V'dibarta Bam

3:13 AM

@IsaacMoses - whoops, I missed your earlier ping. Sorry about that! I should be around more during week days, so let's try and coordinate something.

Isaac Moses

@Dori How important is synchronicity?

And we're both here!

@Dori Good evening!

And to you as well.

Do you have time now?

Dori

3:22 AM

Glad you got a laugh out of the jawbone reference; I wanted to put a giggle in there so I didn't sound like a super serious anonymous jerk from the main office coming in to change everything.

Sure, now is good.

Isaac Moses

Believe it or not, I and some others are happy about the "main office" influence coming in as an impetus to break free of some bad habits.

Dori

I was ransacking my brain to figure out if or how someone could take offense at that comment, and I finally just decided to go with the mild version—I figured I could tell a lot by the reaction it got, and from whom.

Hey, I'm here and happy to play bad cop. What kind of changes would you like to see?

Isaac Moses

Wow. Glad I passed this Rorschach. :)

I'm in favor of ending riddles and surveys (latter was less of an issue), for one thing. How about you?

Dori

Nah, I know that tone doesn't come across well in text, and that it's particularly hard to tell with new people. I'm glad I passed! :-D

As Robert said, if someone has a real question, they should ask it as a question, not a riddle.

Isaac Moses

Also, (and this is a little less defined) I know that we under-moderated m.y, being a little too deferential to authors.

The new tech is already changing that tendency a bit, by, e.g., suggesting "low quality" material from new users for mod attention.

Dori

3:29 AM

Something I noticed (and can't find now) was a comment that was disemvowelled—has that happened much?

Isaac Moses

That was my first time. I'd seen the technique on boingboing and liked it, and thought it made sense in that case. The comment in question was belligerent, but it was the context for the following comment, which was more substantive.

Dori

There's been a lot of talk over the last few months about what's referred to as broken windows—if people's initial impressions are of a site with low-quality content, they think that that's what the site is about. So we're focussing a lot on helping mods focus on high quality.

Isaac Moses

On m.y there was very little real fighting, I'm happy to say. There were a few instances, and one that led to a user getting banned, but for the most part, people were civil. I expect that there'll be more little fires to put out as readership grows.

Dori

In general, if something is low quality enough to get disemvowelled, it's low enough to just delete outright.

Isaac Moses

Fair enough

What other broken windows have you seen that you think need mending now?

Dori

3:33 AM

Oh, there will be future fires; I know that just based on the mess we had with the short-lived atheist Q&A site.

Isaac Moses

I haven't been there, but I suspect that one difference here is that there's an existing community with existing communal norms.

Dori

One of the things I want to push the SE developers into doing is coming up with automatic glossary feature . I can read Hebrew, and I know more about the topic than the average SE user—but much of it is still over my head.

Isaac Moses

That'd be cool. The tag wikis kind-of serve that purpose, but you only get five tags per question

Dori

If they can come with up something that automatically does a look up on certain words (say, ones that aren't found in an English dictionary), and then makes a little pop-up if you hover over that word, I think that that brings down the barrier to entry.

OTOH, not that bringing down the barrier to entry is always a good thing…

Isaac Moses

And what, the pop-up would connnect to a wiki in which users could put a definition?

What's your opinion on this jargon question? Accessibility is good, but translating/linking every term can get very cumbersome.

Dori

3:39 AM

The atheism site had a bad habit of attracting trollish wanna-be preachers who thought they could argue people into believing in their particular brand of faith—I'm not sure what the m.y community has done with those in the past.

Isaac Moses

We had that once. That was the person we ended up having to ban, after multiple warnings.

Dori

I personally think that the jargon guidelines are great, but it doesn't appear that overall community has an interest in following it. Unfortunately.

So I was trying to come up with a way it could be done by computers instead.

Isaac Moses

Well, the guideline I wrote essentially demanded a great deal of defining/linking, so was naturally hard to follow.

Dori

And then there's the whole English/Hebrew/transliterated Hebrew issue (with occasional Yiddish as well)

Isaac Moses

I think, based on the discussion to date on the jargon question, that it might make sense to have a weaker rule that calls for no gratuitous jargon (the first point in my guideline and something Joel et al seemed particularly interested in) and suggests that people try to define/link terms when they think it'd be useful to readers.

I think that transliteration should be entirely up to the individual writer. Trying to standardize would be way too hard.

