Questions tagged [on-topic-off-topic]
This tag is for questions regarding off topic questions, including whether a question is on topic and what to do with off topic questions.
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Should we expand the “It’s in the dictionary” close reason to include etymological questions?
Consider the recent question Is cockroach composed of cock and roach? The post’s title says it all. @FumbleFingers and I both left quick—and perhaps overly snarky—comments illustrating how easily the ...
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Are requests for part-of-speech tagging in example use on-topic?
We recently had a question where a usage example was given, along with an attempt at part-of-speech tagging, and a request to validate that tagging:
Knowing what grammar is used
A user then closed the ...
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Is it on topic to ask about English advice given by ChatGPT?
This question
Can "neither do I" apply to both disagreement with positive statement and agreement with negative statement?
asks whether the advice given by ChatGPT (we can use 'Neither do I' ...
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EL&U.SE vs ELL.SE
I'm a monolinguist but have had a bad experience on English Language & Usage (EL&U).
Might I break any (site-specific) rule for asking questions here instead of EL&U?
Sure I could get ...
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Can I submit a video here for feedback on my pronunciation?
I am trying to improve my pronunciation of English words. For these purposes, I make short videos. That is, I want to know not about a specific word, but in general how understandable my speech is.
My ...
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How can get help from this community if I can't hear some audio clearly?
Recently I am learning the Cambridge practice tests for IELTS, the listening part is the most difficult for me. Even if I look at the transcripts when I am listening to the audio, I find that there ...
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What close reason should I use when closing a question for requesting resources?
I have recently flagged a few questions asking for resources for learning English, which is off-topic per our Help section's on-topic page.
As a link to Language Learning is not provided among the &...
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Should questions like this (like linguistics... see below) be asked and answered on ELL?
There was a very recent question "Why is “threepenny” pronounced as THREP.NI?" on this SE. And the spectacular answer by a very cooperative contributor Void. Under Void's answer, one user ...
user119042
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demand on research or context for a question
Recently, I have had several posts put on hold because they "lack research or context." However, there are plenty other posts that don't include any research or context at all, but they remain as they ...
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How to handle questions if answers can be found in a grammar book as "basic" knowledge
It is the obvious thing to flag a question like:
What is the meaning of "white"?
as being off-topic (answer to be found in a dictionary).
What about questions like the following:
How to use "...
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The "Scope" of ELL [closed]
Now, let's see, my last question, was closed as off-topic.
(Although the word is translated in my native language, in the image below, I did not want to look at it because I wanted to understand what ...
user17814
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Is this question really off-topic?
I am still pondering over this question that I asked the other day:
"High-pitched": one word or two words?
It received a close vote very early on for being off-topic, and is currently ...
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Add a link to Language Learning Beta to "What topics can I ask about here?"
I think Language Learning Beta is relatively new and must not have existed when the ELL help page was created.
I suggest adding a link to Language Learning Beta to "What topics can I ask about here?...
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Is "Why is 11 am + 1 hour == 12:00 pm?" an English learner's question?
I've been silently ruminating for several days now. Admittedly, I hesitated to say anything because the upvotes my answer accrued finally permitted me to reach that mythical 10k milestone. But, after ...
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Questions about understanding a passage about a specialty topic
EDIT: It looks like I was viewing this topicality question from an incorrect perspective. I'll leave the question in place for other site newcomers. If the question seems to make sense and is ...
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Why is meaning mentioned as both allowed and not allowed?
Let me elaborate. A little while after answering a question I came back to check on it and noticed that is was put on-hold. Then I read the hold box and it read, "[b]asic questions on spelling, ...
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Are questions about learning methods on-topic?
I want to ask the community certain questions about pedagogy for online learning. For instance, when practicing listening activities for journalists, whether ELL knows how we can both listen to the ...
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Why are most of my questions marked as "off topic"?
I always refer my question source which is completely in text form
I know my questions related to movies but in text form for this you don't have see the movie
for answering my question, just read ...
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I see in hindsight that a question might have been better for ELU. It has close votes now
This question has now got two close votes.
One user commented:
Where is the value to a new learner of English in this protracted slap fight?
When I posted this I didn't know it was such a nuanced ...
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Another "translation question": the ethics of helping professional freelance translators
I would like to echo the sentiment of Colleen in, I assume, her answer to another question.
We don't want the site to become a free translation and/or writing service.
I heartily concur and I as ...
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Stop answering close-worthy questions!
Call to stop answering off-topic questions seems not to have reached the goals it aimed to achieve. Out of the most recent 100 questions that were closed for any other reason than "duplicate", 76 ...
