All Questions
1,326
questions
107
votes
7
answers
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views
Please, everyone ... details. Please!
I've seen a lot of questions crop up recently, where individuals are giving a very brief snippet of English, and asking questions like these:
Is this correct?
What does this mean?
What is the ...
J.R.Mod
- 110k
94
votes
0
answers
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I am resigning as moderator
I have been trying to write this post for weeks. This is not the magnum opus that I hoped it would be, but it will have to suffice. I have resigned as moderator of English Language Learners effective ...
- 12k
87
votes
21
answers
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views
Resources for learning English
This is a specifically created Community Wiki which gathers resources for learning English and it has been approved by the Community itself.
It should be clear that the resources are not written by ...
67
votes
1
answer
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views
DO NOT FEED THE BEARS
A question was just asked on ELL, and it needs a lot of work.
Here's a screen shot. There are two problems with this question: first, the way the initial question was asked; second, the way a follow-...
J.R.Mod
- 110k
66
votes
0
answers
2k
views
When the Chips Are Down
Maybe you have been aware of the Monica problem on the Stack Exchange, or maybe you have been blissfully unaware of the bubbling brouhaha.
My version of the events goes like this: the Stack Exchange ...
J.R.Mod
- 110k
58
votes
6
answers
899
views
How do I determine whether a question fits on English Language & Usage or on English Language Learners?
It's been less than ten minutes since I've been on this page and already I have a dire need:
A checklist on: how do I determine whether a question fits on English Language & Usage or on English ...
- 4,754
58
votes
3
answers
645
views
Have we forgotten our mission?
I unilaterally reopened a question today. Here's my paraphrase of the original question:
In this phrase, which preposition(s) would be correct:
Put the pen ..................... the book?
I'm ...
J.R.Mod
- 110k
55
votes
9
answers
876
views
New site design!
As you can see the new design just went live. Congratulations! Thank you for your valuable design feedback.
We have also themed the twitter account and newsletter template for this site, and adjusted ...
- 101
55
votes
2
answers
3k
views
Not so fast! (When should I accept an answer?)
So, someone has answered your question, and you haven't even waited a full hour yet. That's great! As you might already know, the Stack Exchange model encourages you to accept an answer from those ...
J.R.Mod
- 110k
52
votes
3
answers
3k
views
Alternative websites for proofreading
What websites are available where people can practice writing English, and have their written work corrected by native speakers?
(It'll be useful to point people to this question if they've asked a "...
- 5,947
40
votes
8
answers
1k
views
Requests for native speakers to answer questions
I have been seeing a somewhat increasing trend lately of questions which end with a variation of this sentence:
I would like to hear a native speaker's opinion, please.
Though I am sure that the ...
- 14.6k
39
votes
11
answers
945
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UPDATED: Site design for English Language Learners community
UPDATE 22 Feb. 2016
Looking at your comments, it seems like we need to tweak a few things:
Capitalize the word "Learners"
The bookmark should start "inside" the books and not below
A colored ...
- 101
38
votes
1
answer
1k
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So, you found a sentence or phrase... (Why you should cite your source)
So, you found a sentence or phrase that confuses you, and now you want to know what it means.
If your confusion stems from the fact that you are an English novice, then ELL is a good place to ask.
...
J.R.Mod
- 110k
37
votes
3
answers
469
views
What our learners want to learn
I have seen a handful of questions get closed on ELL, and the close reasons usually start something like this:
I'm voting to close this question because it's about a rare or non-standard form of ...
J.R.Mod
- 110k
36
votes
0
answers
291
views
Please do not copy *open* questions from ELU on purpose
This is not going to be a question, but it's too important an issue to not be raised.
It's been a day, and we're already seeing lots of questions being more or less copied from ELU. Open questions, ...
- 5,406
34
votes
6
answers
1k
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Submitting Answers that merely answer the question
Lately I've noticed quite a few answers that provide an answer to the O.P.'s question, but provide no supporting information.
Sometimes, comments are left, asking for more information; other times, ...
