Wizards Den

@M.A.R. I'm not going into the definition of grammar, it's to wide and fraught with traps. Well, if you fel so pasionately about something then maybe you should enlist some users to lend a hand

M.A.R.

@Mari-LouA There's no one other than Jasper willing to do this as far as I'm concerned

in Language Overflow on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, 2 hours ago, by M.A.R.

Would you like to participate in a retagging event? Ping me and let me know. (Preferably with the time of the day you're willing to participate)

Your meta post ignited another MAR outrage.

I will hold up a chat session to deal with [grammar] and finish what I started a while ago.

Mari-Lou A

I have edited where I thought I could improve posts, if they happened to have a grammar tag too that was an extra bonus. Posts with only a single tag should be dealt with, and I'm fine with that. But deleting hundreds of grammar tags seems an exercise in pointlessness

M.A.R.

Why are you telling this to me?

All I ever said was helping get rid of [grammar] is a good thing.

If you think Jasp's edits are trivial, as they miss other important problems with the post, and not just [grammar], then that's another issue.

Irrelevant to the decided fate of [grammar].

Mari-Lou A

12:49 PM

I don't understand, getting rid of the grammar tag must mean blacklisting it. Otherwise you're merely keeping the tide at bay, or rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic

M.A.R.

@Mari-LouA No, blacklisting means something different in the SE context.

And yes, one downside of taking into consideration [grammar] lovers is that we have a tide to fight.

But a tag with three thousand questions would be chosen much more than a tag with three questions.

Mari-Lou A

If the mods decided to burninate the tag, I would support that decision. So, if 99% of the questions are erroneously tagged "grammar", as you claim, we are to expect months of bumped questions. Is that it?

ColleenV

good morning

M.A.R.

Mornin'

Mari-Lou A

buon giorno, afternoon at my end

M.A.R.

12:55 PM

@Mari-LouA Not months if we get a coordinated effort to get rid of it. But again, no one is unless I do something about it

ColleenV

Have progress been made? I'm willing to participate in a grammar retagging, because I think a lot of questions are mistagged MAR

but I doubt we will be able to entirely eradicate it

M.A.R.

Nice, thanks for informing

So 2 people as of now

in Language Overflow on The Stack Exchange Network Chat, 2 hours ago, by M.A.R.

Would you like to participate in a retagging event? Ping me and let me know. (Preferably with the time of the day you're willing to participate)

I think snail would help too.

And with Jasp we'll be four.

Mari-Lou A

@M.A.R. see you're talking of eliminating, canceling the tag. You say it's "bad, very bad" and that's your opinion, but users will continue to tag English questions with grammar

M.A.R.

@Mari-LouA Yes, it's bad, very bad.

Why should we not remove it?

I'm yet to see a good argument.

ColleenV

@M.A.R. You will never see a good argument because you're convinced

and I don't mean that it a mean way, it's just true

M.A.R.

1:00 PM

Abuse of other tags, existence of other bad tags, learners not knowing what tag to use etc. are not good arguments for God's sake.

ColleenV

and it's hard to defend grammar because it's been abused so badly

M.A.R.

They're akin to saying things like ''because murder is common, stealing isn't wrong'' or ''because a lot of people steal, stealing isn't bad''

Once again, I'm not opposing leaving [grammar] on very very few questions that don't touch either of syntax or morphology.

But talk about grammar as a whole.

Mari-Lou A

You don't like it, you want to banish it. Fine. It has to be blacklisted then. It won't be by the looks of things. Grammar is not nonsensical. The tag "word" is stupid, and nonsensical. Grammar attempts to describe how the language is spoken, it's on topic as far as I am concerned.

M.A.R.

But I'm very much FOR removing [grammar] in questions like ''should I use ''eat'' or ''eats''?''

@Mari-LouA Please take a look at what questions it is being applied to.

If you ever find a connection between them, I'd let it remain.

Mari-Lou A

I have looked, and they're not ALL bad.

M.A.R.

1:03 PM

That's like saying [English] is a good tag because it's on-topic and sensible @Mari.

I'm having flashbacks to discussions with Maulik.

It's really sad that we have these discussions in the first place.

ColleenV

@M.A.R. We get so few of those questions on ELL that I wouldn't see a problem with getting rid of the tag entirely, especially because we have a few folks that are passionate about it. I just worry that the behavior we're seeing with grammar will just move to another tag and our efforts will be wasted

Mari-Lou A

If the question is asking " What does "pussy" mean?" and that is taged grammar I'm with you there

M.A.R.

@ColleenV But we won't. Don't give people placeholders and they won't use placeholders.

Mari-Lou A

But those questions get tagged with meaning, which you also think is a bad tag

M.A.R.

@Mari-LouA That would be an off-topic question.

@Mari-LouA Yes, it's a bad tag.

ColleenV

1:05 PM

I'm working on merging the meaning tags

Mari-Lou A

Don't you see, you're going round in circles.

M.A.R.

I'm not.

A lot of ELL tags are bad.

How is that running in circles?

