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One of the possible roles that EL&U could fulfill is to provide a place where questions of language correctness for user interface on all stackexchange sites are addressed. I think it would be a useful way to give back to the community.

For example, the following question could be asked.

In the text

The English Language and Usage Stack Exchange is for linguists, etymologists, and (serious) English language enthusiasts.

is the comma before "and" breaking the punctuation rules?

Are questions like this appropriate for the main site?

(The example is just that, an example of the question; there is no need to explain the serial comma issue.)

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  • The use of English in the UI of SE sites is on topic, much as this and other aspects of the SE UI are on topic on User Experience.
    – TRiG
    Nov 18, 2013 at 0:17

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The question should be posted as an ordinary question on the main site. For example, rather than asking about the user interface, the question on the main site should be about the serial comma.

The issue of whether to change the user interface should then be raised on meta separately. There are two steps here, and we need to take the first before the second, as with all things in life.

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  • Are you saying that the question on the main site should or must be sanitized (generalized and all reference to so/SE should be removed) before posting it there? If so, why? I like the idea of parts of SE helping to improve SE transparently, not obscurely.
    – Unreason
    Nov 24, 2011 at 10:17
  • But, you would still keep the word 'rather' in your answer? I don't get why you needed to emphasize this point. (I don't get also why you think that everything in life needs to happen in specific order and/or that we know what that order is; you assume that you need to do two things, one of which goes before the other, then you later use this as an argument; this, if I am not mistaken, is called begging the question or petitio principii and you might want to try to minimize that as it is a logical fallacy.)
    – Unreason
    Nov 24, 2011 at 10:42
  • Apologies, I though you were seriously answering.
    – Unreason
    Nov 24, 2011 at 10:57

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