13
Any source is always better than no source, and no source is ever required.
For instance, in increasing order of preference:
We wash our hands in the morning.
My parents taught me to wash my hands in the morning.
I learned in 2nd grade to wash my hands in the morning.
I learned in 2nd grade from Rabbi X in ABC Torah Academy to wash my hands in the morning.
...
12
This compiler, George Duckett, does that a lot. It is legal so long as he follows the CC-BY-SA license requirements, which require (1) attribution and (2) that he similarly license the product.
(2) is satisfied in the one I looked at. I found, at the very end of the book, this statement:
All questions and content contained within this book are licensed ...
11
This was implemented in 5778.
I move to change
All Purim Torah questions must include the following disclaimer code at the bottom:
---
#This question is [Purim Torah](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purim_Torah) and is not intended to be taken completely seriously. See the [Purim Torah policy](http://meta.judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/797/).#
to
...
11
Don't edit or delete. We are not in the business of deciding who is a legitimate rabbi. Cite your sources and let others evaluate their value. After all any source is better than no source.
If you want to comment suggesting an improvement, go ahead.
9
Tack-on point to DoubleAA's answer:
A decent rule of thumb is that if someone feels moved to challenge you for a source, then your assertion is probably one of the following:
Unknown to at least one reader in the target audience
Incorrect, at least according to some
Insufficiently precise
In any of these cases, looking up the best source you can and ...
9
The FAQ says:
Please respect that in the Jewish tradition certain questions, especially certain questions relating to sexuality, are discussed only in private. Such questions will be closed or deleted at the discretion of the moderators or community.
That would seem to apply hereto. You can vote/flag to close a question if you think it's about material ...
9
I can't think of any instances in which we've had a significant problem due to a post going on the HNQ.
Therefore, I think the rule should be that we take one down only in extreme situations. I suspect that trying to craft a rule now that will define what one of these situations will look like would be counterproductive. Instead, for now, we should watch ...
8
A profile is the user's space to use, within reason. There are limits, as described in this Meta.SE post from a leader of the community team at SE:
We will probably not allow:
Most terms or statements that directly malign (non-famous) individuals
Any terms or statements that imply something derogatory about a racial, ethnic, religious, gender ...
8
See What is the official etiquette on answering a question twice? on MSE. The top answer there states:
When you have two distinct answers.
It's better to post two different answers than to put them both into one answer.
[snip]
If you put two very different answers in one, then one could be a great answer, and one could be a terrible way to do things, but ...
8
Note: I think that if we want to ensure that all relevant users will read and apply the entire policy, we need to make it more inviting and readable than the incumbent version, especially if we're increasing the complexity of the rules. This is one attempt at that. I'd love to see other rewrites that demonstrate other ways to communicate this policy ...
8
In the title of your question you ask "What do you do when a moderator is saying insulting or belittling things?" and the answer to that is: the same thing you do if anybody else says insulting or belittling things, as addressed in the linked answer. You shouldn't avoid flagging something just because a moderator posted it; everybody errs sometimes, and ...
8
The other answers suggest reopening as soon as possible given the content of the question (either because those are the rules or because there is no longer the appearance of approving of Psak questions), reopening when the risk of Psak giving is clearly mitigated erring in closure, and never reopening. I'll suggest something in the middle.
Reopen when a) ...
7
For guidelines on what counts as "rude or offensive," one of the categories of comments we're encouraged to flag, take a look at the Help page that explains the "Be nice." rule of interaction on Stack Exchange. If you see a comment that you think any part of is
rude
belittling
name-calling
bigoted
vulgar
harassing
bullying
or the like, you should flag the ...
7
I don't see why such comments can't be flagged as offensive if they're thought to be offensive. Otherwise, you can flag them as too chatty or as not constructive if they're thought to be such. As far as I recall, we haven't developed criteria for any of those flags, so flag at will.
In other words, my answer to your question — What should we do with ...
7
I see now that two other SE communities, Health and Law, have professional advice disclaimers in the top-right corners of their front pages:
This would seem to be the right place to put our disclaimer.
The text of our disclaimer should be what we already have in our Tour, as that's the product of years of slow evolution and community scrutiny:
Like ...
