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Somewhere in the 339 questions containing "bare with me" there may be one or two intentional uses of "bare" instead of "bear", but for the most part it's 339 post accidentally asking us all to get naked and answer programming questions.

We should probably whittle away at them over time and either...

  • edit them to use the correct "bear with me"
  • remove the phrase and the sentence that contains it altogether, as it's usually the kind of fluffy preamble that just takes up space, ie

    bare with me, but I'm a noob and I have this really tough question that I've been stuck on for days

Bonus: The presence of "bare with me" seems to be a good indicator for low-quality questions and answers. I haven't edited one yet where "bare with me" was the only problem with the post.

Extra credit: There are a lot of "alot" posts. A lot. Just saying.

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Simlar-sounding-word density exceeds maximum limit. Seriously though, removing the entire line would be sufficient enough IMO - it doesn't add anything to the discussion. – Makoto Jan 29 '13 at 5:35
10  
Are we really talking about this? I could probably come up with a dozen phrases of concern right now, and a dozen more every evening. Reminds me of the "Hi Hello Hi there" salutation whitelist, that doesn't take into consideration "Hii", "Hiiiii", or "Konnichiwa". – Michael Petrotta Jan 29 '13 at 5:46
1  
@MichaelPetrotta So it's a problem, but because there are other similar problems, we should ignore this problem and all the similar problems? It's 300 posts. It can be fixed in a few hours. Nobody is suggesting it's worth some kind of automation in the future, but in the mean time it's a fantastic indicator of low quality posts. – meagar Jan 29 '13 at 5:47
3  
And when you fix it, there's a couple thousand similar phrases just waiting there. – Michael Petrotta Jan 29 '13 at 5:48
2  
And then, gasp, we can fix those too. A thousand posts is a drop in the Stack Overflow bucket. – meagar Jan 29 '13 at 5:49
7  
It seems really pointless to me, and a vast waste of effort, speaking from an opportunity cost point of view. – Michael Petrotta Jan 29 '13 at 5:53
12  
Just go in and fix it. There are tons of things like these which are annoying but don't really need community consensus. "Guyz", "Please help me", "It's urgent", "thanks in advance", etc. are all either wrong, unnecessary or reasonable indicators that the post could stand some improvement. But let's not make a post for each and every one of them. – Bart Jan 29 '13 at 6:04
1  
It's fine that you've pointed it out, but I'm also leaning towards the opinion that there's no need to enlist scores of editors to alleviate the problem. If you consider it significant, go after it with passion. I don't think anyone is going to tell you not to. – jonsca Jan 29 '13 at 6:05
1  
I wasn't particularly interested in grinding through 330 posts by myself. I have a job, and a life, despite present evidence to the contrary. I also don't perform mindless edits to simply remove the phrase, I clean up the entire thread of questions and answers and apply votes where warranted. It's quite a large job for one person, or a small job for many. – meagar Jan 29 '13 at 6:06
3  
@meagar Then take your time. I'm slowly whitling away at homework posts at a dozen or so each day. There's no hurry. – Bart Jan 29 '13 at 6:07
1  
@Bart I felt this particular one was post-worthy because it's a case where literally every use of those words in that order is a correctable mistake. That it is an indicator of low-quality posts is, as I said, a bonus. – meagar Jan 29 '13 at 6:11
2  
@jcolebrand: That wasn't meant to be completely serious, but point taken ;) – BoltClock's a Unicorn Jan 29 '13 at 13:56
3  
Why don't we just change the site tagline to get naked and answer programming questions. Problem solved. And it'll make the avatars interesting ... – EnergyNumbers Jan 29 '13 at 14:40
4  
How about we require 10K rep on english.stackexchange.com to be able to post on Stack Overflow? If that sounds stupid, then how about 5K? – Wesley Murch Jan 29 '13 at 19:37
1  
Sarcasm is lost on this one, it would seem. @WesleyMurch I thought it was funny :) – ryan Jan 29 '13 at 19:40

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