23
About this question, I think we should apply the golden rule that says that everyone is free to ask questions in one of those two languages (we restrict ourselves to English or Italian, of course).
This makes sense because those who are learning the language wouldn't be necessarily able to follow a post if it is written in the language itself; native ...
21
I'm a foreigner living in Italy and I had to deal very often with local dialects/languages. It is a very fun and interesting thing, it is part of the Italian way and it shouldn't be excluded from this website. We can't afford to have a StackExchange website for every dialect of Italian (even if is Sicilian or Sardinian), so they all should be discussed here ...
19
I'll reply in English, so that future foreign users (which are most likely the ones going to ask for a translation) will find this useful.
I'll borrow a term from StackOverflow, and propose to mark as off-topic any plzsendtehtranzlation questions (see: https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/19780/205473)
I'm not saying that any question about a translation issue ...
15
I don't think we need to do anything special.
If such words are subject of a question, it will be evident by the context.
In case they are improperly used for addressing other people in a rude or offensive way, they'll be handled with the use of flags and a moderator intervention.
13
We recognized a bad habit and nipped it before it went too far. The term 'language and usage' is rather redundant, and unnecessarily long. We're not quite sure how the '& usage' originally came about, or why we didn't catch it when it did, but at least now we have.
Learning a language entails learning how to use it, so there's no practical purpose for ...
13
I don't think we should transform the site into a Latin discussion one.
With your kind of reasoning, every site about romance languages could do the same!
I think we should welcome questions that show a clear reference to Latin (and I agree there'll always be a lot of them, for obvious reasons), but we're talking about Italian, not Latin.
So, for instance,...
12
I'm torn about this.
The difference between a dialect and a language is fuzzy and probably only dependent on its diffusion. Dialects have full-fledged grammars, vocabularies and history, making each one of them a language which is not Italian.
I'm a native Italian speaker and I can barely understand (and surely not able to speak) the dialect of my own city,...
12
It's too early to say anything intelligent about your stats. At 30 days, it is way too soon.
Does this site have a chance of succeeding?
You are currently serving about 60+ users/day. French SE was running about twice the traffic you are in this same time frame, but they bottomed out at 46 users/day before establishing a steady pattern of growth. This is ...
11
I believe so.
Etymology can help in understanding the proper use of a term, so they look indeed related to the main topic of this site.
11
Approvo, in pieno.
Non vedo motivi di aggiungere barriere formali, in fondo siamo su Internet.
11
It's always better to give your best attempt to translate the sentence. See https://italian.meta.stackexchange.com/a/14/707.
10
Since there exist many predefined tags which are already in English (discussion, feature-request, ...) I'd rather stick with English.
We however might consider to add wiki descriptions in both languages.
That being said, I might think of exceptions in case of specific Italian words, which wouldn't make sense to translate.
For instance I believe accademia-...
10
I don't think we should delete them outright.
Questions should be preferably in English for the time being, although I wouldn't go as far as forbid Italian at all. I realize that sometimes asking a question in Italian is going to be much easier, so we should allow that.
Answers should preferably be in the same language as the corresponding question or ...
10
I disagree strongly with the icon idea for the very simple reason that swearing is not appropriate on this site at all.
People can certainly ask about vulgar words or swear words or blasphemy etc., on the other hand they should do so in a clear context that we are talking about sensitive subjects. This has been discussed on other language sites.
Since ...
10
The main focus should be on clarity, so whatever makes the post clear is fine in my opinion.
I wouldn't enforce a standard and I'd leave as much freedom as possible to the author, as it's also in their interest to achieve the maximum clarity possible.
That being said, I'll go ahead and encourage the use of
quotation, for long sentences or whenever the ...
10
egreg, I personally have voted +1 because I saw in your answer some useful details and also a very good citation from the ISO recommendations.
If I was to guess why your answer's been downvoted, I'd say that just the phrase "Separating thousands with periods is cause for ambiguities" might be perceived by some people as overstatement, since (a) we all are ...
10
As a matter of fact, the general consensus across the StackExchange network seems to be that downvotes don't (generally) need a comment.
I'm not very keen on downvoting (even less so here, being a moderator) and my personal opinion is that many downvotes should need a comment. It's not really easy to make a hard and fast rule, but we're in a different ...
9
In un forum di lingua italiana che ho guardato di tanto in tanto, il tono con il ‘lei’ mi pareva molto fasullo. O forse era addirittura un modo di ritenersi superiori.
Propendo decisamente per il ‘tu’ (ma ai miei studenti do rigorosamente del ‘lei‘).
9
Thanks for the heads up Abby, we'll work on it.
However I feel like opening the beta to the public will result in more interesting questions coming in. So far we have a great majority of native speakers on the site, meaning a lot of people very oriented to answering questions rather than asking them.
I perceive this site as intended both for
beginners
...
9
AYE! Of course, we want it, why do you ask?
9
I can speak only for myself, of course. I might have been guilty of the behaviour you mention: if so, in general it is because I feel that what I have to say is incomplete, or unsupported by sources, or am not sure of its correctness. So I consider it a comment because I give some of a cue, or of a half-baked idea others might want to improve (or refute, as ...
9
Upvote = Yes! Please sign us up for hats!
Downvote = No thank you, I'd rather enjoy a regular day at the office.
8
I think that an italian language site should stick to its original focus: deal with italian language.
If the Latin language site proposal failed it's probably because there is not enough interest by the community.
Of course 'italian language' will deal with Latin related issues when you wnat to explore, etymology, constructions of the phrase and other ...
8
I think we should have title and body in the same language, I have fixed the title of that question.
8
I'm not the censor and, on a personal level, I would not have deleted it, but the site is not intended for to collect users' opinions, even less so when they are of political nature.
The purpose of the site is to collect comprehensive answers, with sources which are traceable, neutral and not personal opinions on the language and its evolution. The idea is ...
8
Many thanks for pointing this out, Ana.
We'll kindly ask users to write on meta primarily in English. As to the already posted questions, we'll take care of adding to them an English translation asap.
8
YES, I definitely want the site to participate!
8
In my opinion, this is not a problem. You or any other user can post an answer to this or to any other question in the site. The fact of having some comments written by some specific users shouldn't be a problem or a barrier: anyone can answer!
8
In my opinion, such posts are OK if they can fit under the tag discussion whose usage guidance stays
The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.
That is, it could be that there is not an explicit question written in the body of the post, but the aim of ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible