V'dibarta Bam - 2014-10-07

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1:57 AM

My good comments are always on posts that end up getting deleted.

2

1 hour later…

3:03 AM

@YEZ You can still see them, no?

If they involved research and answer something which others might be interested in (which can totally happen) consider reposting as a self-answer.

(FWIW 20% of my comments on MY are now deleted. I'm sure there was some good stuff in there.)

3:18 AM

@DoubleAA No, they were all just humorous or clever.

@YEZ Ah. I know what you mean. All my comments are like that too.

:):)

@DoubleAA Yours often go for humorous and clever. I try to keep them mutually exclusive :)

@DoubleAA If I was better at data mining, I'd pull up your +17 or so comment around now. Something about 3 angels walking into a tent.

3:34 AM

@YEZ Excuse you! It's plus 18 now.

An angel, an angel and an angel walk into a tent. One says to the host: "Your wife is going to have a kid!" Hahahahahaha — Double AA ♦ Oct 21 '12 at 16:35

4:00 AM

@DoubleAA Can't believe I hadn't upvoted that yet. That's my favorite joke of all time.

5 hours later…

8:41 AM

@DoubleAA To help me better understand tagging, and the halacha tag in particular, why is it not pertinent to this question? Thanks!

4 hours later…

12:27 PM

I'm actually of half a mind to report this project to kickstarter as a scam — Daniel 1 min ago

Am I being paranoid?

12:57 PM

@IsaacMoses There have been many times where I see a comment that I am sure I upvoted weeks or months previously, but I am able to vote again. It's hard to ascertain whether this is a bug or my memory is serving more wrong because it's always comments I thought I upvoted ages ago

@Lee IMO, halacha is generally reserved for questions of the form "what is the halacha?" rather than "why is the halacha...?"

You wouldn't know that from the name of the tag or the wiki, though

3

Q: Advice for Lighting in a Sukkah

I'm seeking advice for safe, cost-effective lighting inside a Sukkah. My goals are: Minimize risk of fire. Even florescent lights can get hot enough to spark dry kindling in certain circumstances. Minimize energy consumption. Should I go with solar? Outdoor timers? See #3 below. Minimize up-fr...

product-recommendation sukkah lighting hachnasat-orchim-guests

^^^ is affected by something that SO has much more than us: rapidly-changing technology!

1:31 PM

... how is that handled on our more technology-oriented sister sites?

1:59 PM

I'm having a hard time envisioning what the right or accepted answer to this question would be. IMHO, the question begs fairly subjective responses. Can someone help me understand how this type of question is not forum-esque?

@Lee It's a how-to question -- it's asking for a solution based on someone else's experience, which is fact-based....."what works for this [Judaism-related] problem?"

@Lee By the way, if you want it to look nice, you can write [tag:halacha] to get halacha

@Lee @Shokhet ... with clear basis for evaluation of answers

@IsaacMoses What kind of "clear basis" do how-to questions need to provide to be answerable? Why can't it just be "here is my Judaism related problem; what works for this?"

@Shokhet I don't see how the right or accepted answer can be anything but what the questioner "feels". That is, the question seems very subjective.

@IsaacMoses Or, "what worked for you, based on your experience"

2:04 PM

@Lee Answers need to provide objective justification. "This worked for me, in the following way." "This satisfies your criteria in the following way."

@IsaacMoses "Answers". But, what about the right answer?

@Lee Whatever the asker ended up doing, that worked.

@IsaacMoses Come to think of it, the accepted answer to any question is entirely up the questioner...

Or, if it was a bunch of things from a bunch of different answers, you could do something like this

7

A: Seder advice when with people who aren't interested?

Report This "answer" records what I did this year and how it worked out. I drew from several suggestions in other answers here. Some context: the two seders had different but overlapping groups of attendees. One has always been a "when do we eat?" seder; the other spends more time but replace...

@Shokhet It depends on the question, and How-to is a little less susceptible to the problem than product-recommendation, but if there's a potentially infinite set of answers (as @Lee is worried about), then the question should provide criteria that say what would make one answer better than others, e.g. "low-cost," "low-wattage," "low risk of fire." Then, voters can objectively evaluate answers against those criteria, as can the asker when choosing which to accept.

2:09 PM

@IsaacMoses Got it, thanks

@Lee Yes. That's what that feature is designed for. Consider the analog on SO: "How should I write code to solve this problem?" There are many possible answers. Any that work objectively may be upvoted. The one that worked for the asker should be accepted.

@IsaacMoses Thanks! And thanks to you as well, @Shokhet!

@Lee No problem :)

(I invented how-to yesterday, and want it to stick around.....:P)

@Shokhet (I founded mi.yodeya almost 5 years ago, thinking it would be mostly for how-to questions, and want them to stick around on it ... 8^D)

@IsaacMoses Question number 3:

13

Q: What's a good technique for a not-so-strong person to do [Ashkenazi] Hagbaha?

