Error in Latest Breaking News

[Chrysanthemum]

Hello!

I apologize in advance for being pedantic, but I was a language teacher for many years, and there is a repetitive error on the Latest Breaking News Forum.

The sentence in question is: "This message was self-deleted by its author." This sentence makes no sense. If a message were self-deleted it would be like a self-driving car. There is no driver involved in a self-driving car, and there can be no author involved in a self-deleting message.

I believe the intended meaning of the sentence is: "This message was deleted by its author." Simple, no?

I'm curious if anyone else has noticed this. And I'd also love to know if the sentence can be corrected!

Thanks for reading!

All the best,
Chrysanthemum

[mahina]

1. True! But every time I see the Forums tab I think "you mean Fora." But language is shared meaning, and Fora wouldn't

mean plural of forum to most people. So I'm the wrong one to ask.

[TwilightZone]

2. Forums is also acceptable.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forum

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/forum

[mahina]

6. Yep. That's why I never asked for it to change.

You're right, but I took Latin for a few years for no good reason, and that's just what my brain does.

[PikaBlue]

3. Grammar Saves Lives

There is an important difference in the following two statements.

"Let's eat, Grandma!"

"Let's eat Grandma!"

[bucolic_frolic]

4. Self refers to the self doing the deed. I see no ambiguity.

And self driving cars are far newer than self-deleting authors. They refer to very different deeds.

[birdographer]

5. Absolutely redundant

But in the world today, this is pretty easy to overlook. Kids can't spell anything, nobody proofreads their YouTube video graphics or memes, as an editor I feel your pain. It's just the way of the world now, have to get used to it.

[BOSSHOG]

7. Hello My Friend

I don’t know the answer to your inquiry, but would you agree the English language is the hardest on the planet? I recall the words of an Old College Professor asking way back in the 70s, “imagine a Citizen of China trying to learn English.” I tried but I couldn’t.

[dobleremolque]

15. I taught English As A Second Language (ESL)

for a while. In addition to the "rough, bough, through" quirks, one of my favorite illustrations of the difficulty of English was to speak the sentence: "I really believe that", twice. The first time, emphasize the word "believe." I really BELIEVE that. The second time, emphasize the word "that" and give it the pitch rise then drop ..."THA-yut." The meaning is the polar opposite of the words spoken in the second example. No student ever quit on me, though.

[TwilightZone]

9. Posts can be deleted by multiple parties.

It's likely intended to differentiate from the others, though your example would probably suffice.

The process to remove one's own post is Powers -> Self-delete this post, so it's probably also worded that way for consistency.

[NJCher]

10. I think it should be corrected to what you suggested

We should always try for the fewest possible words.

[True Dough]

11. Ptah making a statement a few posts above!

[littlemissmartypants]

14. Clever, Ptah. ❤️

[Shellback Squid]

12. apology accepted

[littlemissmartypants]

13. Don't ask me. I can't spell and I'm terrible with grammar, too. ❤️

[EarlG]

16. Appreciate the question

The answer is, you’re not wrong, but it’s that way because we think of “Self-delete” as the specific name of a function on DU. It appears as a function in the Powers menu below any of your posts.

Part of this is just for legacy reasons. We understand that it’s clunky, but we deliberately chose to say “self-deleted” rather than just “deleted” in the notification because when the function was new, we wanted to be crystal clear that the post was deleted by its own author and not for some other reason. We didn’t want the notification to be too similar to other notifications.

We don’t mind leaving it the way it is because we still want to make sure that people associate that piece of information with the Self-delete function.

At least, that’s my excuse

[marybourg]

17. In a world in which people use "him and me"

as the subject of a sentence, or “myself and the wife”, everything else can be overlooked, in my opinion.