^ Per the answers to this Meta question, I'm not mod-deleting that answer. But I think it should be deleted. If it has one deletion vote (which it does not now) and another mod (@DoubleAA @MonicaCellio) wants to cast another, then please consider mine the third.

@msh210 a shame how it's framed,/sourced as the general idea that the 10D are a polemic against specific pagan ideas sounds plausibly compatible with Judaism to me, though I don't know if it fits with any traditional interpretation

@msh210 @IsaacMoses

As Isaac implies above, that answer seems sufficiently plausibly consistent with Judaism to me.

@DoubleAA what about the identification of Roman gods as inspiration? Isn't that inconsistent with our dating of Sinai?

@IsaacMoses Certainly Rome would be too late. The question is how early Rome's predecessors had use of a central group of the precursor gods.

IAE it seems clear to me that the downvoters, deletion-voters (and even possibly msh210) misapplied MY policy here bc the answer didn't seem normal enough to them.

@DoubleAA No (in my case): because I forgot the policy (that Meta post; and applied the other).

@DoubleAA @IsaacMoses The answer suggests the gods are also the basis for the choice of items created on each day of b'reshis. That'd require very early precursor gods indeed.

The contra-Judaism-ness of the anachronism disturbs me. I do not vote to undelete that post.

@msh210 There are traditional Jewish opinions that the organization of the elements of Creation in Bereishit 1 is meant to teach lessons about theology and ethics rather than about cosmological chronology. See The Challenge of Creation. I don't have it in front of me, and I don't recall exactly, but I think that R' Slifkin cites sources that suggest that a lot of it is indeed to counteract specific pagan ...

... beliefs that were prevalent when the Torah was given.

Though not Roman ones, naturally.

Here we go. Unfortunately, key pages aren't available via GBooks, so it's not clear exactly whom he cites to this end.

@DoubleAA CC

@DoubleAA Downvotes could be for any reason at all.

I don't understand why people don't downvote. It boggles my mind. Not to pick on mevaqesh (he happens to be the one I saw just now, but I've seen this from many others on other occasions), but he commented on judaism.stackexchange.com/a/66933 pointing out that the answer cites a source in its support where the source pretty much explicitly supports the opposite view, and expressing concern that another source cited in the answer is cherry-picked. Yet [cont'd]

he didn't downvote: the answer had no downvotes at all until I just downvoted it. Why wouldn't someone downvote such an answer? Is it that people don't want to insult the post author? that they don't want to lose a coupla points' rep? that they trust other readers to judge the answer without reference to votes and see no purpose in voting?

Again, I don't mean to pick on mevaqesh. I've seen similar from other users.

@msh210 Well, the system is designed to offer a little more friction for downvotes than upvotes, so the community being more reticent to render the former, at least to a certain degree, is by design.

@msh210 That answer in particular, I upvoted without following the sources or carefully reading the comments, FWIW.

@IsaacMoses I am not surprised by the other upvoters (or nondownvoters). Maybe they think the Chazon Ish does support the answer. Or whatever. But mevaqesh himself....

It seems that I've downvoted about once for every 17 upvotes.

@msh210: about 1:4

@IsaacMoses Sorry, what?

@msh210 1 downvote for every 4 upvotes.

@IsaacMoses Oh. Yeah.

mevaqesh (not to pick on him, but his name's at hand): 1:14

Mi Yodeya: 1:10

@IsaacMoses median long-time, current user: 1:25

@msh210 Among users with >= 1000 votes apparently I'm 6th highest in downvote/upvote ratio

at 86%

but that's only after I recently made a conscious effort to increase my downvoting after seeing a while ago that I was slacking in that regard

sorry it's 86% upvotes

only @DoubleAA is below 80% upvotes

And the two of you @msh210 and @IsaacMoses have the highest number of total votes by a wide margin

@Daniel It could be that as mods, you look at problematic stuff more frequently and more carefully than other power users.

@Daniel @IsaacMoses does. My margin is not so wide over the next user ( @ShmuelBrin ).

@Daniel ... and part of that (but admittedly not all) is that we had a head start over nearly all users.

@IsaacMoses And even so over 75% of his votes are upvotes

That was my point

@msh210 Yeah I didn't include him because he hasn't been in the room recently

@Daniel I would hope most content is not downvoteworthy!

@IsaacMoses @msh210 has more than twice as many total votes as @DoubleAA. I'm not sure when either joined but I think both have been around for a long time

@msh210 true

@Daniel Oh. Well, he's been here recently enough to ping. That was not a special mod ping.

@Daniel Creation dates are in that table.

@msh210 Ah true

hmm we can learn some interesting things from that query. Of people with >= 500 votes, only 9 were last seen some time before 2015

@msh210 In addition, some downvoted content is deleted or improved and then undownvoted

@Daniel Those are dependent: people with more votes are naturally around longer.

@IsaacMoses Also true.

@msh210 Any departure from linearity in that dependency could be meaningful

(unlike with rep scores, which can increase without the user's activity)

@IsaacMoses Yeah... well, linearity in time and number of posts, or something.

Votes' linearity in time and posts, I mean. But probably not linear in number of posts, either, because people will vote only on so many posts a day (whether because of the technical limit on votes per day or just because of human factors).

@msh210 votes vs. years of membership, votes vs. posts, and posts vs. years of membership should all be linear in the absence of behavioral effects

@IsaacMoses Er, "votes vs posts" you mean posts on the site, and "posts vs years" you mean posts by the user?

@msh210 Oh, you mean posts a user has seen? I guess that it's easier now to vote many times per day than it was when the repository was smaller, so oh well, there goes linearity.

@IsaacMoses Yeah, I meant posts on the site, sorry for the unclarity.

@msh210 So could the deletion votes. I'm just saying what it seems to me the motivation was.

Creepily searching, I was: thejc.com/node/151918

@msh210 The Gemara in Niddah is still quite relevant (though it could use more fleshing out as there are Girsa issues). Perhaps someone thought 1-1=0 or so.

@DoubleAA Maybe so.