V'dibarta Bam - 2015-02-02

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12:52 AM

In case anyone is interested, Vaad of Kansas City has been hacked by Algerian ISIS sympathizers. I feel like I should tell them in case they don't know . . . how would one do that? vaadkc.org

1:02 AM

@Mike From the cached contact page: Telephone: 913.210.4174
Fax: 913.341.2467 . (Note: www.kckosherbbq.com has likewise been hacked). The Vaad's e-mail address is vaadkc@gmail.com. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vaadkc and Twitter: https://twitter.com/vaadkc .

@Fred Thanks.

5 hours later…

5:59 AM

One thing to remember in all our discussions about making the site more accessible, is that (as mentioned elsewhere on MY), Hebrew braille runs left to right. Should we find out that people generally browse by screen reader, this shouldn't be an issue.

However, if people browse by refreshable braille display, then (even as I don't think we need necessarily change our regular posts) we should take care to write the alt-text entirely in one language (I pick English), for ease of use. After all, no one really reads/relies on the alt-text unless they have to.

....I'll put this in an answer to the Meta question tomorrow if no one has done that by the time I get here -- I'm way too tired to do it now.

6:14 AM

@Shokhet In case I wasn't sufficiently clear: it will be very confusing to read text, and suddenly start another language in the middle, using the same characters running in the same direction, without a clear demarcation. Sighted people can tell the difference between Hebrew and English easily because of the different alphabet.

Re images of text:

accessibility.umn.edu/styling-and-layout-y6.html — msh210 ♦ Jun 17 '14 at 19:36

@Scimonster I have a PTIJ Q in mind.

@MonicaCellio Thanks for asking.

@Shokhet Is there no symbol to mark a Braille character as a in a different langauge? I know there's a symbol to mark a Braille character as a number.

6:35 AM

@msh210 I'm pretty sure that there isn't. A person has to know what language the document he's reading was written in, or take an educated guess based on how much makes sense in a given language. Or so I'm told (kinda second-hand, but still reliable).

I can ask, in case I heard wrong. Hopefully we'll get accurate information from @MonicaCellio's UX question.

@Shokhet That's unfortunate.

8 hours later…

2:53 PM

@Shokhet If so, alt text is only a small fraction of the problem, since our actual text (which is probably about 1000X or more as massive as our alt text) contains plenty of RTL text, incline or on its own line. I don't think there's anything we really can or should do to change that. Someone's just going to have to develop a Braille UI that handles such texts more gracefully.

@IsaacMoses But there's a difference -- I don't think our site is too bad, but the alt-text is literally written for blind users. Why mess up the text that nobody but the blind reads?

@Shokhet I guess that's right. Anyway, typing transliterations is easier, for me at least, than typing Hebrew.

@IsaacMoses I type in Hebrew in shiur -- I find that if I'm typing a lot, it doesn't make sense to switch languages for individual words. Also, if I want to search my notes later, I know I'll be able to find it in Hebrew, since I don't always transliterate things the same way. ....I haven't measured it, but I think I might type a faster Hebrew than English, even though I think in English.

3:25 PM

@Shokhet when I was in yeshiva (KBY, 5759), one time, a guy visited from Gush with a laptop that he used for learning. Other than that, I don't think I ever saw electronics in use for learning purposes in the B"M or in shi'ur. Times have changed.

@IsaacMoses More than half my yeshiva has laptops; most of those guys use them in shiur. I don't think that's a standard in yeshivos, though.

@Shokhet Whatever yeshiva it is, I'm sure that that those ratios were very different there 16 years ago.

@IsaacMoses True. I wouldn't know about that, though ;-)

4:22 PM

0

A: Let's make Mi Yodeya more friendly to people and machines that can't see images: alt text fix

If you're writing an alt-text for an answer, please stick to one language. English and Hebrew braille use the same characters, and run in the same direction. This means that a Hebrew word in the middle of an English sentence can be very confusing to someone using Mi Yodeya through a refreshable ...

11

A: Where does the concept of Gilgulim (reincarnations) in Judaism come from?

In regards to the first one, Gilgulim are first mentioned in the Heikhalot texts, also found in the Zohar, and Sefer HaBahir. That possibly puts the idea at least as far back as Tannaim and Amoraim. Several of the Geonim argued over it, such as Sa'adia Gaon.

I really think that edit was inappropriate, as it puts an opinion into the mouth of the answerer that he probably doesn't have. Thoughts?

@Yishai I skipped that edit because I wasn't sure, and wanted to see what others would do. I don't really know.

Thanks for bringing it up in chat, @Yishai :)

4:35 PM

@Yishai I approved it because it seemed to improve the post. The authorship of those works is not certain.

@Scimonster @Yishai I was considering, for a bit, "improving" that edit, so as to include a link to one of our "authorship of the Zohar" questions. That takes the words out of the mouth of Rabbi Tzadok, I think.

@Scimonster Some authorities certainly consider it certain

Noach mi Frankfurt

4:53 PM

Who in New England slipped and said "משיב הרוח ומוריד השלג"?

3

@Yishai I think that the edit was better, as it also grounds the answer better

@Shokhet I agree that linking to an authorship question is highly appropriate, although my Yekkisch tendencies tend to make me more likely to ascribe the Zohar to R' Moshe de León

@NoachmiFrankfurt גשם + New England + February = שלג . You want your prayers to line up with the seasons more precisely, move to Israel.

Noach mi Frankfurt

@IsaacMoses Don't disagree, but we've also gotten גשם around here this time of year, as you may recall from your stint as an MIT gabbai

Personally, I've made that mistake before (while preparing to daven chazarat hasha"tz no less)

@NoachmiFrankfurt my stint experiencing New England weather was about twice as long as my stint as gabbai. :) Fine: P(שלג_NewEngland|גשם_Israel) >> P(שלג_Israel|גשם_Israel)

5:27 PM

@NoachmiFrankfurt See the נטעי גבריאל.

@NoachmiFrankfurt @Shokhet @Scimonster All of this is fine as a comment. But if answers were changed based on the fact that others want to add qualifiers to opinions, chaos would reign. This isn't improving the author's intent, this is just having a different opinion, or recognizing other opinions that vary from the author's.

2

Elsewhere on Stack Exchange, Sefer Shemuel:

38

A: How did Indy know not to look into the Ark?

There was a deleted scene that explained it: A plot element involving the Ark of the Covenant was cut from the film and is only hinted at during the finale when the Ark is opened. Basically, there were 2 rules about the Ark not mentioned in the final cut of the film: If you touc...

5:44 PM

@Yishai I think I agree with you on this edit. That said, if the edit were more explanatory (I.e., "according to those who hold the Zohar is Tannaic...") I'd be more ok with it. This edit puts the "possibly" in the authors mouth, whereas an edit that acknowledged other opinions, (but didn't change the author's) would be ok, though unnecessary, I think.

5:59 PM

@Yishai That's certainly fair. You wanna roll back that edit, and leave a comment pinging the editor?

@IsaacMoses Ouch, the red.

@Scimonster I know, they got their design this week.

@Shokhet Last week or two weeks ago, i think.

Something like that. Recently.

46

Q: UPDATED (January 9) Design for Movies SE

I'm Kurtis, a new product designer at Stack Exchange. First off, congratulations, your site is beginning the process of moving out of beta to a fully-graduated site! Graduation and Your Site Design Graduation comes with a few perks. We have already begun work on your site's design, which will g...

discussion featured design

44

Q: Site graduated! New design launched

As you can see the new design just went live. Which means this site has been officially launched! Congratulations! Thank you for your valuable design feedback. If you see any CSS/styling bugs, please start a new post and tag it with "design" and "bug." We have also updated site's Twitter profil...

discussion featured design

6:03 PM

@Scimonster Jan 28 was last week ;-)

Is there any way to turn it off? The Red - it . . . hurts. — wbogacz Jan 28 at 22:12

@Shokhet So it was.

@IsaacMoses Should we add that and scifi.stackexchange.com/q/7843/41144 (linked there) to meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/q/2133/5323?

....I'm only half joking

@Shokhet Should we add every Biblical reference on BH, Christianity, etc to that??

@Scimonster No, because the tags are already in the beginning of that answer.

@Scimonster This one happens to bring in verses from Shmuel (though they could have picked a better translation), and hence might be of interest.

6:19 PM

@HodofHod Good idea.

6:35 PM

@HodofHod I implemented this. @Yishai

Should we ping the original editor in a comment, and tell him about this?

@Shokhet Eh. I can't imagine that the editor would disagree with this new edit, and I see no reason to make a big deal of it.

@IsaacMoses I thought it might be a good idea to let him know that author's intent is a pretty major thing around here? ...I agree, it isn't really such a big deal.

@Shokhet Oh, to educate him? OK, I think that's a good idea.

....on that question, we have an accepted, link only answer, with an absent poster.

6:57 PM

@DoubleAA Until we have a better answer, this serves the purpose of disambiguation by clarifying exactly what is being discussed, which is permitted according to the Mi Yodeya Meta. — LN6595 6 mins ago

@LN6595, one score-two answer on Meta is not the same as the community agreeing on something. — Shokhet 1 min ago

cc @IsaacMoses ;-)

@Shokhet Can you hyphenate score-two?

or i can for you if you prefer

@DoubleAA Done :)

@IsaacMoses As long as some are not certain than it cannot be said to be objectively so unless we start taking sides.

@NoachmiFrankfurt What do your personal tendencies have to do with what's appropriate on Mi Yodeya?

