V'dibarta Bam - 2013-05-28

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12:53 AM

Public service announcement: remember that if things are happening on the site that you don't like, you have several tools available, including downvote (125 rep), edit (don't change the intent, but feel free to clean things up), vote to close questions (3k rep), vote to delete questions (10k), vote to delete downvoted answers (20k), and when those don't apply or aren't available, flag (15 rep).

5

3 hours later…

3:53 AM

@MonicaCellio Did something happen to spark that reminder, or were you just throwing it out there?

@Daniel: perhaps it has to do with the last question that went up.

@Daniel I only afterwards realized the placement. Let me be clear that it was not about Dave's question.

I was throwing it out there. I participate on a bunch of sites, so sometimes discussions on one jog my memory about others, and it's been a while since we've reminded folks that the community can act and shouldn't have to wait for mods to step in.

TZT all -- later!

1 hour later…

5:01 AM

@Dave Perhaps some people misread it as a request to generate such a list. We get questions of that form from time to time, and we generally consider them not practically answerable within our format.

I think you might be correct. They might have understood "anybody" as a reference to themselves, when I actually meant literally anybody.

Wow. Talk about putting up numbers for work on the site: Yeyasher Kochacha to @DoubleAA for being the first to earn the Reviewer badge according to its current definition ... after also being the first to earn it under its old definition!

3

6:08 AM

@DoubleAA, indeed! In fact, if you factor into consideration the frequency of libations as compared to the meaty part of the tamid, you might even say that vine > ovine > bovine. — Shimon bM 7 mins ago

10 hours later…

3:42 PM

Hi all. I closed the following as a dupe of the OP's general "what's an idol?" question:

-1

Q: If someone makes an Idol as a medium of worship to worship one God does it still make it Avodah Zarah

Its a common argument of Hindus and many other pagans that they understand that the God does not reside in the Idol but it is only a focus of attention and a medium to reach God. Does this still qualify as Avodah Zarah? Moreover Hindus do Have the concept of Monotheism as discussed here.

halacha avodah-zarah

@MonicaCellio I don't think this is a duplicate of that. Normally for narrow applications of broader questions, we would mark the narrow question as a duplicate; however, I think that in this case, the question stands on its own as something that a person might want to know, where it might only get a brief mention in the broad question, it can be answered fully here. — Daniel 20 mins ago

What do the rest of you think about the close vs. @Daniel 's comment? Is this different enough to merit its own question? If so, should we be concerned about getting additional specific "is this an idol" questions? Or is that ok?

4:10 PM

@MonicaCellio I commented there. I think that this question needs more work to explain what it's looking for. I think that many "Is this an idol" questions would be either dupes of previous questions or too localized, but that some can still probably fall into the sweet spot in between. It remains to be demonstrated where, on that continuum, this question belongs.

Hi

@MonicaCellio I did not ask is "hindu cow" an Idol , I asked about a very specific characteristic concerning an Idol which makes it avodah zarah — Ali 54 mins ago

The characteristic being that Idolaters use it as a medium of focus and as a medium to get closer to God

@IsaacMoses @Daniel Can I use you for a quick feature test?

@DoubleAA OK

@Ali Add in your understanding of the general case of the prohibition and why you suspect this may be conceptually different.

@IsaacMoses Did you just get a ping from me on main?

@DoubleAA 526

4:21 PM

@IsaacMoses Cool. Thanks

Because they have the concept of monothiesm , yet worship Idols

as a focus of worsip

@Daniel You around? I want to try a >10k user also

@Ali Christians claim to, too. And they don't AFAIK think the cross is a god. How is this different from that?

@DoubleAA Sure

@Daniel Check your inbox on main. Did you get anything?

4:24 PM

@MonicaCellio So thats the clarification I was seeking , as some people in my "cross" question answered as if cross is not an Idol

@DoubleAA 421

?

@Daniel Just that one?

@DoubleAA Oh and 739

@Daniel Great. Just testing Qs and As.

It's a recent feature change. I wanted to know if you guys got pung.

@DoubleAA We can now.

4:29 PM

@DoubleAA Yep. Definitely pung

@Ali it would help if you would explain in the Hindu question what you learned from the Christian one and why you think this is different, then.

