...

I wrote a long answer on transitivity which might be helpful!

3 hours later…

10:01 AM

@tchrist okay I have to ask: just how much does one have to suck at geography to identify as Midwest what is most clearly Mideast?

10:15 AM

there is no "Mideast"

the US started on the east coast

then went south and finally west...

unless you mean middle east

Hi,

can somebody please tell me if I used "a"/"an" in the following sentence correctly?

The object contains a Alias, not an Module, so we cannot use form.populate_obj() at this time.

I would use "an"

because the next word "Alias" starts with a vowel sound

also "a Module"

According to english.stackexchange.com/a/155/123379 its "an Alias" and "a Module" or?

Exactly the other way round than I said.

yes

Thank you!

10:27 AM

thanks for asking :-)

10:53 AM

@tchrist Ohio through Iowa have been traditionally referred to as the Midwest. The Chicago Tribune even had (maybe still has?) a magazine supplement to the Sunday edition called Midwest.

Matt E. Эллен

11:07 AM

mad wost

Has Reg taken over your brain?

> "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" is an aphorism which appears in the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew — Matthew 6:34.[1] Its meaning is the philosophy that one should live in the present, without a care for tomorrow.

That seems pretty much at odds with the rest of Christianity's message, doesn't it? Else what's all this about Hell?

Now I'm sorry I gave Wikipedia three dollars.

-1

Q: Why "latest" itself has 2 contradicting meanings?

In this case, these are the meanings emphasizing: most recent [adj.] last [adj.] by Dictionary.com Sometimes it can cause confusion... This is the latest news I have received from my teacher. So it's newest or oldest? The latest time you must arrive school is 8AM. So...

Oh sweet Geezis. Now people think there is Intelligent Design in English.

News flash: the word was not designed. Almost none are, in any language. — Robusto 1 min ago

Matt E. Эллен

þou wost what I mean

I knew you were going that way.

user image

At some point the old Northwest Territory got renamed to the Midwest.

> Because the Northwest Territory lay between the East Coast and the then Far West, the states carved out of it were called the "Northwest" in 1789, and "Middle West" by 1898.

> In the American Revolutionary War, Virginia frontiersman George Rogers Clark was able to capture key British forts in the summer of 1778. When General Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Detroit, retook Vincennes, Clark returned in a surprise winter march in February 1779 and captured Hamilton himself.
Because the British ceded the entire Northwest Territory to the United States in the 1783 Treaty of Paris, some historians have credited Clark with nearly doubling the size of the original thirteen colonies by seizing control of the Illinois country during the war.

Apparently Lake Michigan is the heart of the Midwest.

11:26 AM

So Wikipedia's citation for the meaning of "Sufficient unto the day . . ." is Sandra Wolfe, Larry Leonard (2010), What Dogs Teach Us about the Kingdom of Heaven. Really? Really?

What dogs teach us?

I want my money back.

I just find it odd that there is no state which everyone agrees is in the Midwest, and many states which some people think are in the Midwest a whole lot of people don’t.

I find that people on the Left Coast are the worst about what the Midwest is. To them if it isn't on a Coast, it's Midwest.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof" is an aphorism which appears in the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew — Matthew 6:34. Its meaning is the philosophy that one should live in the present, without a care for tomorrow. The same words, in Hebrew, are used to express the same thought in the Rabbinic Jewish saying dyya l'tzara b'shaata (דיה לצרה בשעתה), "the suffering of the (present) hour is enough for it". It is also similar to the Epicurean advice of writers such as Anacreon and Horace — quid sit futurum cras, fuge quaerere (avoid asking what the future will bring) — but Jesus...

Matt E. Эллен

is Texas midwest? it seems pretty mid to me

@MattE.Эллен Texas is 1,000 km wide. It can be mid and west at the same time.

@MattE.Эллен Ah but that's the thing. Midwest doesn't mean halfway between the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Matt E. Эллен

:D

11:29 AM

But people usually think of it as west.

Culturally, it varies.

@tchrist That is what I was quoting.

@Robusto Did you edit it or something

No. I don't do that.

I don't understand why you even ask that. My quote is verbatim from the link you posted.

They need an external source for their assertions, so they find one.

11:32 AM

That's my problem with external sources. Many of them are utter crap.

Sturgeon and caviar are hard-parted.

But "What dogs teach us . . ." is worse than crap. It's dog shit.

Which makes me wonder why bullshit and chickenshit are single words, while dog shit feels better written as two.

They connote differently but falute the same.

BTW, the one-boxing for Wikipedia planes off the citation links. You have to go to the site to see the cites.

@MattE.Эллен If Haltwhistle stands as the midmost point in Britain, why isn’t that the Midlands? :)

Awfully near the Wall.

Matt E. Эллен

11:38 AM

I guess they must have been called the midlands since before the union

That was my guess, but I didn't know.

And look who come strolling in suspiciously together.

@Robusto what, you want me to take over his kidney instead? I have no use for spare kidneys.

And why doesn't England have proper lakes outside the Lake District? All they have is reservoirs.

Matt E. Эллен

> a1475 (▸a1447) O. Bokenham Mappula Angliae in Englische Studien (1887) 10 32 The mydlonde peple is betwix þe norþyn & þe sowþirne.

@RegDwigнt If you take the brain you have to take the kidneys as well. It's only fair.

11:40 AM

@MattE.Эллен yeþondheit

@MattE.Эллен Notice how your orientation axis is normal to ours.

@Robusto privileges stop being fun when they turn into obligations.

Matt E. Эллен

:D

The axis might be normal, but the orientation is totally gay.

@MattE.Эллен Your ancestors excelled in relevance and non-obvious statements.

Matt E. Эллен

11:42 AM

lol

Must be the reason why they are all dead.

That must be it. Seems more likely than mortality and stuff.

Matt E. Эллен

not all of my ancestors are dead

Ah, Matt wins.

You didn't eat them upon birth?

Matt E. Эллен

no, they fled in terror before I learnt to walk

11:44 AM

@MattE.Эллен a sentence future philosophers will clearly identify as a horrible lie.

Matwin is a surname.

Makes sense.

11:57 AM

Why are these ok?
* We policemen should leave now.
* You policemen should leave now.
But these not?
* They policemen should leave now.
* I policeman should leave now.
* You policeman should leave now.
* He policeman should leave now.
* She policewoman should leave now.

Is there a reason why alternative and alternative-words aren’t synomised?

Also, what’s behind this room’s subtitle?

Sep 6 at 23:55, by Cerberus

For posterity: The Incomprehensible Room.

@Wrzlprmft Probably because it’s a thankless task.

1. It only works for plural; otherwise, you need an article, just as with normal word order: they are policemen but not ~~I am policeman~~.

Matt E. Эллен

"She a policewoman ..." doesn't work either

2. Policemen is already in the third person, so you don't need to add they: it's redundant. Pronouns of the first or second person are not redundant, because they add meaning: we policemen adds information to policemen.

12:01 PM

@Wrzlprmft Because we had a question asking for a word that covers lady bits.

@MattE.Эллен See rule #2.

Matt E. Эллен

hmmm

* I policeman should leave now.

I think not.

An article doesn't help there.

I would guess that only when addressing us or you (plural), a specification of who is addressed is commonly needed and thus the construct only exists for such cases.

That sounds plausible.

12:06 PM

I, a policeman, should leave now.

@Cerberus But you don’t use commas with We the people . . . .

No, please stay!

Actually, I, a dog, must leave you now.

eyes a dog

@tchrist Oh, the commas. I would say that is just convention.

12:08 PM

English we and you are somewhat broadly inclusive. The nouns limit that.

We sometimes just don't use commas with appositions, but I don't think that changes or reflects a change in the syntax.

@Cerberus There is also a difference in pronunciation.

Is there?

I would not make a pause in You policemen should leave now

It also does not feel like an apposition to me

@Wrzlprmft because someone posted an idiotic question on ELU saying they're creating a website that 'covers the women stuff too'. It's funny because it's messed up. so somebody who can change the subtitle did so.

12:10 PM

Perhaps it is easier to pronouce it without pause when the pesky word a isn't in the way?

@Wrzlprmft It does to me: apposition doesn't always happen with pauses.

I Cerberus say so.

@Cerberus Oh, if you're a dog, then I suppose leave you must.

Is today your day?

Indeed.

Valete!

No star diddling.

Nice. Is that one day a year or for your whole life?

I Spencer do take thee Claudia as my lawfully wedded strife.

12:12 PM

You would speak “I Cerberus say so.” without a pause between the first two words?

@tchrist ha ha. It seems excessive to star every thing needed for context.

@MattE.Эллен Why might Community have just deleted this? It isn’t Roomba.

Matt E. Эллен

I flagged it as spam, community did the rest

Ahah, that would do the job.

@tchrist not illinois?

12:18 PM

@Mitch Only 81% of the people who responded considered Illinois to be in the Midwest.

12:37 PM

Gah, I answered a question then noticed that I totally misunderstood it. Lesson learned: never answer questions.

But I am sick, so I have an excuse.

@tchrist There's no accounting for stupidity.

An excuse to mute commies right now, no less.

@tchrist If illinois is not in the midwest then it would have nowhere to go.

It's not like it's questionably on the border like Finland in Scandinavia or Pakistan in the mideast

it's at the geo center of corn and soybean.

Do they grow corn and soybean in Eastern Colorado (up to the mountains)?

> Important field crops are wheat, corn and hay. Beans, grain sorghum, potatoes and sugar beets are also produced. Apples are the leading fruit crop.

So, no.

user image

Oh, they have corn-for-grain at #2.

Whatever that means.

Is there a subreddit for English things that are just off topic for ELU? LIke the pasta pun question. I want to shoot myself in the face after reading it but I'm sure there's a selection of people out there who want to help.

12:46 PM

> Colorado's agricultural production is domintated (75%) by livestock and livestock products, driven by the cattle industry. Over 60% of the state's agricultural revenues are provided by the growth of cattle and calves. In terms of revenue generated, Colorado's top five agricultural products are cattle and calves, dairy products, corn for grain, greenhouse and nursery products, and hogs.

@tchrist for people or for cows?

@Mitch Not much corn is ever grown for people.

there's sweet corn for people eating and regular corn for fattening up cows

yeah so weird that they specify 'for grain'

Sweet corn != Field corn.

netstate.com/economy/co_economy.htm

you don't grow sweet corn in a field?

what, on mountain tops? in your house?

12:50 PM

Field corn is every variety of maize that is not grown primarily for consumption as human food in the form of fresh kernels in the United States. In contrast sweet corn is grown primary as edible crop. Popcorn, although it is not grown for human consumption in the form of fresh kernels, is not considered to be field corn. More than 98% of corn-growing land in the U.S. is in use for field-corn production. Principal field corn varieties are: Dent corn Flint corn Flour corn, including blue corn (Zea mays amylacea) Waxy corn == Uses == Large-scale applications for field corn include: Livestock fodder...

@tchrist I suspect because the plurality links it to a group, and the group needs to be distinguished in a way that individuals do not? As good a guess as any.

Ask a farmer: What is the difference between sweet corn and field corn?

user image

Notice the sweet corn on the left is much less robusto than the field corn on the right.

> When most people think of corn, it’s sweet corn that comes to mind. But the fact is, of the 97.2 million acres of corn planted in the United States last year, sweet corn made up less than 1 percent of the total crop. The rest was field corn.

And as for the agricultural output of Colorado, states west of the Missouri (roughly speaking) have pedocal soil, which is okay for grass but almost nothing else, while states east of the Missouri have pedalferic soil, which is good for most food crops. At least that's what I learned when I took geology lo these many years ago.

@tchrist Don't forget that all corn these days is hybridized beyond recognition, and that sweet corn has been bred to be sweet while field corn has been bred for yield.

100 degrees west.

We get butter-and-sugar corn here in New England. Yum.

user image

12:55 PM

user image

Hard to grow stuff west of 100, and even harder when also north of 40.

user image

A lot of farms in Boulder County grow those. They’re in the stores now at four or five per buck.

@tchrist I dunno, they grow a lot of wheat up in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

amazon.com/Cadillac-Desert-American-Disappearing-Revised/dp/…

The thing is, if we get rid of the livestock industry, which I believe we should, the need for field corn drops to zero. And the land could be used for other, better purposes. Like soybeans, etc.

1:01 PM

Yes, we should get rid of the livestock industry.

It is not sustainable.

Water.

@Robusto they'll turn all the reources used for corn to ethanol production then

@Mitch That's another thing that has to go.

Hmm, duolingo marked me as wrong because I translated la propuesta as the proposition.

I don't think that's a terrible thing. It seems weird though

Proposition, proposal—what's the difference?

@Robusto use the 'there's a mistake' button

1:05 PM

I see no such button.

oh. That's a mistake.

on the phone or on a desktop?

if you got a question wrong I think there's always a 'report a mistake' option. Of course they overlook offering that when they say you got it right.

When you're doing timed practice the last thing you want to do is stop to report a mistake.

Mi marido está actualmente sin trabajo. They won't accept "My husband is currently unemployed" but insist on "without work." That is a failing.

Yes, synonyms are weird. When translating do they want the exact word for word translation or the translation of the sentiment?

It depends.

I frequently find myself saying clumsy things in English just to make sure they accept the translation.

1:24 PM

@Robusto Yeah, that's wrong.

1:34 PM

@Robusto It's a clumsy thing in Spanish as well. I'd just say mi marido no tiene trabajo just as I'd say my husband is unemployed.

La altura es el resultado de la frecuencia que produce un cuerpo sonoro. How to translate el cuerpo sonoro? I have "The pitch is the result of the frequency produced by the sounding body."

But it feels not quite right.

Seems like cuerpo sonoro really means "body of sound" or something like that.

But "body of sound" feels clumsy.

Perhaps sound-producing object or similar?

That would be "sounding body" and would be understandable in English, though perhaps a bit odd-sounding.

But if you look at the whole sentence, it feels like it wants to reference the object that produces the sound, but it actually refers to the thing that is produced.

0

Q: Omission of subject

Is it correct to omit the subject of a subordinate clause if it coincides with the subject of the main clause, for example, I felt drowsy when (I) woke up? Can you give me a reference to the rules?

This is actually interesting, for all that it seems blockheaded.

Why do we repeat the subject in "I felt drowsy when I woke up" or "I feel drowsy when I get up" but not in "I feel drowsy when getting up"?

Probably there is a simple explanation but I can't think of it right now.

2:02 PM

'when' isn't a relative pronoun. if it were a relative pronoun the rel pronoun would be the placeholder for the referent so you wouldn't in a sense need to have a -third- instance. ''That was the man who came to dinner" not "that was the man who he came to dinner". When doesn't have a referent

@Mitch Caitlyn Jenner was a man when she won an Olympic gold medal. When is a relative pronoun there.

Wait, no it isn't either.

My head is into Spanish translation right now so I am spouting nonsense in English. Move along, nothing to see here.

moved along. Hey that guy stole my watch!

2:18 PM

@tchrist: How would you translate en este sentido here? Es discutible —en este sentido— si una secuencia dodecafónica podría ser considerada una melodía o no. "It is debatable—???—whether a twelve-tone sequence can be considered a melody or not."

In this feeling? In this sentiment? By this author?

In the spirit of [what has been discussed thus far]?

In this sense.

Thank you.

Seems obvious when you say it, but my brain is lost in translation.

> It is arguable — in this sense — whether or not a twelve-tone sequence could be considered a melody.

Translation is hard. It's like teaching to foreigners, you start to think some of the weird things students say are right.

In some senses, translation is an abomination. I sometimes feel that you literally can't say the same thing in two different languages.

BTW, someone needs to get "chasly from uk" a job. He is answering every single question on this site as soon as it comes up.

2:32 PM

@Robusto And not especially well.

@Robusto Reading and understanding the original takes me no more time in Spanish than reading what I wrote in English would. However, figuring out what I would actually write in English takes a great deal more time, because now I actually have to think.

This.

In other words, I never think "in this sense" when I read "en este sentido". My brain attaches meaning to the original and does not translate.

It's like sight-reading music. If you think about it, you can't do it.

Though I suppose that is true of walking as well.

2:54 PM

They translate Parámetros del sonido as "Parameters of Sound" but I would think the English term would be "Elements of Sound."

Especially since they go on to discuss pitch, duration, intensity, and timbre.

but a hat is a sombrero is a hat

maybe not the canonical one you're thinking of.

but the conical one... was totally thinking of harvesting in the rice patties.

oops...paddies. the rice patties don't cook well without something like egg to bind them.

-1

Q: Why is sacrilegious not spelled like religious?

Clearly sacrilegious is not necessarily the opposite of religious but derived from the same root. One could make the argument that sacrilegious is also derived from sacred which would imply a spelling with "sacre-". Thoughts?

spelling-pronunciations

Oh sweet christ on a cracker.

I don't think "spelling-pronunciations" means what they think it means.

Hahaha, I didn't even notice that.

Because it comes not from "religious" but from sacrilege, a word whose original meaning was "temple robbery." There is nothing even to think about here, still less to marvel at. — Robusto 2 mins ago

And, on cue, chasly shows up. The hardest-working man in show business.

Always a clown.

3:08 PM

@Robusto mmm... as good as Nutella

wants Nutella now

You wouldn't say that if you had any christ crackers on hand.

eww!

@chasly: My objection is to a question that is asked without even a modicum of research, and which presents a mundane, researchable question as something deep and thought-provoking. — Robusto 1 min ago

user116848

@Mitch You are a Nutella fan it seems :)

3:23 PM

@Arrowfar It's OK.

Mmmmmmmmmmm. Keep your Nutella. Our locally sourced peaches are ripe today. They are so buttery and tangy sweet I may not eat anything else all day.

@Robusto We actually still have some, which is remarkably late in the season for us.

Even as we speak, my wife is making a peach pie. That is almost sacrilegious, since the ripe peaches are divine.

On the other hand . . . peach pie!

It doesn't get any better than this.

Transportation has given us a lot, but it has taken away people's appreciation for how a good, ripe piece of fruit tastes, or should taste. No wonder so many people don't like fruit. They've never actually had it as it was intended to be eaten.

Can you imagine someone eating a hard, miserly nub of peach and thinking "This is all peaches"?

I am out of non-tomato fruit. I had to content myself with apple juice for breakfast.

Since I am not working today, I think I should fix this.

user116848

Hm everytime can be written as a one word still I get a red underline when I write it in chat.

user116848

3:37 PM

Or am I missing something? Dunno.

3:50 PM

@Arrowfar I don't think everytime can ever be just one word.

user116848

Yeah it seems that way.

user116848

> Everytime: (proscribed) Alternative spelling of every time

Read: misspelling. :)

4:10 PM

user image

^ Canadian riot

user116848

Heh.

@Robusto stolen from someone else's tree...hey get away from my yard!

@Arrowfar everytime I right it that weigh it under lines it.

@JohanLarsson "I'm sorry, I don't mean anything by it"

user116848

@Mitch Funneh.

user116848

4:26 PM

It is like I learn something new everyday.

