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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.
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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 ...
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
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
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
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
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" ...
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
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
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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
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.
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.
...
3
Weekly challenges. Need i say more?
Well, i guess i will say more.
Each week, we should have a topic challenge, encouraging people to ask questions based on the 5 perakim learned that week.
Having the challenge should encourage people to get with the program, and even if they don't, reading about it here is better than nothing, right?
This will, of ...
2
I was told about Mi Yodeya by a friend.
He quoted research that he did in a chabura in yeshiva.
2
Background information (you can ignore this)
The phrase "unregistered account" sounds like an oxymoron. In truth, what is an unregistered account? Let me explain.
Stack Exchange is interesting. It allows a new user to create an "unregistered" (cookie-based) account; it requires only that they provide an email address. And then they can gain badges and ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible