ELL's Cabin

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

06:52

This is disappointing.

All I'm asking for is some meta participation.

1

Q: What 'buzzwords' should we ban or give a warning about in question titles?

A little while ago I revealed my evilish devilish plans about question titles. Let's review what we did: Write some FAQ. Clean up some titles and lead by example. Get some help from the system to stop the bad titles to reappear in the questions. Our greatest buzzwords are: (Sorting by 'wor...

All I get is two upvotes and one downvote.

No answers.

No comments.

No suggestions.

@TCh @Dam any idea on how can I get the ELLers to chip in the discussion?

Damkerng T.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M But you've got one.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. That guy could've answered me here.

Damkerng T.

Huh?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Well, what's the point in bringing it on meta if all of the people who're gonna participate are the ones in chat?

Damkerng T.

Oh, you mean you want more opinions from other members.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

06:58

Yes.

All of this is disheartening.

If we want some warning or ban implemented, we need an overwhelming "YES" response from the community to persuade CMs.

Damkerng T.

I see. StoneyB's answer has 7 votes, that means that there are more users read it. They just haven't written any answer or comment.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I don't see such response, and I see no point in trying to do BIG things on meta.

Do you think we can pull off the burnination of stupid tags?

Sigh

Well, I need to go. BBL

Damkerng T.

See you soon!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

And BTW I'm skeptical; it's possible that half of those voters voted because it's Stoney answering.

Damkerng T.

Given the situation, my best advice would be, be patient.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

07:03

Anyhow, I think we need a meta post on "why no meta participation?" more than "let's burn grammar".

Damkerng T.

That makes sense!

Freddy

10:31

hola

Damkerng T.

Hallo!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hullo!

That feeling when you post a message sooner than the chat drops you in

Hehe! @Dam mixing the rooms again?

Damkerng T.

Aye. :D

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

May @TCh's catch phrase be our flag.

Aye.

room topic changed to ELL's Cabin: This is the main chat room for English Language Learners Stack Exchange. Welcome! [aye] [bah] [meh]

Damkerng T.

LOL

Freddy

10:53

I have seens people using "lolwa" instead of lol.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Freddy Or lolwut

Damkerng T.

14:47

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Have you noticed anything?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

15:54

@DamkerngT. Yeah, I noticed I've caught a cold.

Damkerng T.

Aww... get well soon!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Thanks!

But what was I supposed to notice?

Jude Niroshan

Good Evening!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

\o

Jude Niroshan

I was just surfing in Academia forum and I found this phase.

I once read that, for example, there are statistical techniques that are applied in social sciences that also are applied for Computer Science and other fields

shouldn't it be Once I read that ..... ?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

15:57

Both versions are acceptable.

Jude Niroshan

no difference in meaning ?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@Jude adverbs places are flexible in the sentence.

@JudeNiroshan There could be a subtle difference in meaning.

Jude Niroshan

Alright! thank you

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I believe your version has a bit of emphasis on once.

Jude Niroshan

I got used to Once ... . So I found it little bit strange it sounds.

I mean the other form which once goes somewhere at the middle of the sentence

BTW; how are you?

tchrist

16:02

"Once I read that" means something else.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Tired, but good.

tchrist

It means "As soon as I had read that".

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Oh!

tchrist

I does not mean "I at one time read that".

Jude Niroshan

@tchrist You right, Sir!

tchrist

16:03

> Once he finished his homework, he shut his textbooks till his next class.

Jude Niroshan

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M I think you may agree with his elaboration. do you?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I do.

I was short-minded on this one.

Jude Niroshan

np

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Maybe because I'm decaffeinated.

tchrist

Fatigue makes rimnods of us all.

Jude Niroshan

16:06

@tchrist today we learned about Arrays, Lists & Hashes in Pearl. Sadly; lecturer is dumbo. He can't pass his knowledge to students. Opps! He is a Doctor.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Teaching is an art, not knowledge.

tchrist

If your teacher is lacking in knowledge, then it is fortunate that he does not infect his students with that same condition.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I won't call someone who can't teach a dumb-A.

Jude Niroshan

A for what?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

A**.

Jude Niroshan

16:09

He has poor english. I think that's the problem. He is struggling till the end of the lecture

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M :P

I'm like imgur.com/gallery/JNLxOF8

Final exams are getting closer. I'm happy because of the semester break ! :D

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

And I'm going to school on Wednesday. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

Jude Niroshan

What's special on wednesday? Hajji ?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

No, schools commence.

Jude Niroshan

OHHH MYYY ***, See who is in the chatRoom !!!!!!! @StoneyB

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

He's occasionally dropping in.

Jude Niroshan

16:18

This is the first time i saw him here. Proud to have someone with 6 digits rep in ELL

@Arrowfar Greetings!

user116848

Greeting @JudeNiroshan!

Jude Niroshan

I have developed a screen where the HR manager can enter the allowances for each employee

Refine Salary ; would this be a appropriate page name ?

user116848

Yeah? Awesome!

Jude Niroshan

does it make sense in English ?

tchrist

@JudeNiroshan There is something I should tell you.

Jude Niroshan

16:23

@tchrist Of course.. tell

tchrist

"This is the first time I saw him here" is not grammatical in English.

It has to be: "This is the first time I’ve seen him here."

The saw does not mix with "is first time" very well.

It is a very common thing that happens to learners, even rather advanced learners.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist Hmm, is using the present tense with the simple aspect also correct?

> This is the first time I see him here.

tchrist

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M That is also ungrammatical in English.

And also a common mistake, perhaps even more common than the other one.

English is the only language I know that works this way for that, so perhaps this is not surprising that it should be commonly mistaken.

Jude Niroshan

@tchrist huh? I heard many people whom I met used it in that way. to be honest, I didn't learn the grammar in school. So, I learned many english by listening to how other people talking.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hmm.

I'll keep this in mind, if my trash can has space for this.

tchrist

16:27

@JudeNiroshan I question whether they were native speakers. This is a topic difficult to search for. I'll see if I can dig something up.

Jude Niroshan

This is the first time I’ve seen him here. == This is the first time I see him here.

user116848

I found this: usingenglish.com/forum/threads/…

Jude Niroshan

tenses are different. so these are two different sentences.

This is the second time I've seen @StoneyB here! :D

StoneyB

Hi, guys.

tchrist

This is the first time that I have ever eaten raw oysters.
That was the first time that I had ever eaten raw oysters.

user116848

16:31

Hi Stoney B!

Jude Niroshan

@StoneyB Greetings Sire!

tchrist

@StoneyB I'm trying to find something about why we have to use a perfect construction in English in "first time I blah" scenarios, and it's terribly difficult to search on.

I think Rob might remember a ref for it; I'll ask.

StoneyB

Interesting question. Particularly when you turn it around; this is perfectly acceptable: I'm seeing him now for the first time, I see for the first time what you're driving at.

tchrist

Notice it has to be progressive: Today I’m eating this weird living mollusk for the first time in my life.

StoneyB

I suspect it's because we take first time, second time as temporal locatives, not merely characterizations of the head they modify; and present perfect, which is a present tense, notoriously does not accept a temporal locative which does not include the present.

tchrist

16:35

But your second one can happen, yes.

3

Q: This is the first time + continuous

I know that the standard construction with "this is the first time" is the Present Perfect. 1) This is the first time I have driven a car. But what if the action is still in progress and I am still driving talking on the mobile phone? Is it correct to use "the Present Perfect Continuous"? ...

grammar

Grammar my butt. :)

raises a support request to synonymize grammar and language

Jude Niroshan

yes. That's the one

StoneyB

*I have seen him in 1990. *I have seen him the first time (in 1990)*. But with *This is the first time* we are speaking of a present occasion; and the perfect is elicited because a past context is evoked, a timespan stretching across my entire experience down to the present.

tchrist

> Until today I hadn’t ever expected to find pearls in my oysters.

And "That was the first time I had ever verbed" requires past perfect.

Hm, or does it?

> That was the first time I ever ate snails.

That's ok.

Why?

StoneyB

It accommodates past perfect, because PaPrf has no contrasting perfective, as PrPrf does. PaPrf is both a past perfect and a perfective past.

Damkerng T.

I think "That was the only time I've ever verbed thing" would be fine too.