J.R.Mod
- 110k
33
votes
2
answers
302
views
Congratulations! English Language Learners is graduating!
It's a big day. You've been cleared for graduation by the Stack Exchange Community Team! English Language Learners has already met our threshold for graduation-worthy sites, and today joins in the new ...
- 101
33
votes
1
answer
220
views
Disable the subjective warning for ELL, like for ELU
English Language Learners has the "Your question appears to be subjective and is likely to be closed" filter, which I triggered with Is "Can I help you" a suitable expression for offering ...
- 5,947
33
votes
2
answers
326
views
Winter Bash 2016: Hats are coming again soon!
It's almost time for Winter Bash 2016!
For several years now, Stack Exchange has run a holiday event called Winter Bash! It's a fun little event where users collect "hats" that you can wear on your ...
user230
30
votes
3
answers
518
views
Let's bring down the number of unanswered questions
There are currently almost three thousand unanswered questions (questions with no upvoted or accepted answers) on this site. If I recall correctly, some sites actively try to bring this number down to ...
user61774
29
votes
2
answers
2k
views
Native speaker answering questions
I'm a native English speaker, and I couldn't find anything in the tour or the help center about this question. Is it appropriate for me to answer questions on this SE? I likely will never ask a ...
- 740
28
votes
4
answers
733
views
How can I write a better title for my ELL question?
I have an ELL question; but the Stack Exchange format obliges me to write a title not shorter than 15 characters and not longer than 150 characters.
So, how do I write a good title?
Link to the main ...
- 7,361
26
votes
16
answers
2k
views
Contributor's Guide to English Language Learners
I thought it would be nice if we had a community maintained guide to ELL written in easy-to-understand language and arranged to make the most important things to know easy to find. The help center has ...
26
votes
2
answers
330
views
Robo-reviewers on ELL
Occasionally, Stack Exchange receives suggested edits that replace a valid answer with spam. One particular answer on ELL has received this treatment fifty-two times (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 ...
user230
26
votes
2
answers
371
views
What's keeping the site in beta, and what can we do to get it graduated?
Current Status of ELL
So far as I can tell, as a beta site, ELL's statistics are superlative:
29.4 questions per day: E̲x̲c̲e̲l̲l̲e̲n̲t̲ (vs. 15 for average)
97% answered: E̲x̲c̲e̲l̲l̲e̲n̲t̲ (vs. 90%...
- 633
26
votes
0
answers
248
views
Embed an audio player
Questions about the pronunciation of a word as heard are probably common for a site for people learning a language. I can imagine questions similar to the following ones:
I listened to this [link to ...
- 20.9k
25
votes
4
answers
249
views
How much editing is too much editing?
Many of our users will not have extensive written English skills. We can't give a lot of feedback about the edits we make in the description box, but those edits might make it difficult for the OP to ...
- 1,034
25
votes
2
answers
352
views
Please use specific titles. Don't just ask "Is this grammatically correct?"
Today, I was looking over at the related questions module on a recent question, and it looked like this:
It would be nice if we could tell questions apart simply by looking at their titles. But ...
user230
24
votes
6
answers
378
views
How can a native English speaker with no experience teaching or learning English help, if at all?
I want to answer questions and I know English pretty well. However I don't have experience learning, or teaching, English. Most of my thought process is "that sounds wrong". People say words like ...
user19874
23
votes
0
answers
277
views
2016 Community Moderator Election Results
English Language Learners' second moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the 2 new moderators are:
(source: stackexchange.com)
They'll be joining the existing crew ...
- 121
22
votes
7
answers
917
views
Who should the moderators be?
The issue of holding fair elections is largely technical. The long-term solution will likely come from [Stack Exchange management]. Still, bring up these issues in meta. There is a lot of room for ...
- 854
22
votes
12
answers
782
views
Formatting Sandbox – Please test stuff here
What the title says.
Use this for testing stuff and gosh I can't believe we didn't have this till now.
22
votes
3
answers
239
views
Can we please remove the tag 'word'?
