Questions tagged [on-topic-off-topic]
This tag is used for questions about whether something fits within the defined scope of this Stack Exchange site.
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What good reference works on English are available?
Questions that can be answered using commonly-available references are off-topic.
What good reference works on English are available, and what kinds of questions are they good at answering?
General ...
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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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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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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 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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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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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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Jaded user meets new contributor…
The jaded user is myself. The new contributor is (was) Replica Foxtrot who posted this question
What does the phrase 'Putting the Spring' mean?
I am reading the book about the Simpsons and I ...
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Are minor jokes in answers and questions OK when they are slightly discriminating against certain groups?
Consider this answer:
What is the pejorative for people who only practice their faith while at the place of worship?
Whited sepulchres. This is what they
are called in that noted work of
...
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Please help define the limits of General Reference
As mentioned here, the General Reference close reason is dead. In its place, I've added a custom "off-topic" option:
Questions that can be answered using commonly-available references are ...
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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 ...
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Do questions about emoticons belong on ELU?
A question was published recently in which the OP asked about the proper style for usage of emoji, which as it turned out I guess he meant emoticons since he was talking about using punctuation marks.
...
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Continued recommendations that things be moved to ELL
I've seen a number of questions (including one of mine) receive comments along the lines of "this would be a more appropriate question for the English Language Learners (ELL) site". While I understand ...
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Where do we stand on legalese questions?
Recently there have been a lot of questions about legalese. Here are a couple of examples:
What’s the difference between “cite” and “cite to”?
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/185890/what-...
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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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Are typography questions on-topic or off-topic?
Before adding a votable answer to the on-topic-off-topic question I figured some discussion would be appropriate.
Are typography questions on-topic or off-topic?
Why there's a difference between the ...
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Are questions about the use of italics in English off-topic?
Recently, this question was put on hold: Why is "their" italicized?
I'm wondering, why it is considered out of scope? If it's considered to be too close to "analysis of literature," that ...
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Are all questions about the reason a word is spelled/pronounced the way it is duplicates of one another?
As a hypothetical example, should we close Why are "put" and "but" different in their pronunciation? as a duplicate of Why is "chore" pronounced differently from the &...
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Should Scots language questions be considered in the English language community?
I stumbled across the question What is the meaning of “Many a mickle maks a muckle”? which is a question about a Scots language proverb. The thought occurred to me that although the Scots language is ...
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I am worried about being off-topic
Today is the second time I had an "English Language" question and visited this forum based on the result of a Google Internet search using a query such as:
"proper use of the word _______"
Both ...
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Exactly WHY is this question Off Topic? Or not?
My instinct is to assume Help me understand the pronounced phrase? must be Off Topic (it's about a movie clip where the OP can't discern what's being said at a certain point).
If it's On Topic, what'...
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Are requests for arbitrary lines from novels on-topic?
Am I the only one to be very disturbed by the re-opening of the 'What is the exact wordings for "There is a single stupid question in the world … " in Stephen King's "Under the Dome"?' question? ... '...
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What is the point of migrating all resource requests to Meta?
There are a couple of resource requests that were recently migrated to ELU Meta (e.g Is there an online speech comparison programme, What are some good and authoritative reference/data source for ...
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Can we come up with guidelines for "good" dictionary questions?
This subject came up in the town hall chat: how basic is too basic, and more importantly, how do we help users to write questions that are not too basic?
"Find in dictionary" questions
...
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Why is my alliteration question off topic and put on hold?
I have a question about my English Language & Usage Stack Exchange post: Is alliteration adjacent words and/or close together words starting with the same letter? If words between are permitted ...
user268533
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Is there anything we can do to get fewer off-topic questions?
Having read Josh61’s considerations about “Thanks for not laughing at my question”, I stopped to ponder. There are days, and I think you all agree, when only 10 to 20% of the questions we get deserve ...
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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 ...
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Would this question have been off-topic here?
I just posted a question about English etymology in Linguistics SE.
I was contemplating whether to post it here, but decided against it.
Could I have posted it here, or would it have been off-topic?
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Are these OED questions on-topic here?
One of our high rep users has recently asked several questions based around the OED's "public appeal for help in tracing the history of some English words."
Though EL&U is an appropriate site for ...
Kit Z. FoxMod
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Are there any topics that are off limits in answers/comments?