6:08 PM

I might call it "peripatetic learning" if I could stay in one place long enough to do that. — Robusto 10 secs ago

6:56 PM

-1

Q: Is the use of the word 'in' at the end of this sentence incorrect?

It is never too late to change the direction your life is headed in.

Dupe of canonical from August 5, 2010.

You mistake me for someone with close votes left.

I really want to kill correct.

And my ire is growing.

Don't you get extra as a mod?

If you have a diamond, you don't close vote.

You close.

And you can do so however often you please, until you piss people off.

But ELU still has only 24 close votes per person.

On SO, I have 40.

Shog has talked about scaling it like delete votes.

7:13 PM

Shog "commands" a lot of respect.

Hello

Hi

7:24 PM

@tchrist You should run for mod next time. I would vote for you.

ug no

I can't think of anybody as assiduous as you are in this pursuit, and I include the current mods.

Try it and I'll nominate you.

You first.

Feb 21 '11 at 17:37, by Robusto

In my haste to be provocative, I didn't quite give the whole picture. It's not that I mind the occasional cleanup, etc. I just don't want to feel compelled to do scut work around here.

@Robusto If you mean tagging, keep in mind that our own mods have a lot of other more pressing matters to attend to than I do.

7:29 PM

But you would be so more assiduous than the rest :P

Feb 21 '11 at 17:40, by Robusto

"Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it – namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.

Twain must have had our Tom in mind.

Fixing tags is probably the only thing that a diamond would come in handy for.

For example, I would have less ability to close vote, and that would be less satisfying. :)

What does it take to be a CM?

On the other hand, you would actually have more ability to close vote, and that would be more satisfying.

Feb 19 '11 at 13:11, by Robusto

See? This is the dirty little secret reason I do not want a moderator job. I don't want to run around performing janitorial chores.

Friends in high places ;-)

7:42 PM

@Robusto Then you will be overjoyed to learn than I am readying a formal proposal to award you with 127 close votes.

Where will you be doing that, in MSO?

Yes.

No.

Link it when you do. I'll be curious to see how that is received.

MSE.

> Proposal to award @Robusto 127 close-votes.

I see.

7:44 PM

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 are you ready for some bronco burgers tonight?

};-)

@Kristina: We're playing way past that. Please see the question and answer this is a duplicate of. — Robusto 1 min ago

I need a picture.

Of?

Voting.

On?

7:48 PM

Doesn't matter. :)

:D

New close reasons:

user image

No reason is a good reason.

Re: None.

8:05 PM

@Robusto Done.

1

Q: Proposal to make close votes scale with rep

There have been several proposals for how to handle the ever-mounting close-vote queue. Dupehammer has been especially successful, and there have been several proposals since them for awarding more close votes one way or the other, including one to give extra close votes, only accessible via /re...

discussion feature-request reputation vote-to-close

in Tavern on the Meta on Meta Stack Exchange Chat, 13 mins ago, by Normal Human

Aug 18 at 21:27, by Shog9

@durron597 I think 24 votes/day is reasonably generous as a baseline. Rather than artificially spiking this on sites like SO, that limit should scale with rep - so at 10K you'd have 38, 20K you'd have 58, 800K you'd have 1618...

Whoa, that was quick.

Shog put it on status-review.

8:27 PM

Does "sign up" mean register? because "sign in" just mean like "log in" for me, so I'm unsure

Well, I should use register and sign in (ux.stackexchange.com/questions/1080/…)

Yes.

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@skillpatrol yum!

@Robusto Daniel J. Boorstin approves.

Oakland Raiders Game Introductions

cornbread ninja 麵包忍者

@Rob I believe The Phlorescent Leech and Eddie is the string.

1 hour later…

10:06 PM

@cornbreadninja麵包忍者 Not sure I get the reference.

@tchrist Is that a good sign?

