Some people have a diamond after their username (ex: Jeff Atwood♦)
What special privileges do diamond moderators have?
How can I become a diamond moderator?
Who are the diamond moderators? How many are there?
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In short: mods are elected by the community periodically. They get all rep-based privileges and more in order to serve as human exception-handlers, that is, to fix things when the community can't handle it itself for whatever reason. In an ideal world they do very little.
@Ariel as DoubleAA said, it's not actually rep-based. There are (checks) 15 people with rep higher than mine, yet I'm a mod because the community elected me.
Site mods can currently set feeds to automatically chat messages in their chat rooms. Additionally, they can create a special feed user account specially for this purpose.
Since these users have no parent site, no rep, negative user ids, and no information other than recent chat messages, users ...
@SethJ I deleted it, as I agreed with your comment. I don't remember whether I +1ed your comment: I think had been someone else.
@Daniel English Wiktionary had a user who kept making good edits until he was elected administrator, then, a little while later, deleted the main page. Then he did it again under a different username. And again. And again. Now, his editing style is known to the regulars, so he's unlikely to be able to do it again unless he disguises himself well.
@msh210 That's really funny. I had thought to do that back in my vandalising days, but I figured that being a regular editor until I managed to get admin priveleges was too much effort even for a dedicated troll
@Daniel Becoming an admin on Wiktionary is easier than on Wikipedia. (From what I understand. I'm not really all that familiar with WP's processes.) You weren't WoW, were you?
Question for everybody: I have a friend who is looking to learn in Yeshiva in Israel next year. He doesn't really have any experience with Aramaic or learning gemara, although his Hebrew is good and he can do pretty well with translating and understanding the mishnas.
Any suggestions?
Also, he's married, so he would have to be able to live with his wife
@Daniel Is he graduating high school? College? Older? What is his approximate hashkafa? I appreciate your trying to help him, but I have enough trouble trying to guess where someone will fit best even when I know them pretty well.
@Daniel I'm studying Issur VeHeter through correspondence with them. Taking a year to learn full time sounds fantastic to me. I can give you plenty of information about their correspondence program if you'd like, though I cannot speak for their year-in-Israel program (it's supposed to be a condensed version of their several-years-long correspondence program).
@msh210 No. Some rabbis and Yeshivoth will only allow you to test after you've demonstrated considerable time spent studying, particularly with guidance. YPS conducts exams for Semichah for their students only, as do most Yeshivoth that I know of.
R' Zalman Nehemiyah Goldberg, if I'm not mistaken, allows anyone to test at any time, but generally speaking he is an outlier in that regard.
@msh210 and @Daniel, the reason I recommend YPS in particular is that their program is designed to teach to all skill levels to gain a certain level of mastery of the Shulhan 'Aruch. Basically each Se'if or two gets an in-depth Shi'ur.
(And to be clear, the goal is mastering Halachah through Shulhan 'Aruch; to get there you first travel through the Gemara and especially the Rishonim by way of the Tur and B"Y. Then you go through all Nosei Keilim.)
@SethJ Now that you mention it, he does seem to have some trolling tendencies. I wonder if he really thought that the joke about chad gadya was appropriate to post as an answer