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Mi Yodeya's birth occurred on December 6, 2009 / 19 Kislev 5770 with the posting of http://mi.yodeya.com/q/1 .

In 2014 / 5775, some of us celebrated Mi Yodeya's fifth birthday together, in person, at a Shabbat meal in Silver Spring.

Now, Mi Yodeya's tenth birthday is less than a year away. How time flies! What shall we do to celebrate?

Please treat this post as an invitation to brain-storm, with half-baked ideas of all sorts welcome. There's plenty of time to develop ideas into concrete plans subsequently.

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    Well I sure hope someone gets a nice card. Maybe one of those with lights
    – Dr. Shmuel
    Feb 1, 2019 at 12:02
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    But try to avoid the ones with glitter; that stuff gets everywhere.
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 1, 2019 at 20:13

4 Answers 4

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To piggy-back off of DonielF's idea of doing something Mishnah-themed due to MY's turning ten, what if we tried to do a site-wide siyum of the shishah sidrei Mishnah? We could gather whatever people are able to come together for an in-person siyum and allow other people to virtually join through Google Hangouts or some other method of video conferencing.

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    Doing something like this, and giving it a long time to percolate, could be a great way to get lots of people around the world involved, and invested in coming together, one way or the other, for a big gathering.
    – Isaac Moses Mod
    Feb 1, 2019 at 14:08
  • @IsaacMoses Yeah, being a part of the siyum would be a good motivation for people to want to show up.
    – Daniel
    Feb 1, 2019 at 14:13
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    ... And, a video-conferenced event, unlike a Shabbat event, is something we could use one of those Wednesday federal holidays for, if we want.
    – Isaac Moses Mod
    Feb 1, 2019 at 14:15
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    Maybe add a requirement to ask one question on site about your masekhet
    – Double AA Mod
    Feb 1, 2019 at 17:12
  • According to the Rambam (Talmud Torah 1:11), Tur (YD 246), and Shulchan Aruch (YD 246:4), “Mishnah” seems to be a general term for Torah SheBa’al Peh, as opposed to “Gemara,” a general term for learning things out from each other. As such, it could be argued that, for both your idea and mine-ripped-off-from-Isaac’s, we should go for the entire Talmud, not just Mishnayos.
    – DonielF
    Feb 1, 2019 at 20:09
  • @DonielF That would complicate matters for the 15th birthday, B"H.
    – Isaac Moses Mod
    Feb 1, 2019 at 20:14
  • @IsaacMoses I think we’re already complicating things by using this Mishnah - what will we do for the 18th birthday be”h?
    – DonielF
    Feb 1, 2019 at 20:15
  • @DonielF You need help figuring out what kind of celebration we need to throw then? We have nine years from now to do one easy task (as easy as splitting the Sea), and we'll be all set.
    – Isaac Moses Mod
    Feb 1, 2019 at 20:18
  • @IsaacMoses Just as there we’ll figure it out eventually, so, too, for the 15th. :)
    – DonielF
    Feb 1, 2019 at 20:18
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    @DonielF that would be a very ambitious project and (in my opinion) probably wouldn't be achievable with the number of people I'd expect would participate.
    – Daniel
    Feb 1, 2019 at 21:15
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    Also mishnah is accessible to a wider audience than gemara so it allows the project to be more inclusive.
    – Daniel
    Feb 1, 2019 at 21:15
  • @Daniel Mishnah is included in Talmud. I’m not arguing to focus exclusively on Gemara, I’m suggesting to include it as well as Mishnayos.
    – DonielF
    Feb 1, 2019 at 21:19
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    Note that such a siyum can happen even sans a meeting (even without an online one). Everyone's finishing together will be a beautiful accomplishment per se.
    – msh210 Mod
    Feb 2, 2019 at 18:08
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To completely and utterly rip off Isaac’s suggestion from 2014:

Not to preclude any other ideas (and perhaps to complement them somehow), perhaps there should be an in-person celebration on Shabbat Parashat Vayetzei (Dec. 6-7). By default, it will be one Shabbat meal for Yodeyans (and their families) who happen to live in...wherever it ends up happening. If people are interested in coming in from out of town, we can put together a fuller-fledged Shabbat program.

Either way, I am proposing as a theme Mishnah, given that Mi Yodeya's turning ten and the curriculum in Avot 5:21.

