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We have a community bulletin board on our site. Here's a near-current screenshot of the homepage:

(screenshot)

You can see four items listed sub "Community Bulletin". The first two are marked "event" and called "miketz questions" (linking to https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/miketz) and "chanuka questions (linking to https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/chanuka) respectively. The next is marked "blog"; and the last, "meta". The latter two are there because the Stack Exchange software chose them. (One links to a recent Stack Exchange bog post and the other to an active post here on meta. You can read more on how items are chosen for the community bulletin board.) But the first two items are there because a site moderator put them there: we (the mods) have been intermittently setting temporally topical tags as 'events' on the community bulletin board. The ability to do so was a big part of why Mi Yodeya pushed for something like a community bulletin board before we ever got one.

I have a question, though. We've mostly been setting these 'events' to run during the time period of the parasha, holiday, or the like. For example, the Miketz 'event' runs approximately from after Shabas parashas Vayeshev until Shabas parashas Miketz, and the Chanuka 'event' runs approximately for the eight days of Chanuka. So two questions, actually:

  • Is that start time good, or should temporally topical tags be 'events' starting earlier or later? (Feel free to specify how much earlier/later.)
  • Is that end time good, or should temporally topical tags be 'events' ending earlier or later? (Feel free to specify how much earlier/later.)

If your answers to these two questions depend on one another, then combine them in one answer, below; otherwise, post them as separate answers, please. Then, if someone's posted an answer that could be yours, upvote it instead of posting separately; and downvote answers you disagree with. We can assess the community's mind by looking at the votes. (Don't bother voting this question up/down, as it doesn't propose any schedule for the future.)

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    Although you could vote the question up to thank msh210 for his effort (and it is mostly him) at maintaining the community board.
    – Double AA Mod
    Dec 10, 2012 at 3:52

2 Answers 2

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For the weekly parsha these times are good, spanning the time when most of us do most of our regular study of the target text.

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  • I wonder though whether Monday through Sunday or Tuesday through Monday will better capture when people are thinking about the parasha (or when they're able to post things that they had previously thought about the parasha).
    – msh210 Mod
    Dec 13, 2012 at 15:54
  • Good question. At that point in time, will people need the community event to remind them that they can post on the just-ended parsha? Or will seeing the event for the next one, and (with luck) having seen several questions tagged for the ended one, be enough?
    – Monica Cellio
    Dec 13, 2012 at 15:59
  • True. Good point.
    – msh210 Mod
    Dec 13, 2012 at 16:01
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For holidays, I think it's worth starting the event a few days in advance (3-4), as that will be when people will be preparing and perhaps thinking of questions. This year we saw questions about Chanukah in advance, and I seem to recall that's typical. (The event is "(holiday) questions", not "holiday", so I don't think this is confusing.) The event should run through the end of the holiday.

I'm not including minor single-day observances like Tu Bishvat and fast days in this. Those should run for the day. The only one of those that seems to entail a lot of advance focus is Tish B'av, but an event for the three weeks covers that.

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