English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Færd

02:59

There's an example sentence in a dictionary under buy that reads:

> Did you buy this sofa new?

Is this a grammatical use of new?

Cerberus

Yes, although I would say it is colloquial.

It works with a very limited number of words.

You can also buy something used.

Færd

Interesting.

Is it an adverb there then?

Cerberus

An object complement.

Færd

Hmm.

Thanks.

Cerberus

I painted it black, I bought it new, I considered it preposterous.

Færd

03:06

Now it clicked.

Cerberus

Yay.

Færd

Hey that wasn't such a big deal. I was frantically looking for new (adv) in dictionaries.

Cerberus

An object complement is praedicative, which means it is semantically close to an adverb.

She came first.

Just like a subject complement, she seemed smart.

Færd

It doesn't so much describe the verb as it describe the state of the object, right?

Cerberus

Both at the same time, the theory says.

tchrist

03:20

> I just told him not to get his chumbly-wumblys in a tizzy

As everyone knows, that should of course have been chumbly-wumblies.

Tonepoet

06:00

@tchrist That's assuming the s in "wumblys" is meant to be serving in a pluralizing capacity. Maybe wumblys is a singular noun, like in Alys Bagwin's name or the Ys series of video-games. =P

RegDwigнt

10:21

Good morning. I would like to report that I have successfully lost all hope in mankind and humanity.

4

Here is a comment from the Internet for your consideration:

> This theme is more epic than almost anything Han's Zimmer has made.

It is over.

Dear God, just kill us off now. We do not deserve to live on in such excruciating pain.

sky-light

Hi

to better understand the xxxx. OR to understand the xxxx better.

Helmar

13:36

@RegDwigнt Didn't you know that Han Zimmer is the Han Solo's uncle?

Tonepoet

I just now noticed that moderators have their name in blue. Now I understand that visually differentiating them might be useful, but blue seems like a poor choice of color, given that it is also the color of internet links. I just ended up trying to click the names to see where they might take me. Why not use green or purple, or better yet, just even use the diamond placed next to their name on the main website that is used to serve that purpose? v_v

terdon

@Helmar No, no, no, he's Guitar Solo's uncle.

Helmar

@terdon That's not mutually exclusive, so Han Solo and Guitar Solo are second degree cousins ;)

terdon

Fair enough

Helmar

:D

Tonepoet

13:48

@terdon In an alternate reality, Leila just rolled her eyes and accepted it, thus initiating a timeline that ultimately created Darth Guitar Solo!

Helmar

hm, I was just trying to gather up some formatting guidelines from different meta posts, but besides the italics thing, there is barely anything there

Tonepoet

@Helmar Did you see the list of allowed H.T.M.L. tags?

Helmar

@Tonepoet Yeah

I was more thinking along the lines of what's usual on ELU

Without being too defining of course

But there is as much on meta as I thought there was.

Boils all down too only a few discussions

Andrew Leach

Like this and its links and "related questions"...

3

Q: Bold vs italics for giving an example word/phrase

For word/phrase request questions, is there a convention for highlighting the example word given? In this answer http://english.stackexchange.com/a/169794/37273 I used bold, and somebody changed it to italics. What is the convention here?

There's actually quite a lot.

Helmar

@AndrewLeach Really?

There is the italics threads

Then something like this

0

Q: Editing Question titles in pursuit of 'standardisation'

Apropos an issue that came up in Comments under the first Answer to this question, does anyone [else] ever edit Question titles in pursuit of 'standardisation'? I say 'else' there because the other day, having already noticed that many questions have the form WordA vs[.] WordB, I coerced a new q...

discussion style

Look at this, he found barely anything either

8

Q: Style guide for questions, answers, and comments

Style guides such as those on Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, Ask Ubuntu have been greatly helpful for me (and many in those communities) in creating well-written, well-formatted, easy-to-understand, easier-on-the-eye content. So, I would like to propose a style guide for this site. Yes, I understand ...

discussion style

Andrew Leach

13:54

Oh. A way of actually asking the question, not just making it look pretty.