4:47 PM

I have updated the question and that is no longer the motivation @MonicaCellio

5:01 PM

@Ali is the current form of the question clear enough that others think it should be reopened? Ping @Daniel @IsaacMoses.

@Ali Are you asking whether that form of worship is avodah zarah or whether the object gains the status of "idol"?

@Daniel status of Idol

@MonicaCellio Ya its clear

-1

Q: Has an idol been clearly defined as to what is an Idol that makes it Avodah Zarah?

Has an idol been clearly defined as to what is an Idol and what is not?

halacha avodah-zarah

why downvote here?

@Ali That's not what your question asks

You ask whether the worship is a form of avodah zarah

5:22 PM

@Ali with all due respect, whether the asker thinks it's clear doesn't matter. I'm asking the readers who have commented on it.

@DoubleAA, Ali, re the requirement to destroy it? re the ban on worshiping it? re the ban on owning it? re the ban on deriving benefit from it? re the process of 'nullifying' it? For what purposes are you asking? There may be different answers depending. — msh210 6 mins ago

@Daniel Ya I updated it

@msh210 ... et seq.

0

Q: Are photographs of living creatures considered to be Idolatry and hence prohibited?

I seldom see any of the people here post their photos , Is it because of the fear of Idolatry?

5:47 PM

@msh210 why the clse?

close?

I GAVE the motivation

and both of my questions were marked against other of my own question!

and i do know what i have asked before

@Ali You asked earlier whether paintings are allowed in light of the prohibition on idolatry. The title there specifies that you mean paintings of living creatures. Here you ask whether photos of living creatures are allowed. I took that as a duplicate, not realizing that there could be a distinction between photos and paintings (as indeed there a priori can). I'll reopen it, sorry.

@Ali I thought you'd forgotten.

6:09 PM

@Daniel @MonicaCellio (MY regulars who are currently present) : close judaism.stackexchange.com/q/29039/170 as "not a real question: It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ." or perhaps as a duplicate? (See my comment there.)

6:25 PM

@msh210 sounds like a dupe to me. (Commented there.)

@msh210 Yeah, I agree with @MonicaCellio. It's a dupe

@All Can we get Daniel a close vote? judaism.stackexchange.com/search?q=user%3A1713 Only 57 more rep.

@Daniel @MonicaCellio okay, thanks, closed.

@DoubleAA Eh. History says that he'll make it there within a couple of weeks at most, naturally.

BTW, @Daniel, re: your profile: No, it just means you're nerdy in two different ways now. As a result, the only community in which you wouldn't be seen as a nerd is the one that lies at the intersection of the two.

<triumphantly pushes up glasses by the bridge over the nose>

6:43 PM

@IsaacMoses Namely Mi Yodeya?

@Fred Shh. When you say that out loud, it makes my statement look like a cultish "the only place you're really understood is here."

@DoubleAA Wait! I still need to get 484 more helpful flags so I can get the marshall badge before getting the close vote!

Seems unlikely at this point... :(

@Daniel Give away rep in bounties. :-)

@IsaacMoses Good point

@Fred Also a good point :)

@msh210 Oooh that's a good idea

@msh210 Is it possible to flag after reaching 3000?

6:51 PM

@Fred I think so

But not for closure

@Fred Yes.

You can flag a question if you think it should be deleted

or you need mod attention for some other reason

@Daniel Right (I think).

@Daniel So you could still eventually get that badge. :)

@Fred Also all the comment flags are still fair game.

6:54 PM

@Fred Yeah, true. Looking back at my flagging history, it seems I mostly just flag posts that should be deleted and leave comments on closures for some reason

The only difference is any flag that was basically a close vote becomes an actual one. Spam/Offensive flags, comment flags, and mod-attention flags still exist.

I also have only racked up 16 flags in the 10 months i've been here so it might take a long time anyway haha

18 hours ago, by Monica Cellio

Public service announcement: remember that if things are happening on the site that you don't like, you have several tools available, including downvote (125 rep), edit (don't change the intent, but feel free to clean things up), vote to close questions (3k rep), vote to delete questions (10k), vote to delete downvoted answers (20k), and when those don't apply or aren't available, flag (15 rep).