StoneyB

16:50

Yes. That one's wonky. I wonder if the implicit negative (I have never VERBen except on that single occasion) implicitly moves the locative into a supplemental subordinate clause.

Until today I hadn't ever expected ... hmm

I'd say Until today I never expected ... or Until today I have never expected ... --but that may be Eh-prof-brat dialect.

Damkerng T.

Perhaps it depends on whether or not we've done it at the time we're saying it.

StoneyB

mmm "I never expected him to show up" works with both "but he did" and "and he didn't". "I had never expected" does too. But "I have never expected" doesn't.

BUT: expect is tricky, because it inherently lies entirely before the event which is or is not expected.

Damkerng T.

17:05

Oh, right!

StoneyB

In fact, it's a stative ... not even an activity. And its negative is --what?

tchrist

> I’ve never expected my cats to be dogs.

StoneyB

And you still don't, presumably: the state is presumed to endure until explicitly terminated.

But if this morning you suddenly discovered that one of your cats was in fact being a dog, would that mark a change of state? I don't think you would you thenceforth expect your cats to be dogs, but it might shake your confidence in your expectation that they would never be dogs.

Is NOT(Expect(X)) = Expect(NOT(X))? And if so, is NOT(Expect(NOT(X)) = Expect(X)?

tchrist

17:21

I don't expect not to solve that.

StoneyB

John Lawler has a handout/worksheet on symbolic logic somewhere on his site, but symbolic logic's one of those things that life's too short to get involved with, like assembly language and communications protocols and Paradise Lost.

Damkerng T.

Means here "are" is correct? — user124234 5 mins ago

Why does that make me feel like it's just their homework?

StoneyB

I was just working this morning on revising (read: completely contradicting) an ancient answer of mine that addressed this subject: ell.stackexchange.com/questions/8128/…

There's prolly about 20 questions on ELL that want that quantificational-nouns tag.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

17:36

@StoneyB Ahh, that's also a challenge to tackle with in Persian.

tchrist

@StoneyB Just call them predeterminers.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M You are not alone....

4

Q: Um terço das mulheres presentes pode estar grávida?

Esta dúvida surgiu-me a partir dos exemplos (a) Um terço das mulheres presentes está grávido. (b) Um terço das mulheres presentes estão grávidas. Estes exemplos foram discutidos nas respostas à pergunta: a maior parte concorda, concordamos ou concordam? Os dois exemplos anteriores s...

concordância-verbal concordância-nominal

7

Q: "A maior parte" e concordância verbal

Todas estas frases me parecem possíveis. Pela ordem da minha preferência: A maior parte de nós concorda. A maior parte de nós concordamos. A maior parte de nós concordam. O mesmo para outras expressões partitivas: "metade de nós", "maioria de nós" (embora com "maioria" eu tenha maior pr...

concordância-verbal

StoneyB

I tried something like that originally, back in '13, but Profs. Hufflepuff have convinced me that's wrong.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Interesting, so head of NPs are sometimes tricky in many languages I reckon.

tchrist

If you cannot read the Portuguese, both those are essentially asking the same question as the a SOMETHING of questions are asking.

StoneyB

There's also a school of thought that says that most of what we call NPs are DPs.

tchrist

17:40

D?

Damkerng T.

Oh, determiner-headed phrases?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Terminology FTW.

A lot of these stuff get philosophical when you dig deep enough.

StoneyB

Yes ... what scares me is that this sort of thing suggests that Chomsky was not after all the Newton of linguistics but the Ptolemy.

tchrist

@StoneyB Could you explain why something like a few of the Xs should be treated any different syntactically than how few Xs? (Similarly for the other — partitives? — like that.) is treated?

Nuff editing. You know what I mean. :)

> A lot of the water tastes bad. A lot of my friends are going.

> Much water tastes bad. Many friends of mine are going.

Hm. Premodifiers in English: Their Structure and Significance, by Jim Feist.

StoneyB

On the one hand (a) N of X takes its gramm. number from X, and (a) N can "stand for" (a) N of X -- in these respects the construction (a) N seems to act just like an ordinary quantifier/determiner, this (X), his (X).

tchrist

17:54

I doubt that I'll find the right bits.

Call it a quantifier?

Here's another:

4

Q: ¿Se usa "está" o "están" con "la mayoría de las personas"?

