Questions tagged [discussion]
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
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questions with no upvoted or accepted answers
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My first experience with trying to get a question reopened after it was put on hold
...was with the question What is the origin of the word "Blackmail"?. It was asked by a user who appeared to be new to EL&U and who framed it as a simple etymological question—one that a ...
- 162k
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Measuring typographical emphasis: the “lawler” and “lawler weight”
RegDwighт said: @Robusto wow, that's formatting to the max. Bold and italics and monospaced and in quotes. John has outlawlered himself.¹
It occurs to me that this is something we can measure.
I ...
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John Lawler's ELU answer links, by topic
This is more of an announcement than a question. But it's intended for Meta.
For a class I'm giving, I've recently made up links to my answers here,
on various grammatical topics. This list is on my ...
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Why isn’t “Please help” on our titular stoplist?
We just got in rapid succession these two soi-disant “questions” over on main:
Please help to interpret
Please help me with this sentence
Strictly speaking as questions go, those are imperatives not ...
tchristMod
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"ELU updated site theme is ready for testing" is ready for voting, but still not visible
"ELU updated site theme is ready for testing"
has been vigorously voted on. It turns out that currently it is
25 down and 10 upvotes.
34 down and 13 upvotes.
At a net of -21 votes, it is ...
- 70.9k
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Thank you, Professor Lawler and Rest in Peace!
I am saddened to announce the passing of John Lawler on Saturday November 25. Many of us here were friends with him, and countless more helped by his answers. For those of you who aren't familiar with ...
LaurelMod
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I'm sometimes unsure about whether to answer a simple grammatical question or to suggest that it is more appropriate for ELL. What are the criteria?
[Before asking this question here on Meta, I did search for duplicates. There are similar questions, but I found no exact duplicates. If they do exist, please direct me to them, and I will delete this ...
- 3,315
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Too many questions that qualify for "Please include the research you’ve done"
I feel that this has been discussed before, and that this problem is never going to go away.
I've been going through the review queues since a recent Meta.ELU post about too many questions needing ...
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EL&U's top bar stopped being elegant in 2013
This is how the top bar appears in October 2017 on my desktop. I like the search box, it's larger and it is clear. But it's off-center, it's like a picture frame that's askew, I want to align the ...
- 90.3k
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About Reference Questions
It seems that we must once again clarify what questions should and should not be closed with the close reason:
Questions that can be answered using commonly-available references are off-topic. A ...
- 14.5k
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Who is this spammer and is this really spam?
I have recently come across quite a number of questions that have been closed by one of our higher rep users as SPAM. This is the latest one which is undergoing an edit war as I write.
The posts in ...
- 21.4k
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Request for undeletion and reopening of a question on the main site: "Retriable or retryable?"
A poster asked the question Retriable or retryable? on February 9, 2016. It was closed for lack of research on February 15 of that year. On November 9, site participant sumelic edited the question to ...
- 162k
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It’s September again
Eternal September doesn’t end, but does wax and wane with the school season. It’s waxing again.
Be prepared to spot and quickly VtC unvarnished orders to do others’ homework.
Also please downvote, ...
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when is "primarily opinion based" a valid answer, and not a reason to close?
Possible duplicate of What the "primarily opinion-based" close reason is for.
I think there's a litmus test here that is misapplied.
As an example, Capitalizing Stages of Diseases is ...
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Should this question be closed?
I found no reason why this question is closed. This question asks whether a given phrase is the right usage for expressing a particular action. It is a particular doubt that may arise in a non-native ...
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This question doesn't have an answer here
This question was recently closed as duplicate and linked to another question:
Using "is" versus "are" in a relative clause
However by the time it was closed it had generated a ...
- 45.1k
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Let's get rid of the "correction" tag
Is there any value in the tag correction? Currently 87 questions are infected with that hideous tag.
Since unspecified proofreading is off-topic I don't think this should be used as tag anywhere. We ...
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Why is my question about the stress of "uroboros" a duplicate of the one about the stress of "stigmata"?
Sorry to make a post about "why my question was closed," but I'm having a hard time understanding it.
The question about "uroboros" asks about two things: descriptive information about the history ...
- 80.4k
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Informing people about lyrics interpretation in help center
A lot of new users ask questions regarding lyrics interpretation.
I was going through the What topics can I ask about here? page in the help center, and noticed that lyrics interpretation is not ...
- 21k
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Different users' edits are amalgamated
Revision 3 of https://english.stackexchange.com/posts/83629/revisions is attributed to me.
I edited the question to remove the code formatting and present the quote correctly, and did only that. A ...
Andrew LeachMod
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2012 Community Moderator Election Results
English Language & Usage's second moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the two new moderators are:
They'll be joining the existing crew shortly — please ...
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By "gosh", the etymological hydra's immortal head unburied
Revisiting the "Request to reopen “Literal Meaning of 'Gosh'", I observe that a few minutes of dedicated research for that question ("Literal Meaning of 'Gosh'") antedated the earliest OED attestation ...
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Reopen request following addition of research results
The question The origin of "knickers in a knot" and "knickers in a twist" was closed for lack of research. I have added a paragraph to the question pointing out that in a reputable ...
- 162k
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What is our current position on these issues?