@Yishai It is an unsourced claim of the OP's. Either he (or someone else) can source it (and thereby imply "according to this source [XYZ follows]") or someone should edit in "according to myself, the grand Mr. OP, [XYZ follows]" to help make it clearer in the post what is being sourced and what is the OP's whim. This is no different then any other unsourced claimed on Mi Yodeya, AFAICT.

@DoubleAA We don't generally require answers to be consistent with or even to account for kol hadei'ot. Still, the measure of qualification suggested by @HodofHod and implemented by me seems to be proper. The more marginal the alternative opinions, the less important such a qualification would be, I think.

7:11 PM

@IsaacMoses We generally require or at least strongly prefer them to identify explicitly what de'ot they are accounting for.

@IsaacMoses (I haven't gotten to @HodofHod's comments yet in the transcript)

@DoubleAA I agree on "strongly prefer." We wouldn't, e.g., delete an answer that fails to do so. The answer at hand could be improved by the addition of an explicit source, but I wouldn't require it on pain of deletion.

@IsaacMoses No but we wouldn't object to someone editing in "The following is my own opinion". It may even be encouraged.

It's true that you should assume anything is the OP's opinion until he says otherwise. but sometimes it's good to clarify especially whenother things nearby are sourced.

@HodofHod Something which I think is true is also something I think is possibly true.

In a sense anything unsourced on MY is only possibly true.

@DoubleAA If I suspected that the author had a source but simply hand't bothered to included it, I would not edit that in.

@IsaacMoses Generally I doubt I would either. But I probably would somtimes if I was trying to encourage the OP to edit in a source when he was being reluctant or something like that.

It's a valid edit and it improves the post, at least marginally. It's annoying for me to do it regularly so I wouldn't do it regularly especially when I know a better edit is coming soon.

@NoachmiFrankfurt More likely "ותן טל ושלג" - see beginning of Maseches Taanis (sorry to ruin a joke with pedantry)

7:20 PM

@DoubleAA I disagree that it's a valid edit. It could well be that the author's personal opinion is actually the opposite.

Jan 5 at 5:11, by YeZ

@Shokhet I know. I just wanted to score a pedantry point. cc @IsaacMoses

@YeZ I will check it out if you tell me where. (which daf)

@IsaacMoses Why should that matter? Would you prefer: "The following is just an opinion I thought of"?

@Scimonster I was vague because I don't remember if it is 2a or 2b (or maybe even a bit later than that). The Gemara says משיב הרוח is a שבח, as opposed to ותן מטר is a בקשה.

@Scimonster @YeZ I searched "ותן טל ושלג" in ש"ס, and didn't find anything.

7:23 PM

@DoubleAA How about just saying what you mean: "[citation needed]"

@YeZ Oh....I thought you said it discussed using the phrase with the word "שלג" in it

@Shokhet point wasn't sheleg. It was mashiv haru'ach vs. v'sein tal umatter.

(sorry I got too lazy to keep switching keyboard languages)

@YeZ Right. I think that's pretty well-known.

@Shokhet Yup. But that's what I was nitpicking on.

@YeZ Doesn't matter much; doesn't bother me.

7:24 PM

@IsaacMoses That works too. I don't see any problem with my versions either.

@DoubleAA I suppose it would depend on the context and the history of interactions with the author. I would suggest using the insertion that you deem most likely to be interpreted consistently with the message you're trying to send and least likely to result in tangential bickering.

@IsaacMoses Certainly. It's all about making a post clearer, and sometimes that means noting what is or is not sourced.

@DoubleAA A little too literal, I think. It's true that any statement of fact on MY (or anywhere) could include the word "possibly" and still retain the same accuracy, and the same meaning, at least syntactically. But in this case, it changes the authorial intent from one of where the author thinks that the statement is true to where the author thinks it may be.

@DoubleAA I agree.

@HodofHod s/author/answer/g

@IsaacMoses "answerial?"

You dropped this: /\b/

;)

7:35 PM

@HodofHod I don't know why it matters so much (also to @IsaacMoses) what the OP actually thinks IRL. We just care about the post.

2 hours ago, by Yishai

@NoachmiFrankfurt @Shokhet @Scimonster All of this is fine as a comment. But if answers were changed based on the fact that others want to add qualifiers to opinions, chaos would reign. This isn't improving the author's intent, this is just having a different opinion, or recognizing other opinions that vary from the author's.

@DoubleAA No one likes having his name under stuff he doesn't agree with. We'd have mass requests for dissociation from posts.

@DoubleAA I agree. However, we shouldn't ascribe (using some version of the pronoun "I") IRL thoughts to the OP that the OP hasn't claimed

@msh210 That's irrelevant. A problematic outcome may be mass leaving the site as users.

@DoubleAA That, too.

7:37 PM

@msh210 That only. Why do we care if people disassociate?

@DoubleAA Dissociation is more work for SE employees.

