Month: August 2016

What Garrick Saito said, only with more anger and venom.

Quora does incur a reputation loss, by being seen as robotic and unnuanced in its enforcement of moderation. In fact, Laura Hale has argued that public statements by Marc Bodnick about who should be banned don’t reflect who actually gets banned—which means that there’s less than complete message discipline about Quora moderation or concern about perception of it, to begin with.

But since we’re all expendable and fungible (and that includes Top Writers), Quora doesn’t particularly care—or at least, it thinks that the benefits of offering a safe space through BNRB outweigh the risks of anodyne discourse, or hurt feelings.

In any case, it takes months for new Quorans to work out any issues with Quora moderation, it’s inside baseball, and it will not deter people from signing up in any real sense.

So yes. It’s a tiny drop in the bucket and insignificant in the grand scheme of things (whatever that might look like).

As, no doubt, is this:

User’s answer to How do I find out what comment caused a Quora Moderation warning?

As I observed at the time, if the episode was not a clear message from Quora’s administration that my presence and contributions are not valued or appreciated in any way, it was completely indistinguishable from one, and it has left me seriously considering deleting all of my answers before leaving Quora for good.

Adding my reaction to the thread when I saw it:

https://www.quora.com/My-partner…

I can only think that this perspective on who is and isn’t Dutch is tied up with Western European, civic notions of nationhood, rather than stereotypically Eastern European, ethnic notions: the 2nd generation Surinamese born in Rotterdam is more Dutch than the 2nd generation Dutch-Canadian, because he lives there and is acculturated there.

Why did Quora rescind automatically forcing users to follow any question they answer? It was a great feature previously (and the time before that, though that was before my time on Quora). Having to follow manually each time is extremely annoying. At least make it optional under settings.

What infuriates me most about this feature on-again off-again (as opposed to all the other myriad missteps of Quora Product “Development”) is that it was only divulged to the Top Writers. Presumably, it was rescinded in response to the preferences of the Top Writers: Konstantinos Konstantinides’ answer to At what points has Quora enabled and disabled the feature that automatically follows questions that you answer?

The Top Writers are not representative of all Quora writers. And this preference certainly isn’t mine.

Dimitra Triantafyllidou. In a good way. Because she often calls me to account, and not infrequently corrects me. I don’t enjoy it, but I do appreciate it.

BNRB (Grrr) compels me not to name the bad nemesis (in the literal sense). Suffice to say, he’s a guy with what I consider an unhealthy obsession with treating questions about the Roman Empire as questions about the Byzantine Empire. (Yes, they are contiguous, but we know what time period anyone but an ideologue means when they ask Roman Empire questions, and it isn’t the 15th century.) He’s blocked me, I’ve muted him (because I regard blocking as unmannered), and I mostly stay out of his foul-mouthed way.

I keep them open in a separate tab for a later time; I might take a day or so to get to them. I often get a lot out of longer answers (though not always), but they’re not part of my inbetween-tasks graze of my Quora feed.

“I have a deal with Dimitra Triantafyllidou. She gets to be MVW on Culture of Greece, and I get to be MVW on Greek (language). She gets to teach me on Greek culture, and I… get to be corrected by her on Greek language.”

(If Dimitra didn’t know about the deal before, she sure does now.)

I write lots of scattered other stuff too, including linguistics, music, and conlangs; but Greek language is my main gig.

Oh, and I draw cartoons of people I like here. This, so far, I like the best, not least because it features Lyonel Perabo, who A2A’d me:

Edward Conway dreams of Fire and Ice by Nick Nicholas on Gallery of Awesomery

What do they think? *sigh*

The students at the Classics Department in the University of Auckland have this channel on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/…

In which they have published three recordings of pop songs sung in Ancient Greek, with Erasmian pronunciation.

They are exceedingly clever renderings, both in translation and staging. Mama Mia even has a Sappho quote. The students at the Classics Department in the University of Auckland make me proud to be Antipodean. (Because Australians like taking credit for their cooler cousins.)

