V'dibarta Bam

Seth J

1:59 PM

@Alenanno , thanks for that.

Alenanno

2:20 PM

@SethJ You're welcome. :)

Seth J

3:39 PM

My SE swag pen was swiped from my desk at work over the weekend!! :(

msh210

4:05 PM

@SethJ Well, if you see someone using it, you can be fairly confident it's yours.

msh210

4:34 PM

@IsaacMoses I did! Not on the outer container (where it might soon be lost to sight) but on the package of peanuts within. I figured adults are more likely than kids to eat peanuts, and adults are the target audience of the sticker.

Isaac Moses

5:26 PM

@msh210 Nice! Thanks.

@msh210 Re: judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/26575/… OK, not surprised.

@msh210 Unfortunately, from what I can tell from the jewi.sh visit stats, not too many people have tried the URL on the stickers this year. It turns out that jewi.sh can be very slow to pass you through to where you're going, so I think I'll look into changing to a better URL shortener for the official URL in the future.

Compare jewi.sh/ocmon and is.gd/ocmon

@msh210 We did a new variation on this this year, with real food going to one family and very minimal token baggies (one cookie and one candy) for any children who came to our door. (Logistical issues made extensive deliveries impractical this year.) I adorned the baggies with O-Cmon Pareve stickers, partly to actually indicate that the contents were pareve, partly because it was a quick and easy way to make the baggies look a little more ...

... interesting, and partly for MY promotion (although as you indicated, the kids getting these baggies are unlikely to investigate URLs from the plastic between themselves and their treats)

Seth J

5:58 PM

Mods: Are we restricted to serious (non-offensive) comments on questions?

@SethJ: This is a serious question, not Purim Torah. Your comment seems to be in jest, so please delete it. — Gershon Gold 2 mins ago

Monica Cellio

@SethJ That would seem at odds with my memories of past comments. I suspect he only took it that way because we're currently in the season of purim torah and maybe he thought you thought it was a PT question? I wouldn't worry about ti.

Seth J

@MonicaCellio OK, thanks.

Here's a softball for the community to answer.

0

Q: Why doesn't G-d's name appear in Megillath Esther?

This is a classic question, but I don't see it asked anywhere yet on the site: Why doesn't G-d's name appear anywhere in the text of Megillath Esther?

yoel

@SethJ maybe we should have a tag for questions asked by classic sources.

Might be kinda arbitrary though

but it would be cool to have all those on here eventually

eg, "how can I take an eye for an eye if the guilty party is blind?"

Seth J

@yoel That would certainly increase the volume of questions (and potentially drive up traffic to the site). But I'm not sure that's the role of the site. The only reason I asked this question in particular, is that it is timely, it is the basis of a lot of our understanding of the Megillah, and it also serves a function of Musar and a lot of other theological issues.

Monica Cellio

@yoel that feels a little meta to me (SE discourages meta tags), unless the question arises from the source rather than being answered by it.

Seth J

6:12 PM

@MonicaCellio That's also true. I wonder if there's a way around it, though, or an exception to standard rules in certain instances (ahem purim-torah-in-jest).

Monica Cellio

@SethJ and mi-yodeya-series, yes. I think it's significant that when those are used they are singleton tags.

Seth J

@MonicaCellio singleton?

@MonicaCellio There are two of them.

Monica Cellio

@SethJ sorry. Those tags are used alone, not in combination with other tags.

Singleton use, not singleton tags. :-)

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio Well, I always pair mi-yodeya-series with number. I, for one, would not fight a movement to, e.g., merge the former into the latter.

Blog - Stack Exchange: Podcast #42 – It’s The Exception That Proves The Rule

Alex Miller on February 05, 2013

Welcome to Stack Exchange Podcast #42 – it’s our usual gang back this week with Joel, Jay, David, and Producer Alex. There’s plenty of inside baseball, so put on your rally caps and make sure to stick it through to the end!

David Mamet, apparently. Jay was a drama major.

Michael forgot to pay the Google bill, so our hangouts are back down to 10 person limits (but it’s fixed now!)

We have one big thing to talk about that made a change and generated controversy. Joel correctly guesses what it is: we no longer display your accept rate (the percentage of questions you asked that you accepted an answer for). …

Seth J

@IsaacMoses I dunno. I like the meta-tag. I seriously think it helps to set it apart. Otherwise the series might not be on topic at all.

@IsaacMoses I mean, purim-torah-in-jest, at least, was created in the first place for just that reason. It allows off-topic or non-real questions to be asked in a way that conforms to Jewish Life and Learning without having to conform to SE standards.

Isaac Moses

6:23 PM

@SethJ I still contend that each of these questions, while not terribly high-quality, are valid, on-topic questions. I agree with you about the value of the tag in making them into a body of work.

@SethJ Exactly.

Seth J

@IsaacMoses Remember how impossible it was to sift through serious Purim questions with Purim Torah questions.

@IsaacMoses This is also why I advocated for a Daf-yomi-challenge tag.

(I may push for it again in another 7 years. We'll see how it goes this cycle first. Right now it's not going too well, but it might pick up.)

Isaac Moses

@yoel Related: the early discussion in the comments on this question. I reiterate the cautions I expressed in my final comment there:

@Yehoshua, making an effort to populate MY with pre-existing Q&A can be fine, but anyone who does it has to be extra careful to quote fairly and to make sure the question is well-written for this context. — Isaac Moses Dec 10 '12 at 15:42

Seth J

@MonicaCellio, @IsaacMoses, I just got a weird notification asking me to review a chat comment that was flagged. Is that tied to my rep score? Do you guys get those a lot?

Isaac Moses

@SethJ If someone suggested a m-y-series tag now, I'd probably be the first to shoot it down. The only reason I accept the body of work argument as possibly viable is that there is a body of work existing already. Maybe the thing to do if you want one of these would be to start by executing the project and cataloging it in Meta and then asking for community approval for a special tag when the project is sufficiently proven.

6

Q: Chat flag notification

10k users can see flags in chat. What are we suppose to do with it, and why these notifications don't go away after "reading" them?

discussion notifications chat flagging

It seems to be for 10K and up. In my experience, they don't pop up that frequently. I guess that most of the time, people don't feel the need to resort to flagging each others' posts in chat.

Seth J

@IsaacMoses I've never seen any before. And the answer on that question says that you get flags on the main site, too. I've never seen any of those. I thought they were reserved for mods.

@IsaacMoses It was also in a chat room I'd never visited before.

Isaac Moses

6:35 PM

@SethJ I think chat's considered its own world in some ways

@SethJ It's a little strange, though, since behavior standards in one room may be very different from those in another, and context is vital to evaluating almost any possibly offensive message. I guess they just want stuff that's really, obviously horrible on its face to get removed quickly by whoever's trusted and in chat anywhere.

Double AA

Why is this the only mi-yodeya-sereis without the tag number? FTR I don't think any should have that tag. The series clearly has to do with numbers. Kind of like how we did not put any other tags with purim-torah-injest. — Double AA Mar 23 '12 at 18:14

et seq

Isaac Moses

@DoubleAA Glad to see that I haven't contradicted myself. :)

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses yeah, it's odd, but chat is its own thing I'm told. I was once in a chat room where two other people were arguing with each other, a little bluntly but not out of line. Suddenly six people I'd never seen before showed up within the span of a minute. One of them then said "nothing to see here" and they all went away. I later found out it was a chat flag.

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio Sounds like an incident in a humorous time travel novel

3

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses yeah, now that you put it that way, it does!

msh210

6:51 PM

@MonicaCellio (@SethJ too) I would delete it as "doesn't contribute to the improvement or understanding of the post itself" (from MSO)

Isaac Moses

@msh210 I think practice here has generally been to exercise that prerogative mainly when a thread has gotten long and/or contentious, but to generally leave individual humorous comments alone, no?

msh210

@IsaacMoses I think practice here has generally been too lax w.r.t. comments.

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio BRB teaching Jasper Fforde about SE so he can write that novel.

@msh210 Fair enough

msh210

@IsaacMoses Anyway, "I would delete it" was stated as an expression of my will, not of my intent.

Isaac Moses

@msh210 If y'all want to step up enforcement, I'd recommend letting the community know via Meta first. If you just start deleting non-post-advancing funny comments (e.g.) whenever you see them without warning, you'll probably generate a bunch of indignance. (You probably will anyway if you try to warn the community, but hopefully less.)

msh210

6:58 PM

@IsaacMoses More, if they wouldn't otherwise notice it. :-)

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses my preference, though it's hard to implement so I'm not advancing this as a proposal, is to let the humorous comments stand for a short time so people get their laughs and then clean them up. But if threads get long it's time to clean up no matter how quickly it unfolded.

Isaac Moses

@msh210 (@MonicaCellio @SethJ) OTOH, an in-jest comment that that's not obviously so to all and has any chance of being misleading wrt the actual question should probably be deleted or at least responded to with ("You're joking.")

msh210

@MonicaCellio That's mine, too.

Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses true. This is probably one of those areas where even if you think emoticons are over-used, a well-placed :-) can do wonders.

Seth J

@IsaacMoses Or a creepy one.

Isaac Moses

7:05 PM

@SethJ Yeah, it could be a dark story of runaway authoritarianism

msh210

@IsaacMoses Good point.

@msh210 Not of my immediate intent, anyway. (Per @MonicaCellio's comment here.)

4 mins ago, by Monica Cellio

@IsaacMoses my preference, though it's hard to implement so I'm not advancing this as a proposal, is to let the humorous comments stand for a short time so people get their laughs and then clean them up. But if threads get long it's time to clean up no matter how quickly it unfolded.

