[developers] [Matrix-dev] poll: stack exchange?

Mon Jul 24 20:11:33 CEST 2017

I think having a better public-facing Q&A site would be a great idea, but I
don't think Stack Exchange is the way to go.  Following Mike's link, it
says that "10 questions per day on average is a healthy beta, 5 questions
or fewer per day needs some work".  So we're unlikely to be able to set up
a Delph-in Stack Exchange site.  We could try to create a Delph-in tag, as
Mike suggested, and to answer Emily, it's possible to subscribe to a tag,
which would give high precision and recall.

However, if we use an existing site, we have to stick to their rules - and
looking through the most recent threads in the developers list archive, it
looks like the majority of threads would not be considered appropriate as
Stack Exchange questions, because they can't be marked as having a correct
answer (asking for advice, starting discussions, making announcements) and
even the ones that would be appropriate (asking how to solve a bug, asking
how to do a specific thing) often lead to a back-and-forth discussion that
would be awkward on Stack Exchange.  So I don't think we can replace the
mailing lists with Stack Exchange.

A forum with threads might be more appropriate, and would have a friendlier
interface than http://lists.delph-in.net/archives/

2017-07-21 21:08 GMT+01:00 Ann Copestake <aac10 at cl.cam.ac.uk>:

> Hi Olga,
>
> It's a very good point to raise.  I am sure that something like this would
> help with new users.  I had an interesting conversation at CLIN with
> someone who had used the LKB for a project (undergrad, I think).  He was
> completely sure that, for his peers, we needed to use something like
> stackexchange rather than mailing lists.  He actually said that he'd
> assumed that DELPH-IN was dead, based on our lack of use of modern
> interactive technology (don't shoot the messenger ...)
>
> I don't think the linguist/non-linguist distinction is so clear that a
> forum should be set up specifically for `grammar engineering' though.  For
> instance, there are people trying to use the ERG/Redwoods for various
> machine learning and NN things right now.   So somewhere where people could
> also ask questions about details of ERS or the best configuration of ACE or
> how to get things out of Redwoods/Wikiwoods etc etc would be helpful.
>
> I think the requirement for 60 people for stackexchange is sensible - I
> can't see it working without that number.  If some such forum did take off,
> and we got more traffic than developers, then personally I'd probably use
> an email filter to avoid my normal inbox getting even more cluttered than
> it is now.
>
> stackexchange works best when people can ask rather specific questions, I
> feel, so I don't think we should broaden to all computational linguistics
> or all parsing.  But possibly there's something other than stackexchange we
> should consider.
>
> All best,
>
> Ann
>
> On 21/07/2017 20:39, Emily M. Bender wrote:
>
> From my perspective I'd only want to move off of our own mailing lists
> (which I see
> in my inbox) to some external service if I could get notifications from
> that service
> that were high precision/high recall for questions that I really should be
> replying to.
> IOW, I don't want to subscribe to a "linguistics" tag just to be able to
> catch the 0.01%
> of it that would be questions about the Matrix (let alone "nlp" where it
> would be more
> like 0.00000000000001%).
>
> Emily
>
> On Fri, Jul 21, 2017 at 12:36 PM, Michael Wayne Goodman <goodmami at uw.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Olga,
>>
>> I think a similar idea was brought up at Stanford last year, partially as
>> a way to make what we're doing more visible and to lower some barriers for
>> asking questions.
>>
>> But a separate stackexchange forum might not be the best path forward as
>> it's too narrow a topic. People have asked questions about HPSG on
>> StackOverflow, and you could create an [hpsg] tag if you have 1500+
>> reputation points, but they have to be used in at least 1 question every 6
>> months or they get removed. Alternatively, we could reuse other tags, like
>> [nlp], [grammar], or [linguistics].
>>
>> There's also a linguistics forum in beta: https://linguistics.stackexcha
>> nge.com/. Its stats (https://area51.stackexchange.
>> com/proposals/6673/linguistics) show that it's doing ok, but it needs
>> more questions per day, so if we join up with that forum we can both
>> benefit.
>>
>> What do you think?
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 21, 2017 at 12:03 PM, Olga Zamaraeva <olzama at uw.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> I was curious how many people on these lists would be interested in
>>> participating in a stack exchange site (like stackoverflow, tex-exchange,
>>> math-exchange etc), as an alternative/supplement to this mailing list?
>>>
>>> The site would house questions about grammar engineering with HPSG, I
>>> imagine, particularly using the Grammar Matrix.
>>>
>>> These sites both promote quality question/answering and provide a very
>>> convenient way to look up things which had already been answered/discussed.
>>>
>>> I created a proposal for such a site on stackexchange.com but I suspect
>>> we won't have enough users? They want 60 users or something like that, to
>>> send the proposal "live".
>>>
>>> In any case, here's the proposal, if you think it is a good idea and
>>> would like to follow.
>>>
>>> https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/111508/grammar-engineering
>>>
>>> Alternatively, if you think it is a bad idea, also let me know!
>>>
>>> Thank you,
>>> Olga
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Matrix-dev mailing list
>>> Matrix-dev at u.washington.edu
>>> http://mailman13.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/matrix-dev
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Michael Wayne Goodman
>> Ph.D. Candidate, UW Linguistics
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Matrix-dev mailing list
>> Matrix-dev at u.washington.edu
>> http://mailman13.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/matrix-dev
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Emily M. Bender
> Professor, Department of Linguistics
> Check out CLMS on facebook! http://www.facebook.com/uwclma
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