@msh210 I definitely agree with your overall point. Is the whole Talmud one source? (I don't have a strong opinion either way – if you think it should be removed I'm fine with that.)

@Alex Well, we can see what others here think.

@msh210 @Alex I guess the operative question here is "Is it a particularly useful resource for advanced Yodeyans?" Before Sefaria came out with the Davidson Talmud, I'd have said yes, since the Soncino PDFs were the only complete translation of Talmud Bavli on the Internet (to my knowledge). Now that Sefaria has a complete translation that's deep-linkable, I see those PDFs as of very limited usefulness for citing in posts.

Truth be told, Mechon Mamre's comparative advantage also decreased a great deal with the advent of Sefaria.

@IsaacMoses Personally, I'm not such a fan of Sefaria for two reasons. 1. Their translations can come from almost anyone, which can throw a ? into their reliability. 2. They usually throw in large swaths of translation that are actually interpretation/elaboration. This is not necessarily a bad thing when it is clear what's what, but when text is pasted onto Mi Yodeya without distinguishing fonts, it makes a bit of a mess of things.

What I like about Soncino is that it is literally just a translation (to whatever extent you can translate a word without interpretation), with no additional material. When you paste that into Mi Yodeya you know that everything you are reading is the literal translation of the passage. (Interestingly, I was just recently thinking of writing a Meta post about this.)

The Soncino translation was also done by scholars, so it is relatively reliable, and if you follow the link and read the footnotes there you will sometimes find amazing information (e.g. this post). I always use the Soncino translation when quoting Talmudic passages (well over 100 such answers, I think).

I will admit, though, that Sefaria has the advantage of being able to link to a specific line on a page, while with Soncino you can only link to a PDF of the entire tractate.

Again, this is all just my personal opinion.

@IsaacMoses The translation on Sefaria is simply the Steinsalts translation?

@Alex sefaria.org/william-davidson-talmud

@IsaacMoses Ah, I just saw that, good to know.

I would have the same (2) with copying an Artscroll translation, by the way.

When I've used it on Mi Yodeya, I've removed the elucidation part of the translation, at least once. I agree that there are advantages to a straight-up literal translation for simple citation purposes.

@Alex Naturally

Since no one else weighed in I've removed the link from the post in accordance with being outnumbered by @IsaacMoses and @msh210.

@IsaacMoses mechon-mamre's text of tanakh and rambam are still more exact than sefaria's. and they are relatively easy to link to (unlike soncino pdfs). still a solid advantage.