English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2011-07-13 (page 3 of 7)

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2:00 PM

-3

Q: Origin of pluralisation of verbs and nouns in English

From this question, I was just wondering why plural verbs are spelt without an 's', while plural nouns are spelt with an 's'. What is the origin of this form, why aren't verbs just the same along with nouns?

verbs grammatical-number nouns

okay, we know that H&B is a problem, but this is actually a legitimate question

with a really interesting historical answer

hey, i know. everybody downvote the question but upvote the answer that i'm about to write, then i can get the reversal badge

@JSBangs Sounds good to me.

Hey, does he accumulate rep while he's banned?

Alain Pannetier

@JSBangs, The problem is that the "pluralization" of verbs is a strange concept.

@Kit i don't think so

@AlainPannetier i may edit the question to make it better

Alain Pannetier

@JSBangs, It needs some editing indeed, also OE nouns had 2 possible declensions (weak, strong), 4 cases and three possible genders.

Write a new question, then we can mark H&B's as a dup.

2:06 PM

16 hours ago, by Kosmonaut

If he thinks this site should be for experts only, then 99% of the questions are crap.

This.

14 hours ago, by Robusto

So, have we applied the choke to EL&U.SE so that only four approved questions may be asked and answered within any 24-hour period? And those asking and answering must be doctoral candidates (at least — post-doc researchers preferred) in English?

Well, on the plus side, Jeff will be able to answer them

13 hours ago, by Robusto

The truth? I have no idea now what constitutes a legitimate question on EL&U. None whatsoever.

can we get a direct feed from his amazing brain?

Jeff doesn't answer questions here, but he does swoop in and close them.

Alain Pannetier

2:10 PM

I'm mulling over a Meta ELU question whereby your daily rep cap should actually be a function of your average reg-gain per answer. For instance if your last 50 answers have an average 4.3 upvotes, then your daily rep cap should be 400.
Brute force attack users would have a 100 repcap and interesting answerers would have a higher rep cap.
At the moment, the fact that interesting people reach their daily repcap with 4 or 5 answers and that the rep-starved characters need 20 for the same means that we have at least 4 or 5 more crap answers than awesome answer.

I guess if we're sinners in the hands of an angry God (i.e. JA Rule) then one day he may feel obliged to destroy us because we don't live up to his expectations, whatever those may be.

@z7sg that's actually looked down on in most cases

K pipl, make that five.

And that one user changed his name.

Right after getting put in the penalty box.

Perhaps he thought changing the handle would unban him, I dunno.

Since this is a matter of public record anyway, can you just clue us in?

I think I am not even supposed to be mentioning the bans taking place.

2:13 PM

Yet the "This user's account has been suspended" message is there for all to see.

@JSBangs It certainly seems wrong to me but technically within the rules. I don't know who exactly you mean is 'looking down' on it though.

@Robusto I can't forbid you to google for it.

@MrHen my question was not general reference; at least, if it is, then virtually nothing is ontopic here.

-4

Q: Origin of pluralisation of verbs and nouns in English

From this question, I was just wondering why plural nouns use the ending -s, while the exact same ending is used for the third person singular form of verbs. How did we get into this weird situation? Why don't we use the same plural ending for both nouns and verbs?

verbs grammatical-number nouns history morphology

edited and answered

@Jez Hey now.

2:14 PM

Also, I think a public announcement of bans and the reasons for them would have a salutary effect on the community, reinforcing a standard for what constitutes good vs. bannable behavior.

it's not even general reference. the origin of that phrase is disputed.

I'm just saying, no fomenting unrest and division in the chat room.

@Jez link?

2

Q: Why do people say "break a leg" to actors?

Frequently, before going on stage, someone will say "break a leg" to an actor, which is a peculiar acting saying meaning "good luck!" How did this expression come about?

etymology idioms

I am here to foment division and unrest!

Oh dear did I say that aloud?

2:17 PM

Interesting factoid about "fomenting": ...

1

Q: What is the meaning associated to a baseball and a screw?

