Questions tagged [support]
You need help with the use of one or more of the site's features.
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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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answer
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How much research is needed?
Please advise or enlighten me if such guidance already exists.
For example, for this question, I sought to record my thoughts and opinions on how to gloss that sentence. Yet it was still closed as `...
user50720
11
votes
1
answer
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Do we have any general guidelines on flagging?
There are a number of Meta posts about flags, both here on Meta.ELU and on Meta.SE.
Do we have any guidelines for flagging comment as offense? (mELU)
Why can’t I flag a question as offensive? (mELU)
...
Andrew LeachMod
- 98k
10
votes
1
answer
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How to act when you are being serial downvoted
Today someone downvoted my answers serially:
The hostile downvoting activity took place within a short span of time. How should I act?
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2
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A single vote closes a question! Have I just been granted "superpowers"?
I just cast a closevote (duplicate) on this question, which at the time had no comments, answers, or votes.
As I write, it says Marked as duplicate by FumbleFingers 2 minutes ago, and there's an ...
- 137k
2
votes
1
answer
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Not receiving any reputation from my answer being upvoted
This has happened to me before, but I never reported it, because I was busy, but now it felt like a good time. I'm attaching a screenshot, which you can also see in full size.
As you can see, my ...
- 21.7k
30
votes
2
answers
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Blacklist the [words] tag
The tag words has been heavily discouraged since the early days of the site. A few weeks ago I manually retagged every question that used words, and there are currently no questions with that tag, ...
- 53.9k
29
votes
2
answers
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The Great ELU Tag Clean-up Proposal of 2014
EDIT:
So, none of this got done in 2014. Does this mean that we should just give up on tags? Doing almost any of these by hand will annoy people since they would all bump those questions to the top ...
tchristMod
- 132k
14
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2
answers
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Will there be a 2014 Community Moderator election?
I've been a user for twelve months, and I would like to nominate one or more candidates for the position of ELU moderator. Generally speaking, the mods on ELU are doing a great job, with a few who are ...
- 88k
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Request for aggregate data regarding deleted questions with subjects containing CORRECT, GRAMMA, or RIGHT
This support request will require the assistance of a Stack Exchange employee, probably a kindly Community Manager.
As shown at the bottom of this answer, I present some SEDE results on just how many ...
tchristMod
- 132k
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2
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Answers as comments
OK, so I'm new here, and I don't necessarily know my way around, but:
It strikes me that on a lot of questions, people will answer the question, but post their answer as a comment to the question. ...
- 257
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1
answer
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Why is this question listed under the unanswered questions?
In Unanswered Questions there is an answered question.
Why is it there? Can we get a fix, if this isn't intended?
user11550
17
votes
1
answer
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Should the 'language' tag be deleted?
The language seems like the ultimate cop-out tag. It has five questions with an accumulated score of -8, I expect it to sink further today with the question that made me stumble upon it.
There is no ...
- 5,349
10
votes
4
answers
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About EL&U usage, purpose, and comments
I simply have to ask, and lash out (a tiny bit), about some of the comments and messages I have received on answers I've provided. I've had at least one moderator (I think?) and another senior member ...
- 2,389
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Do questions asking for the origin of a word and the etymology of a word ask different things?
Is a question about the etymology of a word asking for its origin? Is a question about the origin of a word asking for its etymology?
As I understand it, the origin of a word could be the point from ...
- 58.4k
7
votes
1
answer
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Why can't I (101 rep) answer a protected question?
This question is protected: "To answer it, you must have earned at least 10 reputation on this site." I have 101 reputation, so why can I not post an answer?
- 139
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What's the site policy for serial downvoters? [duplicate]
If users detect the presence of serial downvoters on ELU how should they behave? Are they supposed to post comments to the downvoters telling them to refrain from their improper activity or should ...
user66974
5
votes
1
answer
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Closing a question: How are migration possibilities determined?
I was going to put a close vote with suggestion to migrate to writers.se on this question here (about the use of names in formal writing), but when I tried to cast the close vote, the only target for ...
- 59k
5
votes
3
answers
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What should be done with answers that contain just a link?
In other SE sites, answers that contain just a link (even if preceded by see, try, etc.) are not considered answers, and users are suggested to flag the answer.
Is that considered the action to take ...
- 58.4k
4
votes
1
answer
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Reached Question Limit
Can someone tell me why I've reached my question limit on the English Stackexchange site? All my questions are generally positive.
I suspect it's because I gave out a 50 rep bounty when I was low in ...
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answer
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Duplicate Question -- Already Been Answered
I was under the impression that "marked as duplicate--this question already has an answer" meant that OP's question had not only elicited an answer or answers, but elicited one that satisfied the OP ...
user98990
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vote
4
answers
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Flag etiquette and effectiveness
Suppose a participant writes a rude or hurtful comment, and a flag is raised, and it's removed. As far as I can tell, nothing gets communicated to the participant -- the comment just quietly ...
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vote
2
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Why are some questions shaded green? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Why are some questions on the question page darker than others?
I've really tried to figure this one out on my own, but I give up. What determines whether or not a question ...
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-8
votes
2
answers
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Will you please insist on explanations for down-voting? [duplicate]
Despite "helpful" contributions from various Members, this Question doesn't at all have a previous Answer.
Without explanation, a down-vote can be very like a slap round the back of the head…...
