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The About page and the title for the main site page and for meta all say 'TeX - LaTeX - Stack Exchange'. We've had some discussions, for example when we had a skills contest and about the user greeting, stressing the need to cover all TeX-related matters and not just LaTeX. The 'TeX - LaTeX' thing is something of a hangover from the early days of the site. I'd therefore suggest that we standardise on 'TeX - Stack Exchange'.

(Prompted by a recent question about the text in the FAQ)

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  • This needs developer action, except for the FAQ page, hence the question.
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Commented Feb 12, 2012 at 22:21
  • 1
    The problem you might have is that LaTeX is far, far better known than any other part of the typesetting system, including TeX itself.
    – Canageek
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 16:10
  • @Canageek I realise that: the FAQ specifically lists LaTeX and no-one is suggesting dropping that. I'm looking at the fact that we tend to abbreviate the site as 'TeX.SX', 'TeX-SX, etc., and that the name of the site is therefore perhaps best expressed as 'TeX - Stack Exchange', or similar.
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 16:22
  • +1 This seems like a no-brainer to me
    – morbusg
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 21:03
  • Okay, I've changed the FAQ text: other areas need attention from the devs.
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Commented Feb 14, 2012 at 7:20

1 Answer 1

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Do you mean the "phrase":

TeX - LaTeX - Stack Exchange is that tiny asterisk in the middle.

I'll assume so.

If we're going to change this (and I have no problem with the spirit of the proposal) then can we please change it to something that actually makes sense. The dashes (of whatever type) make it a bizarre sentence and should be removed.

I was about to propose that in that particular place, "This site" would be the clearest. But then I realised that even that doesn't fit because it is not this site that is the "asterisk", but the StackExchange Q&A site model. The current phrase implies that it is just this site that is the intersection of wikis, forums, and so forth. So for that place, I propose:

The StackExchange question-and-answer format aims to be that asterisk in the middle.

I don't see it on the main site page - is it only for people not logged in? Nope, can't see it when not logged in either. I'll skip that one. Oh, hang on. Do you mean the title as shown in the title bar? If so, I agree with the change but again think it should go further. At the moment, the title bar of the main site reads as follows for me:

Recently Active Questions - TeX - LaTeX - StackExchange - Mozilla Firefox

Again, the dashes are simply daft. I think I'd go for something like "TeX at StackExchange", the idea being that it makes it clear what is the topic and where it is hosted.

The only bit of the FAQ that I could find was the first part:

Welcome to TeX.SX! TeX.SX is for enthusiastic users of TeX, LaTeX and related systems, people who love to create well-structured and beautifully typeset documents.

The , LaTeX could easily be removed here. It is mentioned in the first bullet point following so there is no danger of missing it. If we really have to get rid of the TeX.SX (why?) then make it an actual name in the first instance and in the second use a referral back to the first (with apologies to Alan Munn for incorrect usage of grammatical terms), such as "Welcome to the TeX site at StackExchange! This site is for ...".

I strongly prefer "TeX-SX" to "TeX.SE" (note the punctuation) and "TeX.SX" is acceptable. I'd rather annoy random other StackExchange users than the Swedes. However, as this has brought it to my attention, I'd rather make the essential details of the site clear right at the outset: that it is about TeX and is hosted on the StackExchange network. Someone visiting the FAQ is more likely to be completely new to the SE network than just visiting from some other site. All of "TeX-SX", "TeX.SX" (is it some new variety of "FX"?), and "TeX.SE" (what has Sweden ever done to you?), are unclear on first sight (and site).

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  • My understanding is that '<site> - Stack Exchange' is a way of reading the domain <subsite>.stackexchange.com, but allowing for the fact that 'subsite' is not always the name of the site (for example, the Lego site is has subsite 'bricks').
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 8:44
  • @JosephWright In which context? The "About" page has bigger issues. The "FAQ" should go out of its way to be understandable by people who do not know the "in jokes". The web page title is, as far as I'm concerned, pretty irrelevant so I don't care about that. Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 8:46
  • 1
    How about tex-sex? I'll get my coat
    – morbusg
    Commented Feb 13, 2012 at 10:26
  • 2
    @morbusg That doesn’t make any sense. Now, if you’d said latex-sex Commented Feb 14, 2012 at 22:30

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