¿Se usa la mayoría de las personas está o la mayoría de las personas están ? Algunas veces se usan ambas versiones. Por ejemplo, ¿cómo traduce la siguiente oración a inglés? Algunas veces es útil saber "qué tan largos son la mayoría de nombres."

uso-de-palabras

Which reminds me, @StoneyB have you ever come across the notion that the majority of is invalid when used with uncountables?

StoneyB

On the other hand, these N's themselves take (pre)determiners, which "ordinary" determiners do not: there's no *a this, *the his; and the PP bit, of X, acts as an independent constituent; so in that respect these are more like NPs.

@tchrist Oh, yeah; I don't pay those folks much mind.

tchrist

Just checking. I'll ignore them then. :)

I had never heard such a thing till lately.

StoneyB

Mind you, I don't say or write the majority of the water was polluted, but I don't mind when other people do.

I make every effort to stay away from places Great Mother English tells me to avoid ; but I'm too old and slow to follow her everywhere she's going.

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M By the way, I've decided to focus my retitling/retagging efforts on the questions I've answered, starting with the earlier ones. I'm finding I have to do a lot of rewriting, too, so it's gonna take a while.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

18:17

No problem.

If everyone helped in retagging, this would've been done in a day.

Assume I meant the people on the first page of meta participation ranking by "everyone".

tchrist

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M Oh?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

4380/36?

tchrist

Unlikely.

StoneyB

You kidding? I took part in the first retagging effort, back in Mar '13; it took me 4 relentless hours to survey 204 questions.

And that was a very thin, mechanical effort. It took me about three hours to do maybe 25 this morning.

tchrist

So you think it could be done?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

18:28

@StoneyB Chuckles

Laughs

Cries

We currently have 8834 questions with only one tag.

tchrist

So?

Maybe it's the right tag.

But stuff tagged with something that isn't real is a problem.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Our tagging system is far too far from perfect to claim that even 10% of those are the right tags.

tchrist

If you consider tags of any use at all.

Perhaps we should just tag them all english or language or learners and be done with the whole silly business. :)

StoneyB

Correction: 40. But we're not talking 4380 -- we're talking the whole damn corpus. More than 17,000, if you leave out closed/duplicate QQ.

Damkerng T.

At least we should have listening, reading, writing, speaking, grammar, and vocabulary. :P

tchrist

18:32

There are 1729 questions tagged with nothing but grammar, which is useless.

StoneyB

@tchrist That's the real question, of course. Who actually uses the tags? For what? I asked that back in our first week of operation: I find it difficult to understand why we expend so much effort and discussion on tags..

tchrist

Pretty sure I recall Lawler thinking it’s a waste.

Damkerng T.

FWIW, here are some of the tags related to ELL I really use in my bookmarks: marginal, letter, language-hacking, context-please, phrasing-choices, quantity, proofreading, simple-english, etc.

tchrist

heh

Damkerng T.

:P

StoneyB

18:37

Meta-tags every one, but they'd actually be useful: they'd let us find QQ to throw away.

tchrist

Sounds like a Triage queue.

Damkerng T.

One problem I have is I'm not sure what appropriate tags would be for many questions:

For example:

StoneyB

Exactly what we need. on-hold-for-context, duplicate-merge, answer-and-pitch, answer-and-keep, new-and-provocative

Damkerng T.

0

Q: A question about relative clause and present participle

Consider: He hurt his arm while he was playing tennis. He hurt his arm playing tennis. He hurt his arm while playing tennis. I can justify sentences 1 and 2 (2 is reduced version of 1). But, I have no idea about grammarian structure of the while playing in sentence three (3). ...

grammar

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Relative clause?

Damkerng T.

18:44

That was my first thought...

Then I thought maybe there must be something better for "while playing tennis".

(like, as Victor Bazarov mentioned, "reduced (temporal) clause"?)

StoneyB

That's a new-and-provocative for me.

Are clauses with while and when relatives?

Damkerng T.

That's exactly my problem!

StoneyB

Looks to me like while and when there are prepositions.

But perhaps they're fused-head pro-PP. ;)

Damkerng T.

Ouch!

I did a quick scan on my personally-used tags, a lot of them are phrasing-choices, and prepositions.