I’ve been noticing an increase in answers that, essentially, consist of nothing but a suggestion or bald assertion and that are often lacking any apparent effort to even format, punctuate, or spell ...
user98990
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2018: a year in moderation
It's New Year's Day in Stack Exchange land...
A distinguishing characteristic of these sites is how they are moderated:
We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in ...
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Update the "list of community recommended resources"
Quoting from the help center:
Where can I find answers to simple and basic questions?
If your question is simple and can probably be easily answered by
looking it up, then you may find common online ...
- 196
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List of most useful NLP resources and tools
We already have lists of general-reference resources, one on meta and a larger one on main. For the most part, these are things like dictionaries and thesauri, not actual tools related to natural ...
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Google Ngrams, an object lesson
This is just a fun factoid to entertain you.
By now you should know not to put too much stock in Google Ngrams result graphs, and insist on a deep dive into the individual results. I thought I'd ...
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EL&U Glossaries
Would it be useful for us to have two EL&U Glossaries on the site.
The first could be for SE and EL&U specific abbreviations and acronyms, including ones that just happen to crop up a lot ...
- 45.1k
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Etiquette on flagging as a duplicate without an "accepted" answer
Got a quick question about flagging questions as duplicates; I've already established that ideally it should be identical or very similar to a question previously asked, but the window where you ...
- 6,791
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Reopen request: What is the origin of “ex”?
Can you please reopen:
What is the origin of "ex"?
The reason for closing it was the following:
"Please include the research you've done, or consider if your question suits our English ...
- 62.6k
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2014 Community Moderator Election
The 2014 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:
Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase
Most elections take between two and three weeks,...
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Hell is hot, but is it funny?
On August 27 of last year, a poster on the main site asked "What does the idiom “funny as hell” mean?" Four days later, the question was closed for a familiar reason:
Please include the research ...
- 162k
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Why were comments locked on my post?
I recently asked a question, and after a while that post was locked and comments were disabled. Why did that happen with that question? The message said:
Locked for 22 hours. Comments on this ...
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Tag synonym request: [computer] → [computing]
I would like to propose synonymizing computer (25 questions) with computing (164 questions).
computing
Questions about computers, programming and IT.
- 540
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Has there been a recent plague of exact duplicate (copied) answers on EL&U?
In the past two days I've come across two instances of exact duplicate answers that unregistered 1-rep users evidently copied from existing answers and posted as new answers.
The two examples I've ...
- 162k
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Shouldn't this site have an open question about the meaning of "the pot calling the kettle black"?
I think so—and it just so happens that we have a candidate that was asked in September 2013: The meaning of the American idiom "pot calling the kettle black". Unfortunately, because the ...
- 162k
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Missing off-topic flagging options
When flagging a post for being off-topic, the following options are given:
Questions that can be answered using commonly-available references are off-topic. A list of these references can be found ...
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2021: a year in moderation
As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange ...
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Is there a need of the "the-that" tag?
There are 11 questions using the-that, without tag wiki, including the following ones:
When to use "That" instead of "The"?
When can one omit "that" from a sentence?
...
- 58.9k
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We should have a better dupe target for questions about pronoun order
We receive a large number of questions about the proper use of pronouns, which in turn means that many of these questions are closed as duplicates.
These aren't all duplicates of one another, though: ...
- 80.4k
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Is there evidence of concrete Meta contribution to the rules that govern ELU?
This is a nice place for giving vent to our frustrations, to express our best thoughts on how to improve the site and to suggest the improvements we would sincerely like to see implemented to make ...
user66974
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Can we switch to a better canonical question about using pronouns in compound possessives?
We get a lot of questions about coordinating pronouns with nouns for joint possession, along the lines of "my wife's and my dinner," most recently: "you," "your" or "yours&...
- 80.4k
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New blog post! "Writing Good ‘Meaning’ Questions"
Our very own Mahnax has christened the relaunch of the blog with a great post on how to ask meaning questions — a topic that sorely needed expounding on.
On any Stack Exchange site, a question must ...
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Why are tag synonyms so hard to suggest and vote for?
I haven't paid much attention to tag synonyms before, but today I notice there's one question tagged blend-words, and three tagged portmanteau-words.
I thought I'd do something useful and propose ...
- 140k
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Stack Exchange Fellowship Program: Looking for volunteers to review proposals
Stack Exchange will be introducing a Fellowship Program awarding grants to students conducting independent research projects. Undergraduate Honors Theses, Independent Study Projects, Masters Theses, ...
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Is there a place on this site where users can express their admiration and gratitude for this site?
I am truly impressed with this site. It encourages so many good things as positive curiosity, research, mutual help, voluntary service, elegance and nobility, but also honesty. I am grateful for what ...
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Would it be appropriate to reopen the "'Home page' or 'homepage'" question from seven years ago?
The question "Home page" or "homepage"? was closed seven years ago on the following grounds:
This question is too basic; it can be definitively and permanently answered by a ...
- 162k
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Dealing with obstinacy of commenters
Is there a procedure for alerting moderators (without whining) when a commenter appears to be singularly obstinate and disagreeable? I'm thinking, for example, of when a commenter keeps insisting that ...
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Would you support systematic testing of proposed quality improvement methods?
TL;DR: Shall we support systematic A/B (and similar) testing of QI (Quality Improvement) proposals, or would advocating for such research simply lead to frustration, i.e., would it be an exercise in ...