Dori

3:46 AM

Will the community go for it? I asked an interested non-Jew to take a look at the home page, and based on just the question titles, he said he could kind of figure out what we being asked about 30% of the time.

Isaac Moses

Could we go through some examples of titles?

Dori

Should we try to get that number up? And if yes, how? (And does it even matter?) That's what we need to figure out.

Sure

He was impressed that I was at about 70-80%

Isaac Moses

(If you don't mind my asking, now that it's become germane, what's your Jewish/Hebrew background?)

Dori

I figured it would matter, and no, I don't mind.

My father was raised Conservative to Conservadox, but he then met my mother who was brought up by her mother, a very poor illiterate immigrant. So, she'd been raised "Jewish," but only in terms of the few traditions her mother could remember and afford.

My family attended a Reform synagogue throughout my childhood, and my brothers and I did the more religious things Reform Jews do—Jewish summer camps, Hebrew school, Sunday school, etc. But other than that, Judaism was more a matter of culture than religion.

So, teenage years: Bat Mitzvah, Confirmation, summer trip to Israel, the usual.

Isaac Moses

As for me: I was raised "Orthodox" (scare quotes b/c I don't like the label) and went to Jewish day schools from nursery through 12th. Studied in a partially English-speaking program in an Israeli yeshiva in Israel for a year before college. Speak Hebrew, though not fluently. Still observant ("O") and still studying Torah when I can.

Dori

4:00 AM

College: every time I looked into becoming more observant, I ran into people who assumed I was just husband hunting, Between that and the attitude of "you're a girl, you don't need to fret about that stuff", I got turned off by the more religious side. Note that this was 30-some years ago; I believe things have—in some groups, at least—become a little more flexible.

And now here I am a few decades later, always interested, but not even knowing the questions to ask. Literally, in this case.

Isaac Moses

Well, I hope you continue to hang around on main. No shortage of thought-provoking questions!

So, to titles: "Adoptee a Cohen or Levi?"

Dori

Well, at least that one is all in English! :-)

Isaac Moses

kind of

OK, more Hebrew in "Will I ever actually make “al mitzvat tzitzit” on a daily basis if I don a tallit gadol?"

Could be rephrased as "Will I ever recite the benediction called "al mitzvat tzitzit" ("on the commandment of the fringe") on a daily basis if I don a prayer shawl?"

Should it be?

Dori

That's exactly the kind of question that he & I discussed—I got it, he didn't

Isaac Moses

What came up in your discussion?

Dori

4:08 AM

He was baffled at the amount of in-jargon. And that's to be expected, to a certain degree, of course.

As I said, it may be a matter of: who is the target audience? Maybe if you don't speak Hebrew, this isn't the site for you?

Isaac Moses

I wouldn't go that far. I hope that neophytes would at least come with their questions.

Dori

Right now, someone with an interest who wasn't brought up in the tradition would be lost. There's a lot of jargon that's just assumed.

Isaac Moses

As I wrote in the Area51 [definition comments](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/22435?phase=definition) when I re-wrote the definition:

2) "Anyone interested in learning more" // Unlike flying, law, or photography, Judaism intrinsically contains a mandate to educate. // Questions (and askers) welcome on all levels of sophistication. The experts in the core population are able and willing to address even the simplest questions with serious, backed-up answers. // Some types of questions (e.g. "Can you recommend an alternative for a talit bag with these specifications?") lend themsel…

Hmm. So the problem is that if I want such people to ask their questions here, I probably also want them to hang around, which they won't want to do if they don't get most of the questions?

Dori

OK, looking at that last question, here's the words he wouldn't know:

"tallit katan", "al mitzvat tzitzit", Kitzur, Shacharit, halacha, b'racha, sidur, lehitatef, leshem ihud, rabenu iosef haim

And yes, of course, hang out on the site for a short while and you'll quickly learn what sidur and bracha mean

Impressive: if I Google "al mitzvat tzitzit" judaism.se is the #2 site after Chabad.

Isaac Moses

So we could:
1) Leave questions like this as-is and accept that people with limited background probably wouldn't want to hang around
2) Mandate/edit questions like this so that all non-English terms are replaced, defined, or linked, so that most potential readers can understand most questions
3) Something in between?

Dori

4:21 AM

I might be because I've trained Google to know that I want SE sites, but above Wikipedia? That's impressive.