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    Ooh I like the idea of doing Mishnah-related stuff based on pirkei avot. What if we did a site-wide siyum of the shisha sidrei mishnayos?
    – Daniel
    Feb 1, 2019 at 13:54
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    I'm Isaac, and I support this "rip-off."
    – Isaac Moses Mod
    Feb 1, 2019 at 14:25
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    We can do this in multiple locations.
    – msh210 Mod
    Feb 2, 2019 at 18:06
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How about a commemorative publication? "Mi Yodeya - the first ten years" or something like that. Our other publications are themed; this one, in contrast, would be a collection of interesting and/or important questions and answers on a broader range of topics. Such a volume could be particularly good to give away to friends and colleagues as an introduction to the site.

It's been a while since we've done a publication and we have most of a year to figure out what to include and assemble it, so we might be able to get more people involved. (Past publications have taken from a few weeks to a few months.) We all have favorite questions, right? This is a chance to share.

(This is meant to be one of a several things we could do.)

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  • A Shabbaton or the like can be put together much more quickly than a publication. I propose we get on this sooner rather than later, if we go through with this.
    – DonielF
    Feb 1, 2019 at 4:17
  • @DonielF I'd like a shabbaton too. Not everybody will be able to attend, so we should think of a variety of things for people to be involved with. By the way, did you know that our first haggadah went from idea to book in something like three weeks? The HHD book took a couple months. Having most of a year for a publication is way more generous than we've ever had.
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 1, 2019 at 4:23
  • For sure we should do multiple things and not limit to the Shabbaton. I’d love to help out on the publication - I know I offered to help with the Sukkos one at one point, but now I’ve actually got the time to perhaps make a stronger commitment (emphasis on perhaps). At a minimum, we should think about brainstorming a bit, even if we don’t get to work on compilation until after Pesach perhaps. It doesn’t surprise me that the first Haggadah took only a couple weeks - MY was only a few years old at the time. Picking out the best questions over ten years is a very different type of challenge.
    – DonielF
    Feb 1, 2019 at 4:32
  • @DonielF definitely brainstorming would be the next step. If this idea seems to have support, we can start a new meta question specifically for that. (The Sukkot book hasn't happened yet, though there's a meta post collecting some ideas for it. Eventually we'll get back to it.)
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 1, 2019 at 4:33
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    A publication could also be Mishna / Shas themed, with Q&A arranged by related seder or masechet. With enough curatorial creativity, I'll bet that any MY question could be categorized into one of six themes suggested by the Shisha Sidrei Mishna.
    – Isaac Moses Mod
    Feb 1, 2019 at 14:29
  • @IsaacMoses Surely it could be. Question would be if we want half of the packet revolving around Maseches Megillah (read: PTIJ).
    – DonielF
    Feb 1, 2019 at 20:01
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    @DonielF PTIJ goes under Maseches Bubba Meisa
    – Isaac Moses Mod
    Feb 1, 2019 at 20:02
  • We can only do better than this one
    – Kazi bácsi
    Feb 13, 2019 at 7:58
  • @Kazibácsi yeah, that person took dumps of a bunch of sites and made them into books (perfectly legal under the license). There used to be Kindle editions and I looked at the free sample for Mi Yodeya. It's a tag-sorted dump, no curation that I could see. Our publications are better. :-)
    – Monica Cellio
    Feb 13, 2019 at 15:27
  • @Kazi Does that thing seriously want us to believe it was published in 1857?
    – DonielF
    Feb 22, 2019 at 2:01
  • @DonielF It wasn't that long ago...
    – Kazi bácsi
    Feb 22, 2019 at 6:12
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I know I'm a bit late to the party, but I have another idea. (Ok, fine, it's kind of a modification of @Monica's.)

While I think we have very good exposure to the regular, hamon-am, English-speaking, internet-searching masses, I think that we assume that we are looked down upon by many internet users who feel that we do not contribute serious learning, information, or new research to the internet. For example:

In my opinion, the best way to do this would be to develop a small kuntres or journal with full-length, edited articles based on MY posts, and to then try to disseminate it throughout the community/ies that we target. It may need a bit of fundraising, and will need a whole lot of work by a lot of people, but I think if we do even a decent job, it can give us a better name within certain circles, and hopefully attract more serious contributors.

Having users develop answers from, say, one of the "Best Answer Contests" into article form would allow for somewhat lengthy articles with serious scholarship to be put together, and even seasoned academics and Torah scholars would be able to appreciate the work put in by MY users, hopefully opening their mind to participation.

Thoughts are welcome! I realize I am a bit of a dreamer here, but that's ok, I think!

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    Sorry I’m a bit late to responding to yours. Being a dreamer is good - without dreamers we’re not getting anywhere. :) Are you suggesting that, rather than have questions and answers as per previous projects, we’d have articles adapted from various related questions that are put together?
    – DonielF
    Feb 17, 2019 at 16:12
  • @DonielF exactly that
    – רבות מחשבות
    Feb 17, 2019 at 17:20

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