V'dibarta Bam

12:01 AM

1

A: Is the Torah in the public domain? (If not, what license is it?)

Obviously the Torah cannot enter the public domain (or even move 4 ammot within it) on Shabbat. We know (Shemot 19:12) that when the Torah was given (which was on Shabbat) Moshe made sure to erect a boundary around Har Sinai making it a private domain (Rambam Shabbat 14:1). We also know that the...

I hope some of you find that at least mildly educational.

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA Bravo!

Did anyone leave and then delete comments on my werewolf answer? I thought I saw a couple show up in my notifications, but I don't see them now.

Double AA

12:24 AM

@IsaacMoses Yes someone did. That someone then deleted them themself.

Monica Cellio

@DoubleAA nicely done!

@IsaacMoses I enjoyed your werewolf answer. You win. :-)

Fred

5:35 AM

@Scimonster The other day, I was trying to identify the אחשתרנים of Esther 8:10. Something like a horse, but the exact species of animal was unknown to Chazal (M'gilla 18a). Then I found out they are unicorns. I learned how to harness the power of the unicorn mirroring character, and I was able to reverse the comment. Voilà!

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio I enjoyed yours. We all win :)

Shokhet

6:23 AM

@MonicaCellio In case you were wondering about that programming question that made its way over here tonight, I think I figured out why it came here. I am not impressed.

Repost it at judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/… — random 2 hours ago

@random Do me a favor and grow up, will you? Dasan, if no one is answering your question, take a look at "What should I do if no one answers my question?" ...reposting it on MSE or Mi Yodeya where it's blatantly off-topic won't help you with anything. — Shokhet 17 secs ago

(Dasan is the OP of that question, which duplicates an SO question)

msh210

7:01 AM

@IsaacMoses "Above the fold" is used in Web advertising circles to mean "on the part of a Web page that's seen before one scrolls".

@IsaacMoses I'm not sure tbh what the semantics of baruch shekivanti is supposed to be, but the syntactic/morphological counterpart for a feminine singular second-person would be shekivant. (I'm deliberately omitting the first word there.)

@NoachmiFrankfurt The videorecordings??

@Yehuda Salachti kidvarecha.

@Scimonster :-)

msh210

7:26 AM

@Scimonster It must use the "right-to-left override" character. See, um [...searches...] w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-unicode-controls

@Shokhet random may have meant no harm, merely thinking it would add to the festivities here.

Scimonster

7:52 AM

@Shokhet random was probably joking (it seems to me), and i wouldn't have minded if it was to someone who knew how SE worked, but the n00b apparently took it seriously.

@IsaacMoses @MonicaCellio I got a response from Tiflus Magazine.

> my apologies... this is all done in good fun and usually doesn't get further than a few of my friends - i will update the file to give proper credit. thanks for letting me know.

> Perhaps next year i will try and write a few articles.

msh210

@Scimonster The editor uses the same capitalization of "I" as you do. Hm.

Not the same capitalization of sentences' initial words as you do, though.

Scimonster

:P

Scimonster

9:17 AM

I've never had Popular Questions before PTIJ-season. A few days in i have 3.

Scimonster

10:30 AM

And thanks to my very hot What does Judaism think of math?, @CashCow ended up with a Guru badge.

-6

Q: If the Torah tells you not to add or subtract, what does it imply for behaviour?

If the Torah forbids addition and subtraction, what does it imply for Jews, and for ultra orthodox jews, regarding practical life? It is a baffling rule. Can you you use money at all? can you not subtract change? Can you use a clock to count the hours of the day? i.e. doing something in quarter...

mathematics

^ That was inspired by a PT question. :P

Meta-Man

0

Q: How did my consecutive days get restarted?

Over shabbos my consecutive days counter got restarted. How did that happen? I was on the site right before shabbos and back on right afterwards.

bug

Isaac Moses

2:43 PM

Anyone here who likes to draw? 500 point bounty to my favorite of your answers if you draw a "Benny's Bane" label for this answer as described therein.

Scimonster

@IsaacMoses What's a "yummy in my tummy" look?

Isaac Moses

@Scimonster subject to interpretation, I guess. I was thinking smiling, either looking satisfied or with tongue hanging out or licking lips

Don't forget, everyone, that we have a great Purim publication available at s.tk/miyodeya There's a full-length booklet with lots of Torah about Purim as well as Purim Torah, and also a card version that's ideal for printing lots of and putting in your Mishloach Manot.

4

Scimonster

4 PTIJ question posted (by me) == 4 "Popular Question" badges

100+ other questions... 0 "popular question" badges...

Isaac Moses

@Scimonster Related: stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/…

Scimonster

@IsaacMoses What does that have to do with anything?

Isaac Moses

2:56 PM

@Scimonster Funny stuff gets disproportionately high amounts of attention

Scimonster

@IsaacMoses Ah.

True dat

GTG; minchah.

Isaac Moses

Intentionally announced in Adar?

Scimonster

3:25 PM

@IsaacMoses O'cmon

Isaac Moses

@Scimonster If you're making a Benny's Bane label, feel free to put an O-C'mon-Passover on it. :)

Monica Cellio

3:42 PM

@Shokhet oh, thanks. I had wondered if it was a really poor PT joke -- "hey, I'll post something totally off-topic because I think that's funny", but now I see that that's not it.

