All Questions
370
questions
19
votes
1
answer
239
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 ...
- 11.9k
16
votes
2
answers
118
views
Should we prefer plural in tags?
Earlier today I tried to tag a question "nouns", and the system wouldn't let me, saying that the tag noun already existed.
Just a minute ago, I wanted to tag another question "adjectives", same ...
- 5,356
15
votes
3
answers
333
views
What sorts of dictionaries should we use on ELL?
Here on ELL, we have an "entirely answerable with a dictionary" close reason:
Basic questions on spelling, meaning or pronunciation are off-topic as they should be answered using a dictionary. See:...
user230
14
votes
2
answers
268
views
Downvotes are your friend; use them, please!
Downvotes are a good thing. They separate the good content from the bad, and make a user aware that something is wrong with their question (or answer). Downvoting is an integral part of the Stack ...
- 14.5k
14
votes
3
answers
425
views
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 ...
- 7,341
13
votes
4
answers
121
views
What are tags good for?
I find it difficult to understand why we expend so much effort and discussion on tags.
I’ve browsed around other SE sites, and I can see that tags serve a useful, perhaps even essential, purpose in ...
- 174k
13
votes
3
answers
235
views
How should we fix the problem of bad question titles on ELL?
I have recently noticed that question titles are not well-formatted or not entirely representative of the associated question content.
The result is that this site seems to be like "Yahoo Answers", ...
user114
13
votes
3
answers
411
views
Custom off-topic reasons community wiki thread
Edit
One more tickle to see if we can move forward. I was hoping suggesting a strawman for the wording of the expanded off-topic reasons would be helpful, but maybe it wasn't a good idea for this ...
- 11.9k
13
votes
6
answers
394
views
Community Promotion Ads - 2016
It's 2016 now, and we've made some changes to the sidebar size. As such, we can now restart the Community Promotion Ads for 2016!
Keep in mind, we have updated some of the guidelines compared to ...
- 101
13
votes
6
answers
627
views
Should accepted answers appear first, just above the highest scored answer? Or should answers appear only in order of score?
On Stack Overflow (SO), new answers get thousands of views by active voting members long after the question is posted. This means new answers can get hundreds or thousands (yes, thousands) of votes ...
GlorfindelMod
- 14.7k
13
votes
2
answers
164
views
Policy on homework questions
ELU has a rather detailed policy for dealing with homework questions. It seems like we don't have one on ELL, but lately we've been getting some questions that are basically "here is a homework ...
user230
13
votes
0
answers
91
views
Is This Tag Useful? Episode 2 -- The Twins (usage and meaning)
The argument for getting rid of these tags is going to be much more straightforward.
We have tags like phrase-meaning, meaning-in-context, sentence-meaning etc. just like we have the likes of word-...
- 7,341
11
votes
1
answer
134
views
The Great Re-Tagging Call to Arms
There's something I've been noticing sort of passively as of late: a lot of questions being posted have only one tag. This was a bit of a gut-feeling impression I had, so I glanced over the most ...
- 14.5k
11
votes
1
answer
199
views
Proposal: Blacklist [sentences]
It seems we can achieve a consensus on a certain set of tags this time without reading too much into things. Let's clean up sentence-related tags. I just came up with a few ideas, and I present them ...
- 7,341
11
votes
1
answer
169
views
Synonymize [opposite-word] to point to [antonyms]
Should the opposite-word tag be made a synonym of the antonyms master tag?
opposite-word has 9 questions, and antonyms has 35 questions.
- 24k
11
votes
2
answers
274
views
Canonical Post for Perfect Constructions
I've started to wonder recently if we could put together a canonical post that thoroughly explains perfect constructions; how they work, when to use them, etc. There are of course exceptions to ...
- 14.5k
10
votes
1
answer
160
views
Voting to close questions as off-topic: are we overusing it?
I find that some questions that are voted off-topic most certainly should be; for example if someone is asking something that can be easily looked up in a dictionary. On the other hand, questions ...
- 14.9k
9
votes
3
answers
179
views
Less Closevoting, more Editing!
This question attracted at least three downvotes, and was closed (it's since been reopened)...
[Question Title] Is the meaning of costed correctly refer time in here?
i am having following ...
- 64.6k
9
votes
1
answer
171
views
Please suggest a good web site where I can ask what is said in a short part of a video?
I'm already good enough at reading, but I have to focus on listening and also reproducing what I hear in the resources I use for listening practice.
When I watch an English video, I don't need a ...
9
votes
4
answers
148
views
Using terminology when asking or answering
This answer is correct, but it uses linguistic terminology. My concern is that some ELL users may not be familiar enough with English to understand the answer.
What are the guidelines for using ...
- 7,935
8
votes
1
answer
135
views
What's our editing policy?
