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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Against single word requests
We've discussed single-word-requests before:
Are single word requests always welcomed questions?
Are word requests allowed?
The consensus of earlier discussions was that these questions are on the ...
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What is the difference between ELU and ELL?
Someone has suggested that a question of mine should be migrated to the ELL site.
Why are there two Q&A sites for the English language?
What can I ask on each site?
Note: ELU refers to English ...
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What questions are on-topic and off-topic here?
One of the essential components of the FAQ will be the list of on-topic and off-topic subjects for questions.
Let’s use this question to vote on what topics should be on and off topic.
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Single word requests, crosswords, and the fight against mediocrity
A call to action
This topic has been brought up here numerous times before, most recently by JSBangs:
I'm now of the opinion that single word requests should be either disallowed entirely or subject ...
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Why are answers being posted in the comments on the question?
For example: Etymology of "to coin a phrase"
I have seen this several times on this site, and it seems to be a departure from how things are done on other sites in the SE network and how ...
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Google is not General Reference
The description for the "General Reference" close reason states,
This question is too basic; it can be definitively and permanently
answered by a single link to a standard internet reference ...
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List of common abbreviations and acronyms (NOAD, ESL, PIE...)
Abbreviations are always a potential source of confusion. Some people might happen to know what OED stands for, and can figure out what NOAD must mean, but others may not be so lucky. Googling for PIE ...
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Basic questions are not so basic
It has come up in other threads that we have a lot of "basic" or "lowest common denominator" questions. However, a few myths about this need to be put to rest.
First, we do have a general reference ...
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What emphasis to use when referring to words?
Let's say I'm asking a question about the word "cheese". Which of the following should I use? I see various versions being used all over, and it'd be nice to have something consistent.
Does the word '...
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Where can I ask for free proofreading?
I know that proofreading is prohibited in this site. However, I'd like to ask if there are free online websites to do that.
I remember once there was a website where I can help people in Spanish/...
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A friendly reminder: ELL is not EL&U's trash can
We've been getting a lot of migrations to ELL lately. That's actually fine by me – I think a lot of them are okay on ELL, even if they're not suitable for EL&U. The two sites have different ...
user28567
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This is not a site for "serious English language enthusiasts," and it never will be
I think it's time that we addressed the conceit that ELU is a site for "linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts." Its framers and many of its devotees intend for it to be ...
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Word for disrespecting eldest half-sister by referring to her husband as girly-girl-manly-boy though he's amused but the rest of the family isn't?
Are these single word requests getting out of hand, or am I just still too new to this site to recognize a long-standing problem and standard ways of dealing with them?
I thought that by using ...
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Answers in comments
There are quite a large number of Meta.ELU questions about answers in comments, but none which definitively settles community opinion, mainly because they are rather old now, but also because they don'...
Andrew LeachMod
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Bring back the Summer of Love (aka Make new users feel more welcome)
I'm a big fan of SE sites and spend an awful lot of time on StackOverflow. When I saw an English Language site, I pointed a few of my friends and family this way (one of whom is an English professor ...
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English Language & Usage's updated site theme is ready for testing!
As part of implementing the new unified themes across the network, we're gradually rolling out updated site themes for each site. As of today, we have enabled your updated site theme for testing.
If ...
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Has anyone thought about changing the name of this site?
Wouldn't "Advanced English Language & Usage" be more appropriate and cut down the ELL questions?
Just by the name of the site the users who post "ELL" are right. I believe this site poorly named....
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"New attribution rules"
User oerkelens edited one of my answers, with the comment "Saved good answer from potential deletion on sight under the new attribution rules".
I had not heard of any new attribution rules, and went ...
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Referencing the existence of words that may be offensive
I left a comment on this answer in which I made a reference to a word that many people find offensive (although I didn’t use or even mention the word itself). I referenced the word because it was an ...
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On deleting low quality single-word-request answers
This morning, I and my fellow moderators are faced with a quandary. Once again, we have a pile of disputed low quality flags in our queue, the majority of which are for answers to single-word-requests....
Kit Z. FoxMod
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Is Python a snake or a programming language? If the latter, why is it choking my dog?
We've been getting a rash of questions asking, essentially, what a programmer should name methods or properties. One such was a request for a word that meant both "add" and "remove" because the ...
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Why are most new questions being downvoted?
I was scrolling through the list of newest asked questions and noticed that only 3 out of 15 had non-negative votes for the question. Is this just an anomaly or is the quality of the average question ...
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Should we encourage posting distinct answers separately? (Particularly for [single-word-requests])
In a comment on this [single-word-request] answer, the question was raised:
I'm … adding all my ideas to one answer. Is that the right way? Rather than generating many answers and letting each one ...
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How to deal with homework questions
What is the community's stance on people asking homework questions on the site?
There was a recent question that got me thinking about the issue; this question seems like a blatant copy & paste ...
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Etiquette on duplicate questions
Sometimes we may miss a previous post that contains the answer to one of our questions or even miss an identical previous question. Do you recommend:
Deleting the question (what would happen to ...
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Should we have a migration path to ELL?
I know that this has been discussed before but, at the time, it was not possible since ELL was still in beta. Now that it has graduated and has had its first mod elections and everything, it might be ...
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Is EL&U becoming ESL?
Maybe it's just me, but I get the feeling we are seeing an increasing number of English language learner questions.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but is it what we really want? Aren't we going ...
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Can anything be done about mean-spirited requests for terminology?
tl;dr: Mean people suck, and we should not help them.
EDIT: I don’t actually believe anything mechanical can be done here, and I certainly don’t expect a “closed due to meanness” reason. That’s just ...
tchristMod
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Why is it not mandatory to provide comments on a down-vote?
At present, users wanting to be courteous leave comments after down-voting a response, but there is nothing that requires a user to do this.
I don't much care about the lose of rep. or the down-vote ...
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Do we really need to add "NSFW" in question titles?
Two recent questions contain NSFW in the title. Do we really need to do this?
I think the title should be enough to understand if one should read the question when being in a specific place. We had ...
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What should we do about question titles containing vulgar words?
After "What is the difference between 'tits' and 'boobs'?" being censored, it's the turn of "What does 'suck it up ho' means?" to be sanitized. I think we need to come to a consensus.
So, what should ...
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What the "primarily opinion-based" close reason is for
(tl;dr version: "Primarily opinion-based" is designed to stop "What's the best X?"-type questions. It's not supposed to be used on every single question that involves opinions.)
Until last year, one ...
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“What’s wrong with single word requests?”
In the proposal to merge ELU and ELL, the asker in passing mentioned:
On the other hand, many native speakers actually ask questions such as single word requests which should not be the focus of ELU ...
tchristMod
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Common accepted online resources [duplicate]
What would be well-known, and in a certain measure reliable, online resources that should be checked before asking a question, or that could help with answering questions?
I've got a few listed that ...
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Can I ask the community to help me find errors in a text/sentence?
Basically my question is related to the following question:
Should we correct (or point out) language errors in questions?
English is not my mother tongue and mostly i make mistakes in writing which ...
itsaboutcode
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Why are my comments deleted?
Hello,
Congratulations -- you are one of the top new English Language and
Usage - Stack Exchange users for the week of Aug 6 2012!
http://stackexchange.com/leagues/week/english/2012-08-06
...
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Does a question which shows no research, no effort deserve a downvote?
Does a question which shows no research, no effort deserve a downvote?
If the answer is yes, I would like to know the reason behind it.
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How to guarantee getting downvotes without explanation
There has been significant interest in this topic, as shown by the number of related questions. Since new users come along regularly (such as myself), I don't think it's useless to review the downvote....
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General Reference = general clairvoyance?
This question asked what you call those words that sound like the sound they make. It was closed as general reference. Really!? How the hell is the guy supposed to look up the answer when he doesn't ...
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A look at question quality
Table of Contents
This is a really, really, long post. And yes, I hate to create another post on our current "quality" situation, but this post is seriously long to the point where I don't want to ...
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What can we do to make this site more "intimidating"?
EL&U questions are spiraling out of control, and we get so many of them every day!
People are always asking about comma placement, whether it's who-or-whom, where the apostrophe goes with a name ...
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Do we need to write the better questions ourselves?
In the ELL-Post-Apocalypse chatroom, KitFox made a very interesting observation (gently edited here for dramatic impact):
We have gotten diluted with basic questions because basic questions fill our ...
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Are questions about ununderstood English-language jokes on-topic?
In a song video made by an American acquaintance, there is a joke that I don't understand.
I am not a native speaker, and I guess most English speakers would understand what makes his joke funny.
Is ...
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Is EL&U succeeding?
What with all of the hubbub lately, I want to focus on asking one specific question that I think is at the core of the problem/drama: Is EL&U succeeding?
This is fairly open-ended and I think ...
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Extraordinary spike in low-quality questions by 1 rep users
I can't keep up with them, the brand new users who have 1 rep. There's too many, they're swarming the site and often their questions consist of one or two lines with no context. All the following ...
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Are interpretations of song lyrics, poems or other creative works on-topic?
Examples (feel free to edit in more):
What/who are “toy soldiers”?
What do these confusing lyrics mean?
What's the deep meaning in the lyrics of “Heavy Traffic” by Elton John?
Some questions about ...
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How should we handle single-word-requests that don't have a matching word? [duplicate]
I am digging through the old unanswered questions and periodically someone will be asking for a word that simply doesn't exist.
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How to handle old questions with answers stuck in a comment?
I am noticing a bunch of older questions stuck in the Unanswered queue that have an acceptable answer posted as a comment instead of an answer. For the first few I found I just copied the answer into ...
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Taking action on crowd sourced on-line resources based on SE answers
In a comment to What term can I use to express the delay between two connecting flights?, it is suggested that the entry for a description of a word in wiktionary be modified to be more in accordance ...
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Answering questions in comments
First, please know that I have read the duplicates to this question. But I still feel the need for guidance.
I've reached a point where I care little for gaining more points (it was fun at first). I ...
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