0

Q: Miracles in Chumash

I asked why specifically after the miracle of "Krias Yam Suf" did Klal Yisrael say Shira. It was pointed out as well that shira was said after the miracle of Nachal Arnon. There, an answer was provided as to why after both of these miracles shira was said (but after other miracles not): by these ...

pentateuch-chumash miracle

@msh210 No votes, no answers. The last comment (mine) on the question seeks clarification but has no reply from the OP (neither in a comment nor in an edit to the question).

Is it specific enough to be answerable?

If not, can we tidy it up?

Isaac Moses

@msh210 If he wants miracles that happened to Klal Yisrael, then the title should reflect that, and that should be indicated as a first-class element of the second paragraph, rather than by way of explanation in the third. Other than that, I think it's OK. Unless indicated otherwise, I'd assume that "Klal Yisrael" means from the time of Moshe Rabbeinu and on, which is consistent with the stated motivation.

... OTOH, there's something about "please catalog all [of the numerous] instances of X in body of work Y" that rubs me the wrong way

"I'm researching violence in Tanach, for the following legitimately interesting reasons. Please list every example of a violent encounter in Tanach."

msh210

7:20 PM

@IsaacMoses Would you mind fixing it up?

(Incidentally, I don't understand "Would you mind fixing it up, please?". That's asking the person to mind fixing it up.)

Isaac Moses

@msh210 My other hand is currently saying to consider closing it for other reasons. ...

@msh210 "Natural language"

msh210

@IsaacMoses Di'bru b'ne adam bilshon b'ne adam?

Isaac Moses

@msh210 Insert "... my [hereby implied] request that you undertake the task of ..."

@msh210 with the palimpsest of meaning that such recursion would necessarily lead to, yes

msh210

@IsaacMoses That doesn't help, for the literal-minded. "Would you mind my request that you fix it up, please" is still asking him to mind.

Isaac Moses

@msh210 No, it's an interrogative, not a request. The request is implied.

"Would it bother you?"

Or is it that meaning of "mind" - "be bothered by" - that you don't like?

msh210

7:25 PM

@IsaacMoses "Would you mind my request that {you fix it up please}?"? But then what's the "please" doing there? He's not please-fixing it (whatever that means).

@IsaacMoses No, that's fine.

Isaac Moses

@msh210 Oh, it's the "please" that's bothering you. Yeah, I guess it's a tiny bit of dishonesty about roles sneaking in, where you're stating a demand (as indicated by the "please"), but pretending to ask if it's OK.

... to complicate matters, if I'm not mistaken, "please" was originally a stand in for "would it please you to" or something like that, also implying an interrogative, but it's come to mean more of a veneer of politeness on a demand

msh210

@IsaacMoses Yeah: I guess it's more honest than "Would you mind fixing it up?", which is also a request (as above :-)) but not indicated as such in the wording.

@IsaacMoses etymonline.com/index.php?term=please says "was probably a shortening of if it please (you)"

Isaac Moses

@msh210 Well, the explicit question form honestly gives more of an out for me to say "Yes, I would mind; sorry." than "Please fix this up," to which I'd have to respond more bluntly with "No, I'd rather not."

msh210

@IsaacMoses Yeah.

Isaac Moses

@msh210 Oh. Never mind about that, then. It legitimately is a veneer of politeness

Monica Cellio

7:35 PM

@IsaacMoses yeah, I'm not a fan of list questions like this. It's very broad.

Isaac Moses

@MonicaCellio Here, at least, there could be a single impeachable correct answer. It just might be very long.

msh210

@IsaacMoses unlike e.g. "words commonly mispronounced"

Isaac Moses

@msh210 Right

"Has such a list been published?" or "How could I generate such a list?" would be more reasonable for our format, I think

msh210

@IsaacMoses Yeah.

Isaac Moses

... or both in the same question

Monica Cellio

7:42 PM

@IsaacMoses yeah. And I agree with your earlier comment: that it can be answered (albeit with much effort) makes it different from others of this type.

Stack Exchange

Blog - Stack Exchange: Max, Oded, Wendy, Val, Shefali, and Mike: Welcome to the Family!

Joe Humphries on February 25, 2013

We’ve been busy hiring more of the most talented people on the planet! Three cheers for the newest employees at Stack Exchange:

Max Horstmann, Web Developer (Careers 2.0)

New York

Max joins Stack Exchange as a developer on the Careers team. Originally from Denzlingen, Germany, he previously worked on the Windows team at Microsoft. On a recent one-year career break, he and his wife had a chance to travel to glaciers in South America, deserts in the Middle East, and jungles in Southeast Asia. His mission for the next five years is to sort all the pictures taken on this trip, write a few more mobile apps, and find out which German bar in New York City plays the best Blasmusik. …

Isaac Moses

9:06 PM

torahmusings.com/2013/02/hat-tips-in-jewish-law @HodofHod, I recall that were discussing this earlier

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