English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Cerberus

10:05

Okay, that is certainly important. I'd say all three things should play their parts: the asker gets help; the answerer has fun finding and answering interesting questions; and Googlers find their answers here too.

David Wallace

OK, now compare ELU with SO. Millions of software developers around the world find answers to their professional problems on SO. I'm one of them. So it's really useful to a huge number of people. But ELU? Who are the people to whom it's useful? It's not high-powered enough to be really useful to the "linguists, etymologists and language enthusiasts" at whom it is pitched. So that leaves the pineapples. Does that mean that we should be trying to build a pineapple-friendly site?

Or telling them to go and find some other place to tell them about there, they're and their?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

10:27

Once again, @Cerberus is in my internets answering dupes.

0

Q: "Two films don't a revolution make": is this sentence grammatically correct?

Possible Duplicate: Why is “xxxx doth not a yyyy make” considered valid English? Proper usage/origin of the generic phrase “[action phrase] does not a [noun] make” “Dazzling images do not a shining nation make” I came across an article in TOI Crest Edition about black-a...

David Wallace

How duplicitous!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

And every single one of those invariably mentions Aristotle and swallows.

Duplication of effort galore.

David Wallace

Where do swallows go in winter? And if you lived there, would you say "one swallow does not a winter make"?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Well since people are not looking forward to winters but only to summers, I guess they'd rather go with "one swallow leaving does not a summer make".

David Wallace

Maybe they migrate across the equator.

And how do you notice one less swallow?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

10:36

By counting them, duh.

David Wallace

All of them?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Well all of them minus the one that has left.

David Wallace

But you'd first have to have counted them before it left.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Exactly. That's how math works.

Ain't it wondrous.

David Wallace

And when you did that, how would you know that it hadn't already left?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

10:38

Because it would still be there, only some other one could have left by then.

David Wallace

In which case it would be summer already?

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 Oops I did it again!

I doubly did it.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@DavidWallace Not according to the saying!

Cerberus

Just close it, I have no objection!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

It has been closed for OVER 9000 somethings by now.

Cerberus

10:40

How did you even search for those words?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Come on, pay some attention.

David Wallace

Hey who was the cruel person who starred Mahnax's admission of being a creationist?

Cerberus

Or did you guess that swallows would be around there, and summers?

Oh, I only just got here.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus no. It's just that unlike you I remember things.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace It was not cruel; it was by a fellow creationist.

David Wallace

10:41

Spare me! You mean there's more than one?

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 Oh! But I would normally not even click such a question...

@DavidWallace Yup!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus then how did you answer it without clicking?

David Wallace

He said normally.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

No creationism in this chat.

2

David Wallace

We must assume there's some abnormality somewhere in Cerberus' behaviour.

Cerberus

10:43

I heard the funniest thing. There is some site called religion.stackexchange.com, or something similar, and there was a discussion on meta whether all posts accusing someone of heresy should be removed as offensive. "All posts? Wow, the site will seem empty without 'em."

@RegDwightѬſ道 I was exceptionally bored, because you people were all sleeping (or tending sheep).

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Sounds like Atheism: Reloaded.

And we all know what happened to the Atheism Stack Exchange.

Cerberus

Awww yes.

But its spirit lives on, fumbling somewhere amongst the old stars!

David Wallace

Actually, @Reg, I don't - I'm a bit new here.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@DavidWallace Well, they went up, yada yada, they got shut down.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Owls are so wise that they always assume everybody knows and remembers every single mouse that once walked the grass.

David Wallace

10:46

It seems to me that an atheism SE would be a bit pointless though. How do you discuss the details of the absence of something?

Cerberus

QED.

David Wallace

Or ask questions about something that you've already acknowledged the absence of.

But I'd be curious to know why they got shut down. Don't atheists have the same rights as religious people to express their beliefs?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

The basic idea behind Atheism.SE was to create a Big Piece of Garbage, and in that they did succeed fairly quickly, but then the founders noticed that that violated intellectual property rights of the FOX Broadcasting Company.

That's the long answer. The short answer is: it was a circle-jerk, with no value to anyone including the circle-jerkers themselves. So they got bored and left. It was a barren, forsaken, marooned place. Eerie.

David Wallace

Which is what I suspect ELU would become without the pineapples.

Vitaly

@DavidWallace — Our activity levels had been steadily declining since the site had been launched as a beta, so it was closed due to inactivity. Why it got inactive, though, is a whole 'nother question. I have a theory that it happened because TPTB didn't provide us with a pro-tem mod, so the quality of the site became worse and it caused a vicious circle with users leaving and even less quality.

David Wallace

10:51

It lives!

