@EroSɘnnin Thanks. And glad to see you throwing your hat in the ring. You, @Semaphore and @senshin are our most active editors so far, and fixing posts - especially from new users - is the bulk of what a beta mod does.
I'm not asking if they behaved in the same way or had exactly the same abilities.
I consider myself rather familiar with Greek myths, but I've never heard of a fair amount of the ones in his stories. I want to know if any he invented any, or that they all mentioned in the myths and he's some s...
I was reading Greek mythology in the elaboration of Paradowski and I've noticed Hercules was described as 'giant'. It would make his physical strength obvious - being of enormous size means also having enormous strength. I've started imagining Hercules as someone like Rubeus Hagrid.
But is it s...
I would like to nominate Christofian.
I would like to invite you to take a quick look at his comment history. The pattern of him mercilessly hunting down sourceless answers is hard to miss. His always-polite-but-firm comments have inspired quite a few of our posters (myself included) to improve ...
@naltipar It's early, yes. However, since the Meta q has been posted, there's no harm in posting our nominations.
@EroSɘnnin I have exactly zero comments helping people fix their posts. @Christofian, on the other hand, is close to becoming the site's first meme: Cite your sources, or @Christofian will get you!
@Semaphore @fredsbend Since you've been nominated by other people, you should edit your nominations to let us know if you accept them (alternatively, you could post a comment under the nominations).
@EroSɘnnin Yes, they usually don't ignore community feedback unless they have good reason (e.g. a nominee having made an ass of themselves on a different SE site).
@naltipar You could post that sentence in a comment, if you will. However, I don't think you should have to explain why you posted the question. It's an interesting question, and you want it answered. That's as good an explanation as any.
I often hear of a story of Loki taking Mjölnir away from Thor and selling it to giants. Thor then gets angry and makes Loki join him in wearing wedding dresses to enter the giants place unnoticed to get it back.
What is the actual story behind this and who were these giants and were they actuall...
On most SE sites, eventually someone comes along looking for a specific resource. The usually ask a question in the form "Where can I find a [book, site, etc] about [insert topic]?"
These aren't necessarily bad, but the community needs to decide if they are allowed or not.
The close cousin woul...
Which tag we should use for Biblical stories?
My initial idea was to use bible (because of simplicity) tag for myths described in the Bible. However it was changed to abrahamic-religions instead. In my opinion this tag is not so obvious for new people.
Should we use abrahamic-religions, bible, ...
@Ixrec There's a certain satirical element to the story. The giants are a bit suspect of the bride's manly characteristics, but Loki manages to convince them all is good.
I'm referring to this question, which is now closed as Too Broad. I think this should be discussed, since I myself cannot decide whether it is too broad or not and some users seem to have cast reopen votes. How should we treat this now and similar posts in the future?
EDIT: As of now, this quest...
but I'm guessing you were trying to say that the criterion "similar creation myths" is specific enough while the target area of "any cultures ever" risks being too broad
On Wikipedia page we can read:
Enkidu was formed from clay and saliva by Aruru.
How somebody can be created out of clay and saliva?
Was is some kind of magic or today we could say it was a hybrid cloning?
Do we know something more about the process of creation such beings using clay and s...
so the worst-case scenario for that question is every hour someone pops up with an obscure creation myth from a random island culture that bears superficial similarities to a popular one
just checked, we do know a little about the Easter Island creation myth
I'll also nominate myself, @durron597
Top 10 in reputation on Main
Top 10 in participation on Meta
Been an active user in the Stack Exchange community for more than 3 years, with 12k rep on StackOverflow
Recently I've been taking a much larger interest on being a janitor on StackOverflow and on...
So @YannisRizos asked this question: Which cities had chthonic Zeus cults?
I am quite conflicted about whether such questions are on topic. It's a question about "whom did the people from this time period worship"? Not "what are the details of this particular mythological story?
I think it's bo...
I would like to nominate @senshin
He is quite active on this site main and meta, and has a range of useful expertise on other sites and in other domains.His meta posts are very advantageous and thoughtful. He has a good amount of reputation on the site and is a prolific editor.
He is very activ...
There are many different accounts of the life of Merlin, one of the noted magical figures in the tales of King Arthur. Some accounts do not cover the end of his life, while others state that he died at the hands of the Lady of the Lake or by Niviane, his lover.
How old was Merlin when he died? I...
Are mythologies from fictional sources on topic?
Questions about the Old Gods of the Forest from Game of Thrones?
Questions about the Nine Divines from the Elder Scrolls series of video games?
Etc.
I'm thinking no, but I thought the question ought to be asked. We could ban these questions ent...
It maybe a bit early, but it is something definite to start thinking about.
From the Moderator Pro Tempore blog:
About a week into the public beta, we will seek out members who are
deeply engaged in the community’s development; members who:
Have a reasonably high reputation score t...
considering SE staff will be the ones to select mods, downvoting them does not achieve much, as SE staff have no clue why you think they wouldn't be a good mod. If you genuinely think they wouldn't be good, a comment would at least clarify
> Everyone has their own reasons for voting, it's a private matter, and you might well never know why you received an up- or down- vote unless they felt like telling you.
Because S[OFU] are Q&A sites. Meta is actually a replacement for the UserVoice bug report/feature request site (with a bit of discussion thrown in...). The rules are different because Meta is... kinda misusing the SO engine.
And it's ok because we really do need a bug report / feature request / ...
@durron597 I don't think the SE model calls for a single authoritive answer: in fact I think one of the Area 51 criteria for a site to graduate from beta state is that question should have about two answers each in average. Wait, let me look it up.
That said, questions that call for a long list of examples are bad because they usually result in stupid lazy people not reading the existing answers nor even searching for exact words, and posting the same examples again.
@EroSɘnnin The bottom line is this: if Stack Exchange didn't want people to be able to downvote nominations, they would either prevent it in code or ask us not to
Ultimately your opinion on this issue is just that... an opinion. That doesn't mean you don't have very good reasons or that other people don't agree agree with you (you do have good reasons and other people do agree), but it's still an opinion.
And people who have a different opinion are probably going to downvote. That's okay, too.
@EroSɘnnin Because they felt like it. Flipping a coin for every user, upvoting the ones that come up heads and downvoting the ones that come up tails is a valid reason
From §4.6 of the JLS (emphasis mine):
Type erasure is a mapping from types (possibly including parameterized types and type variables) to types (that are never parameterized types or type variables). We write |T| for the erasure of type T. The erasure mapping is defined as follows:
The...
Jiraiya stated that Tsunade's oppai size was 106cm.
From Tsunade article:
Despite being known as flat-chested in her childhood, she now has a rather large bust; 106 centimetres in circumference, according to Jiraiya.
From Jiraiya article:
when caught spying on Tsunade in his younger y...
This is inspired by How Enkidu was created out of clay and saliva?, which (to my understanding) discusses the scientific basis behind a myth. My opinion was
I'm downvoting only because it asks about the feasiblity of a myth. Any and all myths are impossible in some way.
"All" is a poor choi...
Basically what I'm saying (you may already understand this, but even if so, for the larger chatroom audience) is that scientific basis of mythology is on topic if it's still ultimately about the mythology, not about the science.
Yes Fiction Mythology should be on topic.
Mythology is mythology whether it exists solely in a fictional world or existed as a form of worship for actual people. So long as the question is about the mythology and not about the fictional work it should be on topic here.
@YannisRizos thank you for the kind words; it's faltering just to be considered, and with so many qualified candidates, this site will be successful no matter who is selected.
Some works of literature are heavily based on existing mythology. Are these works on topic here?
To be clear, I am not referring to entirely fictitious mythologies, like Cthulhu or Star Wars mythos.
A few examples:
The Homeric epics ("The Odyssey", "The Iliad")
The plays of Sophocles ("Oedi...
1) being a moderator means that someone is in a position of power, and if someone feels that (for whatever reason) that a community member wouldn't make a good moderator, then they need a way to express that.
2) My suspicions as to why people aren't leaving comments when they downvote nominations: people are probably worried about looking mean, although they may have a legitimate concern for not wanting someone to be a moderator (whatever that concern may be).
My nomination has received it's fair share of downvotes, and while I wish we could have a more open dialogue about whatever issues people may have, I respect that people may feel pressured to remain silent, and I would rather that people downvote my nomination than say nothing at all.
It's just that it leaves no room for improvement and one can imply that many downvotes are from other nominees, as said by other users here in the chat.
But in the end, I accept what you're saying, @Christofian
@naltipar What does it mean if a nominee upvotes another nominee and downvotes yet another nominee? Does it mean that the upvote is for "good reasons" and the downvote is for bad reasons / spite?
Sometimes the downvotes do happen for a bad reason, I never implied that this is absolute.
Obviously you, as nominees, are users after all and you might not agree with some nominations, hence the downvotes, I just wanted to express my opinion that they do not sit well in me.
@naltipar Sure, but, the idea is that someone can also upvote for a bad reason (they like the idea of nominating a lego jedilizard), and that it will work itself out in the end.
What is the difference between giants, Jotuns and trolls in norse mythology?
It has three votes as too broad. Here's the review task: http://mythology.stackexchange.com/review/close/254
I don't agree. I don't know the answer, but it likely could be answered quite succinctly, with an answer in t...
I suspect a big one would be that anything designed for entertainment, like a stage play, is probably an adaptation (or "fanfic") since it has some constraints imposed by the medium that typically encourage some editing of the original myth which you wouldn't see the "worshippers" do
@durron597 I had a feeling that was your position too
@Ixrec If I didn't agree, I would have probably just downvoted, voted to close, and moved on. I was disturbed that it managed to get up to 3 close votes during private beta
Yes exactly. But from our point of view, or the casual reader's POV, there's little difference nowadays. Most people don't know which are the original sources; they're just stories.
hm, I think neither of the meta answers about myth identification really cover the "Is there a creature in mythology that is a frost bird or a frost phoenix?" one we just got
I believe other person could be searching for this exact sentance on Google and would probably be pretty happy to find the answer. Plus, I believe Myth Identification makes sense on a website like this one, since the same question won't be asked hundreds of time, they will be asked once and then people will be able to find it on the internet. What do you think ? — Yann Chabot27 mins ago
Did we ever establish where we stand on Q's that ask about pop culture versions of mythologies? I.e. I know we had a question about Marvel Thor versus mytho-Thor.
@Piper I would vote that they're on-topic, but they must be connected to the original mythology in some way. Like asking if the notion that only Thor is worthy is based in original Norse mythology.
So, I did a horrible job addressing this the first time around, so i edited my answer and would humbly ask the interested community members to take a look and see if my clarified answer makes more sense as a site guideline.
since we already have a site that does an exceptionally good job of answering questions about Marvel Thor, anything asked here should probably be focused primarily on mythical Thor
citing some Marvel movie as the reason you thought to ask a question about mythical Thor would be fine of course, eg "Can Thor's hammer actually fly back to him like a boomerang?"
...I should go ask that
@DavidStratton I don't think I was around for the original version but what I see now sounds pretty similar to what I've posted on other meta Qs, so +1 from me