Month: March 2017

The problem with Quora’s policies is that they are fairly high level and vague, and they require the equivalent of judges to interpret them. Christopher VanLang and other former volunteer mods have expertise in the tradition of interpretation they formed, and they would be better placed than me to answer this.

In my opinion alone, a sincere question about a conspiracy theory should not be against BNBR. Hate speech is against BNBR. Advocacy of a conspiracy theory is close to hate speech, but it’s even more close to irrational speech (and I’ve been quite unimpressed by the instances OP has pointed to.)

Discussion of the conspiracy theory however is permitted: there is no block on irrational speech, and there is the expectation that it can be refuted rationally, and the requirement that it be conducted respectfully. Hence Bodnick, with his… curiously double edged wording:

Marc Bodnick’s answer to Should discussion of conspiracy theories be banned on Quora? As a community, are we valuing niceness over debating the truth?

Discussion of conspiracy theories is totally welcome and is consistent with Quora’s mission.

As Joshua Engel’s answer to Should discussion of conspiracy theories be banned on Quora? As a community, are we valuing niceness over debating the truth? points out, conspiracy theorists will tend to violate BNBR overtly anyway:

I suppose it’s interesting to consider the notion that conspiracy theorists are far more likely to violate those policies. After all, a conspiracy theory (more or less by definition) involves the belief that people are out to hide the truth from you, and so anybody who disagrees is either lying or stupid. It will be difficult to discuss that without violating the policies. And conversely, everybody disagreeing is nearly certain to think that the theorist is, themselves, either lying or stupid, and it will be difficult to avoid bringing that up. This is what makes “conspiracy theories” different from other matters of mere disagreement.

Add to that of course the fact that the conspiracy theory in question is based on religious antagonism, which makes hate speech even likelier to arise.

One can counter that the promotion of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories makes Quora unfriendly to Muslims, and one might investigate whether antisemitic and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories are prosecuted with the same fervour. I don’t know; The Protocols of the Elders of Zion exists as a topic, though the questions are pretty neutral, and the Love Jihad questions are not.

Those questions would probably fall afoul not in principle of the policy of BNBR, as Hate Speech, but of the guidelines for neutrally phrased questions (see Should questions on Quora be phrased neutrally? Why, or why not?); in particular: Quora’s answer to What are the main policies and guidelines for questions on Quora?

• Questions are stronger if they are phrased neutrally, ask for information and ask why
• Questions are stronger if they are phrased neutrally and minimise presuppositions.
• Questions are stronger if they do not contain assumptions. In particular, they should not imply false information.

Well, this is what the Googles gets me (with a peek at the OED):

• http://www.yorkshiredialect.com/…

Owt and Nowt are shibboleths for Yorkshire: they are very common dialect words. The historical pronunciation seems to be something like /ou/. They are indeed derived from aught and naught; the spelling with an au is from Early Modern Southern English, and Middle English usually spelled them as ought and nought. Brought in Yorkshire rhymes with owt. (Remember that in Middle English, the <gh> was a kh sound.)

On the other hand, the <ou> diphthong which normally rhymes with <ow> in English is either -ah-, in the West Riding (e.g. Sheffield), or -oo- in the North and East Riding: abaht, aboot.

Hence Nathan Morris’ answer to Could someone tell of “owt” or “nowt” regarding Yorkshire?

A can tell thee owt tha wants to know abart.

[I can tell thee aught thou wants to know about]

---

EDIT:

Joseph Boyle asks whether the aboot of East Yorkshire is related to the aboot of Canada and the US South Highlands.

The Yorkshire and Scots aboot really is pronounced aboot. It is a an archaism, representing the pronunciation of <ou> before the Great English Vowel Shift. (Middle English used the French pronunciation of <ou>.) Notice that Yorkshire keeps <ou> and <ow> separate.

The Great English Vowel Shift changed iː to əi to ai. It’s why reconstructed Shakespearean pronunciation sounds like a pirate: West Country English, on which Hollywood pirate talk is based, has kept the older əi pronunciation.

What happened to Middle English i: also happened to uː : uː > əu > au.

