Apparently, questions which actually ask about aspects of the English Language which might be interesting to linguists, etymologists or serious language enthusiasts are now banned on EL&U. Single word-request junkies who have the disinclination for such questions to appear on EL&U have started sending such questions to the English Language Learners site so as to be able to rid EL&U of such questions. Here is the latest example:
- “The carrots need being chopped” and “The carrots need to chop”“The carrots need being chopped” and “The carrots need to chop”
Do we need some mechanism to be able to stop this kind of behaviour from happening?
I can think of one method that might work. Certain types of question, for example grammar, syntax, phonetics and etymology questions – that may often be answered by linguistics professors or real language enthusiasts – should be protectable by users who have sufficient reputation in relation to that tag, or related tags in order to stop them being closed by careless users.
[I also feel that people whose primary tag is for SWRs shouldn't be able to close-vote questions which don't have a SWR tag, but that's another question]