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Should questions be disallowed because the OP thought they were about English but they're not?
This question — "Do PC screens in Australia scan from bottom to top?" -- explain the humour please — raises what I think is an interesting meta point. I've seen a few questions ...
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Are Parts of Speech / Syntactic Grammar most on topic here? (vs on other SE sites)
I don't normally come on ELL,
I'm a native English speaker, but I don't think I have much real capacity to answers the questions of others on it.
Recently in my post-grad research in computational ...
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Should we change "What can I ask about?" to include etymology, or at least not specifically exclude it?
The help center says:
This is not the right site for questions about:
Etymology, evolution of the English language, or historical English - see english.stackexchange.com instead.
However, ...
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Which sorts of math questions are on-topic?
Today a user left the following comment:
[...] I don't think this is really an English question... there's a Math Stack, you know. :)
The question is about how to explain A = -log(X) in words. It ...
user230
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How to answer questions about accent?
I have seen a LOT of questions about accents and pronunciation recently. Everything thing from "How do Americans pronounce X?", "What are the differences between American accents and British accents?"....
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Where can I ask questions about TOEFL and GRE?
I've a couple of questions about TOEFL and GRE tests. I'm a bit wary of whether questions on this topic is on-topic at this site or not?
My question is mostly about materials of those tests not ...
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Why ONLY some questions asking lyrics meaning are off topic and not all?
I had asked this question
What is the meaning of “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together"
It took no time for one user to vote 'close' stating the song lyrics are off topic (...
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Abolish off-topic tags [etymology] and [resources]
There are about 20 questions tagged etymology, and 8 questions tagged resources. Both are clearly off-topic according to the Help Center.
Of the existing questions, they are either improperly tagged,...
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Should headlines be considered off-topic?
The issue of whether headlines and "headlinese" is on-topic came up because of the question “petition on X” in “Response to We The People Petition on the Protests in Hong Kong”. I don't ...
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Formal = totalitarian?: Why was this closed?
I beg for your forgiveness if Formal = totalitarian? offends, but I would like to request its reopening. While it's from my law preparation book, my question concerns English, why was it 'closed as ...
user8712
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Should we be closing single word requests?
I've seen a few questions asking explicitly for single words, rather than phrases, which fit a certain description. Today, one popped up in the close queue. I saw this comment:
Single word requests ...
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Translation requests and tag
We have a reasonably healthy translation tag with 42 questions as of this moment, but in our on-topic section, it states:
Please don’t ask any questions about the following topics. They are out of ...
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Proofreading questions that are ostensibly about a specific issue
Where is the right position of “Often” in this sentence? has just come up in the reopen queue. Here is the original question (the title wasn't changed):
in order to cancel other tasks execution ...
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Call to stop answering off-topic questions
We get a lot of great questions and a lot of great answers on ELL, and I'm super happy with that. But one thing I've been noticing a lot recently is we have a tendency to post answers to questions ...
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Is this question "primarily opinion-based"?
I'm new to ELL, but I have spent a reasonable amount of time at Stack Overflow, where https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/8677/improving-english-language-by-watching-movies would probably be ...
user2098
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How to continue a conversation from the comments if we go off-topic
I answered a question recently and it was marked the best answer. Later I made a comment, which provoked a reaction from one of the people who had also answered. This led to a dialogue between us, ...
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Are questions regarding non-grammatical prose on topic?
I have seen more than a few questions pop up regarding the meanings, grammar, etc. of clearly non-grammatical prose (as @Matt put it here) used by authors to imply the dialect, accent, lack of ...
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Policy for questions that are entirely answerable with a dictionary
I've asked this question to garner consensus about what we should do with questions that are completely answered by a dictionary definition. This question, for example. (Reproduced here because the ...
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Should we extend topicality to include questions teachers have? [duplicate]
We will hopefully have a user base consisting of people who want to learn English and people who want to teach English.
Can we, therefore, extend on topic questions to include questions about how to ...
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How can I ask about learn tips and tricks
I know that discussion questions are off-topic. But I would like to know a good way to learn new vocabulary. Tips and tricks that help to learn English.
Is there any proper way to ask such a ...
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Ask even if the answer exists online
Should one ask a question here even if the answer can be found googling the internet?
I asked myself for instance what the meaning of rain check is and where it came from. There can be found several ...
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Translation Questions
This question has been closed as Off-Topic (I cast the final vote). There is this discussion on Area51 in regards to translation questions but there doesn't seem to be a definitive guide on whether we ...
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Is pedagogy off-topic?
In In what order to learn English? was raised the question whether questions about how to learn English where on topic or not.
My take at it is that questions which are specific to learning English ...
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