I guess a lot of questions with the tag grammar are about prepositions.

Oh, tense has a lot of ELL questions too.

It looks like we have a lot of old questions with 50 or less views.

tchrist

You know.

I have a suggested clean-up activity for a moderator here. :)

chalants back to the grindstone

Actually, thirty is enough for now. I'm off carping the diem.

Damkerng T.

19:01

I ~~could~~ should try to discipline myself too. :D

Strange, we don't have a tag for dangling-participle!

tchrist

This guy needs help, too. I fixed several of his and left him a polite comment suggesting he choose better tags from now on.

Damkerng T.

(But we do have dangling-modifier; then again I bet that the term doesn't sound familiar to most learners.)

tchrist

Ok, so here's the thing.

People with no linguistics background simply will never know specialist jargon.

So everything is grammar or usage to them, because they have no other buckets. And they never will.

I don't mean to use jargon pejoratively. Call it technical vocabulary if you would, or fancy glosses.

Damkerng T.

nods

tchrist

This is why I wonder if there is any hope to be had here.

StoneyB

19:05

"terms of art"

tchrist

Yes.

StoneyB

What --who?-- are the tags for?

tchrist

I think they are not for the asker so much as the answerer, oddly enough.

I use it for locating duplicates, for example, since you can sort on frequent.

Damkerng T.

Indeed! But perhaps a shallow level of terminologies could be useful to an average learner. (For example, I think we can assume that about 80-90% of learners know parts of speech.)

tchrist

They are probably never for the current asker.

> So what should we do?

First and foremost, we should be reasonable and understanding about this. Many people will not understand why their question “really isn’t about grammar”, or that even if it should happen to be so, that the gramática meta-tag is not a tag that actually helps anyone.

It is also important to realize that “grammar” may be the most specific term that the person asking the question is familiar with. So they are doing their best, and we should accept and understand this.

However, I believe that it will be important to future visitors of our site for us to edit the tags …

StoneyB

19:09

The only use I've ever found for them is marking my own answers for future reference. I just added quantificational-noun a few months ago; I created aspect, free-relative-clause, verb-forms and some more way back when, and I think I'm probably still the only person who uses them.

tchrist

I don't know that we can ever hope people will initially use anything other than grammar or meaning for Every. Single. Question.

Which means if we want things ever to be different, it requires retagging everything that comes in. Or almost everything.

And that seems like a lot of work, albeit far less than editing.

Cui bono?

Damkerng T.

Still quite some work.

Sometimes it's already enough work just trying to figure out the OP's confusion.

BTW, between tagging it (one of my questions) with dangling-participle; with dangling-modifier + participles; or maybe with all of them, which tag set should I use?

Ahh... that makes me realize... some of our tags are in the singular, some are in the plural!

(I chose to tag it will all of them.)

tchrist

I think that they should usually be in the plural for count nouns. And I don't know why I think that.

@DamkerngT. Very true.

Dunno what this one should be:

0

Q: Is there usage of: "prove" + adj.?

One consequence of the agrarian agitations was the increased use of machinery and the reduction in the number of hands employed, which if it proved advantageous to the landlord and to the few laborers retained, who received higher wages, resulted in an increase of unemployment. Source: The E...

grammar

Damkerng T.

LOL

StoneyB

A longterm -very longterm- approach might be marrying the tags to really good tag-wikis -- the sort of thing I tried to do with the Canonical Post on perfects. You could then use the wikis as technical references for the brief 'local' answer.

Damkerng T.

19:18

I think some of our first tag wikis look quite good, but most of the recent tag wikis are more or less nothingness.

@tchrist word-usage, perhaps?

But word-usage is: "for questions about the meaning or correctness of a word in a sentence. Give as much context as possible."

tchrist

I can't remember why we aren't supposed to use subject complement.

Or predicate complement.

Damkerng T.

But the OP's question is more like it's about "I don't understand this usage of this word".

tchrist

Or whatever goes there.

Damkerng T.

Complement is a good idea! -- checking...

tchrist

I get the idea he doesn't like the adjective.

StoneyB

19:21

Good answer ... I stuck complementation on it.

Damkerng T.