7
According to the help center:
If you have a question about...
Jewish law or practice (what to do or why)
Jewish philosophy
a Jewish text (explaining a passage)
history of Judaism
language used in Judaism
general knowledge (science, etc.) as it relates directly to Judaism
...
(examples)
then you've come to the right place. ...
7
If a question asks whether there's Judaism significance to an observed phenomenon, and if it provides some motivation for why we might expect there to be Judaism significance to that phenomenon, then it's about Judaism, regardless of whether the phenomenon is linguistic, natural, or Halachic, and it's on-topic.
Does that mean that there are many questions ...
7
I would say to treat it as you would any other post. If someone posts bad content — whether incorrect, unsubstantiated, or any other flaw — you can downvote it.
You are never required to justify your downvotes. It’s certainly nice if you can leave comments when you downvote that can help the poster improve the post, but that is a bonus. Your downvote is ...
6
If what you really want is that same question answered, but not with that answer, then yes, a new question post would likely be a duplicate of the first one
Here are some things you can do to try to get more, better answers. Only the first three have any reputation-score restriction associated with them.
Add a bounty.
Comment on the answer you don't like, ...
6
I think our existing editing policies cover this already. If you see a post that can be improved, edit to do so and leave an informative edit summary. If it's a new user I usually also leave a comment, where I have more room (and can add links) and which the user is more likely to see. This allows me to educate the user about the issue (while also ...
6
In my opinion, no, it doesn't still hold true in such a case. A closed question is one that should have no answers. (In an ideal world, it would be closed before it got answered.) It should indeed be edited to be brought on-topic (or, if it's not editable to be brought on-topic, should be deleted or have an historical lock put on it), and any no-longer-on-...
6
I can see this situation turning into a hot political issue. Let's keep Mi Yodeya a neutral community where people of all persuasions can safely ask and answer questions.
I also see little gain from spreading further the disgrace of an already disgraced Rabbi. Mi Yodeya is an open forum, and we reach out to Jews and non-Jews from all over the world and of ...
5
My additions in bold. Please edit as you feel appropriate.
Generally, we expect all questions here to be written from the point-of-view of genuine curiosity, and we expect all answers to be genuine attempts to provide real information and analysis that directly addresses the question.
However, the community has indicated that, if regulated carefully, Purim ...
5
I think that questions that are respectfully asked are generally fine even if they involve heretical ideas. Some readers may be working in kiruv or teaching children and may have to contend with such topics; I'd rather give them good, sourced, Jewish answers than hope they'll find something relevant on Yahoo Answers or Wikipedia. And understanding both ...
5
I recommend closing using any reason that is relevant, with priority going to whichever would be most likely to point the author in the direction of a constructive edit1. Then, if you think that the post has many issues that prevent it from being a good fit, I recommend leaving a comment that explains all of the issues and requests correction of them. If we ...
5
It seems like a bad idea to close a question as a duplicate of another question that's closed for any reason. The point of closing as a duplicate is to direct people interested in the new manifestation of the question to another post where an older manifestation is already getting answers. If the target post is closed then by definition it's not getting ...
5
Generally speaking (and I can't think of any exceptions of the top of my head, though they may well exist), Mi Yodeya's moderators use suspensions for the standard reasons used network-wide, or close variations thereof. Again generally speaking, we use suspensions to interrupt a pattern of behavior that we consider to be harmful to the community or our ...
4
We make known our expectations about sources (as in the posts you linked). Our actual definition of source is fuzzy and context-dependent. If I heard Rabbi Ploni say such-and-such at a public lecture that's a source, though one without clear verification (assume there wasn't a recording). If you learned something in Hebrew school, that's a source. If ...
4
From our (and every Stack Exchange site's) FAQ page on "What types of questions should I avoid asking?":
To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …
every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”
your answer is provided along with the question, and you expect more ...
4
We should evaluate questions based on their current state.
If a question were asked theoretically in the first place, would we be concerned about the author's motives? Demonstrably not, or we'd close many more questions on this site. Some of them are asked out of intellectual curiosity or as frames to get to an underlying point of halacha. Judging from ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible