Sometimes when I write an answer on ELL, I use symbols like * and ? to indicate that something is ungrammatical or questionable. But the first time I did this, some users objected! They said that these symbols were unclear because they hadn't been defined anywhere.
So, I started including footnotes in my answers explaining what the symbols meant. They make my answers a little bit longer, but they make sure new users will be able to understand them. (See the bottom of this question for an example.)
I was thinking we could do something similar here on JLSE. I noticed today that one of istrasci's answers used the ○
, ?
, and △
symbols. Now, these are clearly defined in jkerian's meta post, but my guess is that most new users won't have seen that post. (In fact, I think most new users arriving via Google aren't even aware that a "meta site" exists!)
So we could solve this problem by adding little footnotes when we use symbols. That way, we don't have to worry about whether people understand * and ?, or whether they understand △.
Alternatively, we could include links to our FAQ meta post, although I'm not sure how this would be formatted.
○ correct
△ sometimes correct
? questionable
× incorrect