Thank you!

tchrist

In other words, our asker was fishing for complements.

StoneyB

complementation is sufficiently imprecise to accommodate a lot of different phenomena, while identifying OP's concern.

@tchrist Or wondering if this one was underweight and should be tossed back.

Damkerng T.

Hmm... we don't have sentence-parsing or just parsing either.

tchrist

Syntactic analysis?

Damkerng T.

19:27

We have no something-analysis either.

tchrist

Parts of speech is a bit too narrow for a lot of cases.

StoneyB

@tchrist One reason is that "authorities" use the term in different ways, some of which are incompatible. Is a "complement" something required to "complete" the sense of a verb, or can something optional be a "complement", too. And is a subject complement any complement of the verb which modifies the subject, or is it reserved for constituents which complement the particular noun which happens to be the subject.

tchrist

Subject complement

In grammar, a subject complement (also called a predicative complement) is a predicative expression that follows a linking verb (copula) and that complements (completes) the subject of the sentence by either (1) renaming it or (2) describing it. In the former case, a renaming noun phrase such as a noun or pronoun is called a predicative nominal. An adjective following the copula and describing the subject is called a predicative adjective. In either case the predicative complement in effect mirrors the subject. Subject complements are used with a small class of verbs called linking verbs or copulas...

Hm.

Damkerng T.

We have 500 posts with the word parsing in them. (What a round number!) We have 294 posts with analysis. I think I'll go with sentence-parsing.

Hello, @Stephie!

Stephie

Hi!

Damkerng T.

19:31

Welcome to the room!

Stephie

@DamkerngT. Thanks! I'm only very rarely here...

StoneyB

Hi, @Stephie! We're conspiring to blow up the tag system! Got a bomb?

Damkerng T.

A-ha! So this isn't your first time in here. :D

Stephie

@StoneyB Not yet... was just glancing over your discussion. Still trying to catch up :-)

Damkerng T.

I think this question deserves the tag grammar. :-)

3

Q: Schools of thought in English Grammar and Usage?

Having read many posts here (ELL), and some at EL&U, it appears to me that many cases of English grammar (and usage) are debatable. It is likely that there are multiple authoritative sources on English grammar. These sources seem not to absolutely agree with one another on every matter. Otherwise...

grammar

tchrist

19:37

@DamkerngT. Ayup.

StoneyB

But as tch said earlier, it should be grammars !

Damkerng T.

LOL

Stephie

Beginner's question: Why are there the three "aye/bah/meh" buttons? <ducks>

tchrist

ell.stackexchange.com/tags/synonyms?tab=master&filter=all

@StoneyB constituency-grammars and dependency-grammars

Damkerng T.

@Stephie Ah, that's the room owner's humor (who is probably in his bed now). ;-)

StoneyB

19:46

@Stephie Thanks. I just noticed those about half an hour ago and was too embarassed to ask.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@DamkerngT. He isn't.

Damkerng T.

Oh Bah, speaking of the room owner... :P

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I was busy writing

0

Q: Is Buckminsterfullerene aromatic or not?

The $\ce{C60}$ molecule is extremely stable,[26] withstanding high temperatures and high pressures. The exposed surface of the structure can selectively react with other species while maintaining the spherical geometry.[27] Atoms and small molecules can be trapped within the molecule without r...

organic-chemistry aromatic-compounds carbon-allotropes

tchrist

This is proofhearing:

0

Q: What does the speaker say here?

When you say when you .... that it gas in fact happend that is not an accurate statement. https://youtu.be/Mt89AymlstA At the 02:47 I cannot hear it right. At first I felt he is saying you imply, but I'm sure after listening more and more.

word-meaning word-request

And there are uncountably infinitely more where that came from.

Do you guys close those, or not?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

We close them.

We don't close them.

It's complicated.

Damkerng T.

19:49

I usually leave them alone, and sometimes try to help.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Well IIRC the last one got closed.

Help isn't helping when it can affect the site's quality @Dam.

For the worse

StoneyB

We should. It's the sort of thing we should answer in a comment, if we have the time, as a courtesy, and close.

I have now done so.

Both.

Stephie

Agreed.

And VTC.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Boy. Now what in the world is sigma aromaticity?

