English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

00:07

That's nice.

But hard to remember.

tchrist

Well, we could just call them Pat if that's easier to remember.

Araucaria

Araucaria (pronunciation: /ærɔːˈkɛəriə/) is a genus of evergreen coniferous trees in the family Araucariaceae. There are 19 extant species in the genus, with a Gondwanan natural distribution in New Caledonia (where 13 species are endemic), Norfolk Island, eastern Australia, New Guinea, Argentina, Chile, and southern Brazil. == Description == Araucaria are mainly large trees with a massive erect stem, reaching a height of 30–80 metres (98–262 ft). The horizontal, spreading branches grow in whorls and are covered with leathery or needle-like leaves. In some species, the leaves are narrow, awl-shaped...

Araucariaceae would be even worse.

> The genus is named after the Spanish exonym Araucano ("from Arauco") applied to the Mapuches of central Chile and south-west Argentina, whose territory incorporates natural stands of this genus.

Cerberus

I find the endless closing of perfectly fine questions so demoralising.

I'm sure I'm not the only one.

tchrist

1

Q: What should we do when a reasonable grammar question is incorrectly closed?

Here is one of the most important yet most difficult questions about English for the majority of language learners in the world: What is the difference between 'a' and 'the'? My question is: How can this site survive if questions like this get closed? By the way, if you really have no idea o...

It's been shogged.

Cerberus

I think that one was properly closed as a duplicate.

But a number of high-reps like to close questions that get OK answers and that are just fine.

Tons of questions.

Do they care at all about the fact that it makes many others, including experienced users, hate the site?

tchrist

00:23

Properly closing things as duplicates makes people hate the site?

Cerberus

"But" indicates opposition or antithesis.

tchrist

@Cerberus Once one has moved into they territory, it becomes impossible to generalize without demonizing.

Who can say what "they" may or may not care about, since their are necessarily so many of "them"?

Cerberus

"You", then.

tchrist

I filter on off-topic and duplicate only.

Certainly duplicates are easily adjudged.

Cerberus

I'm not talking about duplicates, unless they're not duplicates.

sumelic

00:31

@Cerberus: Hi! I'm grateful that you don't blame me for voting to close this question, but if not, I don't know what you mean when you say "all the hostility." The question has received zero downvotes, and the only comments are from me and you. Are you talking about the Meta post I linked to? If so, maybe you should post an answer or comment there.

Cerberus

@tchrist You've closed plenty of questions that I thought were enjoyable enough.

tchrist

@Cerberus I'm sure.

Cerberus

@sumelic I'm sorry, I just get mad when I see another question closed that I think is asked in earnest, can be answered, and is enjoyable enough for people to answer.

It's the large number.

Makes me close the tab.

tchrist

I'm open to persuasion.

Also bribes.

Cerberus

People close lots of questions.

tchrist

00:33

I am not people, unfortunately.

But I don't want you to be mad.

Cerberus

That makes me and a fairly large number of people ashamed of this site. And it makes the site seem hostile to newcomers. I have heard this countless times from people at other SE sites. Although ELU is by no means the only hostile site.

sumelic

I guess I don't understand why you feel mad. My first comment explained what the word was and had a link to a dictionary definition. So, I think the original poster has gotten the answer to their question. But the question doesn't seem like it will be useful to other people in the future who find it through Google.

Cerberus

Yes, your comment was an A+ for that reason and I have upvoted it.

Maybe someone else will one day wonder about the pronunciation of the same word in that video, who knows?

90% of all questions on the site are probably not actually "useful" for other people. But people might still enjoy reading them and answering them.

tchrist

1

Q: What is a word for "having the form of a Brussels sprout"?

Inspired by Dictionary.com's Word of the Day, "botryoidal" (adj. -having the form of a bunch of grapes), and the ongoing naming process of a product at my work which has these features: What is a word for something with a long cylindrical shape covered in small bulbs? If you understand how such ...

single-word-requests latin

Cerberus

Yeah, I saw that one.

tchrist

00:37

Catullus, right?

Cerberus

We have 10000 SWRs that are far less useful to anyone but the Op and that are not closed.

tchrist

I've done my best to fix that.

Cerberus

Why is it that sites start out far more welcoming, and turn sour as the years pass? I remember this was a much more open, friendly place in 2010 for new users.

@tchrist Why? I have always hated SWRs, but what if other people like them?

sumelic

@Cerberus It's true that not all questions currently on the site are useful. But, I don't think the site will function if the criteria for questions are just "things people enjoy reading and answering." Everybody has different opinions about that.

tchrist

@Cerberus Have you never seen that before?

@Cerberus I try to close them, usually.

Especially bad words for people.