And your example isn't valid since that's an off-topic question.

Mari-Lou A

@M.A.R. Yes, you are because today it's "grammar" tomorow it's "meaning" the day after "usage"

M.A.R.

@Mari-LouA And my point is simple. Get rid of all those bad tags so you wouldn't need to clean up messes

I'm pretty sure learners can think of good tags if they're made to.

Mari-Lou A

@M.A.R. Does “pussy” also mean…? Not very diferent from my hypothetical question, is it?

ColleenV

1:08 PM

@M.A.R. They aren't forced to though - some will always pick without thinking very hard

and it's better if they all pick the same tag in that case :)

M.A.R.

@Mari-LouA Wow. You win. Now let me illustrate some examples and show you why it's a bad tag.

ColleenV

Maybe we make an IDK tag

M.A.R.

We don't need any placeholders.

I'm confident learners can pick good tags.

Mari-Lou A

I like the IDK tag :) :)

M.A.R.

Providing that our future tagging system not be filled with linguistic jargon of course.

0

Q: it was the first time for him?

1) I think when I say "this is the first time", I should use these forms. This is the first time I've been to L.A. This is the first time visiting L.A. And I can't say "This is the first time for me to visit". Could you tell me if I'm right? 2) If I'm talking about another person, not...

grammar

Mari-Lou A

1:09 PM

@M.A.R. but it would alert the more experienced users to retag the question. Colleen joking aside, it might not be such a bad idea

M.A.R.

0

Q: What is the difference among following sentences?

Somebody please explain differences among these sentences to me: I'm feeling like I'm famous I'm feeling like a famous person I feel like a famous person And meaning of this sentence too: It feels like I'm doing well

grammar meaning

0

Q: Present participle to join sentences

Here are two sentences which have been transformed into two different kinds of sentence having a different structure to the first version: 1a) All the employees are huge basketball fans. That makes it a very fun winter. 1b) He couldn’t give me a straight answer. This leaves a lot of room fo...

grammar participle-clauses

ColleenV

How about this - the first pass we use a search to find all questions that are only tagged with grammar and fix all of those

because in my opinion those are the most egregious (and I have a search for that already)

M.A.R.

Hey, I have an idea. Let's create an ELL tag. It would be identical to what [grammar] is right now.

@Mari-LouA But that doesn't happen. [grammar] was supposed to do that back then, but it's alerting no one.

Mari-Lou A

@M.A.R. don't be sarcastic, it's unbecoming :)

@ColleenV I'm with you there "the first pass we use a search to find all questions that are only tagged with grammar" this sounds at least profitable and a sensoible expenditure of time

M.A.R.

@ColleenV Sure, but let's DO something for God's sake instead of two years of babbling about what to do.

If only I did things instead of half my arguments about [grammar] we would've been down to 1k questions.

ColleenV

1:13 PM

I thought I had a data explorer search for a single tagged question but I can't find it now

M.A.R.

I have one.

Lemme open a tab

ColleenV

ell.stackexchange.com/search?q=%5Bgrammar%5D%20title%3Acorrect

that's only 200+ questions

M.A.R.

There it is

data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/368033/…

@ColleenV Good starting point.

ColleenV

That's half of them

M.A.R.

So, should I write the retagging event meta post?

Mari-Lou A

1:15 PM

200 questions is feasible Is it 200 or 1,325 I don't get it

ColleenV

Those with just grammar are 1300+, but I think everyone can agree that a single grammar tag leaves a lot of room for improvement

Mari-Lou A

even if there are three users it should be over and done with in les than fice days

M.A.R.

SEDE says 1325 nonclosed questions with [grammar]

ColleenV

regardless of whether we want to get rid of grammar entirely

M.A.R.

NOW WAIT A SECOND

Let me burst some bubbles.

Editing is going to be cumbersome.

There's a reason I don't edit on ELL

We don't agree on formatting.

We don't know what tags to replace [grammar] with

ColleenV

1:18 PM

@M.A.R. That's the biggest problem for me

M.A.R.

Heck, we don't even know how much we should edit the OP's grammar

No one agrees on how much a post should be edited for grammar.

Even the election questionnaire question wasn't much of a help.

ColleenV

@M.A.R. We don't all have to agree

M.A.R.

And since it's already discussed on meta, you can't just open up a new post

ColleenV

We just have to do what we think is best - nothing is irreversible

My feeling is if someone feels strongly that it should be one way, and it's not obviously hurting the site they should be able to do it that way

Mari-Lou A

@M.A.R. @ColleenV A short burst of editing, and you get it over quickly with, instead of dragging it out for weeks. We're talking about tags, not editing the OP's grammar. Editing if done with sensitivity and a minimum of common sense, no one should complain

ColleenV

1:21 PM

Well let's schedule it then - this week is Thanksgiving in the US

M.A.R.

@Mari-LouA Now that I can't agree with. When you want to bump something, you should try to fix all the problems with the post.

ColleenV

so there may be less activity because of the holiday

M.A.R.

That's what I always had in mind when editing.

ColleenV

@M.A.R. I don't disagree that would be good, but if you really want to get this done we should focus on the tags

Mari-Lou A

Right. That's settled :) I leave you two to battle the finer details out between yourselves. Bye! Nice chatting with you both.

M.A.R.

1:22 PM

Cya

ColleenV

I'm glad we found a place you could chat! Ciao

M.A.R.

@ColleenV OK :/ Just to get this done fast.

ColleenV

@M.A.R. I understand because I have the same tendency

M.A.R.

But if we retag them, we'll then need another event for crappy titles

And another for consistent understandable formatting

ColleenV

Make everything as perfect as you could get it, but it's best to stay focused and to not overwhelm volunteers

M.A.R.

1:23 PM

And another for . . .

ColleenV

pick your battles

M.A.R.

@ColleenV Sometimes one edit overwhelms me, heh

ColleenV

we don't have to have a crappy title event because crappy titles can't be picked from a page and propagate more of the same crappy title

We just have to keep the crappy titles off the first page :)

M.A.R.

@ColleenV We had a TCE though.

It's easy to pick one buzzword and correct titles with that keyword.

ColleenV

@M.A.R. Oh I don't mean to say we should never make an effort

But let's just focus on the tag so we have a chance to get something done

M.A.R.

1:28 PM

Sure

I can be available on SAT, WED, THU, FRI.

7 UTC till night, SAT, WED, THU and 10 UTC till night in FRI

ColleenV

I'm going to set up a meta post to see if we can get more interest

Like I said this week is a holiday week in the US, so next week may be better

They're predicting about 50 million Americans will travel at least 50 miles from home this year.

M.A.R.

Okie dokie. I gotta get some studying done. See you

ColleenV

Later

Shadow Wizard

4:09 PM

looking around

wondering if this is the Den

:D

@M.A.R. TL;DR?

M.A.R.

TL;DR; I'm cool

Shadow Wizard

Not that I care much, Den is for everyone, but why didn't you create a new room? :)

e.g. here you have the risk of @Dro or @ber or myself interrupting.... :D

M.A.R.

@ShadowWizard Mari is banned on main chats and I needed a fast way to tell her she can chat somewhere

Linking to here was fast enough.

@ShadowWizard Well yeah that's a big risk, especially the former two people

Shadow Wizard

hmm.... fair enough, but you know there's one button to create+invite someone to a new room?

Wait.. how much rep you got? checking

3.6k heh, more than enough. ;)

M.A.R.

Rep? From what?

Oh, you meant in general

Shadow Wizard

4:13 PM

@M.A.R. dunno, being a good chemical :P

M.A.R.

@ShadowWizard Still not fast enough

Shadow Wizard

Oh, you just posted a link to here?

M.A.R.

Yeah

Shadow Wizard

Thought you invited her via the chat profile

M.A.R.

And BTW, she was here before, so there was a chance of her coming here

Shadow Wizard

4:15 PM

Well... welcome back to the Den, @Mari and welcome to the Den @Col! :D

@M.A.R. oh. She was... blush

So all is now good @M.A.R.? You resolved the ELL issues?

M.A.R.

Well, we talked about resolving ELL issues . . .

BTW @Sha have you watched Munich?

Shadow Wizard

@M.A.R. nope. What's what?

M.A.R.

It's a movie I wanted to watch, and I wanted to see your opinion of it

Shadow Wizard

5:42 PM

@M.A.R. oh. Well, just to be sure, you mean this movie?

Munich (film)

Munich is a 2005 American-Canadian historical drama and political thriller film based on Operation Wrath of God, the Israeli government's secret retaliation against the Palestine Liberation Organization after the Munich massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics. The film was produced and directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth. Based on the book Vengeance about Yuval Aviv, who states he was a Mossad agent, Munich follows a squad of assassins as they track down and kill alleged members of the group Black September, which had kidnapped and murdered eleven Israeli athletes...

M.A.R.

6:14 PM

@ShadowWizard yup

Shadow Wizard

7:30 PM

@M.A.R. well, I wasn't even aware such a movie exists... I mean, I knew about this movie, but didn't know it had a "remake".

Anyway.... think it's worth watching if you want to learn about those things, it got enough truth in it. I think. :)

M.A.R.

9:07 PM

@ShadowWizard Well, Spielberg's movie is said to be emotional and philosophical rather than just a blunt boring political action movie

@ShadowWizard There's not much to learn, other than animals of the same species tearing each other apart for reasons most animals -- and they themselves -- don't understand.

As someone wise who I don't recall said, wars are just like cat fights except the ones that mark their territory don't get harmed.

Shadow Wizard

10:17 PM

@M.A.R. well said, and very true... but I'm afraid wars won't end any time soon... and not soon. If humanity will happen to somehow survive and get out of Earth, we'll keep fighting elsewhere. :/

(though terrorism and wars are two different things.)

(not that it matters much.)

(Why am I writing in brackets?)

So if you watch it... let me know how it was and what you think. :)

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