V'dibarta Bam

6:23 AM

It's not on Hebrewbooks, so hopefully the image will help.

Shmuel

7:24 AM

Thanks @alex I actually ended up finding it - I linked it in this answer judaism.stackexchange.com/a/95363/16706 thanks anyways (the first reference I posted 8:53 clearly doesn’t exist, I was looking at a bad print referencing it and it appeared that way)

3:56 PM

Hello @chachamNisan and welcome to chat! Have you used Stack Exchange chat before?

Yes, one-on-one.

This is cool, though.

And I appreciate your approach; very peaceful.

This is the main room for our site, so other people visit too. If there are other conversations going on at the same time, it's helpful to use the "reply" control (the arrow that you see in the lower right if you hover over a message). It looks like it's pretty quiet now though, so no need for that at the moment.

Thanks for joining me here. I think we all want the same thing for the site: clear questions and helpful answers that people can know are sound. That's why we emphasize sources so much. But we're not all experts (I know I'm not!), so we don't assume everything will be perfect from the start. That's why editing is so important. When people comment with questions, you can respond by editing in more info.

Comments are meant to be focused on improving the post they're attached to. Mi Yodeya does get a lot of tangential discussions in comments, but chat is really better for that which is why I moved us here.

Fair enough.

You said that you're frustrated because even when you bring sources that's not enough. Could you say more about that? Are people challenging your sources, bringing other sources that say different things, or what?

I answer the question and bring my sources, but it seems they just reject it anyway or give me a hard time about it; I'm not sure why.

If someone offers brings a contradictory source, or even logic, I immediately delete my answer.

It just feels like a few specific people just don't want my answer posted because of whatever reason. So I answer in the comments; but then they get deleted.

I just want to teach.

My specialty is halacha. I know the din, but don't always remember the source(because I just don't have the ability right to remember everything I see).

4:12 PM

That sounds frustrating. I'm sorry. If there's a contradictory source, sometimes it makes sense for an answer to address the difference -- A says this but B says that -- so consider expanding rather than deleting an answer. Sometimes you might need a couple comments back and forth to figure out what the issue is; that's fine. Ideally either it's resolved there or the post gets edited.

Ok.

Sometimes comments can come across as abrupt, unfortunately. Some of that's because we're online, text-only, and some is because there's limited space for comments so people are being compact. If you see something that crosses a line of civility, please flag it.

That's hard for me, because I'm not trying to get anyone kicked off or in trouble.

We very much want your expertise! I hope you'll keep trying to share. When people ask for sources please try to read with good intent. Imagine it's a shailah that you're writing a responsum to, if that helps -- you'd list sources there, right?

@chachamNisan it's not about getting people in trouble. If there's problematic content we'll delete it. If it's an isolated thing, no harm done. If somebody has a lot of problematic comments we'll talk with that person about it, but the goal is to improve the behavior, not punish.

Q: Better to post an answer with no source, or not to post at all?

@MonicaCellio @chachamNisan and in practice, people "get in trouble" infrequently and get suspended or kicked off even more infrequently.

@chachamNisan I suggest you take a look at

12

Sometimes I read a new question, and I want to provide an answer, but I don't have the time at that moment to find the appropriate source citations. Then, I will receive comments in my answer asking for sources. It's a legitimate request of course, but sometimes the questioner really wants a pr...

4:18 PM

I would list sources...But my shita is in presenting Judaism in a way that's simple to remember and not intimidating. Too many sources is unnecessary sometimes because it makes it seem that we need a 101 soucres for an answer to be true.

Thanks @IsaacMoses. I used to live in Brookline; so we used to be quasi-neighbors.

If you know the din and can't say how you know it, that's valuable, but of very limited value, because the reader is given very little reason to accept the position you're presenting as true. The more you can give to back up your position, in terms of reasoning and/or sources, the more valuable your post is to readers.

@chachamNisan yeah, I understand not wanting to overwhelm! If you can provide an entry point, people can often take it from there. Like, if you site SA, you don't really need to cite everything it's based on.

This includes even a statement as simple as "I studied *hilchos orla in depth for five years, and I know this is the answer based on that, though I can't remember the exact source off-hand."

That at least gives the reader a sense of what you claim your position is based on, even though they can't verify it independently.

@IsaacMoses this is a good point. Being less learned than many here, I know that my answers are sometimes of the form "I remember learning this in a class on such-and-such but don't know the specific sources". (If I can cite the class, even better, but sometimes I can't.)

@chachamNisan Do we know each other? I davened at YI of Brookline from time to time in '02-'04.