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 Well, was it really that forsaken? Did not some ghosts stalk haunt the ruins?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus Yes, that one ghost Vitaly refused to leave.

David Wallace

@Vit - you could have volunteered to moderate.

Cerberus

@Vitaly Huh, was there no mod?

@RegDwightѬſ道 Weren't there more?

Vitaly

@DavidWallace — I am not a native speaker, I wouldn't have been able to.

Cerberus

10:52

@Vitaly Bollocks!

Vitaly

Back then I still misused the English articles! (Maybe I do now, but not that often.)

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus No, but to be fair the thresholds were lowered for everyone.

Cerberus

You don't need to be a native speaker of anything to moderate a website.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Everyone could edit everything, for example.

Or vote to close.

Cerberus

Oh, I see.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

10:53

I close-voted a few questions even though I only had 101 reps.

Cerberus

So was there really a lot of thrash that would normally be quickly removed by a mod?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

That you have to ask Vit.

Cerberus

I remember the pointlessness.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I visited like twice, and only because I was bored.

Cerberus

But I feel the same way about Scifi.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

10:54

But then I got even more bored.

Cerberus

Hehe.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Now take that times 10k.

David Wallace

Why does a moderator need to use articles correctly?

Cerberus

I sort of felt the same way. The people there were nice, but there just wasn't much to do besides group-nodding.

Which became nodding off.

Vitaly

@DavidWallace — Isn't a moderator supposed to explain things and edit questions into shape?

Cerberus

10:55

@DavidWallace No idea.

Vitaly

I, personally, really wouldn't like to listen to someone in power if that someone in power spoke broken English.

Cerberus

You can explain things without articles (see what I just did there?).

David Wallace

Yes, but such explanations need not be grammatical. And you don't have to correct the grammar of questions.

@Vitaly Nah, it would add to the charm.

Cerberus

@Vitaly I think it really matters whether this person's English evinces care and intelligence.

David Wallace

You haf angered da Foohrer, und now your posts vill be deleted!

Cerberus

10:57

Don't imitate the owl or he will peck you in the nose at night!

(He's a kraut for all practical purposes.)

David Wallace

Other than making coleslaw

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Better a kraut than an ananas.

Cerberus

Hehe.

Some people eat their sauerkraut with ananas here.

It's disgusting.

Apple, fine. But ananas?

David Wallace

Actually, @Vit, I can kind of see where you're coming from. My wife is a pineapple, and doesn't like writing letters in English, without getting me to check them for spelling and grammar.

Vitaly

May 13 '11 at 12:55, by Vitaly

RegDwight, Europe, GMT+1

227 1 6

internet nazi adolf-hitler

RegDwight Ѭſ道

11:00

@Cerberus You Apple fan boy, bah!

@Vitaly Good times.

Cerberus

I can understand why someone who felt insecure about his English might not want to have a public function; but I don't think he would do any worse.

@RegDwightѬſ道 Shit.

David Wallace

Oh, certainly he wouldn't.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Jul 29 '11 at 17:29, by RegDwight

Everyone is a pineapple, almost everywhere.

David Wallace

True dat, and I might well be insecure, if I were asked to be a moderator of something like an SE site, but in my second language.

I've just had the terrible thought that I'm being frightfully un-PC; and as far as I know, I may well be the only native English speaker here.

Cerberus

It's funny how Chinese.se (or whatever it's called) has some European moderators.

Vitaly

11:05

Oh, and one more thing about Atheism.SE … You know PZ Myers, right?

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Hmm I don't see any un-PC-ness?

David Wallace

Why didn't they just call it Chine.se? That would have been so much cooler!

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Hehe.

@Vitaly Hmm wasn't he a mod somewhere?

Was he a moderator at Atheism.se who suddenly saw the light?

Vitaly

@Cerberus he's the author of a blog called Pharyngula

Cerberus

Ohh right.

There is some other guy here with a similar name, I think.

David Wallace

11:07

Yeah, he lives in the next street to me.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@DavidWallace Chine.se? As in, a steep-sided river valley in Sweden?

Chine

A chine is a steep-sided river valley where the river flows through coastal cliffs to the sea. Typically these are soft eroding cliffs such as sandstone or clays. The word chine originates from the Saxon "Cinan" meaning a gap or yawn. The word is in use in central Southern England; in East Devon, Dorset, Hampshire, and particularly the Isle of Wight. In Devon, Sherbrooke Chine is west of Budleigh Salterton, and Seaton Chine is at the western end of the West Walk esplanade, Seaton. In Dorset, west of Bournemouth are found Flaghead Chine, Branksome Chine, Alum Chine, Middle Chine and Du...

Vitaly

Anyway, PZ Myers plugged Atheism.SE (which wasn't even in beta then) on Pharyngula, and the Area51 proposal got hundreds of followers basically overnight

Cerberus

Why has everybody moved to NZ?

Vitaly

It's not difficult to imagine the quality of such an audience

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus Because I told them to.

Cerberus

11:08

First that Megaupload guy, now PZ Myers.

Vitaly

Practically everyone just registered and never came back

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus It all started with vgv8, really.

Gigili

I have a question. =\

Cerberus

@Vitaly Oh, I see. That's sad.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

He wanted to run for mod, so I told him to move to NZ.

Gigili

11:08

And hello @all.

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 Wai?

@RegDwightѬſ道 Ohh that guy.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Feb 21 '11 at 16:21, by RegDwight

@FX_ I like how he replied to my comment on meta by saying that Novosibirsk is in the same time zone as New Zealand.

Cerberus

@Gigili Hi!

David Wallace

Pharyngula " ... has been ranked as the third-most-read blog maintained by a Minnesotan ... " (Wikipedia). What a sad recommendation!

Vitaly

Hahaha.

Cerberus

11:10

Haha, wowie.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@DavidWallace I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Minnesota.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Haha, Wikipedia is full of nearly-as-bad trivia.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus Not that Hungarian child again!

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 Hilarious.

Right before your self-quote.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I liked the Star Room the most.

David Wallace

11:11

I hate the way Americans assume everyone knows basic American geography.

</gross generalisation>

Cerberus

Star Room?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Cerberus Yes, she created a room with the sole purpose of everyone starring everything.

It worked.

People would join, spend their daily limit of 30 stars...

David Wallace

I recently took a shot at someone on ELU for using "PA" and expecting everyone to know it meant Pennsylvania. I think I was too polite though, 'cos it went straight over the poster's head.

Gigili

If you want to compare two people, would you say "this guy is really cool but the other one is cooler"?

Cerberus

@DavidWallace I have dashed, crushed, and humiliated that assumption once and for all when I played an American map game with Kit. I put most of the states in the wrong half of the country.

David Wallace

11:12

@Gigili you might.

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 Wow.

David Wallace

@Cerberus Excellent!

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Oh, I usually just think, "it must be one of their stupid provinces again that I refuse to memorize".

Gigili

@DavidWallace Isn't a cooler a container which is used for making or keeping food and drinks cool?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Gigili there's a question for that.

6

Q: Is "such a cooler" proper English?

I'm trying to say something like "that's such a cooler design". Is there more valid expression that expresses the same thing? Or is this okay English? I guess "that design is so much cooler" would work, but it's not as succinct. I'm trying to say that something is cooler than something else, bu...

word-choice grammaticality adjectives comparative

Cerberus

11:13

@Gigili That, too; but it can still be used as an adjective as well.

@RegDwightѬſ道 Haha wtf...

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Cerberus is such a cooler.

Cerberus

Thanks!!

David Wallace

@Cerberus But not in the way the asker wanted.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Alas, no.

Perhaps in a hundred years...

David Wallace

Why did they feel that the variant they proposed was less succinct?

It has the same number of words, if you count " 's " as being the same as "is"

Cerberus

11:15

I mean, such has already usurped much of the function of so...

@DavidWallace True...

Gigili

Thank you @RegDwight, @Cerberus.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Huh I was under no impression that I was helping.

Cerberus

Thank David, maybe.

He's all alone on the other side of the globe.

I mean, how would you feel if you had to wear straps all day?

David Wallace

Am I the only person here who's not in Europe? And, yeah, the falling off thing can be quite a hassle.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Well Um-err-ica is only just waking up.

Rob will be here in no time.

Vitaly

11:19

@Reg what's on our WMT agenda for the next 3 hours?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

We have an agenda? Let me check.

David Wallace

@Gigili Usually keeping but not making. It has insulation, but not a cooling element. Which means it's badly named.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Perhaps we could do something about it. What if we had the earth rotate, so that we could take turns, instead of having the sun fly around it all the time?

Gigili

@DavidWallace Got it, thank you.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Do you object to legwarmers too?

David Wallace

11:22

Then we'd need twice the number of straps!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

@Vitaly Well it's all pretty clear, is it not. Once we are over 2.5k against HIMUM we can switch to X-Com, but we'll probably end up going on regen for the next active war.

David Wallace

@Cerberus The name of them? Or the item itself?

We should call them legcoolingslowdowners.

And thus German was born!

Vitaly

@RegDwightѬſ道 or you could get someone else to declare a war on us and lose it, because we aren't winning the X-Com war anyway

David Wallace

I'll declare a war on you! What game are you playing?

Cerberus

@DavidWallace Hey, in these tough times, who are we to begrudge the straps industry some jobs?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

11:25

@Vitaly haha yeah you wish. For Infamy, no less.