... and can lead to people's leaving (when they want to stop bothering to dissociate).

@HodofHod I don't think there would chaos if people made things clearer. It would force people to not be as assertive without sources in a 'world' where they don't have their personal credentials backing them. That's a good thing.

@IsaacMoses meh.

I don't get the point of the disclaimer at the end of this answer. This answer is not pesak and therefore not "applicable" to anyone. And it's self-evident that sources detailing the observance of Y"H are only relevant in the context of discussing the observance of Y"H. — Isaac Moses Apr 27 '12 at 16:39

@IsaacMoses and we all thought that was kinda silly. as if that disclaimer changed the number of people who used that post for psak.

^^^ Wherein the author specifically wanted to dissociate from the view expressed in the answer. This just came to mind. I'm not trying to prove anything by linking it.

7:45 PM

@DoubleAA But the target demographic here is not people who write encyclopedias or scholarly journals, despite SE's use of the term "expert". Insisting or forcing everyone to qualify everything they write to the nth degree would leave us with no one to write anything. Editing everyone's post to diverge from what they intended would do the same.

@HodofHod A reductio argument. It fails, though in the case of n=1, for instance.

I am amsued at: OP: "Consensus is X, therefore I'm in compliance." ... <28 minutes pass> ... Mod: "Consensus is now Y. Get with the program."

It is still a Good Thing if people are less assertive without sources etc. even if we can't enforce infinite rigor.

(I agree that there wasn't actually a consensus of X. I'm just amused at the form of the interaction.)

@DoubleAA Not if n=1 leaves us without any users.

7:48 PM

@HodofHod What is the target demographic here accd to you anyway?

@HodofHod Correct. But I highly, highly, highly doubt it does.

@DoubleAA People who can contribute quality content. Nothing else.

@HodofHod "quality" makes your category hard to define and seemingly then circular in its use in the previous argument.

@DoubleAA Community defined, obviously. If this were a community of professional scholars for professional scholars, then quality would be different than it is now, clearly.

@DoubleAA I know multiple people who could be top-tier contributors here who were turned off early by being forcefully (and somewhat rudely) required to defend every (or nearly) statement or assumption of fact in their writing.

3

(Anecdotal, but you'll not find better in this case)

@HodofHod I don't follow the "clearly". Top voted answers are often quite scholarly.

@DoubleAA Incidentally, this is the type of discussion, that if forced upon a new user on the main site, would chase them away (and has). Obviously, we can have this discussion, but that doesn't mean that everyone else should be made to.

7:56 PM

@HodofHod That may imply a problem in the method of asking or in their ability to recognize that they are just a 'dog' here on the internets. It's a big change from real life for some people. It doesn't imply that less assertiveness is not a Good Thing.

@HodofHod Most users don't wander to Meta for a bit anyway.

@DoubleAA It refers to the minimum level of quality.

@HodofHod We are targeted towards those who can produce a minimum level of quality??

@DoubleAA Or a problem in demanding excessive qualification of everything, like I argue.

@DoubleAA But the problem is that this happens on main, not meta.

@HodofHod "Forcefully/rudely" we can work on. I think we should always try to get content to be as high-quality as we can, and that the best way to go about that is going to depend on the situation.

@DoubleAA Yes. The community's minimum. For our community, that is lower than the level that would be required if we were all professional scholars.

7:59 PM

@HodofHod Right. It's one of those three (or maybe something else). But it's just your word which it is.

@HodofHod I disagree. We are targeted to people that produce an average level of quality, at least.

I can't recall an instance of ~"This could be more valuable if you make these improvements." being taken poorly. If it happens, it's rare.

@DoubleAA No, we are targeted towards those that can produce "quality." By the law of averages, that will (probably) be a bell curve.

@IsaacMoses When stated in those exact words or similar, yes.

@IsaacMoses No, but the trouble is that it's not said like that. Instead it's "what makes you think that <assumption> is true?"

2

@IsaacMoses @HodofHod asserts chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/19857456#19857456 that is not the case and there is a fundamental issue with valuing sourced writing.

8:01 PM

That's aggressive.

@YeZ That's my point: the tone.

@DoubleAA I have not argued that.

@DoubleAA That's my other point: requesting improvement isn't inherently off-putting.

@HodofHod You seem to, perhaps unintentionally. In chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/19857456#19857456 you say the issue which pushed off those users is not one of the two I propose here chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/19857425#19857425 such as "the method of asking" but rather in the "excessive qualification of everything".

@DoubleAA I argued against forcing people into high quality, and rejecting/harassing those who fall short of the highest standard we have.

@DoubleAA Again, this is anecdotal, but the people I have in mind would not have that issue. Several of them are web developers, and probably familiar with the dog comic, actually.

8:06 PM

@HodofHod Then I don't follow your reductio here

20 mins ago, by HodofHod

@DoubleAA But the target demographic here is not people who write encyclopedias or scholarly journals, despite SE's use of the term "expert". Insisting or forcing everyone to qualify everything they write to the nth degree would leave us with no one to write anything. Editing everyone's post to diverge from what they intended would do the same.

You just mean to say that being mean puts off users.

Nothing to do with sourcing or anything about content or target demographics at all, in fact.

Seems remarkably similar to how I explained @msh210's comment chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/468?m=19857066#19857066

@DoubleAA Yes. And insisting or forcing the highest standards on everyone, to the extent of editing their answers to diverge from their intentions, is rude and mean. Again if we were professionals, it might just be rude, (though it obviously needn't be).

@HodofHod "is rude and mean" ??? How so? I don't propose leaving comment in the summary like "Doofus you shouldn't have put this idiotic c*** in here at all." Something like "Normalizing claim per site regulations, cf. meta.xxxx..." wouldn't be either, I think.

DoubleAA, it's your tone and overall attitude.

@TheOne What is my "tone and overall attitude"?

Oh, you're

2.4k 3 16

halacha blessing tefilla sephardi-mizrachi-eastern torah-study shabbat food

yes

8:12 PM

Yeah, chat is annoying like that. It doesn't pay attention to the site a room belongs to

"@AniYodeya I don't really care what you always learned? Also your link just confirmed what I wrote. Thus my comments above stand. " : judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/52734/…

@DoubleAA You don't insult people (AFAICT), but you're very terse. Perhaps you should change your style in commenting, and add some extra padding so that users don't misunderstand your intent.

4

@IsaacMoses Sometimes, things get out of hand. (sorry I can't find your nifty sefaria links as quickly)

I agree with @TheOne on this

I just gave up that conversation since it was going nowhere.

8:15 PM

@DoubleAA True. But that is often not the way it's done. (This has become somewhat tangential to the discussion of altering an authors words).

@Shokhet And I agree with you and s/he as well.

@HodofHod I don't even know why it's tangential. It seems completely independant.

@HodofHod My guess is "he." Otherwise, shouldn't it be "Yodaat"?

@YeZ http://sefaria.org/NameofBook.CC.VV

@IsaacMoses I've tried that, but their transliteration isn't always what I'm expecting.

In the olden days DoubleAA would nitpick on every little thing I asked even if it had nothing to do with the question. In the end the comments polluted all my posts leaving no room for any answers.

8:17 PM

@DoubleAA They're both enforcing quality regardless of our human users and their beliefs, feelings, and intentions.

@Shokhet Me, neither. They do have at least some aliases in there, though. The standard Anglicization, if you know it, is a good default.

Can we not make this into an evaluation of any particular user's conduct?

4

@IsaacMoses Oh, that's good to know. Thanks!

@HodofHod What is "both"?

@TheOne There's always room for answers.

8:19 PM

If all the attention goes to the 20 comments of back and forth folks tend to forget about the actual question.

@DoubleAA Both discussions (editing and commenting/clarifying)

@IsaacMoses @TheOne True, but at the same time, I also agree that if there is a problem with a question, then it needs to be fixed.

@TheOne That's why comments are in smaller type, are limited in number displayed without a click, and are easily deletable

@TheOne Citing that questions with more comments have fewer answers would support your claim. I find it dubious, and in any event would attribute it to fundamental problems with the question that the need for comments often indicates.

@IsaacMoses They also have these nifty flag reasons, so that other people can very easily arrange for them to be deleted if they're obsolete, chatty or not constructive.

8:21 PM

Let me try to find some examples...

@DoubleAA <resisting the urge to SEDE that up>

2

@Shokhet that too

@Shokhet Indeed mods have removed over 850 comments this month

@DoubleAA Wow.

@DoubleAA "Month" is Jan, or Feb?

@Shokhet Shevat, I assume!

@IsaacMoses :)

8:22 PM

@DoubleAA Want me to find some more to burn?

@Scimonster Always. Right now I'm about 70 behind for the mod-who-deleted-the-most-comments-in-the-last-30-days award.

@Shokhet I think it's 30 days.

@DoubleAA That's not how all the tabs here work, but it could be that you have access to better info

@Shokhet Right. Different interface.

@DoubleAA (To be clear, my agreement with @Shokhet is regarding your terseness. The internet doesn't include tone, and a lot of comments can be misunderstood as abrupt). I know the people I talked to wouldn't mind improving quality, but didn't appreciate the way that the community demanded clarification etc.

@DoubleAA I had a query somewhere, let me go dig it up again... (that's how i was able to hit Deputy when i wanted, right after getting Socratic)

8:25 PM

@DoubleAA that number may be bolstered by a certain hat.

Clears throat. If I may interrupt...

I think clarity in answers (and questions of course) is important. Where it is lacking, we should seek to improve that. However, I would much rather that we do nothing at all than that we do it badly.

4

@YeZ I was just thinking that.

Sometimes comments on main come across as overly confrontational. I'm sure this is nobody's intent; we all "hear" what we write through our own filters and if we don't actively step back and ask "how will others read this?" we miss things.

2

@Isaac's approach to comments is spot-on: "this would be more valuable if..." or even "I would find this more helpful if...", or in my case even "I'm having trouble understanding X; could you expand on that?" is generally well-received.

6

Some may feel it's too "wimpy" or deferential or something, but I ask you to think again: better that than an argument that could have been so easily avoided.

2

To those versed in more in-your-face argument styles, a comment like "what makes you think X?" seems natural. In a beit midrash or when you're in the room with the person, that's probably true. The Internet is different. We are not all coming from the same place or with the same assumptions. Take some extra care please.

2

I know we have lost some users over interaction style. And while you might say "eh, the site's not for everybody", other than obvious trolls you don't know up front if somebody could have been a good contributor if given half a chance. We can err on the side of caution without compromising on quality by being careful in how we say things.

3

Or, put more simply, be nice. It's a positive commandment; "I'm not being un-nice" isn't enough.

2

(Done.)

someone's been preparing a statment in Notepad...

@MonicaCellio That's what I was hinting to with my "things get out of hand" comment.

8:27 PM

(With what I had queued up, I mean.)

@DoubleAA please. Emacs.

2

@MonicaCellio Sorry for starring everything, but I couldn't agree more with what you write or how you wrote it. Very well put.

2

I agree completely with @MonicaCellio, though I may not have starred every message.

I was trying to say that before

(The right starboard is now completely @Monica)

@HodofHod This one isn't, and it's starred (wink)

@Shokhet Didn't make the board though - not enough stars

8:29 PM

@Shokhet Well, when I started writing, anyway :D

@MonicaCellio I can't help but feel that this should be copy-pasted into a meta post, and probably even a help section.

@YeZ It made my board. I guess different screens come in different sizes.

@HodofHod watching the stars roll in as I was cutting and pasting was kind of surprising. Thank you. And I'm not saying anything original here; I did my best to read the whole transcript before posting and you and others have said some of this already. I saw discussion starting to go in circles so jumped in anyway.

@HodofHod I saw you on mine but then it changed.

@MonicaCellio Absolutely. But your formulations are excellent (as usual, dare I say?). We've had most of this discussion before, and I think everyone agrees with what you wrote. It'd be good to have an official place to link to, and to gently remind people when they forget about tone.

@HodofHod A Mi Yodeya Meta post is probably better

cc @MonicaCellio

@DoubleAA I agree.

8:35 PM

@DoubleAA I fear it might be less authoritative-feeling then a help section, but I'm happy either way, really.

@HodofHod Just make sure we all vote it up. If it's a +16 meta post, then it's a good place to link to.

@HodofHod It doesn't have to be authoritative, IMO. Anyway, it's a pretty subjective thing, and shouldn't be a rule. It should be something we do because we all agree that it's the right thing to do.

It's maybe even better - it's the community's decision to be polite. If a new user gets a rude comment, then sees that link, hopefully they will see that the community is committed to civility.

@Shokhet It depends on screen height. My iPad in portrait mode shows 9; landscape only can get 2.

@Shokhet This is our community, and its rules are that which we decide. There is an SE rule framework, but even that can be stretched if the community desires it enough.

8:38 PM

@Scimonster I figured

@MonicaCellio Why didn't you just paste it all at once?

Meta is probably a good place. What form should it take? That is, should this all form an answer to an as-yet-unspecified question, or should I just go with the "announcement" style some meta posts, or what? (I've seen both approaches.)

@MonicaCellio Announcement, imo.

@HodofHod Something in the help center is something we can force on something, and is not subject to change. Something on Meta can be tweaked easily, and doesn't feel like we're forcing it on anyone.

1

A: Rewriting canonical Meta Q&A as dedicated official FAQ posts

If we want to really do this right, we should follow Meta.SE's model, found at the bottom of this question: FAQ for Stack Exchange sites Essentially: Anyone can propose a FAQ question by asking it and tagging it support and faq-proposal (and other tags, as relevant). The question should be sho...

8:39 PM

@Scimonster because anything long enough to require a click and scrolling doesn't get read by as many people. Also, formatting gets lost.

@MonicaCellio An answer, I think.

@DoubleAA faq is a good idea. Let's have it featured for a bit, first, though.

^^^ (can you do both at the same time?)

@Shokhet Why not?

@Shokhet 5 tags. Any tags.

@Shokhet I think civility should be enforced. As @MonicaCellio said, it'd be better to do nothing than to do it badly.

8:41 PM

@Shokhet Not necessarily. The community has modified the help before, and we can do it again. Moderators are given that ability for this very reason.

@DoubleAA Okay.