I am now invited to review proposed edits on this site, and would like some guidance from the Community.
This morning I was presented with an edit to this question. It consisted of adding a single ...
- 174k
7
votes
2
answers
372
views
I received 9 downvotes in one minute? What happened?
Take a look at my reputation. I received 9 downvotes in just a matter of a minute or two.
Do you think it is the right behavior for any member?
user24743
7
votes
3
answers
283
views
Are answers which consist only of block quotes acceptable
This is related to this question on ELL meta about EL&U quoting.
This ELL question has an answer consisting only of a quote from quora. Is this appropriate? I edited it to make it clear that it ...
- 8,165
4
votes
0
answers
92
views
Site icon on iOS app has a circular background
When viewing the site on the main web, the site icon bookmark is only the bookmark itself.
When viewed on the iOS app, it has a beige circle surrounding it (light grey for Meta), which seems ...
- 25.3k
-1
votes
2
answers
155
views
Why can't I accept both answers?
In my question What does "do" mean in "What do I do"?, there are 2 answers that are helpful. But when I accept the other one the check mark goes away. Can I only accept one? I want ...
-9
votes
1
answer
113
views
Add a symbol to the user box to identify the user's first language
Should we add a flag or other symbol to the user box to indicate the questioner / answerer's dialect.
This would avoid the need for the person posting to say "I'm from New Zealand and we say X", the ...
- 855
-10
votes
4
answers
250
views
Should we use only the best ten hundred words in our answers?
For the best learning of our friends in this place, should we attempt to write all or our answers in up goer five words?
This would help people who do not have a lot of words that they know ...
- 101
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
- 109k
33
votes
1
answer
219
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 ...
- 5,777
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 ...
- 732
25
votes
2
answers
333
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
23
votes
6
answers
359
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
7
answers
914
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 ...
- 834
21
votes
0
answers
659
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 ...
- 11.9k
20
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
19
votes
1
answer
201
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
2
answers
880
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 ...
- 24.2k
18
votes
1
answer
286
views
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 ...
- 14.5k
18
votes
2
answers
367
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 ...
- 24.7k
16
votes
4
answers
4k
views
What is Ngram and what is it used for?
I must be dumb, but before entering this site I have never seen the "Ngram" word. So what does it mean? I have seen several answers here cites Ngram stats which seems to be discombobulating me. Can ...
- 6,311
16
votes
5
answers
395
views
Call for Volunteers! In search of a canonical post on "passive voice"
We get a lot of questions on active and passive voice. The current count is up to 425. 90% of these questions are low-effort homework questions along the lines of:
I've been given these sentences ...
- 14.5k
15
votes
1
answer
204
views
Bookmark in favicon is too small and the circle blends into backgrounds too easily
I double-checked, and the favicon didn't make it into the design preview, or I would (hopefully) have commented on this earlier. But the bookmark is about the only thing really visible on most ...
- 9,443
15
votes
4
answers
229
views
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 ...
- 638
15
votes
4
answers
273
views
What can be done to increase the number of visits per day?
The last time I checked it, the number of visits per day reported by the Area 51 page was 227. Is there anything we can do to increase it, since the minimum acceptable seems to be more than 500?
- 20.4k
14
votes
5
answers
325
views
Can't ELLearners be expected to do internet searches?
This question bothers on me on two accounts.
First, it seems to be a pretty easy combination of words. Look up each word in the dictionary and then put the meanings together.
But the main thing is ...
user6951
14
votes
4
answers
455
views
Let's rewrite the "Proofreading" close reason
It's been discussed that the proofreading close reason is overused:
Stop throwing "Proofreading" close reason at questions that are clearly limited to a single point of concern
As part of ...
- 25.3k
14
votes
1
answer
94
views
How to encourage use-mention distinction?
Almost every answer on the site could use editing to mark the words being used as examples. I don't really feel comfortable editing a bunch of posts just for this reason; plus, I feel like I can't ...
- 5,149
14
votes
1
answer
349
views
Consolidated grammar tag discussions and a clean-up proposal
We have fixed more than 332 questions tagged only with grammar - we're down from 1325 to 993. (as of March 19th, 2017) We've probably fixed a lot more than 332, because there are new questions each ...
- 11.9k
13
votes
4
answers
425
views
Introducing "Canonical Posts"
I'm pleased to introduce our newest collaborative user effort here on ELL, the Canonical Post.
The idea behind Canonical Posts is to take a subject which is often encountered by English Language ...
- 14.5k
13
votes
3
answers
212
views
Policy for coarse language in posts
Recently the question has been raised about if (and to what extent) we should allow coarse language in our posts here on ELL. No one is trying to tamp down on free speech, and I know this has been ...
- 14.5k