Cerberus

00:40

I have, but I will make sure to protest vehemently if that should ever happen to Latin. Luckily, we need all the questions we get there...

tchrist

This happens on mailing lists, news groups, forums. It's a syndrome. Might ask Shog.

Can you name three non-beta SE sites where this does not happen?

I'll take one or two even.

Cerberus

@sumelic No, not all questions should be allowed. But most questions that have to do with English and are asked in earnest deserve to stay open, unless they're really bad for some reason. Or unless they're try duplicates or belong on ELL.

@tchrist Probably not. But does that make it any less demoralising for me and other people?

This looks a whole lot less hostile than ELU's 129.

sumelic

@Cerberus I think if someone asks an earnest question about English, we should do our best to make sure they learn the answer. But that doesn't mean the question itself is necessarily valuable.

tchrist

PT.SE has closed exactly five undeleted questions in the past 90 days.

Cerberus

@sumelic Don't you think different people have different opinions on what's valuable?

As it is, only 5 users are needed to close a question.

And it alienates lots of users, new and old alike.

It spoils the atmosphere.

sumelic

00:46

@Cerberus It also only takes 5 to reopen.

Cerberus

But those 5 are 1000x harder to acquire.

tchrist

@Cerberus Verga verrucarum

Cerberus

Because they cannot be cast when normal people view such a question.

I view the question when it is new.

sumelic

@Cerberus Alienating users is a serious problem. But it's hard to figure out how to best resolve conflicting preferences.

Cerberus

Then I probably won't see it again.

@sumelic It's just that I get the feeling that the close-happy among us don't realise what kind of an effect it has on people.

Nor do the people at SE HQ.

Or most of them.

tchrist

00:48

That's the passive-aggressive we. :)

Cerberus

How has your experience been when you went to a new SE site because you had a specific question (not because you were looking to answer questions)?

tchrist

Never had a problem with it.

Cerberus

I don't think any of my questions have ever been closed, but that is because I dare not ask any questions except when it's a new site.

tchrist

Except on MSE, whose masters are cruel slavedrivers.

sumelic

@Cerberus I asked a question on Skeptics about "Earl Mitt." It is still unanswered, but people were friendly and left some helpful comments.

Cerberus

00:50

I ask questions in chat, not on actual SE sites, usually.

@sumelic I'm glad.

tchrist

wonders whether it should be warty green pole or whether it should be green warty pole

sumelic

@Cerberus I know it bothered me when I got a question closed on this site. But that is because I didn't feel I had the answer. If I knew the answer, I wouldn't really care.

tchrist

Just to toss in another v-word.

Cerberus

I recently wanted to know whether ECC protected one against the rowhammer malware attack.

tchrist

I think I may have seen that question.

Cerberus

00:52

I got no useful information.

tchrist

Well, chat.

It's an interesting question.

sumelic

@Cerberus Oh, where did you ask?

Cerberus

@sumelic Sure, if you get the answer in a comment, that really helps to take away some of the hostility. But still, if it's closed, that may make people feel that not is their question disliked, no, it is not even deemed worthy to be on the site at all. They're not even able to ask a question that isn't considered ridiculous. That's how it can make people feel, even though it's probably not intended that way.

@sumelic I asked on Security, I think, but got nothing.

tchrist

People will always be put off by having their questions close, justly or not.

Cerberus

I wanted to ask what memory I should get to be safe against rowhammer on Hardware Recommendations, but I asked on Meta first, and I was told my question was not good enough to be posted. So I didn't post it.

@tchrist Yes, that that should only be done if it is really necessary.

tchrist

00:57

If you ran the ELU close-vote review queue, do you not think you could exhaust your votes, and perhaps good will?

Cerberus

Well, anyway, it was not my intention to discuss the merits of closing questions per se; I just want to let people know how harmful it can be for the community.

@tchrist The queue disgusts me, frankly.

tchrist

It would exhaust your good will.

Mitch

@Cerberus to put aside the question of the amount of closing for the moment, I notice that none of the vote to reopeners upvoted the question, and neither did the answerer

Cerberus

I occasionally start dealing with some questions from the queue, but the negativity makes he hate the site too much to continue. All the questions that don't deserve to be closed.

@Mitch No, because it's not a good question per se. But that's what general votes are for: to indicate whether you like the question or really dislike it. But it looks to me as though high-reps are simply using close-votes for that instead.

tchrist

You can vote not to close and move the thing from the queue.

Cerberus

01:01

Or some of them.

Mitch

But in the other topic, the entire set of special features for a Q&A site added by Jeff Atwood was intended to combat your specific malaise

Cerberus

How do you mean?

The close-vote queue is no substitute, it is far too weak to be able to offer any resistance to the 5 close-votes that are needed to close a question.

