@Joshua You'd probably find out pretty quickly that while a cheeseburger is perhaps the most stereotypical non-kosher food (tied with pork, methinks), most Jews don't think about them that often or care that much. You might get some people trying it for the novelty and then forgetting about it.

^^^ New size for sidebar ads (including community-promotion ads): 300x250. So landscape, not portrait. Apparently that's a standard size in the industry. We'll need to ask Hebrewbooks and Sefaria for new images to run. (In the short term the existing images will still work; they'll just have whitespace to either side. When they call for the 2016 ads, though, we'll need to redo them.)

Is there a data.se query for having received the fewest downvotes (among users with a given minimum rep/#posts)? Or ratio of up/down votes received (among users who have received a minimum number of votes)?

@MonicaCellio thanks. Any word on when 2016 ads will be solicited and when they'll go into effect? I'll ask Sefaria for a new ad, as I did the existing one. Could you do HB, as you did last time?

@DoubleAA shouldn't be too hard to write...

@NoachmiFrankfurt We had this discussion about lack of downvoting, do you want to chime in?

@DoubleAA promising search result; not tested: data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/349631/…

Strike that. Not a good one...

@Scimonster I typically try to approach answers which I find unconstructive with commentary, as I think it is helpful to show where problems are. Also, my reputation points are more useful being spent on moderation IMO and unfortunately there are also a siman for reliability, although I try to not put as much stock into that.

@IsaacMoses It was pretty easily edited to be useful: data.stackexchange.com/judaism/query/421091/…

cc: @DoubleAA

more proof of how excellent of a contributor Alex was

@NoachmiFrankfurt Isn't downvoting an example of spending your reputation points on moderation?

@Daniel touché, however, I meant something more along the lines of using the moderation privileges which come with reputation points.

@NoachmiFrankfurt I see. But the rep penalty for downvoting is so low. You'd have to downvote a lot before you lost any moderation privileges

For example, I apparently have the 6th highest downvote/upvote ratio among users with >= 1000 votes. I've cast 202 downvotes

so that's cost me around 200 rep

not such a huge amount

and actually downvoting a question doesn't cost any rep at all

@Daniel Nice job. I'm impressed with this guy who put up 40 posts without garnering a single downvote.

... and this guy who has gotten one downvote over 44 posts

@IsaacMoses Yeah there are some impressive performances there

I didn't realize my upvote/downvote ratio is a bit low

at least compared to other users with comparable reputation

Every time I see statistics like these, I'm always amazed at Alex

He has received more than 5 times as many upvotes as me but fewer downvotes

@IsaacMoses I'm not an SQL expert but I feel like the ROUND function should be pretty self-explanatory

and indeed it seems to work correctly for almost all entries

but for some reason, one of the rows in the resulting table from the query shows a ratio out to 16 decimal places

any ideas why?

@DoubleAA Personally, I'd love to taste a meat-and-cheese dish. Not a cheeseburger so much... maybe lasagna.

@msh210 As a child I used to have dreams about going to a McDonalds drive-thru and ordering a cheeseburger

@Daniel Were you driving in those dreams? Were you old enough in real (waking) life to drive? Were you old enough in your dream to drive? :-)

@msh210 Definitely not old enough in real life to drive

Not really sure whether I was driving in the dream

or even whether the person who was driving was well-defined

or even whether it was the case that somebody was driving the car rather than the car just being stopped at the drive-thru window

I guess that part wasn't the part of the dream that I remember :)

@Daniel :-)

@msh210 now I'm wondering if there is a way per halacha to taste -- put in mouth, don't swallow anything while there, spit out, wash mouth. Presumably not. (Back in the day I considered cheeseburgers, and hamburgers for that matter, to be "make me not hungry" food, not actually "tastes good" food. Meh -- I don't think you're missing anything there.)

@IsaacMoses I plan to contact Hebrewbooks after Shabbat, b'li neder.

@MonicaCellio Well, I like a good hamburger. (Actually, I even like an okay hamburger. But especially a good one.) Haven't had one with cheese. Speaking of which, I've never really understood your statement:

> This is more of a "mindset" thing, provided as background or a window into how we think: We don't tend to think of ourselves as being deprived because of halachic restrictions. For example, it's not that we "can't" eat bacon; it's that we "don't", because God said so.

I'm not sure I understand the difference in this context between "can't" and "don't because God said so". I mean -- we physically can, but I don't think anyone thinks otherwise. When someone says "can't" he means "is not allowed to" -- so how is that different from "don't because God said so"?

@MonicaCellio I've made cheeseburgers with Daiya parve cheese before

it was pretty good

@msh210 I should probably go back and edit or remove that distraction in that post; it was clearer in my head than what came out. I've encountered a lot of people who try to understand (to pick one example) kashrut like food allergies -- if I eat that shellfish I'll go into a seizure and die or something, so there is a direct barrier. The guy with that allergy can't choose to eat the shellfish unless he's suicidal. [cont]

In principle I can choose to eat it, because I have free will and it won't have immediate negative consequences for me -- but I don't, because God said not to and even if He isn't going to punish me for it (not saying yes or no, just leaving that part out of it for now), I'm still going to choose not to eat it. Does that help?

@msh210 I understand that statement to be explaining the previous sentence

It's probably too pedantic a point, and I'm not sure now how much it really matters anyway.

And with all that said, it's time for lunch here. :-)

@Daniel And I've had meat-cheese dishes with real cheese and fake meat. It may be good (soemtimes), but it doesn't take like meat.

@msh210 Yeah when I worked at a summer camp they made chicken parm once with fake chicken

The Daiya stuff is pretty close

although I can't speak for how close Daiya cheeseburgers are to actual cheeseburgers

but Daiya grilled-cheese tastes pretty much like regular grilled cheese

@MonicaCellio I guess so... and I agree with the lack of analogy to an allergen, but non-kosher food does seem (to me) comparable to, say, a doughnut for someone who is at risk for a heart attack (lo alenu). You know it's very harmful, even though there are no immediate consequences, but you have freedom of choice.

@MonicaCellio Bon appetit.

@msh210 the doughnut analogy is a good one, and that is a case where people say "can't" even though technically they can. Yeah, I'll probably edit that meta post later, but no time right now.