Cerberus

@DavidWallace War Metal Tyrant.

You should play it too.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

kongregate.com/games/synapticon/tyrant

David Wallace

Good night, all. I have to go to work in a few hours. It's been ... real.

Vitaly

Night!

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Gute Nacht.

Cerberus

11:29

Night!

@DavidWallace Real indeed!

How many hours?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

11:44

0

Q: is it right grammer? colud you revise my mistakes on this page?

I am not like Kevin, but I like Kevin's sister. I havn't known her for a long time. But, I met her where Kevin's birthday Party. at that time, I didn't know before talking with her. she is 3 Years younger than me. she is majoring in mathmathetic. her name is Sophia, she admitted to university th...

grammer

I colud, but I wnot.

Cerberus

Aahhhhh....

RegDwight Ѭſ道

And the Oxford Comma question of the day.

0

Q: Author enumeration rules

When you enumerate authors (not sure if it's important, but I'm talking about scientific papers), I learned that you write it like this First Person, Second Person, and Third Person For me as native German speaker, the last comma looks awfully wrong, but I accepted that English has differen...

punctuation

Vitaly

reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/ppfwc/…

Cerberus

@RegDwightѬſ道 How do you determine which one is the question of the day?

Do you always pick the tenth or something?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Well so far it's the only Oxford Comma question today.

FFS, I only just noticed: that question is even tagged grammEr.

The thing is, as soon as you start typing "gra...", it will suggest grammar.

So you can only go with grammEr on purpose.

Cerberus

11:54

@Vitaly Hmm I didn't know that site, but you have my sympathy.

@RegDwightѬſ道 Brilliant.

Vitaly

in War Metal Tyrant, Dec 2 '11 at 15:17, by Vitaly

@Cerberus create a mirror of library.nu :P

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Brilliant trolling, yes.

@Vitaly I knew I knew the name from somewhere.

Cerberus

@Vitaly torrentfreak.com/…

Do you know this?

Vitaly

Meh.

Cerberus

Meh?

RegDwight Ѭſ道

12:30

Hahaha, dig the OP's comment here.

Cerberus

Haha aww..

RegDwight Ѭſ道

It's like building your entire house upside-down and then saying "oops, I used the wrong brush to paint the window frames".

Cerberus

That's terrible!!

Kitḫ

Morning.

@Mahnax I'm guessing you are a creationist because you haven't learned enough biology yet, but don't worry, there's plenty of room for God in evolution too.

Vitaly

hi, and you should make that last part of your sentence a link

Kitḫ

12:46

Oh, I'll leave that to you. I didn't know there was a whole thing about it.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Evolution is basically an anagram of evil lotion.

Kitḫ

Huh. Not really.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Hence the qualifier.

Kitḫ

O evil unto

RegDwight Ѭſ道

Either way there must be a reason you can spell "evolution" without spelling "God".

Kitḫ

12:47

U evil toon!

I didn't really want to start a discussion about it, though.

I was trying to be mothering.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

I am not familiar with Mo, the ring.

Does the Mo stand for Mordor?

Kitḫ

No. Moe the bartender.

RegDwight Ѭſ道

His name is short enough, whose lazy ass's idea was it to shorten it even further?

Kitḫ

Kit, the other Ming.

Vitaly

@Kitḫ oh, and i wanted to say your position makes sense. maybe i, too, should stop considering it a victory to wreck other people's faith in homeopathy et cetera and leave it to natural selection.

Kitḫ

12:55

Doing battle won't really change people's minds.

You have to sneak up on them.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

Oh no! I can't start the day with a discussion about creationism and homeopathy! I'll run out of righteous fury by 11am!

Kitḫ

Like when, in the South, I would occasionally deride my friends' unquestioned faith.

Vitaly

@Kitḫ you've been reading LW? :)

Kitḫ

I actually shouted "FUCK GOD!" at the top of my lungs in a bar, just to prove my point.

I was not struck dead for my blasphemy.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Kitḫ I bet that won you lots of points

Vitaly

12:57

via LW:

> My impression is that the arguments have almost no effect. What has an effect is being smart, likable, and altruistic, while occasionally mocking religion and sending signals that being religious is socially uncool.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

probably deconverted at least 12 drunken rednecks

Vitaly

> In other words, people will only convert for precisely the wrong reasons.

Kitḫ

Yes, exactly.

Mr. Shiny and New 安宇

@Vitaly There was a study about this sort of thing. People have a tendency to interpret any facts or argument in favour of the position they already hold.

Kitḫ

Also, when confronted, people will dig in rather than admit that they are wrong.

The only thing that will change someone's mind is education.

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…