I've noticed lately that a lot of people are taking every opportunity they have to take a negative topic and reference the newest US President, Donald Trump.
Not that I'm trying to get people to stop ...
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What sort of resource request questions do we accept on meta?
We often migrate resource request questions to meta, and there's no denying that some resources are very useful to the users of this community.
Here's my attempt at broadly categorising these ...
NVZMod
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Is this site for "English as a second language"?
I'd like to seek clarification on "English as a second language" questions. E.g.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/376/ia-suffix-nouns-for-disorders-and-diseases
When should the word “...
delete
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Are questions of language *usage* discouraged
I was reading this question about usage of abbreviations and nicknames/abbreviations in a newspaper article, and noticed that the question earned a couple of downvotes, as well as two comments (to the ...
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Are word requests allowed?
Is it okay to use this site to ask for words that fit a given definition? Dictionaries are great for looking up definitions if you know the word you're looking up, but not the other way around. I'm ...
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How to save EL&U
I think one way to massively improve this site would be to start a new Stack Exchange site called something like English Phrase Finder or Word finder or something like that where single word requests, ...
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Poll: additional question types that should or shouldn't be added to help/on-topic
Today, I saw that Help Center/on-topic has this text:
Proofreading ("Is this right?", "Are there any mistakes?"), unless a specific source of concern is clearly specified. See below for hints on ...
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Please don't migrate "help me draw a syntax tree" questions
Recently, this question was migrated from EL&U to Linguistics.SE:
https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/27845/syntactic-trees
However, this type of question is expressly disallowed by ...
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What is the point of the Microsoft-Word tag?
I noticed recently that a question used the tag microsoft-word.
Since this question was about the usage of a specific program, it was moved to Super User to which it is much better suited. There ...
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Would "Is 'maiden name' now considered sexist" be off-topic? Can I ask if née replaces it in the same question?
In a comment I wrote
because of the inherent implications of "maiden", these days née is often used instead though it still caries a gender reference, e.g. Sunita Lyn Williams (née Pandya; ...
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Naming vs. Single word requests
It seems that naming is off-topic and single words requests are on-topic on this site.
How do I identify whether I'm asking a naming question or I have a single word request?
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Declaring a question about English usage "off-topic" in a forum named "English Language & Usage"
I was surprised to discover that @tchrist and others had declared this question about language usage off-topic. The "off-topic" flag description says:
This question does not appear to be about ...
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Posting questions from "How English Works" and proposing answers
I am studying English and one of my old friends recommended that I study "How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction" by Curzan and Adam
This book is an amazing book but the questions are not ...
user279810
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No communication regarding wrongly-closed question?
I asked the question "What word for "tomorrow can I use that is not connected with the idea of the rising sun?". It collected a bit of controversy (which was not my intent) and the question was put on ...
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Closing on-topic questions as duplicates of questions closed as off-topic
Regarding this question, I believe duping it to a question that was closed as off-topic is a bit disingenuous. I believe there was general consensus the question itself was on-topic. Is this really ...
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Are we here to do homework questions? [duplicate]
This question here:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/305999/reserved-or-ashamed
The 1 rep OP asks a clearly-a-homework-question.
I have a sentence:" As a(n) .... girl, she found it ...
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Questions asking for technical terms/jargon
I just flagged this question as (potentially) off-topic, and I have flagged other questions like this in the past, but I am not sure if I am right to do so.
It seems to me that the correct answer ...
Kit Z. FoxMod
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Are "Book recommendations" allowed?
I see some questions from time to time which ask about book recommendations. I could not find anything related to the book term on the faq page. Is it allowed or should it be allowed?
Some examples I ...
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To what extent is analyzing poetry or verse off-topic?
I've seen comments on a few posts indicating that song lyrics are off topic. I have no beef with that rule.
However, is asking for an analysis of specific lines or portions of poetry always off-topic ...
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If every answer is improper, doesn't that suggest standards are wrong or moderator is wrong?
I refer to this question (now on hold) and the moderator's repeated observation that the answers, and question, are opinion-based. Isn't the issue that synonyms (like translation questions) are going ...
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Would a question asking for English terms used to designate some aspects of the Spanish language be on topic here?
In a question in Spanish Language someone is asking what are the English terms used to designate the Spanish verb tenses. Some people (myself included) have closed the question as off-topic, because ...
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