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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What process is required to get the Help Center text changed?
Recently, I voted to close this question Can anybody understand what she's saying? (it was subsequently deleted by the original poster) based on the answers to this Meta question: Exactly WHY is this ...
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How did I earn "Edit community wikis" privilege
I just noticed that I was recently (yesterday) given the "Edit community wikis" privilege.
The description about the "Edit community wikis" privilege says that the privilege is given when the user ...
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Reopen request - Have/Did you ever xxx? during a specified past timeframe
Have you ever been/Did you ever go to opera when you lived in Milan? was closed as a duplicate of How do the tenses and aspects in English correspond temporally to one another?
I think the closed ...
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What kind of questions do you want?
I have noticed the influx of ELL type questions. [And the ELL, barely English answers - but that is a different meta]
I see a lot of questions where it is obvious that the writer has little grasp of ...
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Upcoming journal editions: read 'em and ask on the Stack (and get prizes)
As the new monthly issues of your favorite journals are published, we want to remind you to ask those burning questions that pop into your head as you read through novel approaches, methods and ...
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Tag review: [meaning-in-context]
meaning-in-context has roughly 250 questions. Some of these questions are good; some not as good. Today I saw a question I thought was skirting the danger line and noticed it only had the tag meaning-...
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Is not liking the answer given for an existing question a reason enough to ask a duplicate/similar question?
Past tense of RSVP
Past participle of a verb created from an acronym
The OP of the first question declares he asked a different question because he didn't like the accepted answer given in the other ...
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What does recent research tell us about how English sounded in Shakespeare's time?
I am interested in finding a present-day pronunciation that I could point to as close to that which was spoken in Shakespeare's era, much as if I were directing one of Shakespeare's plays and were ...
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How to avoid a second ban on English Stack Exchange?
A while back, I was blocked from asking questions on the English Stack Exchange, which struck me by surprise. Having never been banned from a site on the Internet before, this was new to me. On the ...
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Is the fact that a question is a duplicate a good reason to downvote?
When I first came across this question, it was closed only temporarily and I assumed that it was not a duplicate (otherwise it would have been closed as one). So I went on and did my research and ...
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How can I edit this question and start the reopening process to make additional answers possible?
dog-leg, dogleg, or dog leg? has one well-received and currently accepted answer but was quickly closed for lack of research. It was only my second question here, over three years ago now.
I'd ...
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Off-putting comments to new users
I don't want this to be seen as a personal criticism of the relevant commenter, since I'm often guilty of the same "careless" behaviour myself. But I think there's something not quite right about how ...
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2019: 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, ...
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Is there a database containing a list of once common, but now archaic words?
Is there a database containing words that were not only once common but also now archaic?
I would like to have a list of, say the 100 statistically most frequently used words in 17th, 18th and 19th ...
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Reminder: 10K tools on anonymous post feedback
This post is part of the hidden-feature series started by Mari-Lou A. These posts highlight features of this site that not everyone may know about but can certainly help get an insight into our ...
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Why is my question closed as "unclear"?
What's the correct word to refer to a believer of scientism?
I don't understand what's unclear with this question.
The comment says:
Wait... what is scientism exactly? It sounds like a very ...
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Is EL&U experiencing diminishing returns of question quality?
I think it'd be interesting to statistically find this out. One could take samples from every year of EL&U and compare the amount of average upvoted and downvoted questions to get a more concrete ...
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One year suspension for a new contributor to "cool down"?
EDIT December 20, 2019
I decided to undelete the question because users, old and new, had better be aware of the suspension penalties.
A new contributor was recently suspended for twelve months ...
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Determiner question
The question below seems to be very simple at first glance and swifty got closed:
Are articles pronouns?
However, the answer is not as clear as it seems at first glance. For those of us well ...
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Should we have [that] tag?
There's 10 questions with that. It lacks a tag wiki. Is it a useful tag?
1. Does it describe the contents of the questions to which it is applied? and is it unambiguous?
Sometimes it's being used ...
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Why was my post migrated to ELL?
The post: Is this a complete sentence?: "The man is looking."
No reason was given for the migration which was apparently decided by 5 people, all with the same primary interest (single-word-...
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Reference Request: Analysis of "If you have questions, I'll be available after class"
I am looking for resources analyzing the phrase "if you have questions, I'll be available after class." Although this is structured like a conditional, and will sometimes be said with a "then" after ...
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Resource request on use of comma
May I request (I think I may?) an exhaustive resource on the use of commas in the English language, for someone whose first language is English. A book resource would be fine, especially if it covers ...
user99677
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Is advice for standardized test allow in the context of writing english?
To give a concrete example, I was preparing for the writing task for the GRE which has an issue and argument essay. I was confused about the difference and other details about the instructions and ...
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Neither questions, nor answers
I just read a sentence that used nor in a way that I found strange (i.e. it seems ungrammatical to me), so I wanted to ask a question about it. Dutifully, I searched if such a question had been asked ...