I've seen many people shy away when asked to do Hagbaha (‏הגבהה‏), thinking themselves too weak. I know for a fact that it doesn't take that much strength to do it correctly, so I'd love to see a writeup of proper technique. See also the Sefaradi version of this question.

synagogue torah-service ashkenazi hagbah how-to

2:13 PM

@Shokhet Exactly. That's one of the few that I seeded the site with before opening it to any other users.

... actually, that's the very first question other than the throwaway question number 1. Post number 2 was the answer to question number 1.

@IsaacMoses Got it

Didn't see that you mentioned question 1 before I came back with a link to it.....jinx! :P

@Shokhet We seem to be doing that a bunch.

Haha, I just saw question #1. Respectfully, @IsaacMoses, that's super nerdy :P

3

@IsaacMoses :)

@IsaacMoses thanks for the comment on my old answer, which (as you saw) I updated based on your input. I only just now noticed that you had your own answer to that question. If you would prefer to incorporate your work into your own answer I'll back it out of mine; you deserve the credit, after all.

@IsaacMoses when I joined Mi Yodeya I anticipated that I would be able to best contribute to what I then called "practical life" questions. Yes I know some torah, but nothing compared to many of the fine folks here. I've been hoping we would develop more of these types of questions to go alongside our excellent questions on halacha and text -- I just never thought to tag them!

2:22 PM

@MonicaCellio Would you consider this a "practice life" question?

@Lee I wouldn't, because it's a question about halacha.....this question focuses on practical advice, so I think it's a how-to question.

@Lee borderline but I'd say no because it seems to be more concerned about the halacha question. If, on the other hand, it said "I know the halacha is X and I want to solve this problem of transferring them given these constraints; how do I do that?", then that would be a how-to question.

This one is a how-to question but already has five tags. Should any of them be bumped to make room for how-to, or should we leave it alone?

21

Q: Maintaining Tzniut in Uncomfortable Social Situations

How can a teenage girl, who recently started practicing the laws of tzniut as well as feasible, balance those laws with the prohibition against embarrassing her family members, who are embarrassed to be seen with her dressed so oddly?

clothing tznius-modesty family-members baal-teshuva social-convention

And also in the tzniut category, this one:

9

Q: What's an elegant way to avoid social contact with untzinius or attractive women?

There's times when women I'm attracted to visit our home or are friends of my wife and I don't feel comfortable completely ignoring them or telling my wife to not invite them. I'm not sure how my wife will react to raising this issue. Any ideas how to present this or avoid the issue?

women marriage tznius-modesty men-male bein-adam-lachavero

@MonicaCellio If it already has tznius-modesty, can we drop clothing?

Then again, maybe not.....not all tznius questions are clothing questions; even thought there is a lot of overlap......

@Shokhet right, there's high overlap but it's not just clothing. On the other hand, maybe social-convention could be dropped from that one?

@MonicaCellio Like that other question you just put here

@MonicaCellio Maybe

@MonicaCellio But what would you do with this one?

Maybe remove bein-adam-lachavero?

2:42 PM

I don't know -- I'm bringing these questions here in hopes that somebody else has good ideas. :-)

2:52 PM

New answer on an old question:

1

A: Seder advice when with people who aren't interested?

You may want to consider using Hagada - Mi Yodeya? Our companion to the Passover Hagada, featuring questions practice, lore, and thought spanning the Seder, from preparations to closing. That should make things interesting. :)

@MonicaCellio I think it makes sense to have one answer about strings of minibulbs, updated to current technology, and another about the string of larger worklights.

@Lee What do you expect? It's from the early days of StackExchange! :)

I think that in a future year, we should consider publishing a pamphlet and/or online summary of our Sukkot HowTos (both Sukka and Arba Minim). We've got a lot of great stuff in this category.

... This might even be something that would be good to consider updating every year, to take advantage of the latest technology.

3:15 PM

@IsaacMoses good idea!

4:10 PM

@Shokhet I was going to say to remove that one. Good think I waited till I caught up.

4:27 PM

@YEZ :) .....nice to know that someone agrees with me.

9

Q: What's an elegant way to avoid social contact with untzinius or attractive women?

There's times when women I'm attracted to visit our home or are friends of my wife and I don't feel comfortable completely ignoring them or telling my wife to not invite them. I'm not sure how my wife will react to raising this issue. Any ideas how to present this or avoid the issue?

women marriage tznius-modesty men-male how-to

1 hour later…

5:34 PM

@Lee (Still catching up) Try reading blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective

5:57 PM

@CharlesKoppelman Have you read Will Grayson, Will Grayson, by John Green and David Levithan?

4 hours ago, by Isaac Moses

@Lee Yes. That's what that feature is designed for. Consider the analog on SO: "How should I write code to solve this problem?" There are many possible answers. Any that work objectively may be upvoted. The one that worked for the asker should be accepted.

Actually, that's probably too broad.

At least, i would vote-to-close something like that as too broad.

@Scimonster Just a simplified example. You can make it a more detailed, specific question, and it could still have multiple right answers.

0

Q: How is Rav Feinstein's psak regarding subway travel and the sexes distinguished today by those wanting to sit sepaerately on buses and planes?

Other questions have asked about riding public transportation in close proximity with persons of the opposite sex. It was cited that Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt'l, permitted men to ride on crowded subway cars in close proximity with women even though it might entail actual touching. http://jwa.org/...

halacha tznius-modesty

@TRiG What do you think of this recent question?

(look back to where that comment is responding to)

@Shokhet (TRiG is a major perpetrator of responding to old chat messages and likely would have known to check anyway :)

@IsaacMoses The fact that @TRiG just did that, coupled with the fact that I just saw this question, led to that comment.

6:06 PM

@IsaacMoses As demonstrated just above, in fact.

Jinx.

Any time i try and ask a question with the word "you"/"your"/"yours" in the title, it tells me it appears suggestive and is likely to be closed. Me, i just like the second person.

@TRiG Been doing that all today and yesterday with @IsaacMoses

@Shokhet Interesting question. Have upvoted.

@Scimonster If the question is of the form "what do you think?" it'll likely get closed. Otherwise, not. The heuristic that generates that warning is not smart enough to know the difference, but it's likely useful for preventing some newbies from asking "what do you think?" questions.

@IsaacMoses I know that, it's just slightly annoying. Maybe it could be smarter wrt >1k/2k users?

...then again, i've seen more than a few high-rep users ask questions like that on SO

6:14 PM

@Scimonster Rep is handled differently on different sites too. Some are far more liberal with their votes than others.

Charles Koppelman

@TRiG No, never. Why?

6:38 PM

@CharlesKoppelman The first chapter riffs on that joke.

Charles Koppelman

@TRiG Excellent. Worthwhile read, then. :)

2 hours later…

8:50 PM

Uh oh. This algorithm thinks the mi_yodeya twitter account is very worried. Neurotically religious, I guess.

@IsaacMoses At least @mi_yodeya is more "upbeat" and "plugged in" than is @StackJudaism

Anyone know what purpose baltimore serves us?

It has only 1 question.

@Scimonster I guess the presumption was that there would eventually be more. I agree that there probably won't be enough to make it worth having a tag

@Scimonster I think tags with only one question self-destruct after a certain amount of time (one year?) with no other questions asked with that tag.

@Shokhet Really? Where did you see that?

8:58 PM

Not sure where the documentation on that is, though

@Scimonster I was just about to write the above.... ;)

@Shokhet ninja'd, i guess ;)

@Scimonster :)

9:26 PM

@Shokhet single-use tags with no tag wiki auto-destruct after, I think, 6 months (um, somewhere on MSE, and the tag-wiki protection was a change about a year ago). This one has a wiki. I don't see the point of it either (doesn't that cry out for all sorts of other locale tags too, e.g. new-york?), but if we want it to go away somebody's going to have to delete it from the question.

@MonicaCellio Huh. Didn't know that tag wikis had to do with it.....learn something new every day

9:47 PM

Blog - Stack Exchange: New editing badges and enhancements to suggested edits

Shog9 on October 07, 2014

We rolled out three new badges last week!

These recognize a pattern that sets Stack Exchange apart from the forums and message boards that came before it: answering and editing questions, the ability to not only write an answer that can be useful beyond the immediate asker but also re-write the question such that it can be found and understood by future readers. Thanks to this capability, brilliant explanations need not languish under titles such as “C++ problem” or “Java doubt” – having written an answer that ably fixed the problems in the asker’s code, it is possible to also fix the problems in his writing! …

10:15 PM

@Shokhet once upon a time a singleton tag would quietly self-destruct. This is a problem especially on smaller sites or ones with niche questions. For example, on Board Games every question must be tagged with the name of the game -- quite reasonable, but there are some obscure games out there. So over time we'd end up with an accumulation of untagged questions where, unless we could get somebody to ask another question about that game, we were stuck. So people wanted to defend against that.

The solution was to say that if a tag is that important, a community ought to be able to produce a wiki for it -- so, now, singleton tags with wikis don't self-destruct. This doesn't, however, mean that every tag with a wiki is valuable -- but it's on us, not the bots, to police that.

1 hour later…

11:35 PM

@MonicaCellio Got it, thanks for explaining that.

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