English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room - 2011-01-28

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6:11 AM

Is there any debate about accepting an answer too fast?

Foe example, somebody asks a question about the meaning of a phrase, and after 10 minutes accept a question out of two posted answers that say two different things. If the OP didn't know what the phrase meant, how can he accept an answer? 10 minutes don't even allow other people to post a reply (especially in some moments of the day).

6:29 AM

(It should have been "for example", not "foe example".)

For example, somebody asks a question about the meaning of a phrase, and after 10 minutes accept an answer out of two posted answers that say two different things. If the OP didn't know what the phrase meant, how can he accept an answer is so few time? 10 minutes don't even allow other people to post a reply (especially in some moments of the day).

:416833

@LucasTizma I agree with Kosmonaut; plus, the title case is not used on any SE site.

7:30 AM

@kiamlaluno the concensus seems to be that most of the people who are quite familiar with how SE sites works would wait about 1 to 2 days before accepting an answer, but ultimately, it is up to the OP to decide how and when to accept. There were a discussion about this on meta, if I have a bit of time I would search it.

@Eldros Thank you. Don't lose too much time in the research. If you find it, it's fine; if you don't find it, it's fine the same. :-)

I just remember that this issue has been reported on cooking.exchange.com, and the moderators kept to say to not accept answers too quickly; maybe it should be done on EL&U too.

8:22 AM

I understand that for the Cooking site the case could be different, as a site about cooking where somebody gives a suggestion on how to cook something better supposes the OP tries what it has been suggested. Still, I think that giving to other people the time to reply can be helpful for the site; after all, an accepted answer is considered the correct answer, which should be misleading, if the accepted answer was accepted too early.

9:04 AM

@Eldros: was it this one? meta.english.stackexchange.com/questions/464/…

Or this one: meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/38090/… @kiamlaluno

9:29 AM

@RegDwight: Thank you for the link. I think the discussion on meta.english has more meaning than the one on meta.stackoverflow, which is the meta for sites where waiting 15 minutes can be acceptable.

9:51 AM

@RegDwight: a bit of both and maybe another link. I'm pretty sure there were other threads about it.

2 hours later…

11:50 AM

Hello. Is there anybody?

1 hour later…

1:09 PM

@kikio: Even if there isn't anybody, you can always let your question here, and you'll be notify if you have an answer.

2 hours later…

2:57 PM

Please weigh in on this if you have a chance:

0

Q: Closing questions about how to improve writing

Tips on improving one's English are off-topic for the site. I wanted to make sure that people feel the same way about the following writing related questions that RegDwight brought to my attention: ...we do have quite a few (open) questions about improving writing skills: Recommended books on...

discussion on-topic-off-topic

@Kosmonaut: I agree they should be closed.

Every question that doesn't directly ask about an English word, sentence, phrase or expression should be closed as off-topic.

@kiamlaluno: Could you add an answer on the question thread? (So we have people's opinions in the permanent record.)

I wonder why there weren't downvotes and votes to close.

Two of them had one vote to close, and that is all.

@Kosmonaut: It seems users just answer without to verify if the question really suits EL&U.

I must say it happened to me too.

@kiamlaluno: Yes, I agree about that. But usually, in addition to answers, there are downvotes and votes to close.

Maybe regular users weren't even curious about the question, so they never even viewed it.

I don't know.

I must say that I vote to close quite aggressively ever since we went out of beta and a ton of people lost a lot of privileges, including access to the mod tools.

3:11 PM

One big problem is that we don't have enough active mods.

You may have noticed how certain questions get closeßvoted once, and then the vote ages away, and then a week or so later they get closeßvoted again, rinse repeat, well, that would be me.

I must say that also my question about the differences of pronunciation between an adult and a teenager should be closed as off-topic.

The election for official mods should be coming soon.

Argh, German keyboard.

Don't you mean "German kezboard"? :)

3:13 PM

ROFL, I keep correcting that, but I forget about the hzphen.

AAAAHHHH

I didn't post on EL&U for a while. Now that Ex-user is not around anymore, I could start to visit the site more frequently. :-)

@kiamlaluno: I figured as much.

He left instantly based on one question and never set foot in here again.

Go figure.

Yep.

3:15 PM

I was tired of being said I copied his question, when his question was saying something different than mine.

(See: the pronunciation of router.)

Re: mods @Kosmonaut, I don't think that that will help. Having more mods, that is. We are in dire need of more 10k users, not mods.

Maybe you are right.

I rememder when 2k was enough for access to mod tools; off-topic questions would get closed within minutes.

Aren't 10k users moderators?

No, they can do a lot, but not everything.

3:17 PM

Sure, but my point is that they can easily see what questions have been close-voted on, and throw in their vote, too.

Oh... 10k users only see moderator tools.

I agree, @RegDwight — it would really be useful.

The problem is to reach 10k, I guess.

Yeah, that's why I was so keen to get 10k before we'd go out of beta.

Not everybody can be like Robusto and get there in less than 2 months.

3:19 PM

I guess that depends on the savoir fair.

I slammed on the brakes so as not to get ahead of nohat, but he just wouldn't post, so I said, what the heck.

(I hope I wrote that correctly; I already had a debate about French words ;-).)

faire :)

Damn e! :-)

As an excuse, I can say it's not pronounced. ;-)

Oh, je ne regrettE rien!

if you're singing, all kinds of things suddenly get pronounced

Oh, je ne fairE rien.

3:23 PM

(good thing I don't sing that much)

Ah, damn, disregard that, it should be fais, not faire

how embarrassing

Je ne fais rien? I don't do anything?

Yeah. Actually, I don't do nothing. (^_^)

Yes, they pronounce extra syllables to conform to textsetting constraints

(probably)

I think it's also a feature of certain dialects. At least that's what I figured from visiting various places in France.

3:26 PM

I didn't know there was a writers.exchange.com.

That is true — in Toulouse they also just do it in speech

But all speakers can use that option in music, if they want

@kiamlaluno: just visit my user profile, click on "accounts", and you'll be surprised to learn how many StackExchanges are out there.

I have already troubles to adapt to the American pronunciation; if I try to understand the French pronunciation, I am done. :-)

(^_^)/

I didn't know about writers.SE either actually until now.

3:28 PM

@kiamlaluno: Ever tried Russian? Everything is a schwa, except when it ain't.

It makes these writing questions even more off-topic, because there is a specific place to deal with it.

@Kosmonaut: I have commented to that extent on that question.

So, I think I'm going to go ahead and close those guys down.

(My friend schwa.)

Beat them up!

@kosmonaut: fair enough. Moi, je have close-voted.

3:31 PM

I voted to close them too.

Okay, they have been closed down.

Thanks. Now back to those other questions I was talking about, should I just flag them for mod attention in the future? I don't want to be a nuisance.

Flagging a question with an explanation is usually very helpful.

Okay. It's just that when I go to the Close tab in the 10k tools and click on "30d", I see 4 questions that have 3 close-votes each. This happens quite often, and it sometimes leaves me wondering whether the mods are presented with different stats than me or, dare I say it, just don't check that tab too often. (^_^)

3:46 PM

Hm! Actually, I usually visit the "Mod" section

(I usually don't have any options ;-) )

I'm not familiar with that one, obviously.

To be honest, I didn't realize or had forgotten this existed.

Just for curiosity: what is the difference between to be 10K users, and diamond users?

The diamond users can see all kinds of funky stuff, such as whose votes come from whom, and who surfs from which IP. This helps them identify sock-puppets.

3:50 PM

We see questions, answers, and comments that have been flagged, also.

This is interesting. :-) Thank you.

And we can annotate user's accounts to say "this person seems to be causing trouble" or whatever.

Well, I can see the flags, too.

Yeah, right, mods can suspend users.

Yes

We can delete stuff completely

Uhmmm... annotation. I could make a Drupal module for that. :-)

3:52 PM

We can edit anybody's comments (don't know if you can do that)

Stack Overflow Blog: A Day in the Penalty Box

Posted by Jeff Atwood on April 6th, 2009

Are you familiar with the Penalty Box?

The penalty box (sometimes called the sin bin, bad box, or bin) is the area in ice hockey, rugby football and some other sports where a player sits to serve the time of a given penalty, for an offense not severe enough to merit outright expulsion from the contest. Teams are generally not allowed to replace players who have been sent to the penalty box.

It’s not something we looked forward to, but as of tonight, we’re instituting a penalty box on Stack Overflow. …

No, I can't edit comments.

Also, while I do see the flags, I don't see those cool stats you have, the flag score for each user.

I can also see who has gotten upvotes from whom, for people who have voted up/down anyone more than 5 times

If I am not mistaken, so far we've had only one user suspended for a week. Obviously, I won't point fingers, but I am wondering what triggered that. There were a number of possible reasons.

To see if anyone has a specific vendetta against someone else.

I only know of one suspension, and let me just say it seemed warranted.

@RegDwight: Do you mean on EL&U?

3:57 PM

No arguing about that.

Yes, here on this site.

(I wonder if somebody was used to down-vote my answers :-).)

Anyhow, guys, my wife's outta house for an Irish Dance competition, so I gotta make use of that time and go watch Dexter.

Catch you later.

Haha, okay. Have fun

Catch the rabbit. ;-)

If I had noticed any obvious abuse of the site against you, @kiamlaluno, I would have dealt with it.

4:02 PM

I am sure you would have done it. I am not that important to have somebody who down votes all my answers, though. ;-)

It's more probable to think somebody is down voting you than that to really happen.

The system will stop someone from going through and downvoting every answer from a certain person.

If it is too high, it fixes that automatically.

As I understand it.

I think it does the same for up votes, if they are done to the same user in a restricted delay of time.

I am not sure it can do anything for votes that are done from a user and his friends.

I think so too.

3 hours later…

7:02 PM

This is another question that probably will be closed: english.stackexchange.com/questions/10482/….

2 hours later…

8:51 PM

Hello. Can you read my question and answer it? (please read last comment on last answer):

2

Q: use "pro" before noun

Hello. First, Is "pro" abbreviated form of "professional"? If yes, So that phrase has a meaning?: "Pro American" (=Professional American). Thanks ... (I know my questions are very very basic, but I should ask them)

"Pro-American" means something very different from "Professional American".

Pro-American = I have a good opinion about Americans; I support America

So don't use "Pro-American" or "Pro American" if you are talking about "Professional American".

9:44 PM

@Kosmonaut: Just a quick note. I see that you have deleted at least one of the two answers I have recently flagged as "not a real answer" (can't find the second one right now). If I am not awfully mistaken, there must be a (recently added) feature to convert such answers into comments, and I think that both of those "answers" would have some merit to them when converted into comments rather than deleted completely.

Too bad I can't comment to that extent when flagging.

10:00 PM

21

A: Should moderators be able to convert answers into comments?

This is now implemented, moderators can convert posts to comments. They can also choose to retain the comments on the posts. If you think something should be a comment please flag it. NOTE this feature is designed to salvage "good" information from non-answers. It is not meant to be used to co...

10:38 PM

Found the second one. It's now upvoted thrice. Fair enough.

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