Helmar

Yeah, a little bit more than simple formatting, some hints on how to phrase the title etc..

Tonepoet

One of the things that makes Stack Exchange appealing, compared to other Creative Commons based hosts like Wikis., is greater editorial control for the posters. I wouldn't really recommend implementing enforced style.

Helmar

I don't want to impose enforced style

It should be really on the "consider using this" level and not on the "we'll down vote, close and edit you into oblivion unless you do this"

@AndrewLeach I would totally upvote your answer on the help page thing, but I kinda wasted my votes when I was running through meta earlier

I'll vote it up tomorrow.

Andrew Leach

Tomorrow is another day. Or something.

Helmar

One of the real meta gems is this post about the lawler weight

19

Q: Measuring typographical emphasis: the “lawler” and “lawler weight”

RegDwighт said: @Robusto wow, that's formatting to the max. Bold and italics and monospaced and in quotes. John has outlawlered himself.¹ It occurs to me that this is something we can measure. I propose that a single character’s lawler weight (lw) be the standard unit of measure of the typ...

discussion style formatting

Tonepoet

14:14

I can't help but think Proto Indo-European was chosen specifically because the acronym would be pie, as in "everybody took a slice of the lingual pie with them after the Tower of Babel fell".

Helmar

Not unlikely

There is a reason a lot of the fancy physics supercomputers, research facilities and so on end up with acronyms that spell out food or women's names :D

Mitch

14:33

@Helmar CU Next Tuesday

Helmar

@Mitch I saw that :D

Mitch

5 reasons for how click bait works. You won't believe number 4!

@Helmar how do you watch it? Actually I don't know how I watch it. Cable I guess.

Helmar

Youtube or Proxy usually when I want to watch US stuff

Tonepoet

@Mitch Nice try sly guy.

Helmar

Although the usual streaming services start to notice that people want to rather watch the original than wait a few years for something dubbed. Game of Thrones is available simultaneously in Germany for example on Pay TV and US premiere + 24h on iTunes and Amazon Prime.

Mitch

14:46

@Helmar I feel like it is way too much trouble to even discover what is a good thing to watch, forget about obtaining it at lower cost or through sideways means.

Helmar

When I watched more series I found that the ones I liked got cancelled more often than not

Mitch

You're not voting enough

Helmar

Voting on what?

Mitch

On the shows you like

as though everything were already gamified

Helmar

Well I live in a secondary market for those shows, nobody gives a shit what I think :D

@AndrewLeach I just re-tagged the last 16 questions from the currency tag. Of course, now only moderators can create the tag synonym over to money ;)

MetaEd

15:16

@Tonepoet Lingual pie:

A.k.a. "pastel de lengua".

Tonepoet

@MetaEd I'm assuming that's the tongue meat of some sort.

MetaEd

¡Si!

Tonepoet

Thanks for the confirmation. Anyway, if tongue is so flavorful, why can't I taste mine? =P

MetaEd

You're not biting deep enough.

@Helmar Aww.

Tonepoet

@MetaEd It hurts when I try to do that.

MetaEd

15:25

@Tonepoet No pain, no pastel de lengua.

Helmar

@MetaEd :D

Rahul2001

17:24

hello

Rubisco

Jello

Rahul2001

My English teacher striked of the word "gotten" from my essay, claiming that it is slang :/

Is it actually slang?

MW lists it: merriam-webster.com/dictionary/gotten

Helmar

Did you use it as past participle?

Rahul2001

@Helmar Uh, not sure what that is... I used it in the context "When I had finally gotten a phone" IIRC

tchrist

@Tonepoet Then it wouldn't rhyme, therefore no.

Helmar

17:28

@Rahul2001 It's probably about him preferring another verb in that sentence, not the past participle itself.

Likely had received/bought/acquired a phone

Rahul2001

@Helmar uh, I don't think "aquire" fit properly in that sentence.

Helmar

Gotten is kinda nondescript of how you came into possession of that phone. However, I can only guess.

@Rahul2001 Well, I got no context^^

Rahul2001

Well, it was supposed to be a bit vague

Helmar

Well my guess is, he wants a more precise word.

Rahul2001

Anyway, I suppose I'll just use acquire next time

Thanks

Rubisco

17:31

You're usually reading too much into what the teacher has said about your English.

Rahul2001

@Rubisco heh, she can be very weird in her marking

I just happened to use that word in another room, so I thought I'll come over and ask here anyway

Rubisco

It's always tangled with personal preferences.

It's sometimes wrong.

It's usually spurious.

Helmar

Marking weird is a teacher's prerogative.

Rubisco

It's always done in a much more meh mood than you think.

Rahul2001

I have my English exam tomorrow, I should study now... :)

bye

Helmar

17:33

Good luck

Rubisco

Lood guck

Helmar

ELU is commenting too much on weird questions to make the auto-deletion work.

Rubisco

Of course they are.

This is a language site.

At least it's not a discussion board like Workplace

Don't rely on Roomba.

It's supposed to only throw away the least interesting things.

Only in a site like SO it starts to gain prominence.

Helmar

If I vote this one down once it will be deleted tonight, right?

0

Q: Verb Categories

What is the term for verbs whose action is to take the shape of a particular object? Example: 'arch' The cat arched its back. The action of the verb is to reshape the cat's back into the form of an arch.

verbs

Rahul2001

@Helmar @Rubisco thanks...

Helmar

17:37

Older than 30 days, no answers

259

A: Enable automatic deletion of old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?

Just to formally document the exact policies we have in place to remove old abandoned / dead questions, the Community user will delete questions in the following circumstances: If the question is more than 30 days old, and ... has −1 or lower score has no answers is not locked ...or... it ...

Seems a bit simple

Rubisco

There's so much complication I can't tell for sure.

Helmar

hm, I'll go for trial and error

Rubisco

@Helmar And when it doesn't get deleted when you expect it to things go downhill fast.

Helmar

And if does work there is an easy way to get rid of tons of useless unanswered questions

Just giving the roomba something to chew on :)

There are 1,443 questions that can potentially be deleted by a single down vote

That's quite the clean-up and make community answer potential

Rubisco

Be the hero everyone hates

I'd make a movie about you

Helmar

17:51

@Rubisco Eh, nobody would notice

I bet, I could delete 40 questions a day without anyone noticing

Rubisco

Now that feels satisfyingly evil.

Helmar

Kinda :D

Rubisco

Well, you'd have rumors going around.

Helmar

Even that's not too likely

Most of those questions are probably by hit-and-run users either way

They OP is the only one who notices due to the -2 rep notification

Rubisco

There's this evil-doer who downvotes us. JERK! I mean, obviously my posts are perfect in quality and everyone who downvotes them does it because of their own insecurities.

There is negligible chance that they don't mean harm.

I declare war. WAR!

Helmar

17:55

I already see the headline, Finally seize fire in the great down voting war of 2016

Saladin

looking forward to talk more with you.

is this grammer correct?

Helmar

Yeah, though more at the end is more common

Rubisco

@Saladin Grammer?

Well, I suppose it's correct if it's internet talk.

Helmar

I guess it's a person who creates grams

Rubisco

Well, who are the Grammy awards for?

Helmar

18:25

You have reached your daily voting limit, continue your roomba effort tomorrow.

;)

Rubisco

Ah man, I miss that message.

And how I got annoyed about it when I was stuck at 39 votes.

