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I am so glad to see Monica back in the business of building online knowledge-sharing communities. With her in a leading role in shaping the platform. you can be sure that it will be built on the right principles and executed thoughtfully. I hope the platform succeeds and thrives, and that a Judaism community succeeds and thrives on it.
16
I have accepted an appointment as moderator pro tempore at the new Judaism community at Codidact. I will help that community launch itself while continuing to participate here as a moderator and community member.
Some explanation:
I have been a fan of the Stack Exchange corporation since it was scarcely more than a conceptual conversation between Joel ...
14
TZT / Time zone tov / Good time zone - Have a good one.
"TZT" is an initialization of "time zone tov."
"Time zone tov" is a partial Hebraization of "good time zone," adopting the form of the common Hebrew greeting "Shavua' tov" ("Have a good week.")
"Good time zone" is meant to be an equivalent of "Good day" or "Good night," to be used when the speaker is ...
11
yodeyan - A member of the Mi Yodeya community.
Generated by affixing the suffix "-an" to the word "Yodeya," from the community's name.
Earliest known usage: Isaac Moses, in a January 18, 2010 post on the "lo.yodeya" blog that he wrote during the early days of mi.yodeya 1.0 said, fruitlessly (except for the coinage):
I'd be very interested to hear your ...
9
Rfפ - Request for פְּסַק (pesak / rabbinic ruling)
Presumably pronounced, if at all, "arr eff pay."
This is shorthand for a characteristic of a question that could cause it to be closed on Mi Yodeya - requesting a practical ruling, as if from a rabbi.
Earliest known usage: Scimonster, in an edit summary, November 24, 2014.
Earlier, inferior version, RfP, ...
8
Bam -- our main general site-related chatroom, V'dibarta Bam.
Earliest known comparison of the word בם to the English onomatopoeia BAM: msh210 in Bam on 2012 May 23 15:41
Earliest known usage as a stand alone name: Adam Mosheh in Bam on 2012 Jun 13 14:24
Earliest known Hebrew usage: Double AA in Bam on 2012 Jun 15 22:50
8
All the Stack Exchange sites have these problems at least a little bit. ‹Lashon hara› On Programmers and Stack Overflow, people are sometimes way more obnoxious than on Mi Yodeya and on History.SE there are some people always clamoring to close questions. ‹/Lashon hara› I too have bumped heads with mods occasionally, but I try very hard to not hold it ...
7
I'm glad that you addressed this very topic. When I began about 8 months ago, for about two months, I felt the same attitude. But I realized a few things that have kept me on the site:
Anonymity combined with the web, I think, overall are good things. In other words, while I know that there's a human behind the comments and answers, I don't have to develop ...
7
The vast majority of the time, when someone drops out of a community like this one, either permanently or temporarily, it is not due to any sort of severe real-life troubles. All more likely are:
Changing habits of online behavior
Other interests taking more time and attention
On-site difficulties
Changes in real-life time pressures
Given that, it seems ...
6
Sorry to hear you've had some trouble with Mi Yodeya. The issue you brought up (of directness coming out rudely) was actually recently brought up, and much of the community resolved to do better.
How should we ask for improvements to questions and answers?
While i only speak for myself here, i know that in the past i have posted "what makes you think x" ...
6
This is somewhat of what I was trying to get at here as well (obviously from a different point of view, but with that observation that the QA and rules involved can turn people off).
The rules are a double edged sword. On the one hand, they define and focus the community in important ways that keep personal animosity down. Who would want a food fight? Join ...
6
You might have previously noticed posts on the front page that said "modified by Community", but there were no recent edits or additions. Those are the Community bumps mentioned in the Community user's profile -- the idea is to put occasional older questions that could use some more attention in front of people again.
That behavior has been ...
5
JeLLy - of or related to Jewish Life and Learning
It derives from when the site was defined as not Judaism, but Jewish Life & Learning. Basically, if something is JeLLy, then it is on-topic for this site, and if it's not, then it is not.
Earliest known usage: Feb 6, 2013 by @msh210 in Bam:
Isaac Moses: @msh210 Can you [edit] in a JL&L-relevant ...
5
PTIJ / p-t-i-j - Purim Torah - in jest
This term is the initialization of the purim-torah-in-jest tag, which is applied, in accordance with the Purim Torah policy, to in-season non-serious questions.
Earliest known usage: May 8, 2013 by Isaac Moses, in Bam:
@msh210 File away for PTIJ 5774: this pun, along with conspiracy theories
5
O-Cmon (also O-כמאן) - A fictitious kosher-certification agency with notoriously low standards.
This hechsher was first mentioned on a PTIJ question from 2012 asking what a particular strange marking was on some foods. The answer describes it as "the world’s first crowd-sourced Kosher certification."
This agency is occasionally mentioned on Mi Yodeya (e.g. ...
5
We could use the @mi_yodeya Twitter account to send out a tweet each day with a Q&A related to the day's chapter, possibly along with a link to the chapter text in Hebrew and English on Sefaria or another repository. I piloted this idea today by sending out these two tweets. With less fluff, the same could be done in one.
Note that I made first use of ...
4
This image is an excerpt from a screenshot of the Badges sidebar on the front page of the Judaism Stack Exchange beta website1, indicating that user Shalom was awarded the bronze badge for answering questions in the shabbat tag. Because it shows the words "shabbat Shalom," it's used in Chat as a humorous way for people to wish each other Shabbat Shalom.
...
4
I would be in support of importing all the questions to codidact (without deleting anything from here) and maybe putting a sticky post on the front page that many users and mods have moved to codidact.
3
Here's one way we could do it:
1. Choosing a date
A meta post goes up, soliciting suggested dates.
Anyone can suggest a date (or the person posting the meta post could just do this) by posting two answers: One for people who could travel on that date, and one for people who could participate in-place on that date.
People indicate on which dates they could, ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