Isaac Moses

m.y got lots of google hits every day and was highly-ranked for more of them than one would expect.

Dori

Well, my hope is that the SE devs (for whom I have HUGE respect) will be able to take a list containing pairs of words & phrases and their meanings, and auto-create those pop ups on the fly. That way, nothing needs to be done to older questions, and the community won't have to change how they ask new questions.

Isaac Moses

I fear that creating such a list might constitute a life's work.

especially given variant transliterations

Dori

true, true—but the nice thing is that it would be a growing document, so while it might not be a huge help at first, over time, it would get smarter and smarter.

Isaac Moses

Somehow wikifying it may work.

Basically like tag wikis, including the concept of synonyms

Dori

4:28 AM

Oooh, I like that… And it could be started by just grabbing lists like the one at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_prayers_and_blessings

Isaac Moses

Do you have a sense of the likelihood and timing of such a feature being created?

Dori

And starting with some of what's at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Hebrew_words_and_phrases

Isaac Moses

A couple more sources of semi-structured data: ou.org/about/judaism/index.htm jewfaq.org/glossary.htm

Dori

@IsaacMoses There's a regular meeting every Thursday with Joel, Jeff, and the community team. I brought this up then, and both J&J liked the idea. Anything that lets computers make things easier for people works for them, and this site is one of Joel's faves.

Isaac Moses

So, for the time being, leave things more or less as they are, language-wise?

... hoping for this feature to come out and make a strict policy less importatn?

Dori

4:33 AM

That's my goal.

Isaac Moses

If the devs do get into this and want to slurp up more existing glossaries, they should definitely ask on either main or meta for ideas.

Dori

(drat, it looks like those two sites have copyright policies keeping us from reuse)

Isaac Moses

There are people here with very relevant experience (including Wikipedia and Wiktionary editing, siddur proofreading) and interests.

It may be possible to get permission to use stuff like that if we ask nicely

How is this issue dealt with on SO and SF?

... or is it considered a non-issue because there's less desire to make newbies feel welcome to hang around?

Dori

I should have phrased it this way earlier: anything that combines community contributions and computing power to allow more people to understand a site's questions/answers—Jeff & Joel both love that concept.

Generally, if you're starting to learn programming, you know enough to be able to figure out what's going on.

Also, those sites don't have thousands of years worth of back history to learn ;-)

The tag wiki helps too, but it's more of an issue on this site due to the number of different transliterations.

Isaac Moses

... and we can't do Hebrew tags, right?

Dori

4:40 AM

Ooh, good question.

Given that both the German and Japanese language proposals recently hit 100% on Area 51, I think there's going to be a lot of effort put into internationalization

But I'm not sure that tags in Hebrew make sense—synonyms, sure, but I don't know about the tags themselves.

Isaac Moses

Hebrew synonyms would at least provide a standard for searchers who know Hebrew and don't want to guess different transliterations

Dori

My thought exactly

Isaac Moses

... so at least for now, it sounds like we're agreed on not changing the language/jargon policy just yet.

Dori

Well, I wouldn't discourage people from being more clear, but I think that in the long run, a technological answer is the way to bet

Isaac Moses

I think gratuitous jargon (e.g. "chinuch" instead of "Jewish education" or "maise" instead of "story") should probably be strongly discouraged and edited out when possible.

Do you want to tackle another issue?

Dori

4:52 AM

I agree completely—when there's an appropriate English term with the same context, yes, that's the way to go.

I have a personal question, but I suspect that it's going to come up more and more: there are questions where someone wants to know "the Jewish opinion on topic x "

(as if all Jews can 100% agree on anything)

Isaac Moses

Such as (recent example) homosexuality?

Dori

That's the one I was thinking of, yes. I live in California, so I saw how religious groups had a huge impact on Proposition 8.

Isaac Moses

Depending on how it's asked, and how people feel like answering, that could mean "What does Halacha think of this?," which has available objective answers (sometimes multiple).

Dori

So when someone asks "What's the Jewish viewpoint?"—well, there are a number of answers, depending on how you look at it.

Isaac Moses

It could also mean "what do different Jewish communities think of this?" which also could be answered objectively, but less so, since you can't point to sources as easily as with Halacha

Dori

4:57 AM

Yes, Halacha is pretty clear—but then, I never heard of organized Jewish groups (as opposed to a few other faiths I could mention) donating huge sums to get voters on their side of Prop 8.