Oh whoops. Wrong chatroom.

tchrist

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M dictionary-questions

StoneyB

19:53

terms-of-art

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Today I'm continuously (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻'ing and :O'ing.

StoneyB

underspecified-discourse-context

Damkerng T.

lol

tchrist

o̲̅

Ugly.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

im-not-the-only-one-who-needs-some-sleep-here

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

StoneyB

19:57

By the way: has anyone ever seen questions "merged" on either ELL or ELU? What's actually involved in making it happen and what is the actual result?

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

A mod can merge.

I think once or twice, I have.

Damkerng T.

The result doesn't always look good, iirc.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

The result is, one of the questions will contain the answers and comments(?) to both of the questions.

Stephie

Not here, Parenting SE does it quite often.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

I think @TCh just went to merge something.

tchrist

19:58

Heh.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@tchrist He did?

tchrist

english.stackexchange.com/tags/…

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Come now!

@tchrist Questions, not tags.

tchrist

Merging, for the most part, is a bad idea.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

Hmm.

I think it was good only in some dups?

StoneyB

20:01

If it obscures the particularity of questions and answers I can see that.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

(Where there were good answers to both)

tchrist

25 and 213.

Stephie

Good night guys!

Damkerng T.

Good night!

tchrist

Night?

17

A: Moderator Cheat Sheet

Merging questions When should I merge questions, as opposed to just closing as a duplicate? When a question gets asked twice and the answers on both are worth preserving - for example if a question is cross posted between your site and the other and then the question from the other site is migr...

It isn't common, but happens.

If curious about merges, probably best to chat up JR or the ELU mods.

StoneyB

20:11

That's an interesting document. The answer to Whaddya do about lots of low-quality questions? is "Modify the Help Center". <*sigh*>

@Stephie No bomb? <*sigh*>

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

@StoneyB I think SE expects the topics that make it to public beta be about something that can reasonably get lots of variations of good questions.

Getting crappy questions is a natural heritage of large cities.

StoneyB

Good thing I live in a small one, then.

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

ELL is twice the size of chem. ^^

tchrist

@StoneyB Thing is, we've done that on ELU, although maybe you don't remember or didn't notice. For example, Andrew updated a close reason last December 14th.

StoneyB

@inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M ELL is 1/261.1 the size of SO!

inɒzɘmɒЯ.A.M

20:17

@StoneyB David and Goliath would be proud.

tchrist

Also, they do modify our Help Center now and then.

tchrist

20:47

Does this even attempt to answer the question, or is it merely a comment?

0

A: Past modal in English

Actually I am not astonished that learners have difficulties with verb forms such as 1 I would do (would + bare infinitive) 2 I would have done (would + infinitive perfect) As these two verb forms are used for irreality they never occur in conjugation tables, as the would-forms are not conside...

Damkerng T.

ell.stackexchange.com/posts/22377/revisions

We all have different ideas about tags!

tchrist

This is inevitable. :)

On ELU adverb-position has an adverb-placement synonym.

Damkerng T.

So, instead of one specific tag adverb-position, we use two tags to identify a topic: adverbs and word-order.

tchrist

Sigh.

Damkerng T.

LOL

tchrist

20:53

I feel like the answer I just pasted above is not even trying to answer the question. Could someone please sanity-check my understanding before I bother folks with a not-an-answer flag? Thanks.

Anonymous

I've merged questions on Japanese.SE, and I've watched ELL mods merge questions too, but in both cases it's been pretty rare.

tchrist

I think the hard part is to make sure the questions really and truly are so exact duplicates that all the answers make sense on the new target.

Anonymous

The questions have to be similar enough (identical or close to it) that it won't be confusing when comments and answers from one are moved to the other. That's not usually the case.

Anonymous

So yeah, usually closing as duplicate is all that's needed.

tchrist

If there are valuable answers on something marked as a dup, then most future visitors will never see them.

With a merge, you move the answers to the canonical dup.

Damkerng T.

20:56

It doesn't look like a real answer to me, either.

tchrist

Okay, thanks — I appreciate it. I didn't want send it to the review queue without cause, and sometimes I miss something.

Anonymous

Sometimes you can edit the content on one side to make it just a little bit more appropriate for merging.

Damkerng T.

No problem.

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