If you want it closed, please (flag|vote) it so.

@Daniel @Fred all flags remain available, though if you can take action directly (e.g. vote to close) you should do that instead. Spam/offensive flags should still be raised, all the comment flags are still applicable, flagging for deletion is sometime the right thing to do -- you can still work toward Deputy after 3k, no problem!

In fact all of our current site Deputies received their badges after getting 3K.

7:01 PM

-2

Q: KaHasot Halayla: really?

ורבותינו דרשוהו כמו בחצי הלילה (שמות יב כט) ואמרו, שאמר משה כחצות, דמשמע סמוך לו או לפניו או לאחריו, ולא אמר בחצות, שמא יטעו אצטגניני פרעה, ויאמרו משה בדאי הוא (Rashi Shemot ch. 11) Chabad.org translation: Our Rabbis, however, interpreted it like כַּחִצִי הַלַיְלָה, at about midnight ...

parshanut-torah-comment time rashi bo

Does anyone understand this question?

@Fred No

@Daniel You seem to have a possibility in mind, but I'm not sure how you got that from the question.

NARQ for now?

@Fred I didn't. That's just the least useful possibility that I could think of that could possibly be derived from the question

@DoubleAA Yeah I think so

@Daniel Yet it's the only one I can see as a reasonable interpretation as currently worded.

@DoubleAA Yes IMO.

7:05 PM

@DoubleAA I guess so. I assume the word "err" was italicized for some reason, but I can't figure it out.

@msh210 Yeah, I definitely didn't have to stretch the meaning of the question to come up with it

@Daniel :) thanks!

@Daniel Maybe he meant this: Moshe stated an exact time, but implied that it was inexact, therefore, he was rounding an exact time to some other unknown time within a neighborhood around chatzos. (I don't agree with the premise, since I think chatzos is a point within kachatzos, but could that be the meaning?)

What does an exact moment of time even mean?

It's like instantaneous velocity.

@DoubleAA Maybe Planck time

7:12 PM

@DoubleAA Halachically, I suppose it could mean all points within a range of time such that is humanly impossible to distinguish any of those points from the midpoint of the range. Either that or within toch k'dei dibbur or something.

@Fred It seems like he's asking whether it's permitted to give an imprecise time

@Daniel or Hammer time

But I don't have any idea why someone might think that this needs a proof

@Daniel mid'var sheker tirchak?

@msh210 That assumes that Moshe was not being truthful by saying kachatzos.

7:15 PM

@msh210 Infinite power appearing in Egypt at precisely 0:00, but it all adds up to Echad. Sounds like a Dirac delta function to me.

2

(I'm not proposing it's forbidden! I'm just saying that may be his reasoning.)

@msh210 That's not a sheker. Also when he said k'chatzot he expressly says that he's giving an imprecise time

@Daniel @Fred He's asking whether the pasuk implies one can give an imprecise time. So Moshe's being truthful.

@Daniel Perhaps the assumption is that the term kachatzos implicitly excludes chatzos itself.

@DoubleAA I'm trying to think why you posted that as an answer to my post.

7:18 PM

@msh210 I was linking the joke thread together. (And you do mathematics.)

@Fred Hmm I think that would be a stretch. Especially without stating that assumption

@Daniel I agree.

7:43 PM

I wonder whether this is a good indication of question clarity.

(Just clarity, not overall quality.)

@msh210 Not exactly sure why that would be

@Daniel Comments are to clarify or elicit clarification of the question. So the more comments, seemingly, the more unclear the question is/was. Votes are (sometimes) based on question clarity.

@msh210 Yes, but why votes/comments?

@Daniel Using comments/votes instead of just comments allows older questions (which naturally will attract more of both) to not be penalized.

@msh210 Why not votes - comments?

7:52 PM

@Daniel I'm not saying it's the best indication.

@Daniel That might be good too. (That'd also eliminate the divide-by-zero issue. :-))

@msh210 Could be. Have you tried it? Does it seem to work?

@Daniel See the linked-to page: results are there. What do you think?

@msh210 Is this supposed to be an indication of how clear a particular usre is?

@Daniel Actually... it doesn't really. :-D

or how clear a particular question is?

7:56 PM

@Daniel It's supposed to be a count of votes divided by comments. I raised the question of whether that's a good indication of question clarity.

With that caveat:

@Daniel ...in his questions only.

@msh210 Do we have only one user with a net-negative sum of question scores?

@IsaacMoses Note that this query only looks at those with 10 questions or more.

@msh210 OK, well within that group. Wow. There oughta be a badge for that.

@IsaacMoses the Jeremiah badge

er...

@msh210, based on this graph, you might want to tweak the metric to remove a possible bias in favor of longer-standing users

8:01 PM

@msh210 hebrewbooks.org/…

@IsaacMoses ooh, good point

@IsaacMoses The graph isn't working in my browser. What does it show? Don't you think it's likely that longer-standing users would be clearer?

@IsaacMoses I wonder actually whether it's a bias in favor of older users or in favor of older questions. I suspect it may be at least the latter.

@Daniel Again, please note that the idea that this is a good indication of question clarity is merely something I made up! If you find evidence to the contrary, then the idea should be discarded, not the evidence tampered with.

@msh210 Right, but I know that your SQL works, so I'm asking about the assumption

@Daniel The graph shows the score (votes/comments) graphed against user ID, and a downward slope of the regression line (i.e. newer users have a lower vote/comment ratio).

@msh210 Interesting. Now that I think about it, it does kind of make sense. Once a question has been made optimally clear, the comments slow down, but people may stop by and vote it up over time

So perhaps there is some minimum ratio which determines question clarity, but anything above that ratio is meaningless

8:11 PM

@Daniel Yeah. Also my impression (just an impression) is that we've gotten more commenty and less votey, as a site, lately.

Makes sense to me. I wouldn't expect there to be a "clearest questioner." I would expect there to be a list of people who are "optimally clear"

@msh210 That could be true as well. As of when?

@Daniel Right, makes sense. (Or "clear enough", anyway.)

@Daniel Don't know.

@msh210 My impression is that we've been getting more and more commenty. Dunno about delta-votiness

@IsaacMoses Just for example, how many votes do you typically get on a mi-yodeya-series question nowadays (within the first few days of its posting)? How many did you use to? If you know.

Charles Koppelman

I regret my words from a few while ago (intentionally not linking). I did not mean them literally. I'm sorry.

8:16 PM

(I'm not saying we seem to vote less -- just that we seem to vote less per question.)

@CharlesKoppelman Thanks for not linking. You have awakened my curiosity, but not enough to go searching.

@msh210 Not something I pay much attention to; sorry.

@msh210 Can Data Explorer get at any notion of historical voting or maybe rep change over time?

8:35 PM

@CharlesKoppelman, thanks for catching the islam link in that question that I had missed in my earlier edit. As you commented (and I've said the same to Ali), Islamic sources are not relevant for anything Jewish.

@msh210 Rough proxy for votiness? Upvotes per post that got any upvotes per week: data.stackexchange.com/miyodeya/query/edit/116702#graph Looks about flat for the past >2 yrs.

@IsaacMoses Try looking at that graph data.stackexchange.com/miyodeya/query/116694#graph

Just the total number of votes in each day

@Daniel Also looks pretty flat.

... perhaps better would be upvotes per week divided by new posts posted per week

@IsaacMoses Or upvotes on Qs per new Qs.

@CharlesKoppelman I can say the same.

@msh210 ... or upvotes on new Qs per new Qs

8:49 PM

@IsaacMoses Yes, even better.

@msh210 I think I've got that now, and yes, it's down since a peak about a year ago. data.stackexchange.com/miyodeya/query/edit/116702#graph

Better link: data.stackexchange.com/miyodeya/query/116702/…

@IsaacMoses hmm. So the high clump of that graph corresponds to the time of the public (2.0) beta.

9:04 PM

@MonicaCellio Huh. We had a discontinuous rise in voting when we migrated (not surprising) and a discontinuous drop when we launched (more surprising)?

@IsaacMoses Maybe we all put in some extra effort during the beta so we'd get to launch, and then took a collective breather? If so, back to work everybody. :-)

@MonicaCellio Pretend it's November in Chicago!

Oh, man. I hadn't really fiddled with Data Explorer until today. Now, my mind keeps running to ideas for fun queries

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