@Robusto Very. That he did it within the first ten minutes is even better.

0

A: Proposal to make close votes scale with rep

I support this idea. I'm one of the highest-rep users on EL&U, and I vote to close when I see bad questions. But currently I stay away from the queue for two reasons: There are simply too many questions now that need closing. I look at the mile-high mountain of crap and then at the tiny little ...

If it does any good at all.

Hope so.

Over Closed Asked Percent
 1d     12     65 18.46 %
 2d     51    129 39.52 %
 7d    174    435 40.00 %
14d    363    915 39.67 %
30d    769   2036 37.77 %
90d   2455   6284 39.07 %

Our overall close rate is above the number of votes per day per person. So we need more than five people voting.

Maybe if we all had 50 CVs like SO and Math and such, instead of 24 CVs like we do, that would be closer to the overall average on day one. I don't know, and I don't know if that is necessarily good if it is.

But I feel that low-quality questions draw low-quality answers, and an earlier closer would help that part.

It's okay in the mornings when Matt and Andrew and Reg are around, because the super-terribles get closed unilaterally, and they let the Community take care of the rest as they see fit.

The problem is that once those guys are gone, the super-terribles take longer to close than they do to get lamely answered.

India and China wake up when our most active mods are usually asleep.

That should be ok, but in practice, I hate blowing all my CVs before supper.

Because then I just sit there and chew my cud all day the next day. :(

It might be reasonable for us to consider raising our votes to the big-site 50 instead of 24, no matter the overall thing. Our close-vote review queue is much much bigger than on U&L for example despite them getting +33% our questions, and even 4x bigger than Math who gets way way more.

I've been keeping my eye on the overall number. It's been above 200 for a long time.

Thing is, Unix only closes 18% overall long-term, and we close like 42%.

So that they get 133% our question count at 18% is still a smaller number than our 42%.

10:38 PM

Ok, I've taken a deeper look at things and I don't think it's worth asking for 50.

Most of the questions we close don't have any answers, and so will be Roomba'd soon enough anyway.

But if our review queue get does keep rising, we might consider it.

maybe ask if you can close the entire site?

@JohanLarsson I understand what you’re saying. I wonder whether you’ve seen this though.

poor questions?

I have only visited main a handful of times when things were linked from here.

The reason we close a lot of questions is that a lot of questions are poor.

On SO I see insane amounts of poor questions but also many good and useful questions with closevotes.

I have a feeling you are a very god judge of that. Not a trace of irony here.

But I think there are members who have made it their mission to close all the things.

10:51 PM

heh

what is the difference between {heh, lol, ok, :)}

I alwasy read heh as if I wrote something dumb.

@JohanLarsson Heh is a non-committal bit of phatic communication.

what does it mean in English?

@JohanLarsson Demographic on the first two.

@JohanLarsson Something like mild surprise, lack of anything cogent to say but wanting to acknowledge a statement in any case.

11:01 PM

@tchrist so same meaning different zip code?

@Robusto ty ty

@JohanLarsson Expiration date.

It is possible that the very young use lol in a way that more closely corresponds with how the very old use heh than I am being careful to analyse here, but I have never really understood using lol as punctuation, nor at all.

heh is a bit of a half-smile perhaps.

heh is almost a word to me

something you actually say

likely so

Well, he did say it.

when mildly surprised and slightly disgusted or confused

disgusted is too strong there

slightly did not neutralize it

11:22 PM

@Robusto But heh can also express mild amusement.

OK merely means acknowledgement. Or sometimes agreement.

@Cerberus I think that's just about covered in "mild surprise" . . . but I take your point.

LOL is just bad.

@Robusto Good.

@Cerberus spot on, nice

Mild amusement as a result of mild surprise, then.

It also expresses a slight reservation sometimes, as if one is forbearing to speak one's mind.

11:26 PM

lol is also old, ancient 2000 adolescent

gah, gave up trying to make sense of ^

just piled words

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