Mitch

Well in one direction, the closing machinery to get rid of crap, just like reputation, eventually gets gamed, people playing with the rules simply to exercise their abilities.

tchrist

@Cerberus That depends. On SO I only ever run the CVRQ for duplicates I have golds in. That takes care of that.

Cerberus

There should at least be a "leave open" button next to the "vote to close" button on the question page, from the beginning.

Mitch

01:03

I agree with the leave-open idea, there should be parity

tchrist

@Mitch I'm afraid that would be closed as as duplicate.

Cerberus

If there were, far fewer questions would be closed.

tchrist

11

Q: Allow voting "Vote to not close" from the question without being in a review

I just reached the 3k rep limit required for close votes and have started exploring the vote-to-close UI that's opened up to me, and I have a request. The review queue has a Do Not Close button, but when I click the close link under a question that has close votes (i.e. it shows close (1)), ther...

feature-request status-declined review vote-to-close

sumelic

@Cerberus: I also was just thinking about that. It is "status-declined" though:

434

Q: How about a "Vote not to close" option to counter the "Vote to close"?

My request is simple: Many times, there will be a question where some people feel like it should be closed. At the same time, I'll feel like it's a perfectly legit question, and it should therefore NOT be closed. Right now, I have to wait till it gets enough close votes (which it always does for ...

feature-request status-completed vote-to-close vote-to-reopen

tchrist

status-declined

Mitch

01:06

But highly upvoted

tchrist

And not closed!

Mitch

Too radical an implementation?

tchrist

59

A: How about a "Vote not to close" option to counter the "Vote to close"?

As the Mechanical snail points out, this has now been implemented, though not quite as-requested. Of note: Only accessible from the review queue (so rather difficult to target a specific question). Yes, this is very much by-design. Voting against closing does not override anyone's close vote....

Cerberus

@tchrist I'm not surprised that people have asked for this before. Shog's answer is bad.

tchrist

Can we please have different systems for StackOverflow and other sites? SO is a juggernaut constantly besieged with terrible questions, in need of a fast, efficient close system, with plenty of users to re-open incorrectly closed questions quickly. Smaller SE sites have the opposite problem - it's common for a clique of 5-7 pernickety users (usually SO veterans) to scupper a site's growth by closing every question that in any way stands out. Re-opening questions on these sites takes ages even when there's a strong consensus, because they've usually dropped of the front page. — user568458 Jan 28 at 15:07

*persnickety

Mitch

01:09

Trivia: there've been over 9 thousand questions on Stack Overflow where the same user has up-voted and voted to close. — Shog9 ♦ Jun 7 '12 at 0:10

sumelic

@tchrist Pernickety vs. persnickety

tchrist

@sumelic I hardly need to chase that link. I'm aware of the cisatlantic distinction.

Mitch

Kerfuffle vs kerfluffle

tchrist

I'm just beating on the Brits. The Fourth is coming up here pretty soon now.

Cerberus

> Voting against closing does not override anyone's close vote. However, a sufficient number of "Do Not Close" responses (currently 3) will kick the question out of the review queue and start aging the close votes - regardless of how many views the question has had.

If the question is closed, Do Not Close votes do not translate into re-open votes. However, we may use them to prioritize items in the Reopen Queue (when such a thing exists).

Mitch

01:11

Wha? Brits say it wrong?

Cerberus

Very much intentional.

Mitch

Way too complicated

tchrist

Where's your Gold Reopen Steward badge?

Cerberus

Let's not all become Jeff Atwoods.

Who drove away several of our most valued, knowledgeable users with his hostility.

tchrist

*our

Cerberus

01:14

Although in his case I think it was intentional.

Mitch

SE is better than yahoo answers, but I don't know how to fix its behavioral problems

I feel like tweaking the features won't do it.

People are just jerks by nature

Cerberus

Perhaps.

But then why give them the power to shut down other people in fives without any resistance?

I think most of the questions that are now closed should instead be downvoted.

Down votes are about interest and quality.

Closing should only be done when it is super clear and objectively testable.

And even then they should just be migrated to offtopic.SE.

tchrist

Have you been getting enough catsup lately?

Cerberus

02:15

?

Mitch

Ketchup has lots of flavonoids, supposedly calming

Wait....there's a offtopic.SE?

Cerberus

There should be.

Call it Varia.SE if you will.

@tchrist By the way, the Brussels sprouts turned out to be a fun question with good comments, ridiculous though it was. I think our site is better off with it open.

Despite my hatred of SWRs.

tchrist

02:32

A Prairie Home Companion: Catchup script 11/22/2008

►

Catchup - 1/30/2016

►

"Catchup" - 11/5/2011

►

@Cerberus And now. You know. The rest. Of the story.

Færd