4:22 PM

Ok...good to know and good post.

Maybe. I used to pray there a lot, too. Know the Youshei family?

@chachamNisan No. I was living in Cambridge, near the BU bridge in those years, and went to either YI or Harvard when we weren't going to have a minyan at MIT.

(I have to step out for a bit. I'll catch up later. Chat is sometimes asynchronous that way.)

(Me too, actually.)

@MonicaCellio I really appreciate the encouragement and information. @IsaacMoses You, too. Thanks for help!!! And HaShem bless you!!!

I hope we will chat in the future.

5:01 PM

@chachamNisan Thanks for chatting and of course for your contributions to Mi Yodeya. Gemar chatima tova, and may your year be full of productive Torah learning and teaching. Stop by to chat any time.

5:22 PM

@chachamNisan sorry, didn't realize I was leaving you with an empty room! Thank you for chatting and for your contributions, and please feel free to visit chat any time and hopefully meet some of our other users too.

Q: Are links strictly necessary when citing a source?

5:34 PM

@chachamNisan If I may make a suggestion, I've noticed that when you do cite sources you do it in the form of just stating the source. E.g. in your recent answer: see Shulchan Aruch OC 596:1 and Taz 1 ibid. and Cavanat Halev RH pg. 459 While this is certainly valuable, it is still somewhat limited in that it still requires the reader to do research to see what the sources actually say, and they might not have the necessary books available to do so.

If you can provide a short excerpt from the source, or if you can find a link to where the source can be immediately seen (or both), it would be much more helpful. Some people won't even bother to check someone's sources if it requires too much effort, and some people won't upvote an answer if they don't know that the person is accurately quoting the sources.

And by extension they might downvote the answer if it's just an assertion that a source says something, because they may think that assertions by anonymous individuals are not so useful.

You can see the following Meta post for some more detail:

2

This came up in respect to my answer here. I hadn’t seen a meta post with an official policy on the topic, so I figured I’d ask. In my time here I’ve almost never linked to a source unless it’s some really obscure Sefer. More common sefarim like the Chumash or basic Poskim I’ll usually just prov...

discussion answers citing-sources

@Alex I gotta say: If someone provides a precise citation as well as a clear (and presumably faithful) description of the relevant information there, that's pretty good, and downvoting because there aren't also verbatim quotations or links seems counterproductive.

@IsaacMoses True, if it's very precise and presumably faithful. On the other hand, sometimes it's not so precise (e.g. "see Source X" after a whole paragraph), or the source itself is not so precise. I don't think I have ever downvoted a post because of this, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me if people have, and certainly that they wouldn't upvote it.

mbloch

@chachamNisan if I may also add, as a still relative newcomer (vs. people who have been here for many years), I can say that MY is at times exciting, at times exhilarating, and times frustrating. I go through periods where I just want to give up, often because of a "stupid discussion" where the text only format makes it hard to understand each other. Then it passes and I enjoy it again. You have to stick with it for a while to really get the best out of it I think

Also, remember that no one knows who you are, how much you have learned, etc. Some people (not you) sound smart but are actually mistaken. Some are good-willed but not as knowledgeable. Some are really knowledgeable but there is no way to know without sources and proofs to back up assertions. This is a big limitation of an "anonymous" forum and we just have to live with it. I am sure you would get a lot more credit in the real world than here, and others (like me) a lot less

@mbloch I think by now you are an old timer.

mbloch

@Alex I'm not even 3. Soon getting my first haircut. Look at the ancients who commented above :->>

5:50 PM

@mbloch Yeah, but there are not that many ancients who are still very active on a daily basis.

Remember that on the Internet nobody knows you're a ~~dog~~ rabbi. :-)

Occasionally it's the opposite – people think you're a rabbi based on the internet when in reality you aren't.

@mbloch It's a limitation which is also a blessing, in that it encourages writers to examine why they believe what they believe and to think about how to express that most clearly, which results in not only better expressions of the content but in many cases, enhanced understanding on the part of the writer. At least, that's my experience.

@Alex Yes.

mbloch

@IsaacMoses fully agree and love this aspect

5:52 PM

@IsaacMoses I often find that in the process of trying to explain something clearly, I've deepened my own understanding. And sometimes, in the process of asking a question I realize I know the answer now (rubber-ducking).

8:46 PM

Thanks for all the helpful tips and encouragement!! I want to say that you guys are awesome!!! Great people and a pleasure to share the platform with...May HaShem give you great hatzlacha in apprehending the emet!!!

9:09 PM

@MonicaCellio I'm not a rabbi; at least, not yet. Thanks for the compliment, though.