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I've flagged to remove a warning template, and haven't received a response. Should I panic?
This answer was posted on July 15, received a warning template on July 19, was edited on July 20, and I flagged it to have the warning template removed on the same day, and haven't (as of July 28) ...
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Academically sound resources about "The Dane Wall"
I am looking for academically-sound, accessible online resources about the influence of Old Danish on Old English in a region somewhere between northern and southern England. It was referred to as "...
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Auto review comments can save you time
There is an extension available for Google Chrome called AutoReviewComments, which can save you time if you frequent the review queues, or guide new users with your comments, and I've been using it ...
NVZMod
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Plurality of [part-of-speech] tag
OK, firstly I apologise for being a bit pedantic. But I am wondering whether there is a particular reason why part-of-speech is not plural (i.e. parts-of-speech). I only bring this up because it would ...
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'Duped' again...is that a "real word"?
My question, titled what does the phrase "a real word" mean?, from Sept 2015 has been closed as a duplicate of What are the criteria to adopt new words into English?, from Feb 2011.
Aside from the ...
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Let's change the canonical question about forming possessives for words which end in 'z' [Completed]
I voted to close the question https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/362525/when-a-name-ends-in-z as a duplicate of Possessive form for a surname ending with "z" (Q1).
Unfortunately, ...
user140086
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Can we reopen this question please? [Now re-CLOSED]
Edit note 2:
The patient and long-suffering OP has now re-asked aspects of this question in three separate posts. So, there's now probably no harm in leaving this one closed.
This useful question on ...
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Historical lock instead of closure for high view questions
Today I found this question in my review queue for a close vote. It's mostly my fault because I edited a previously burninated tag out and bumped it to the front page by doing so. Naturally, another ...
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Burninate tags [request] and [polite-request]
Both those tags were exclusively attached to questions with either another something-request tag or the politeness tag. I re-tagged those. Now I move to make them total ashes. Let's burninate them.
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2016 Community Moderator Election
The 2016 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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Synonymize and merge the tags [be] and [to-be]
Can we merge and synonymize the tags be and to-be?
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Resources to help with answers to regional difference type questions
Here are three recent question examples, including one asked by me:
What do you call the space where you park a car? Parking spot, space, bay or what?
This baby-walking device is called a ([prefix]-)[...
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Clarification on tag usage
I'm new to the community and not sure of accepted standards yet, but I'd like to help and not make a nuisance of myself.
I made an edit suggestion to add the Hiberno-English tag to this post, but it ...
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Is this question sufficiently improved to be undeleted?
I'm interested in reviving my question Meaning of phrase "Early/late in the piece". It was closed and then automatically deleted. I've tried to edit it to improve it. Is this question any good now, or ...
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Should questions about the meaning of metaphors be on-topic?
A large number of questions on ELL are asking for the meaning of metaphors. Many are from song lyrics or poetry, about which there are a number of meta questions. Some are from literature, most ...
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Why was my post deemed off-topic?
Hypernym for "to increase" and "to decrease"
It is on topic, I'm guessing someone saw I was asking about a video game and instantly closed it. It's about English if you actually ...
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Should Google be considered as the ultimate resource for checking sentences?
As I did before and based on the suggestions, I do google to find matches for the sentences/phrases I'm doubtful about. Some times, although sentences seem to be correct, there are no (or few) matches ...
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Examples of "Great subjective questions"
From EL&U Helpcenter about asking:
Some subjective questions are allowed, but “subjective” does not mean “anything goes”. All subjective questions are expected to be constructive. What does ...
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Are there just as many questions posted on ELL that should be on ELU?
I asked a question about changing the site name. So I am also wondering if there are questions on ELL that are really ELU questions - or as many compared to the ELL questions that appear on ELU. I ...
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A new badge? Acceptable?
When I was going through the list of badges, I felt there may be a badge which will be awarded when a user has 250 (or more, whatever seems appropriate) of his answers accepted; it may be a hard-to-...
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policy on 'tangential' answers
Referring to this answer as an example: https://english.stackexchange.com/a/119687/47377
While the answer isn't strictly relevant, the user has obviously put some effort into researching it. On the ...
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Comment deletion notifications
I see that all the comments I made to the questions referenced in Wordreference cross-posting have been deleted. Can I somehow be notified when my comments are deleted?
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How are these two question different to warrant a downvote in one and upvote in another?
What verb could I use to mean "make less anxious"?
Specific verb for "training an apprentice"?
I posted the first question and then I got downvoted 2 times because it is "a ...
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On Migrating and Dispatching: redirecting off-topic question from and to EL&U.
Following the recent complaints concerning the growth of the Stack Exchange Family and where to ask questions, I think it would make sense to help the users and moderators to find the right place for ...
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Is there any way I can embed a small piece of recording on ELU?
I want to know whether there are any ways I can embed recording on this site? I have a little piece of recording and I've listened many times but still can't clearly understand what the man is saying. ...
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