Isaac Moses

It could also mean "what do all Jews think of this," which, as you hint, is pretty much un-answerable

Dori

I just very much dislike the idea of "Halacha says" being turned into "All Jews are required to hate all gays"—which is what happens with those who are inclined to make that kind of jump.

Isaac Moses

religiously conservative (small 'c') Jews have fish to fry that are seen as more pressing, I suspect

Dori

(I would think the Catholics and Mormons would have bigger things to think about too, but that didn't stop me getting push polls from Utah phone numbers)

Isaac Moses

Well, taking this question in particular, I think the overwhelmingly upvoted answer did a great job of describing what Halacha says in broad terms and distinguishing between that and how people tend to relate to homosexuals, and how people should.

Dori

5:03 AM

This isn't something where I have an answer, or even a definite question—but there are always those who are looking for bad guys, and I hate seeing us setting ourselves up for that.

Isaac Moses

(Catholics and Mormons care about saving everyone around them. Jews don't in the same way. Also, Jews tend to expend a great deal of political capitol on Israel, for which Catholics and Mormons don't have an equivalent issue.)

Dori

Oh, all true, no question!

Isaac Moses

What's an example of how you see a bad outcome taking shape?

Dori

Those who go looking for things to be offended about are almost always successful. Here's the Stack Exchange Network Content Policy.

But there are always those who will scream that they're being repressed, whether it's gays that claim some part of the answers are hate speech, or Christians whose questions are barely-disguised proselytizing.

Isaac Moses

Interesting information. (Also potentially relevant to meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/123/…).

Yeah, I expect that sort of problem will come up.

Worth thinking about, and maybe articulating as a full-blown meta question to see what [more of] the community thinks.

Dori

5:15 AM

As I said: I'm not saying I have an answer, or even a definite question; it's just something to think about.

More meta questions are almost always a good thing

Isaac Moses

Perhaps there are particular pathologies that came up on atheism.SE that would be worth referencing

Dori

Well, that site had huge other issues—for instance, we found that, for the most part, atheists didn't have questions for each other after the first round of "So, whaddya think of the latest Dawkins video?"

Imo, the newer Skeptics.se site is Atheists.se done right.

Isaac Moses

(I notice that other than that, this is the first religion SE to hit beta. The next ones may indeed have interesting issues in this area.)

Interesting (I haven't looked much at Skeptics either) Looks a bit like a crowdsourced Snopes.

Dori

There are plenty on their way; they just first have to decide how pure they want their sites. Can Catholics and Fundamentalists share a common Christianity site? That's going to be fun to moderate, I'm sure.

"crowdsourced Snopes" is exactly right. It's an interesting site for seeing how a community requirement that all answers must have citations can work.

Religion-wise, though, Biblical Hermeneutics could actually be pretty interesting.

Isaac Moses

Yeah, I don't know much about Christian Bible scholarship, but I suspect that there's a lot of interesting and objective discussion to be had there, very much parallel to some of the material here.

OK, I think I'm running out of steam. Shall we pick this up again another time?

Dori

5:28 AM

Exactly—some have been talking about merging that into the generic Christianity proposal, but I think if it stays separate there could be some really good discussion to be had. At a minimum, just the haggling over exactly what various Hebrew words mean would be great.

I know it's getting late for you, so I won't keep you too much longer. I just wanted to have a get to know you chat so we both know each other, and to let you know I'm here for further questions you have.

Have a good night.

Isaac Moses

Well, thanks very much for your interest and efforts. I'm confident that we'll [continue to] work well together. If there are other broken windows that you or others at SE think need addressing, I look forward to discussing them further here or on meta. Good night.

msh210

10:14 PM

@SLaks, hi.

(And the rest of you, but you're all greyed out.)

SLaks

Hi

msh210

10:29 PM

Why the lazy eight?

SLaks

That's the Visual Studio logo

msh210

/me goes to Google....

SLaks

Microsoft Visual Studio

Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It can be used to develop console and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all platforms supported by Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE, .NET Framework, .NET Compact Framework and Microsoft Silverlight. Visual Studio includes a code editor supporting IntelliSense as well as code refactoring. The integrated debugger works both as a source-level debugger an...

msh210

Ja, thanks.

SLaks

I joined the SE network as a programmer