@HodofHod Yes, but it needs SE staff, doesn't it? ....my understanding is that it's not easy.

@HodofHod With the new help center there are only certain parts we can edit directly without asking SE people for help

@HodofHod And it's also not a conversation that people can discuss on Meta. It feels monolithic.

Over on Workplace we had a spate of rude comments and posted this (Q, no A). Either that or the question + canonical answer approach works. The former will get bumped by Community from time to time because it's unanswered.

@Shokhet @HodofHod we can edit select Help Center pages but not all of them.

@YeZ I think we should encourage civility, but I don't think we need to make it a rule. Look, we all agree to this, don't we?

8:42 PM

Oh, I see @DoubleAA already said that.

@Shokhet Additionally, not everything in the help is a hard-and-fast, clearly delineated law. Not everything is strictly enforced, and many/most of the community-modified rules originated on meta.

They're not mutually exclusive.

@YeZ There's already a rude/offensive flag. Use at will. Anything of this sort is oging ot end up as a judgement call in the end.

I think even if we find a place in the Help Center to hang this, we'll want something on meta that can be easily linked to (and that can be a little less length-constrained if needed).

@HodofHod I know that, and you know that, but I think that this is the perception that many users have toward Meta and Help.

@Shokhet And yet: meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/935/…

8:44 PM

@DoubleAA unfortunately, rude is a very subjective term.

@MonicaCellio Right.

@YeZ So is "chatty," for comments. And yet, a lot of those flags are marked helpful.

@Shokhet Yes, we all agree to it, and yet not everyone complies with it. Which is why we are having this discussion.

@Shokhet Right, but if an occasional chatty comment slips by, no one is terribly upset. משא"כ rude and offensive.

@MonicaCellio Actually, an "announcement" along the lines of the beginning of this meta post might be good

How about a meta post to decide if it should be a meta post or a help center piece?

2

8:46 PM

@DoubleAA Perhaps we should have guidance in the help center as to whether or not this kind of thing should be a help center or meta post.

@YeZ Hm...the problem, I think, is that we sometimes forget. I think we need a reminder, לאו דוקא something that we can force on people.

@DoubleAA great. We can post it on meta.meta.judaism.SE.

user image

Life goal #29 is to get enough of them rejected that I can publish a comparative analysis of the rejection letters.

@Shokhet beat me to it.

8:47 PM

בדיחה גוררת בדיחה

גוררת בדיחה....

@DoubleAA but you knew the xkcd was coming....

Ok. I need to get back to work at the moment. I will endeavor to write a meta post later. If y'all come to a conclusion about what form you think it should take, please ping me.

@YeZ Sometimes people don't notice. Flag it, and see what happens.

@Shokhet I'm not sure why you are set on allowing people to be offensive

@HodofHod I'm not sure what you're trying to show with that post.

8:48 PM

@MonicaCellio I think we need a meta post to decide what form the meta....

@YeZ @Shokhet It is already disallowed meta-post or not. There is a rude/offensive flag already.

@Shokhet That discussion has since become part of the help: judaism.stackexchange.com/help/whats-mi-yodeya

@HodofHod you're late: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/19858638#19858638

@DoubleAA Apparently we are discussing re-defining the limits of how rude you can be, in such a way as to disallow or disencourage what we are currently defining as rude.

@MonicaCellio No, I mean we should discuss on meta, whether the meta post should be an announcement or a question/answer.

8:49 PM

@YeZ You misunderstand. I don't want to allow it, but I think we'll be more successful at having people be civil if we do it this way. Kinda like the guy who tells his chavrusa "you're משעובד to me, and you can't switch now" -- that will not be very successful, by any standard.

@Shokhet So you're saying.... we shouldn't be rude.... when warning people about being rude....

@HodofHod But be nice is there already.

@HodofHod more or less :)

@Shokhet Right, but if MY policy is that X qualifies as rude/offensive, then it will be removed as part of that, not subject to a case-by-case decision if that was indeed rude or if this user is indeed offended.

user image

@YeZ You would need to have very specific guidelines for mods to use in that case

8:51 PM

@YeZ There's no שיעור for rudeness (unless I missed it in the help center) ....it is subjective, and should be flagged, and the mods will decide.

@DoubleAA I think @MonicaCellio 's post, with examples, would be a fairly good start of a guideline.

@HodofHod Oh. You had linked to a Meta about ads, and I had no idea what you meant by that. Thanks for explaining :)

I think it's noteworthy that the comment about jokes bringing jokes got more stars than any of the comments about not being rude.

@YeZ I thought so also. The "6" is the number of minutes since the message was posted :P

@Shokhet oops.

8:53 PM

@Shokhet It's a magically self starring post.

New mod ability.

Dec 30 '14 at 18:44, by Shokhet

,000,000 approve this message.

@DoubleAA automatically increasing, at that.

@Shokhet Yep. My point is basically, you're ascribing a little bit too much power to the help section.

Resistance proved futile

@Shokhet I seem to be alone on this, but I feel that "since we can't quantify it absolutely, we shouldn't do so at all" is a bad argument. We are discussing one very specific recurring problem, and it can be specifically addressed. Another watered-down "let's all get along" post is meaningless.

8:55 PM

> Hypothesis: For some cutoff duration and for some number of comments, Questions that receive more than that number of comments before the cutoff are significantly less likely to get answers after the cutoff than those that don't.

@HodofHod I don't think so. If we're going to link to it to educate people, a Meta post is less scary. Real people put that stuff there, not SE staff.

@IsaacMoses causation/correlation

You can try it with various cutoffs and comment counts. I've only tried a couple so far, and this falls short in validity to, say, a regression test, but so far, I have failed to confirm the hypothesis.

@Shokhet Realistically, if someone is linked to the help section about being cautious when asking for clarification (etc)., what is the worst that would happen if they thought those rules were god-given?

@IsaacMoses Even one comment reduces number of answers from 1.4 to 1.1

8:58 PM

@HodofHod Okay. I didn't say the Help was a Bad Thing, but that I thought Meta would be better.

@DoubleAA There are many, many limitations to this experiment.

@HodofHod lifnei iver on avoda zara?

2

@YeZ Okay.

(because you said god-given as opposed to G-d-given... sigh...)

@DoubleAA Whoa. I'd been trying with 6 comments so far (the number required to go to "click for more"), and with that threshold, the difference is smaller than at the 1 comment threshold. hmmm

Maybe we need a regression.

8:59 PM

12 people starred that "גוררת בדיחה" message. There are 9 users in the room....who's hiding the bot?

@Shokhet Maybe it was just really really really funny, ok?

@Shokhet and with 12 stars it got bumped off my wall!

@Shokhet Okay!

@DoubleAA Maybe answers with comments get answered more quickly, which would invalidate this experiment

For once my vote is not binding: I vote meta post faq-proposed.

@IsaacMoses It would invalidate the hypothesis. Any user seeing a trend in their posts probably has selection bias based on the quality of their writing.

@DoubleAA Up/down votes aren't binding. That's almost 7000 times!

9:02 PM

@Scimonster They are binding till the next edit

I'm going to have to leave soon; TZT!

@Shokhet TZT.

(so you can actually see it :P)

....I think this was a pretty constructive conversation, even though we got a little lost in the middle and had to have @MonicaCellio come rescue us.

I just thought of an analogy. SO banned links to whathaveyoutried.com in comments, because it set off a bad tone.

@YeZ Lower-case "god" intentionally.

Additionally, if they thought they were G-d-given, how would that be Avoda Zara?

9:07 PM

@HodofHod farkert. If they thought they were god-given, as you suggested, it would be avoda zara.

9

Q: I don't think we're explaining sourcing properly to new users

A lot of opinion follows: Here at Mi.Yodeya, we place a strong emphasis on sourced questions and answers. New users, who are unfamiliar with this, often ask unsourced but otherwise decent questions (or at least they could be with a little work). The common practice is to leave a comment that sa...

discussion asking-questions comments new-users

@YeZ Oy.

@MonicaCellio, I recommend a genuine Meta Q and A, allowing for community discussion, etc. of your answer as well as others, if there are any, followed by a distillation of the resulting response into a formalized Q+A faq post. I doubt getting it linked in [Help] is going to happen.

@DoubleAA I saw that. Very related. If @MonicaCellio were to post as a q/a, it would be good to carefully avoid being too close to a dupe.

2

(One distinction here is that it's not just sourcing, but any request that for clarity/quality, that can be misinterpreted and we should be cautious about.)

@HodofHod If they think it's G-d-given, that would be more in Ikar 9 territory than Ikar 2/5.

(Trying to keep up the serious-comment:leitzanus-comment ratio that we have all come to expect in this room)

1 hour later…

10:23 PM

Dec 14 '14 at 21:03, by Scimonster

@Shokhet I mean, i know it's permissible, but i also know that that's the kind of thing Double AA hounds people about. ;)

10:34 PM

0

Q: How should we ask for improvements to questions and answers?

Sometimes we get a question or answer that is unclear or leaves out important details, and people comment to elicit improvements. Sometimes that works well (and the post gets improved); other times there are complaints that we're overly critical. How do we do more of the former and less of the ...

discussion comments

4

@IsaacMoses @HodofHod @Shokhet @YeZ @DoubleAA @TheOne @Scimonster ^^^ (Meta-Man is fast; I was pasting a link in here when that popped up.)

11:29 PM

@MonicaCellio Thanks for the ping!

"and the Rabbis followed suit" groan — Shokhet 34 mins ago

Noach mi Frankfurt

11:53 PM

@DoubleAA They don't

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