Proposal: Digital Fabrication
Just like the title says: I would like to propose including something about CNC in the site description.
1
-
1Agreed, we should also have 'like' changed to 'such as'.– user22356Aug 24, 2013 at 3:01
Add a comment
|
2 Answers
The old description was:
Proposed Q&A site for people interested in making physical things in the digital age. Including using home/office 3D printing & scanning, CNC milling or cutting machines, CAD/CAM software and how we can communicate & share ideas within the maker & hackerspace communities.
Unfortunately, as mentioned by Robert Cartaino, this was too complex and tried to include too much. When he changed the name of the proposal he simplified the description to:
Proposed Q&A site for professionals and advanced makers who design, prototype, and fabricate physical things using technologies like 3D printing & scanning.
When I proposed alternative names, I suggested a revised description:
Proposed Q&A site for professionals and enthusiasts who design, prototype and fabricate physical things using technologies such as 3D printing, scanning or cutting machines, and 3D CAD/CAM software.
However when the name was changed again, the description was left as the simplified version.
I suspect that this suggestion was still considered too complex, and while the current description would be slightly better English were the "like" to be replaced with "such as", I believe that in some parts of the world both of these options would be considered equally valid and a matter of style (two nations divided by a common language and all that *8').
If there is a strong feeling that the description should be changed then we can ask for it to be changed, but I'm not sure if that is really necessary. After we get into beta, the Area 51 page and its description becomes pretty irrelevant, and we can decide matters such as this on the new sites meta site.
-
Deferring the change until later raises the likelihood of inertia resulting in it staying unchanged. The grammatical error makes us look ignorant. Aug 25, 2013 at 15:21
-
2
-
(For the humour impaired, that was intended as a joke, two nations divided by a common language and all that *8') Aug 25, 2013 at 18:15
-
Yeah thanks for the explanation, as this site reaches beta and begins to mature, that will be a better time to refine this topic.– Chris OAug 26, 2013 at 2:08
-
‘Like’ being used in lieu of ‘such as’ is not yet (and one would hope never will be) accepted American usage. I've dealt w/ projects w/ the British, and have a fairly decent awareness of the resultant difficulties --- using and enforcing proper English usage helps to minimize such. Aug 26, 2013 at 13:47
-
I dunno, it's a big world, many folks outside of GB/US speak English as well, all with their own quirks. Not sure whose version(s) gets to be "correct" at the end of the day. Sure it's good to keep things tidy, but there is a point of diminishing returns when trying to define/enforce "proper".– Chris OAug 26, 2013 at 15:25
-
And there's a point where sloppiness and incorrect word choice / usage impedes clear communication --- like is properly used to indicate similarity, not to enumerate a list --- I don't care what term is used, so long as the usage is grammatically correct. Aug 26, 2013 at 15:52
In our final review (when we finalize the proposal description going into launch), we generally try to avoid enumerating the list of what the site is going to be about heading into the launch.
When a proposal is first created, we generally don't fuss with the description too much because it can be helpful to folks actively seeking out these proposals. But we generally pare down a site's byline going into launch. It's the job of the early community to decide what the site will actually be about. That's one of big goals of the private beta. That doesn't mean the site isn't going to be about CNC systems. It just that such details will be enumerated elsewhere (like the Help Center/FAQ).
answered Aug 26, 2013 at 14:59
