By now, you have had the chance to read the updates of both NCommander and Barrabas. Nonetheless, you may still be wondering quite a few things about the site and its staff. Here is your chance to ask us anything. These questions can be general in nature, in which case the staff will select a spokesperson to answer it, or it may be specific to an individual. If the question is for an individual, please ensure you identify that person specifically enough.
We will select the best questions from the thread and provide answers to the community. These questions may not be the highest rated, although we will probably use those first.
In keeping with tradition, ask as many as you'd like, but please, one question per post.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Wednesday February 19 2014, @05:44PM
I've yet to find how to report bugs on this site, so I'll take this opportunity to ask this now.
Please can the "Logout" link on the profile page be changed to the more traditional and more grammatically correct "Log out" to match the "You" side bar?
Sites changing "Log out" into "Logout" often seems to be symptomatic of a hideous Web 2.0 or 3.0 upgrade.
I'm sorry for my pedantry but it just irritates me. What's the past tense of "logout"? I "logouted"?
I'm certainly not alone in my quest. See loginisnotaverb.com [loginisnotaverb.com].
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by BsAtHome on Wednesday February 19 2014, @05:49PM
You have https enabled, but I cannot login using https.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by efernsler on Wednesday February 19 2014, @05:52PM
I am very eager to see some FAQs. I was a reader on the 'green' site for many, many years and never bothered to create an account. As such, many of the interfaces are brand new to me here, and I find I have a few, simple I'm sure, questions. I just need a little hand-holding to get me going is what I'm saying.
When can we expect that to be complete? I know it seems like a low priority thing, but for us newbies, it's critical.
Thanks for this place!
(Score: 3, Informative) by furiousoyster on Wednesday February 19 2014, @05:53PM
Unlogined
(Score: 1) by EvilJim on Friday February 21 2014, @02:08AM
Deloginated?
(Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday February 19 2014, @05:53PM
As long as we're on a grammar nazi spree, "The Fine Print" should read, "The following comments are owned by who M ever posted them."
Also, the parser is nuking “ and related HTML character entities, and it's inserting extra spaces around the M above.
Cheers,
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 5, Informative) by johaquila on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:24PM
Actually, no, it's fine as it is and should not be changed. As a native speaker of a language in which the dative and accusative (of which "whom" is one of very few remnants still existing in English) still exist, I am acutely aware of what is going on with "whom". There was a time when every native speaker of English used who/whom as naturally as they are still using he/him. At that time nobody would have thought of using "whomever" in the way that you are proposing. In that sentence, "who[m]ever" functions as a relative pronoun. It is an object in the surrounding sentence ("The following comments are owned by ..."), and simultaneously the subject of the relative clause ("Whoever posted them"). Turns out that in Germanic languages the latter function has always taken precedence. It is a recent effect of language change that English speakers have become so unsure about who vs. whom that they even consider doing it the other way.
That said, the number of people who are doing it in a way that would have been clearly wrong a hundred years ago is close to critical mass now. Linguists will soon unequivocally consider it correct to use "whomever" in the way you are proposing. But this is not the case yet.
If you don't believe me, consider this. The strangeness of a part of speech being in nominative case in one respect and in accusative/dative case in another has long been felt. That's why there is an alternative construction: "The following comments are owned by him who posted them." "Him" consumes the dative/accusative, leaving the relative pronoun "who" in the nominative case, as it should be for its clause. Presumably this is the original construction, which was later shortened by dropping "him". This is why the case from the relative clause wins.
Sometimes the effect is the other way round:
"Whomever they are trying to kill, will have a hard time." Here the accusative case comes from the relative clause ("Whomever they are trying to kill"), and wins against the nominative case in which the pronoun (or clause) stands in relation to the main clause ("... will have a hard time").
Linguists have written a lot about this, especially on the web. For one nice casual treatment, see http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2900 [upenn.edu]
(Score: 2, Informative) by bucc5062 on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:53PM
see, this is why I love reading the comments (and why the other site is failing. Whomever remains at the aqua site will be less for the experience. Yes?
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:17PM
Magic 8 ball says yes!