Helmar

:)

Tonepoet

18:57

@tchrist That's assuming the spelling is a form of reduplication rather than a coincidence. =P

@Helmar That only works assuming the unanswered questions are really useless. I can't tell you how to use your votes but if I may make a suggestion, if they haven't been deleted by the normal means, I'd presume that they are potentially merited.

Helmar

@Tonepoet Don't worry, I am looking at them before I vote

Also, it only works if there haven't been any up votes so far.

Tonepoet

19:13

@Helmar Sometimes it's less about making a validated judgement as it is about making the wrong one. When you have the power to delete a question with a single vote personal bias is more of a factor, so I think it necessitates a greater level of responsibility to objectively ascertain that it's really a poor question, rather than simply a neglected one.

MetaEd

@Tonepoet When an old question goes from 0 to -1, maybe that's not just one person's judgment. Maybe that's also the accumulated judgments of all the other people who saw the question and acted accordingly.

Or to put it another way, a bunch of other people have also exercised their power over the question, so it's not really a situation where one person has the power.

Tonepoet

@MetaEd I doubt we can for certain what inaction means any more so than the system can automatically vote on a question for a person who declined to vote. I wonder if the person who designed this script anticipated it might be used in this way?

MetaEd

@Tonepoet In the long term we can. That's why crowdsourcing works: enough eyes on a problem and you generally get a reliable result. Good questions continue to get votes forever. Look for example at Barrie England's reputation chart. His questions have earned him something like 17,000 reputation over the last two years that he's been on hiatus.

Cerberus

19:29

Sexually explicit wall art

Brussels.

And the government allows it.

MetaEd

@Cerberus They'd better, or there'll soon be nobody left to vote for them.

Cerberus

Hah.

Tonepoet

19:44

@MetaEd One reason I'm reluctant to admit the point is because we can argue for an assumption to be made for either perspective. It wasn't good enough to receive a vote for it, and it wasn't bad enough to receive a vote against it for all of that time. Assuming that it's a question of roughly middling quality seems to be the wisest course of action and if that's the case it may as well be left open so that perhaps somebody can eventually answer it.

However with that being said you'd know better than me which way we should vote in those cases, since that's a power the community expressly chose to entrust with you.

MetaEd

20:10

@Tonepoet A 0 total could be no votes at all, but it could also be the result of a voting controversy.

Tonepoet

@MetaEd A zero total can mean that, but not in this case. Helmar expressly told us that if it had a vote for it, that the system doesn't work. That rules out a voting controversy.

I think I may have seen a meta-stack exchange thread describing the community bot's deletion behavior before. Let's see if I can dig it up out of my history.

MetaEd

@Tonepoet The advice I've seen from people wiser than me is simply vote up what's good in its current form and vote down what's not. In other words vote as you see fit. So while I argue that the community has spoken by not voting, I am expressly not saying "so vote" or "so don't vote". That's up to you.

@Tonepoet You're referring to this, I guess. It came up earlier today and I bookmarked it. Possibly to do with the same topic.

259

A: Enable automatic deletion of old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?

Just to formally document the exact policies we have in place to remove old abandoned / dead questions, the Community user will delete questions in the following circumstances: If the question is more than 30 days old, and ... has −1 or lower score has no answers is not locked ...or... it ...

Helmar posted it here about 3 hours ago.

Tonepoet

Hmm that looks like the one, I think it might've been posted some weeks ago too.

MetaEd

@Tonepoet In fact the very idea that I would know better than anyone else which way we should vote kind of makes me feel sick a little. ;-)

@Tonepoet Based only on that document, I don't think it can be right that an upvote matters. It seems only the total matters.

Tonepoet

@MetaEd If it makes you feel any better, I didn't say everybody. I specifically said you'd know better than me, perhaps implying most. Surely the moderators know better than the commoners, and the rank of moderator involved is also factored into the equation.

MetaEd

20:24

By this time of the day I am usually pretty rank.

Tonepoet

@MetaEd Rose water might help with that.

MetaEd

@Tonepoet Yum.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…