Isaac Moses

4:02 PM

Anecdotal, but indicative:
Number of questions posted in the past 24 hours (parts of Sunday and Monday): 27
Number of which are PTIJ: 14
Number of which aren't: 13
Our "usual" Questions per Day" level: ~12 (though that's over all days, including Shabbat)
Anecdotal Conclusion: PTIJ continues to not prevent other stuff from getting asked.

Isaac Moses

4:32 PM

@DoubleAA Yeyasher kochacha! Only 63 posts left in the Main list, and we can really celebrate.

Double AA

4:45 PM

in Discussion between mevaqesh and Nafkamina, 9 secs ago, by Double AA

@Nafkamina רפאוה שלמה!

Scimonster

7:39 PM

Since i have currently maxed out on reputation for today (twice! -- once here, once on MSE), i am writing another PTIJ question, and will have a script press submit just before UTC midnight.

Hey, why not? ;)

YeZ

8:30 PM

18 of the top 20 users for this week have PTIJ as their main tag

Isaac Moses

@YeZ "This week" is ~48 hours old, right?

YeZ

@IsaacMoses yeah, a bit less.

Scimonster

And i'm at the top. :)

When the tag score script runs in the morning, PTIJ will become my top.

Currently at answer score of 80.

halacha, my new #2, is at 72.

Isaac Moses

8:53 PM

Welcome, @Superplane

YeZ

@IsaacMoses Do you think PTIJ attracts a lot of new traffic? I heard we hog the Hot Network list.

Isaac Moses

@YeZ We do get a many questions on the HNQ list. If I understand it correctly, it's because PTIJ questions get lots of answers with high scores quickly, compared to normal traffic on MY. Many PTIJ questions are racking up thousands of views quickly. So, I think that yes, the number of visits we get is up. I don't know how many of these PTIJ-inspired visitors stick around at all. Thos who just came in because of an intriguing title on the HNQ are less likely to care enough about Judaism ...

... to care about the rest of our content.

YeZ

@IsaacMoses I hear a data query coming this way...

Isaac Moses

@YeZ for?

YeZ

@IsaacMoses # of new users during PTIJ season

Isaac Moses

9:23 PM

@YeZ Here's a graph of new users per week.

PTIJ weeks were 201208-201210, 201306-201309, 201407-201412, and 201508-201510 (to be completed)

I don't see obvious spikes in previous years PTIJ seasons, but last week, 201508, was a record-setter (setting aside when we launched on SE 2.0), with 62 new users.

Week number calendar for reference

The previous record-holder was 201443, with 56 new users, the week following this past Sukkot. Not sure what that's about.

It looks like there was a jump to a new sustained plateau around 201435-201437, ~September 2014 / this past Elul. Not sure what to make of that either

YeZ

9:42 PM

@IsaacMoses I hope you saw I featured you in my newest PTIJ post

Isaac Moses

@YeZ I did. I'm trying to come up with a good answer

Scimonster

I have a potential idea for retaining users a little more, but it's almost midnight and i can't stay up now, so i'll post it tomorrow.

The question that will be posted by me in a couple hours is going to be automatically submitted by a script. :P

YeZ

@Scimonster I hope that fact will somehow be relevant to the question.

Scimonster

@YeZ Extremely tangentially.

YeZ

@IsaacMoses You could just post an answer of meaningless drunken rambling, thus confirming the suspicion stated in the question.

Isaac Moses

9:59 PM

Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr (/ˈhɛdi/; born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, 9 November 1914 – 19 January 2000) was an Austrian and American inventor and film actress. After an early and brief film career in Germany, which included a controversial love-making scene in the film Ecstasy (1933), she fled her husband and secretly moved to Paris. While there, she met MGM head Louis B. Mayer, who offered her a movie contract in Hollywood where she became a film star from the late 1930s to the 1950s. Mayer and the studio cast her in glamorous parts alongside popular leading men, and promoted her as the "world's most beautiful...

Jewish, was married to the enemy (like Esther), did cool stuff (invented important technology). I'm not getting there as far as a good answer, though. Free for the taking.

Also up for grabs: "Ken Lamar"

Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar Duckworth (born June 17, 1987), better known as Kendrick Lamar, is an American hip hop recording artist from Compton, California. In 2004, Lamar signed to Carson-based independent record label, Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE). Lamar secured a recording contract with a major-label in 2012, when TDE signed a joint-venture deal with Aftermath and Interscope Records. Lamar began to gain major recognition in 2010, after the release of Overly Dedicated, his first retail-release. The following year he released his first independent album, titled Section.80, exclusively through iTunes. The...

YeZ

10:31 PM

@IsaacMoses I actually knew that name. "World's most beautiful woman"

Monica Cellio

@Scimonster I'm definitely interested in hearing that idea (when you're awake again and ready to share). See also:

4

Q: How can we retain users who came for a special event?

My Stack Exchange community has a special event that runs for about two weeks per year. During this event we get a lot of new questions with clever answers and a lot more visitors. It's, basically, a parody/silliness break in the middle of winter. While some users do stick around after the eve...

user-retention promotion

Meta-Man

11:16 PM

1

Q: What if your Orthodox rabbi tells you to ask your question on Mi Yodeya?

I can't tell you how often this has happened... I ask my Ortodox rabbi a question. He doesn't know the answer, and suggests that I ask it on Mi Yodeya. (He knows about this site and sometimes uses it.) So, I ask the question, I don't have it closed, but the only one or two answers I get say, "a...

discussion meta-purim-torah-in-jest

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