(Score: 1) by frojack on Wednesday February 19 2014, @11:01PM
I like it. An instructive and informative Grammar Nazi! Correction done without malice.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by unitron on Thursday February 20 2014, @03:52AM
"The following comments are owned by *he* who posted them." is the version that doesn't make my brain hurt.
Most "who/whom" usage questions can be solved by converting to "they/them" and seeing which sounds right to the mind's ear.
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 1) by TheSage on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:42AM
"The following comments are owned by *he* who posted them." is the version that doesn't make my brain hurt.
My wife will hunt you down and explain gender neutral language to you.
May $DEITY have mercy on your soul.
(Score: 1) by unitron on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:55AM
I would be equally happy with "she who posted them" instead of "her", since it's just an alternate as a way to illustrate when to use "who" and when to use "whom", both of which, last I checked, are not gender specific.
So my problem wasn't with "he" versus "she" but "he" versus "him".
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 1) by johaquila on Thursday February 20 2014, @03:04PM
Unfortunately your post proves that these usage questions can no longer be solved this way by most native speakers because they have started getting even these simple things wrong. The correct (though of course sexist) version of your sentence is (currently) still the following: "The following comments are owned by *him* who posted them."
For further illustration, a very classical example with a nice workaround for the problem:
"*He* that is without sin among you, let *him* first cast a stone at her".
The correct short version of this has always been:
"Let *him* who is without sin cast the first stone at her." (60 Google hits in 19th century books)
But more and more speakers are preferring a new, formerly (and arguably still) ungrammatical version:
"Let *he* who is without sin cast the first stone at her." (8 Google hits in 19th century books)
This new variant already has 50% more Google hits than the old one. There are even reports of copy editors who have already started 'correcting' the correct version into the new one: http://sesquiotic.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/let-her -who-is-without-error/ [wordpress.com]
This is just normal language change. What used to be wrong becomes right, what used to be right sounds antiquated or even ungrammatical to more and more people, and before you know it we are yet another little step removed from the language of Chaucer.
(Score: 1) by acid andy on Sunday June 01 2014, @04:16PM
It's unlikely that you'll see this reply as the topic is so old now but would an acceptable gender neutral version of the above be: "The following comments are owned by them who posted them."?
I realise that by using they / them rather than he / she you're substituting the sexism for ambiguity between the singular and plural.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1) by johaquila on Tuesday June 10 2014, @04:41PM
I agree with your solution, though it looks a bit weird. I think that's because during the time when the now antiquated construction with "he who" (or "him who", depending on case) was still in widespread use, singular they was not, or at least not so generally. That's not to say singular they is a recent thing. Starting with Geoffrey Chaucer it has always been part of written English, including in the King James Bible. But of course there were times when it was restricted to certain situations, and times when a lot of people were careful to avoid it in general.
That said, the curves for "he who", "they who" and "them who" in Google's n-gram viewer are essentially parallel, so my feeling may be wrong.
(Score: 4, Informative) by LaminatorX on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:53PM
We welcome bug reports here. [soylentnews.org] Please also find the already reported bugs here. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by acid andy on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:23PM
Nice, thanks!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:29AM
For the purposes of reporting bugs...
How much of the issues I see listed on the Bugs page are actual bugs, and how much of them are simply missing slashcode features?
It seems the version of Slashcode you are using is somewhat older than that found on Slashdot and that seems to cause a lot of functionality to go missing.
Examples:
1) The quote button at the bottom of a posting does not appear.
2) The chevron enclosed quote does not work. (These make quoting parts of prior posts or TFAs hard.
3) After Posting you are shown your post, but your place in the Story is lost, and you have to naviaget down to where you were to continue reading replays.
D4) 2 radio button won't stay checked in account settings.
I'm sure there are more of these, but that's enough for here. Are these due to the vintage of Slashcode you are starting with, or are they features that somehow got broken?
If SoylentNews is to be the people that comprise it, treating the poster to all the goodies seems
pretty critical. I think all of us don't mind tweaking and experimenting with the moderation system. But something more than basic functionality still needs to be in the posting system.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by mrkaos on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:47AM
logged out.
As in, I logged out of beta as I found it intolerable.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.