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3
answers
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erm... I lost 2,134 in reputation
Yes, I know. When a user is removed, or they delete their accounts their upvotes and downvotes are removed. But tonight I lost 2,134 rep. That's a lot. Seriously. This is no laughing matter. I just ...
- 88k
20
votes
4
answers
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Call to action: fill in image descriptions
We had a request a couple of years ago to replace "enter image decription here" with some sort of generic text. I think this is a bad idea, as it doesn't add anything. Shog's comment on the proposal ...
- 28.9k
12
votes
1
answer
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Burninate [opinion], please
Today, a user contested the closure of his question with this comment:
And yet there are opinion based questions all over this site. There is even an 'opinion' tag already.
And he's right, there ...
- 28.5k
12
votes
1
answer
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What does ‘User removed’ mean? And why did I get a significant chop-down of reputation?
I was shocked to see 40 points dropdown in my Reputation this morning with the remark ‘User is removed.’ I have no idea about what it means!
This happened after placing the question asking the usage ...
- 69.9k
11
votes
2
answers
237
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What to do with those questions which have received answers in comments?
Take this question, or many others on EL&U where someone answers in comment and OP, despite have got an answer in comment,will satisfactorily forget that question will still remain open and appear ...
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How to discuss something with the mod team privately?
If I want to discuss some specific behaviors of a particular moderator with the broader mod team, how should I go about doing that?
Without going into details, I worry that certain actions may ...
- 28.5k
10
votes
2
answers
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What's the best way to answer when there's a really good answer elsewhere?
In researching the question Which is correct, “buck naked” or “butt naked”?, I found a very thorough examination of this question at Language Log that I linked to in a comment under the OP. I feel ...
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8
votes
2
answers
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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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Formatting poetry
What's the best way to format poetry, where preserving line breaks is important, but extra white space is not desired between lines?
I encountered the situation for this question and was not impressed ...
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About answers to heavily edited questions (re alibi)
I wonder what the community policy is respecting question edits that change the meaning, and existing answers to earlier version of the question. I looked around a bit but only managed to find several ...
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4
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Who is the judge in StackExchange?
Is there any guarantee that the accepted answers or the ones with the highest score on StackExchange are the correct ones?
On the other hand, couldn't an answer with a low or even a sub-zero score be ...
- 1,077
4
votes
2
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Is it possible to edit a moderator attention flag?
I flagged a question, intending to suggest it be moved to the language learners site but realized after I submitted it that I had typed "ELU" instead. I did not see anywhere I could edit my flag ...
- 3,691
4
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1
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Chat: How do I get to it?
I keep seeing people say in comments
'let's take this to chat'
or
'this would be better in chat'
But I don't know how to get to there.
I've looked all over the FAQ and it mentions chat ...
- 70.1k
4
votes
1
answer
85
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Chat: how do I use it right?
Now that I've figured out how to get to chat, I see that there's kind of a lot there.
I see all sorts of weird things there. Before I ask about what's appropriate behavior, I'd like to know just how ...
- 70.1k
4
votes
3
answers
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Has traffic on ELU decreased recently?
Is it just a personal impression or after the implementation of the new layout on ELU traffic both in terms of question and answers is well below average?
I realize it is just a few days but views on ...
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Why can't a user delete their own question that was just asked and has had no activity?
The reference for this is the question delete a question on here.
Update 1: The actual answer seems to be that the user wasn't registered. However, this is not listed as a requirement on our question ...
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3
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2
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Delete [puzzle] tag
I just noticed there were 4 questions with puzzle. I think it's a worthless tag, so I removed it from those four questions. Assuming that's a sensible thing to have done, what needs to happen to get ...
- 137k
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2
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Did some of my answers recently get deleted?
I did a rep recalc yesterday (for the first time in three days) and lost 55 rep. Curious, I found that my number of answers in my profile page went down by 4. Putting 55 and 4 together, I came up ...
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2
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Amount of reputation gained for one vote
How much reputation do you gain for upvotes in questions or answers? How much rep do you gain for different types of badges? Is there a place that tells you all this?
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1
answer
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How do I find deleted questions?
Our resident troll posted a question today which I thought he had asked before, and that seems likely because Reg closed and deleted it.
While Reg was dealing with it, I tried to locate the earlier ...
Andrew LeachMod
- 98k
2
votes
1
answer
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Why are some questions on the question page darker than others?
I've noticed some questions on the questions page are tinted darker than others
Looking at the CSS, I see that they have the same class applied to them as the normal-shaded questions on the page (and ...
- 8,711
2
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2
answers
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Too many up-votes (Again, fourth time lucky?)
Somebody out there in ELU land likes me. Which is really nice but this is getting a bit over-the-top. I'm getting a flood of up-votes in rapid succession, one after another. Take a look at my ...
- 88k
2
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1
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Why is this question locked?
What words are commonly mispronounced by literate people who read them before they heard them?
If it's not a good question for the site, why isn't it closed? I'd like to vote, at least.
Maybe I ...
- 57.1k
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vote
2
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Why '@' salutation was not rendered
I just posted a comment beginning with @username, and my @username part of the comment was not rendered (it was the first word in the comment). Why is that so?
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Meta badge : informed
My badge progress section tells me that my next badge will be "informed" on the meta site. As I know there aren't any tour pages on meta sites. Am I misinformed about this?
(There is a little pun ...
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Can I know which deleted user caused my loss of reputation?
I just lost a load of rep today because a user was deleted and/or a post was removed:
If I understand the second line correctly, the question mentioned was deleted, fair enough. I am wondering ...
- 20.8k