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

Mon Jul 24 22:01:24 CEST 2017

Yes, the person who asked the question can choose an answer as the best -
but moderators can also choose to remove questions if they're seen as too
subjective, which would rule out a lot of the messages sent to the
developers list.

2017-07-24 19:38 GMT+01:00 Olga Zamaraeva <olzama at uw.edu>:

> (resending with slight edits; sent the previous message from a wrong
> account).
>
> Thanks, Ann and Guy!
>
> Guy, I thought that often it is the "best" answer that gets a checkmark,
> not necessarily the "correct" answer.
>
> For me that is actually the most important feature; in practice that is
> what makes good solutions so easily discoverable.
>
> However, you are absolutely right that we can't hope for 10 questions a
> day, and I also am not sure we would be a good fit for one of the big sites
> as a tag... Which is not to say that I am sure we won't be though.
>
> A forum sounds like a good compromise, perhaps closer in spirit to the
> mailing list than to stack exchange (mainly in that it doesn't promote
> quality question/answering). At least it is supposed to be
> easily searchable. It is not as easy to identify what the best solution is
> but oh well.
>
> Olga
>
> On Mon, Jul 24, 2017 at 11:12 AM Guy Emerson <gete2 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>>> stackexchange.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
>>>
>>>
>>> <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient> Virus-free.
>>> www.avg.com
>>> <http://www.avg.com/email-signature?utm_medium=email&utm_source=link&utm_campaign=sig-email&utm_content=emailclient>
>>> <#m_-674826658534144118_m_7099408130605566349_m_3744901773581259854_DAB4FAD8-2DD7-40BB-A1B8-4E2AA1F9FDF2>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Matrix-dev mailing list
>> Matrix-dev at u.washington.edu
>> http://mailman13.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/matrix-dev
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.delph-in.net/archives/developers/attachments/20170724/cd7f3781/attachment-0001.html>