I have seen a lot of questions recently with the tag word. The tag wiki unhelpfully states that this tag is:
For questions related to words.
I think we have two options.
Add this tag to every ...
- 4,750
21
votes
2
answers
444
views
I don't think ELL should be Word Golf
I don't think ELL should be Word Golf.
I don't think there's anything wrong with Word Golf, at least in theory. People like to play games with words, and games can certainly be fun! But I don't ...
user230
21
votes
0
answers
691
views
Downvoting questions from new users
So I was disappointed to see a -3 score with no guidance at all in the comments for this question:
Can I say "something is happened to my phone"?
The author obviously was new to ELL and a ...
- 12k
20
votes
2
answers
188
views
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 ...
- 975
20
votes
3
answers
399
views
What we need are good answers. It doesn't matter who writes them.
This has come up before, but I think it's worth making the point again.
What we need here on ELL is for people to write good answers. It doesn't matter whether they're written by native speakers.
...
user230
20
votes
2
answers
231
views
Unwelcome Criticism and Editorializing
An ELL user recently posted a meta question, but then deleted it within minutes after it was posted. Too bad, because it was addressing an issue I thought needed to be brought up.
The question ...
J.R.Mod
- 110k
20
votes
0
answers
3k
views
With Lang-8 shutting down, where will we send proofreading questions?
We have a close reason which tells people to use "alternative websites" for proofreading:
Proofreading questions are off-topic unless a specific source of concern in the text is clearly identified. ...
user230
19
votes
7
answers
1k
views
How helpful is it to add "Hope this is helpful!" to an ELL answer?
Google tells me there are about 70 instances of Hope this is helpful on English Language Learners.
I don't like to come across as a grumpy ole git, but it seems to me this level of "chattiness" isn't ...
- 73.9k
19
votes
2
answers
1k
views
And then there were two
What's happening? ELL is once again short of a moderator since Eddie Kal's recent resignation.
Philippe, Vice-President of Community for Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange Network, has not said ...
- 28.3k
19
votes
2
answers
527
views
Stop throwing "Proofreading" close reason at questions that are clearly limited to a single point of concern
We have a handy close reason for questions that are basically just "find any problems in this chunk of text". That's fine, because those are terrible questions. They haven't actually gotten to the ...
- 9,524
19
votes
1
answer
204
views
Is it okay to ask questions on ELL even if you're not learning English as a second language?
As I'm a high school student, I was wondering if it's okay for me to ask questions on ELL about grammar and so forth although English is my first language. If so, which topics can I ask questions ...
- 11
19
votes
1
answer
287
views
Minor recurring formatting errors (and how to avoid them)
Many of my edits fall into a few general areas; this seems to be true for edits made by other people as well. If people who ask questions on ELL would simply heed a few simple guidelines, the site ...
J.R.Mod
- 110k
19
votes
1
answer
242
views
Closing questions from new users
I came across close votes for What is the name of this thing in English? due to the question being unclear and it bothered me for a couple of reasons:
The asker was brand new to the site (signed up ...
- 12k
19
votes
0
answers
352
views
Moderator Pro Tem Announcement
Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community ...
- 100
18
votes
2
answers
383
views
Simple English please!
I have noticed that on ELL many people give answers using rare/difficult words and constructions. Some write in 'an English' not all learners can yet understand. I know I can, although at times I have ...
- 25.1k
18
votes
3
answers
331
views
2015 Community Moderator Election Results
English Language Learners's first moderator election has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the 3 new moderators are:
They'll be joining (or rejoining) the moderator list shortly —...
- 121
18
votes
2
answers
187
views
For some odd reason we have an "english" tag... Should we request that it be blacklisted?
Not sure why english isn't blacklisted. It's only on about eight questions right now because it looks like it was recreated about a month ago but I don't think it's needed for anything.
Is there a ...
- 25.4k
18
votes
3
answers
252
views
As a learner, how do I choose which answer to accept?
After reading some meta questions, it seems there are a lot of unanswered questions, and also that it's not necessarily a problem. I'd still want to know on what criteria I should accept an answer.
...
- 1,466