In some cartoons (Tom & Jerry and The Looney Toons, if I remember correctly), I've seen the image of what seemed to be a baseball or softball along with a screw in a balloon. If I recall correctly, the balloon appeared near a character who had just been "screwed" by someone else. Even if I c...

off-topic. we don't explain cartoon squiggles

hmm. maybe FL&U should only be allowed in French. I have a feeling it may discourage Jeff from swooping in on the site. :-)

@Jez ha! i would love that

apropos, @Reg how is GLU doing these days?

@JSBangs the current plan is to allow EN and FR but if EN stuff is fair game for megalomaniac SEN mods then i might push for recommending questions in French unless really necessary

@JSBangs It does begin to look alarming.

2:20 PM

@RegDwight low activity?

I am breaking every site I am a mod of.

Bad karma.

in War Metal Tyrant, yesterday, by RegDwight

I wonder if it's a good idea to start a new site in the summer.

@RegDwight: I just got an email from Kosmo after the one I sent him. It makes me very sad to read, but I understand his reasons and I can't fault him for taking the stand he is taking.

I am kind of envious that he takes it like a man.

Me, I'm going around cleaning up stuff for Jeff.

0

A: Other meanings for "punctual" besides "on time".

Punctual means "spot on" or "on point." It usually refers to being exactly "on time," but could have other meanings like being exactly in the right PLACE.

What is with this gravedigging user?

@RegDwight all mods should go on strike. see whether they have the ballz to close down ELU.

2:23 PM

@Jez Um. I think the answer to that is "yes, they do."

@Jez You know, I'm not sure that would matter. The way I see it, whether or not I stay on board and double the effort, that effort is ultimately futile.

No matter what I do, no matter how hard I try to improve, no matter how wow-awesome this oh-so-awful site turns out one day — those people will never look back and say, "this site used to be awesomely moderated by RegDwight". Instead, they will look back and say, "this site used to be totally neglected by RegDwight, until Jeff said 'jump!' and RegDwight jumped".

@RegDwight Kosmonaut is nothing if not principled. The site will be less now. He has a real interest in English along with deep insight into the way language works, and his powers of observation and expression will both be missed.

0

Q: What is the plural form of fish?

Fish is the singular form. What is the plural of 'fish'? I've seen both fish and fishes, what is the correct usage?

single-word-requests grammatical-number

WTF?

They will not say, "the core ELU community is really great, and ready to address problems". They will say, "the core ELU community is not capable of running a site and is completely blind to problems until someone from the 99th percentile on the English GMAT comes along; and now we have proof for that".

So, as far as Jeff's (and probably other team members') opinion about this site is concerned, it's a lose-lose situation. A catch-22.

@Kit gen ref. that user is really on a tear with his questions, BTW

2:25 PM

I don't care what "they" say. I care about what our community says.

I don't see how I could possibly resolve this without losing face. Worse still, I have lost face already and I don't see a way to gain it back again. Worse still, even if there is a way to gain back my face, gaining back is never the same as not having lost to begin with. What's been said, has been said. A word is not a sparrow — once it's out, you can't catch it.

As Kosmonaut put it in his farewell email, which he generously allowed me to quote, "If we make what they think they want, we should actually start the site over from scratch (or just close it and set up linguistics.SE)."

anyone wanna go start a new ELU site? ;-)

@Kit i agree with this. we know better.

we actually had constructive criticism (imagine that!) last night w/ Rebecca and Dori

It's hard enough trying to catch a sparrow. So I don't envy that task.

and i'm more than happy to make positive changes to the site

2:27 PM

@RegDwight — BTW, in his email to me he said: "Please feel free to have Reg forward you the email if he hasn't shared it with you already."

@JSBangs I read the whole thing when I should have been sleeping.

and if that's the case, i just DON'T GIVE A SHIT WHAT JEFF THINKS

@JSBangs — We had dialogue, but I'm not sure if it was anything more than palliative.

It's what bugs me most. This is our community. We like it. We chose our moderators, we police the site and keep it the way we like it. I don't need some jackass to waltz in here, kick over anthills, and then say that my playground looks like garbage.

2

@Kit that was what SO 1.0 was about

2:29 PM

@JSBangs Though strange as it sounds, I can imagine that that could have been one of the reasons Kosmo left. Because he didn't want to talk about this day-to-day stuff last night. Just once, just this one time, he wanted to talk about how he was getting treated. Instead, and I blame myself, we discussed technicalities about flags and bans.