If you can read Modern Greek, and delve into the comments…

… Well, if you delve into YouTube comments, you deserve what you got. But it is particularly disspiriting. Poke your own eyes out level disspiriting. I am grateful that at least some Greeks leapt to these kids defense’ (even if a couple of them still thought Erasmian was bogus). The majority just made dick jokes (spelling “dick” in Erasmian: πόυτσο. Ha. Ha. Ha).

Most Greeks aren’t aware that Ancient Greek was pronounced differently, and too many of those who are think it’s a Western conspiracy against them. They don’t base this on any knowledge of Ancient Greek epigraphy, or any consideration of how noone is going to invent the alphabet and then come up with a dozen ways of writing /i/. They base this on a rigid refusal to think outside the Reuchlinian box of their own knowledge of Greek.

Such japes might cause much merriment at first,
or second even; but I warrant you,
that by the fifteenth time that poetaster
had made his verse response to some request,
the joke by then would be well past its prime,
and this ill habit taken by its readers
as evidence of mental feebleness—
as seen with Judge Roy Ashland on the West Wing.

We have the following question as data, and we will assume that there is no intrinsic bias to people self-selecting in the survey:

How do Quorans score on the Political Compass Test?

Yes, the Political Compass test is deeply flawed. Whatevs.

As of this writing:

Left Libertarian: 91

Right Libertarian: 19

Left Authoritarian: 3

Right Authoritarian: 6

https://www.meta-chart.com/share…

… The answer based on the aforementioned question is: yes.

I’m turning 45 in a month, actually; but this Cretan song I heard in my youth has been haunting me since I turned forty. I even had the first verse of it as my Skype mood message for a fair while.

Άχι και σαραντάρισα, δεν κάνω μπλιο γι’ αγάπες
και μου ’ρχεται να τροζαθώ και να γλακώ στσι στράτες.
Γιατροί μου απαγορεύουνε, μα λεν το κι οι γι-ανθρώποι:
ξέχασε κειανά που ’κανες και τη ζωή την πρώτη.
Μην παίζω μπλιο, μην τραγουδώ, μην ξενυχτώ τα βράδυα.
Να πάψω να τσιλιπουρδώ στσ’ αυλές και στα σκοτάδια.
Ρακί, κρασί μην ξαναπιώ, τσιγάρω μην καπνίσω,
Μηδέ το μήνα μια φορά να μην ξαναγλεντίσω,
και προπαντός τα όμορφα μην τα λοξοκοιτάζω.
Χώρες χωριά και γειτονιές απού ’κραζα μην κράζω.
Και λέω ίντα θα γενώ, και τρέμει η ψυχή μου.
Σαν του χοχλιού το κέρατο εζάρωσε η χολή* μου.

Μα συλλογούμαι ίντα θα πεις Σαββάτο γή Δευτέρα,
και συνταγές και γιατρικά θα τα πετάξω πέρα,
και από τσι χάρες τση ζωής τσι πλια όμορφες θα πάρω,
να αφήσω αποδιαλέουρα στον κερατά το Χάρο.

Alas I’m forty, fit no more for love.
I feel like running crazy down the streets.
The doctors ban me, people say so too:
forgot what you once did, and your past life.
Don’t play no more, don’t sing, don’t stay up late.
Don’t hang around in courtyards and dark corners.
No wine, no brandy, no more cigarettes,
don’t have a party even once a month,
and never steal a glance at pretty girls.
Stop haunting towns and neighbourhoods I’d haunted.
What’s to become of me? My soul, it shivers.
Like a snail feeler my gall bladder* shrivels.

I wonder what you’ll think come Saturday,
when I throw all my scripts and pills away.
I’ll sample all the best life has to give.
The leftovers—that bastard Death can have.

*Censored from ψωλή “dick”.