@Kit perhaps Jeff wanted more control

If Jeff doesn't like it, he can take his toys and go home!

@RegDwight whispers (you've got "blame" misspelt as well)

@RegDwight he was treated like shit. no doubt about that

@JSBangs I suppose we should have spoken more loudly about that, on his behalf.

@Kit thanks.

2:32 PM

> If you’ve already created a Stack Exchange site, be sure to read the announcement in more detail to hear about our transition plan. Don’t be alarmed; we’d never do anything to mess with Stack Exchange sites that are already working.

@RegDwight FWIW I don't think you've lost face in the eyes of the community (certainly not mine, anyway). Everyone who's been paying the slightest attention knows that the whole thing has been handled terribly by TPTB, and that if they had issues with the site then they are responsible for not bringing it to our attention. We know you've been working 25/8 adhering to both the letter and the spirit of (what we thought were) the rules.

heh

btw, i just flagged jeff's comment on meta as "rude/offensive"

he typo'd "we can't"

@JSBangs I thought my blinking-innocently response was helpful and constructive. ☺

2:34 PM

There were lots of cross-currents in chat last night. We all want this site to succeed, and a lot of effort was put into that. But all of us were mindful of Kosmo's pain, and maybe we didn't put the screws to the supermods enough to get them to address that. I don't know.

@Robusto The screws went in - far enough I don't know - but the response was silence

@psmears still radio silence on the email, too

@Robusto Check your inbox, then. I wasn't sure if you knew his actual first name, so I've removed from the salutation and the valediction.

@RegDwight I believe it was you who said that the traffic graphs for GLU looked very similar to that of ELU during beta. how do they look now?

@Jez Well, the strikingly similar part still looks strikingly similar. The other part does the other thing.

2:37 PM

what?

Heh. This is the first time that I am smiling today.

Me no speaky engrish.

I suspect the silence on Kosmonaut's real concerns was because even the supermods have little power to address them - but either way, they weren't addressed and I can't fault him for leaving

I am saying that the graph starts deviating from what we had on ELU.

in what way

@psmears the supermod who was the cause of this could certainly have addressed it. he could have, say, apologized

2:39 PM

@RegDwight you're confusing me; that's for chat

I thought you'd been talking about traffic to the site

Sorry for the pings JSBangs, I pushed the wrong button and edited an old message at-mentioning you, and then had to roll back the edit.

28 mins ago, by Jez

@MrHen my question was not general reference; at least, if it is, then virtually nothing is ontopic here.

@JSBangs You're right there - I should have said "the supermods who were actually present"!

@Jez: I need context. Where was this?

@MrHen my 'break a leg' question

2:43 PM

My comment felt good to write, but maybe ought to be flagged.

@Jez What does this have to do with me?

14

Q: Are questions about ununderstood English-language jokes on-topic?

In a song video made by an American acquaintance, there is a joke that I don't understand. I am not a native speaker, and I guess most English speakers would understand what makes his joke funny. Is it on-topic to ask what is the meaning of his play on words? As asked by Jeff Parker, here is...

discussion on-topic-off-topic

@psmears It was amazing, and not in a good way, to realize how little power they have, but at least they were frank about it.

@MrHen you criticized it and presumably you were the one who voted to close it

@Jez I did criticize it; close votes are just votes. If it gets closed we can talk. Until then, I don't see the point.

If you want to talk about the criticism, sure

2:46 PM

@RegDwight — Thanks. Yeah, I know his name. We've talked on several occasions after our altercation earlier in the year.

what is the criticism?

@Jez google.com/search?q=origin+of+break+a+leg

@Robusto You guys had an altercation? Mmm, juicy.

@MrHen it's disputed. and it's an interesting question.

@MrHen virtually anything you can get a vaguely good answer via google

but a quality answer? what's the reason for this site again?

is there any question you can ask that the internet has nothing to say about??

@Jez I am not going to debate this. In my opinion, the question is inane.

2:49 PM

@Robusto I know, so I figured you would know his email address. But not necessarily the name.

"If you want to talk about the criticism" ... "I am not going to debate this"

you have scizophrenia, go see a doctor.

@RegDwight BTW please pass on my good wishes (and email address) to Kosmonaut

@Jez Talking is different than debating; if you want to know why I think it is inane, I can do that. I am not going to get caught up in a hyperbolic discussion about vaguely good answers from Google.

don't bother, i find you insulting.

go away

Now, now.

We have worse issues right now, people.

Seriously.

2:52 PM

Meh. No worries.

You can fight each other when we're on a sunny island somewhere sipping vodka.

Mr. Disappointment

24 mins ago, by RegDwight

@JSBangs Though strange as it sounds, I can imagine that that could have been one of the reasons Kosmo left. Because he didn't want to talk about this day-to-day stuff last night. Just once, just this one time, he wanted to talk about how he was getting treated. Instead, and I blame myself, we discussed technicalities about flags and bans.

16 hours ago, by Mr. Disappointment

I think maybe each party is looking at different 'problems', though, hence calling for different fixes.

@MrDisappointment Well, to be fair, Dori and Rchern can't be calling for fixes to their boss's boss. At least not publicly.

@RegDwight It's sunny where I am, and by the sea - but there's a distinct lack of vodka...

If only Jeff's definition of 'high quality' questions are allowed on ELU, the number of questions will drop dramatically. if that happens, so will the traffic to the site. and then there will be a reason to shut it down.

Jeff & co's wish for really popular sites with an active community is in direct conflict with their wish for only 'really good' questions

they need to pick one

2:55 PM

@Jez TBH I honestly still don't even understand what Jeff's definition of a good question is...

@Jez This is not true. They don't need to pick one.

@Jez Quoth Kosmonaut:

> If EL&U is supposed to be specifically questions that a language expert (like me) would ask another language expert, then there have been literally probably 25-50 questions TOTAL (and I'm trying to be as generous as possible) that a language expert would actually ask.

> And if the person asking the question needs to be an honest-to-goodness language expert (or be able to fake it), then there are but a handful of actual language professionals on the site. If we make what they think they want, we should actually start the site over from scratch (or just close it and set up linguistics.SE).

@RegDwight Right, I would agree with that.

Oop, gotta go

@MrHen Precisely. They actually could have their cake and eat it, too.

CU.

Hi there, I'd like to know if this translation from Spanish is correct: "Judging the popularity of [X]. I'd say that..."

with "judging", I meant taking into account.

2:57 PM

AFK.

> The creation of Stack Exchange sites is a democratic, community-driven process. That does not mean the majority of Area 51 users have to love your site idea. It simply means you have to recruit a community of users large enough so that questions get good answers quickly.

@vemv You probably wan to say "Judging by the popularity of..."

@RegDwight That's sort of what they've got right now in fact.

@RegDwight What I am trying to say is that people are pointing at two extremes and noting that someone wants the other extreme.

i don't really see "Jeff-approved" in there

Mr. Disappointment

2:58 PM

@RegDwight I know, in a sense, but come on. I'm all for individual rights, speak as you will and whatnot, but there are even laws (not only applicable to the professional level, industry) here in the UK about mistreatment (even by use of words alone) and one can't help but look at the recent history here and see that it's like a company telling the customer they're wrong (and in a horrible way.) That's not business, and that's not professional.

ahhh perfect, Google seems to agree. Thanks

Wait, why don't they have to pick one?

@Jez The idea is that there's a "happy medium" - i.e. you can raise the bar on quality, and possibly scare off some users, but still have a sufficiently active community

One more point.

(for whatever definition of "sufficient" you choose)

3:01 PM

I urge everyone to look at the ELU proposal before it got created.

@psmears My point was about if you raised the bar on 'quality' as high as it seems they want to.

Example questions in the Commitment phase included: "What is the difference in use (if any) between an em-dash, an en-dash, and a hyphen? 21 votes"

@RegDwight Linky please?

@RegDwight That is answered with a single link to Wikipedia.

@psmears area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/1269?phase=commitment

@Jez Fair enough. I honestly don't know what level they want... very little information has been forthcoming

3:02 PM

Hello everyone

@RegDwight ta, will look!

Mr. Disappointment

Hey, @Alenanno

@RegDwight that's rather meaningless, apparently. I didn't realize that Unix & Linux was for anything but advanced users, until they told me that the Area51 description was outdated and 'advanced' had been removed from the description

More to the point, though. Look at the definition phase.

area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/…

"How would this sentence be properly punctuated? <example here>
added by Robert Cartaino♦ Jun 2 '10 at 0:48"

@RegDwight although after this debacle, perhaps Jeff will complain about non-expert questions on U&L too

3:03 PM

14 votes as great on-topic example.

@RegDwight but basically the site seems to get defined once on A51, then once again in beta

@Jez True.

Mr. Disappointment

@Jez Precisely.

@RegDwight — I sent you my email to him and his reply. I'd have cc'ed you both anyway.

But this site did get defined in beta.

And the core group is still the exact same people.

Plus Robusto, Stan Rogers...

3:05 PM

ironically that might make my Debian proposal a candidate for re-opening on A51

And I don't want to leave out anyone in this room right now.

Mr. Disappointment

@RegDwight As a side note, I would also very much like to keep in touch, or at least catch up with @Kosmonaut if at all possible (obviously without intruding); if you could, and would, pass on my email address in case he should care to hear, then please do.

hah

@MrDisappointment Sure. I'm taking notes.

Mr. Disappointment

Appreciated.

3:07 PM

BTW are we supposed to close questions that can be answered simply by looking them up in the dictionary?

@RegDwight — I was unaware of beta sites in general when EL&U was born, or else I would have been involved.

@MrDisappointment et moi

Mr. Disappointment

When should one use "which" as opposed to "that"?

When should "who" or "whom" be used?

When is the use of a semicolon appropriate?

@psmears yes, please close those as General Reference

@psmears Your guess is as good as anyone else's.

3:08 PM

@Robusto That's okay, you're actually helping by not having been involved in the beta phase.

Because I am making the point that many good contributors came in late.

And keep coming.

@JSBangs evil grin The accepted answer to the following question is basically a quote from (and link to) a dictionary

7

Q: Does "depends how" require an "on"?

Someone copyedited something I wrote in this form: Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends how many candidates there are. to Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are. I don't have strong feelings abou...

Mr. Disappointment

@RegDwight And you ain't seen nothing yet! ;)

Jul 10 at 13:21, by RegDwight

I mean, if there were tons of stupid questions actually driving people off the site...

Jul 10 at 13:23, by RegDwight

But I still see all the regulars all the time; some high-quality former contributors have even made a comeback (Stan Rogers, Vincent McNabb); and our traffic is looking good.

Jul 10 at 13:24, by RegDwight

So not only is the site not crumbling, it's thriving.

@psmears vote to close.

Three days can change a world.

3:09 PM

@psmears i see what you did there. however... i wouldn't have closed that one as gen ref. not every dictionary will include enough detailed usage notes on that, plus the answer isn't just a dictionary link

(i know, i know, i'm ruining your fun)

4

A: Branding better for new-to-intermediate users?

I don't think the look-and-feel, or arbitrarily matching "Debian Q&A", is the correct way to think of this. If you want to attract (quality) beginners, make sure there are a lot of quality beginner Unix questions on the site! That is what will lead beginners here in the first place. Therefo...

> If you want to attract (quality) beginners, make sure there are a lot of quality beginner Unix questions on the site! That is what will lead beginners here in the first place.

hmm. why didn't he say the site wasn't for beginners?

@JSBangs Not at all - you're kind of making my point for me- which is that, wherever the line that we're supposed to draw between good/bad lies, it's a lot more nuanced than some (most notably Jeff) seem to think - it needs to take that sort of consideration into account - but there has been little or no attempt to articulate it from those who have been throwing the most mud

Which leaves me very unclear as to what (if indeed anything) is good/allowed/on-topic - and, judging by the comments here, I am not alone...

@psmears I voted to close as general reference. Yeah, it's not really, but I'm angry enough not to care, plus, like others, I no longer have really any clue about what is and is not a good question for this site.

i feel like i know, but that's because i'm persisting in ignoring what Jeff thinks and going with what the community standard has been all along

Mr. Disappointment

@Martha No, it must be simple. I'm no expert, so if I can understand what is being asked then it probably doesn't belong here. Just hope I'm clever enough to figure out what to close what as...

Ostracism, anyone?

3:19 PM

Sigh. Sorry about the long absence, folks. MyOpenID was down.

Uhm

2

Q: Why is it called a 'hamburger' when it's actually made from beef?

I guess you could say the same for hotdogs, not containing any dogs. But it's interesting that hamburgers came to be know as 'hamburgers' and not 'beefburgers'. Did they perhaps originate from ham?

@Alenanno i'm... just... so tempted to call it general ref. but i could be convinced otherwise

Mr. Disappointment

2

A: Why is it called a 'hamburger' when it's actually made from beef?

Ham as refers to the meat of a pig really had nothing to do with the formation of the word. The word hamburger came from the name of the German city Hamburg. From Dictionary.com: Word Origin & History hamburger - 1889, hamburg steak, from the Ger. city of Hamburg, though no ce...

@JSBangs I am about to vote to close it as such. It's easily "lookable" in Dictionaries and Wikipedia

isn't it?

upvote drm65. but downvote the question. there's just no way that should be at +2

3:23 PM

I voted to close

@JSBangs Done, done and voted to close into the bargain.

1

Q: Words that change meaning when the first letter is capitalized

What words change meaning when the first letter is capitalised? The only word with this property that comes to mind is polish.

Surely this is CW at best?

@Alenanno See, just a week ago that question would have got multicollidered.

Because it is a question many people might have.

I don't understand "multicollidered"

sorry

The global inbox in the upper-left corner of any page on any SE site.

You see a list of most popular questions there.

@psmears — Gen ref? ^_)^

3:29 PM

there's a more fundamental question: why have a stackexchange site?

if the answer is that you shouldn't have one when most questions could be answered by a bit of searching, then ELU and many other A51 proposals should be shut down now for that reason

You mean why use the technical platform? Because it's awesome.

@RegDwight ah ok thanks, so it was like "featured"?

however, they have never said anything of the sort.

@Alenanno Yes. That's what happened to the Chuck-Norris joke question, by the way. That's why it has so many votes and views.

Mr. Disappointment

@Alenanno Yea, the box contains an amalgamation of such 'popular' questions, majority of them gain huge amounts of traffic.

3:31 PM

@Rhodri voted to close as "not constructive" it's just a list

It seems to me that their multi-collider heuristics are exacerbating whatever problem they see in EL&U. So they've made a mess and now it's our fault.

3

^ This. The MultiCollider is not really helping this particular site, ELU.

@psmears — Yes, and thank you for bringing up nuance ... I keep meaning to mention that and wind up forgetting.

Mr. Disappointment

@Robusto I have no idea how that thing works, and, frankly, might be a bit scared to find out.

> @Shog9 well that's the bikeshed problem right there. I don't need to tell you that it exists on every site, and you'll probably also know that the MultiCollider is all but helping. I am pretty sure that, say, Super User has way awesomer questions than the... um... subpar ones that it keeps flooding the collider with. (Again, not that site's fault; just Parkinson's Law of Triviality, plain and simple.)

> Same here. You ask an awesome question, only the people here get to notice; you ask a subpar question about an expletive, every random passerby gets excited and upvotes it just for giggles. – RegDwight♦ 15 hours ago

3:32 PM

BTW, I've been in and out of meetings so I may not be fully up to date on all the chat that's transpired in the past hour.

Mr. Disappointment

@Robusto I think everybody is (or, most are) in the same boat here.

That is why it's called the Incomprehensible Room maybe lol

you never understand what's going on

I am actually furious that Shog9 compared us to the Urban Dictionary.

May 5 at 16:20, by RegDwight

Are you quoting yourself?

Mr. Disappointment

@RegDwight Say whaaaaa?

3:34 PM

@MrDisappointment Read the comments exchange under psmears' answer.

20

A: Are questions about ununderstood English-language jokes on-topic?

I totally agree with Jeff that The quality of the questions and answers is paramount. Joke questions pose a real danger, because (a) everyone likes them, and (b) they can easily end up trivialising the site. However, I can't help but think the policy in the FAQ at time of writing is overly re...

Whoever you are quoting, I agree with the sentiment about the multicollider.

Shog9 dropped by yesterday and left some... interesting comments.

@Robusto Word.

@z7sg Um that quote is signed.

@JSBangs Good point.

3:36 PM

I had to break it down in two because the chat complained.

@RegDwight Me too... I had to rephrase my responses to him several times to keep them civil...

@RegDwight Just remember we're not all communist masterminds reading this yeah?

@z7sg — It only takes one.

@psmears And he's one of the Community Coordinators, for crying out loud!

So if that's his impression of the site, it's kind of hopeless.

Mr. Disappointment

@RegDwight I'm dumbfounded by that.

3:38 PM

Shog9 is a community coordinator?

Stack Overflow Blog: Welcome Valued Associate Josh Heyer

Posted by Jeff Atwood on March 24th, 2011

Our community team has been growing by leaps and bounds:

Robert Cartaino — Palm Bay FL — Apr 19, 2010 Rebecca Chernoff — St. Louis MO — Jan 4, 2011 Dori Smith — Healdsburg CA — Feb 25, 2011

Rebecca Chernoff — St. Louis MO — Jan 4, 2011 Dori Smith — Healdsburg CA — Feb 25, 2011

Dori Smith — Healdsburg CA — Feb 25, 2011

We’re serious about building community — and that means having a full time team dedicated to you. The community team’s role is to participate deeply on our network of Q&A sites and help …

woah, i hadn't seen this until today:

> my frustration comes from the fact that nearly every time I visit this site, I am embarrassed to be associated with the sort of banal, least-common-denominator questions that appear here

no wonder Kosmo left

@RegDwight I do wonder how people can get that impression. Our answers are totally different - and if anything came close to the mess that is UD, it would get NukedFromOrbit™ in a flash.

I wonder whether people only look at the titles of the questions, and not the answers?

That's what I'm wondering, too.

@Dori, can you shed some light on this?

Mr. Disappointment

It really gets me questioning the value of my own input here.

3:41 PM

3

Q: Is "if any problem, please call me" grammatical?

I found the following sentence used in emails at my workplace: If any problem, please call me at XXX-XXXXXXX. Is the sentence grammatically correct? Or should the senders have used the following instead: If there is any problem, please call me at XXX-XXXXXXX.

This, IMO, illustrates the divide that Kosmonaut so deftly bridged.

Mr. Disappointment

I know it hasn't been an awful lot, but I'm not trying to compare with any long standing member or anything.

The idea of "grammatical correctness" is much deeper than people seem to think.

2

@MrDisappointment My feelings exactly - I want to make the site better, but I feel like I've been told my contribution so far is awful and worthless, but nobody will tell me in what way (or how to make it better)

@MrDisappointment I feel exactly the same.

@Dori: How does the assessment of the quality of a StackExchange site work, precisely? Do you have, like, weekly meetings? What stuff do you look at? Just the graphs in the mod tools? Just anecdotal mentions of what varous people on the team happened across on the MultiCollider? Something else?

3:43 PM

It's telling that while MyOpenID was being it's flakey self, I rejected utterly the idea of creating an OpenID on SE.

@psmears Maybe we should have a title-cleanup drive.

@Robusto this. Jeff is actually less of an expert than he thinks that he is on this topic, and this causes him to underestimate the difficulty and the complexity of the questions. he's a linguistically naive native speaker, so for him it's all "duh, you just do it." but he is completely wrong

@JSBangs Word. This is why, having done short courses on linguistics, phonology and psycholinguistics, I do not consider myself an expert.

@JSBangs Reminds me of my project lead. The kind of person who says "I don't see what's so hard about..." And the appropriate response is "That's exactly why you shouldn't be in charge."

@JSBangs — The way you score in the 99th percentile on the GMAT is by parroting back a lot of prescriptivist nonsense.

3:45 PM

BTW, people. This goes out to all of you, because I just can't handle the load, especially since Kosmo's no longer here: now that certain users are banned, please have a look at their answers and try to tidy up them at your own leisure. Remove all the unnecessary bolding and blather, stuff like that.

@RegDwight Gladly. Fire at will, Captain?

Especially if those answers are accepted.

Mr. Disappointment

in War Metal Tyrant, yesterday, by Mr. Disappointment

You know, there's a known phrase: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

@Kit Absolutely.

@JSBangs This

3:46 PM

@Rhodri The Dilbert Principle.

Or whatever it's called.

Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat

Putt's Law and the Successful Technocrat is the title of a 1981 book, credited to the pseudonym Archibald Putt. It is based upon a series of articles published in Research/Development Magazine in 1976 and 1977. An updated edition, with the added subtitle How to Win in the Information Age, was published by Wiley-IEEE Press in 2006. Putt's Law The book discusses the fundamental observation, dubbed Putt's Law: :"Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand." The book also discussed a num...

@RegDwight Sorry Reg, but I'm not prepared to put significant effort in until the elephant in the corner (Jeff's lack of apology) has been addressed.

Fair to say.

Mr. Disappointment

I feel like we need to come up with a list of questions formulated so specifically that they can only be answered with 'yes' or 'no' and that simply can not contradict each other, directed at those concerned, then we can use such like a truth table on what we supposed to be doing; none of this elongated discussion which, in the end, is highly subjective in itself.

@Rhodri I think Jeff will apologize right about the time we all receive our ELU swag: in 6-8 weeks (which is to say, never).

@Martha I think you're right. Which is why I don't see myself staying here.

I have left jobs over bullying behaviour like this.

3:50 PM

@Martha So nobody else has theirs either?

Actually, this is what I really had in mind:

Dunning–Kruger effect

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes. The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. As Kruger and Dunning...

@RegDwight Wow, there's a name for that! Awesome!

@RegDwight — haha, check out today's Dilbert.

dilbert.com

@psmears Yes, and even I couldn't remember it.

Talk about synchronicity.

3:51 PM

@RegDwight Ah, I remember seeing something about that. There was a crossover point somewhere near 70%

@psmears I think there's also an app for that.

Crap, won't embed.

Mr. Disappointment

Whoa, that didn't work.

TL;DR

@Kit iSuck?

3:52 PM

BTW i'm writing a meta question to elucidate what i said about about deceptively basic questions

@JSBangs Good work. It's a really important point - fundamental in fact, in my view

@Rhodri Yes, but here we have no job to lose. So let's stand together and all push back. We draw the line here.

Mr. Disappointment

Did we get an example of an appropriate question? If so, I missed it amongst the kerfuffle.

@MrDisappointment No, that's why everyone is confused to no end and is going around in circles close-voting stuff somewhat drunkenly, myself included.

So I'm working on cleaning up JB's posts. I think we probably need two or three volunteers for H&B's stuff. Any takers?

3:55 PM

@MrDisappointment Not that I noticed. Lots of warm words and salespeak from people who weren't really in a position to say anything else.

@Kit Yes, but if Jeff isn't slapped, and hard, he won't learn.

Mr. Disappointment

Ah, yes, the politics.

Well, slapping is @Martha's job.

@Kit — I wouldn't know how to edit out the smug wrongness from those.

@Rhodri That's the pushing back part, my friend.

@MrDisappointment Exactly so. Given that I am a politician, it was a tad obvious.

3:56 PM

@RegDwight Thwacking, actually.

@Kit See how confused I am???

@RegDwight Big hug for you. ((HUG))

@RegDwight Thwacking <> slapping.

And I do the face punching.

@Martha See above.

Mr. Disappointment

3:57 PM

@RegDwight Well, you know me enough that I'm flag-happy at the best of times, no doubt you'll be sick of your life moderating with all the flags I'm passing (and will be) based on this new 'information'.

@Robusto I know what you mean, but let's rally for the sake of EL&U.

@JSBangs Yeah, when I read that I sort of understood. I was confused by the reaction until I read that.

Well folks, I gotta comute in a few minutes.

Mr. Disappointment

Ditto.

OK, laterz. Have goodness with you.

3:59 PM

So lots of time for @MichaelMyers to catch up. ))))

What am I behind on?

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