• uː is the original Middle English pronunciation, preserved in East Yorkshire.
• au is the usual Modern pronunciation.
• aː is a further development from au, found in West Yorkshire.
• əu is the missing link between uː and au. It is how Shakespeare would have pronounced about. It is also how Canadians and Southern Virginians pronounce about: Canadian raising – Wikipedia, [əbəut].

So Shakespeare would in fact have sounded like a Canadian pirate.

The chain of development is East Yorkshire aboot > Canadian and Southern Virginian əbəut > standard English about > West Yorkshire abaht. Logically, that tells you that the missing link pronunciation used to occur in West Yorkshire as well, and eventually gave rise to abaht via about. But there is no reason to think that there is anything Yorkshire about Canadian raising. It appears to be a general archaism, although not one that Wikipedia has much history on.

And yes, all my information is from Wikipedia.

https://www.quora.com/careers/wr…

Quora’s mission is to share and grow the world’s knowledge, and internationalization is a critical part in achieving this mission. We recently launched Quora en Español, and we’re eager to make Quora available in more languages soon. Quora is looking for a Writer Relations Manager to activate and manage the writer community on Quora in italiano.

As part of the marketing team and cross-functional internationalization team, you will play a dynamic role in helping early adopters, active contributors, and influential figures find success on Quora in italiano from the beta period, launch, and beyond. You’re a native Italian speaker, curious, driven, and excited to make a significant impact in helping achieve the company’s mission. This is a full-time position based in Quora’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, with some travel required.

Responsibilities:

• Help attract, encourage, build, and manage Quora’s writer community in Italian-speaking markets
• Be an active member of the Quora in italiano community
• Evangelize Quora’s policies and take responsibility for major moderation decisions affecting active writers
• Develop and execute marketing strategies targeted towards recruiting valuable to Quora
• Pursue growth-related partnerships and opportunities for Quora
• Work closely with Product and Engineering teams to better understand Quora in italiano users

Requirements:

• Passion for being part of an active writing community
• Experience growing and managing online communities
• Mastery of Italian language; ability to write prolifically with proper grammar
• Fluency in English
• Deep understanding of Italian culture and internet industry trends
• Proven ability to work independently with enthusiasm, energy, and drive
• Experience working with technical teams at product-centric companies
• Thoughtful usage of Quora and passion for our mission

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity at our company. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

This my 2000th answer could exult
in all the friends on Quora’s paths well met.
(A well trod trope, that I will sing out yet.)

This my 2000th answer could result
in lists of lore here learned, by god and cult:
Kleio, Euterpe, Hermes, Baphomet.

This my 2000th answer could beset
ills I’ve beheld, and insults I insult:
dull aediles, clumsy quaestors, consuls vain

that know their charges not. And I refrain
to write a single ode. They all are one.

Quora gifts wisdom, ire, and amity
to all it hosts—until calamity
unhouses us. Our home. Our charge. Our fun.

Well, I’ve been asking people to provide eulogies for the departed; only one has done so so far. I just got a quit notice relayed via a third party.

I’m cool with it, so long as BNBR is maintained. I assume you’d be parking your epitaph with me, to break out in case of emergency? Sure. Just PM me with it.

User, Professor of Physics at MIT from 1966–2009, has just quit Quora after being edit blocked.

This is his farewell video.

Several of the topics he broaches on have been mentioned elsewhere, including:

• The place of humour in scholarship
• Quora vs Google
• Lazy do-my-homework questions on Quora
• Not feeling appreciated by Quora for the contributions he has made

There’s several things to discuss about this, but I’ll let you all tease them out in comments.

Oh, and he’s being actively courted by YouTube users to join Physics StackExchange instead.

Stop reading this, and go upvote Michael Pothoven’s answer to What were the last years of the Byzantine Empire like in Constantinople?

I MEAN IT.

I’ll wait.

---

One of the conundrums of early Ottoman Constantinople is that there were many churches that were left alone after the Conquest, and not converted into mosques. The norm was that if a Christian city resisted a Muslim siege, all its churches could be converted to mosques; if the city surrendered, its churches would be left alone.

I don’t remember where I read this, but the solution to the conundrum I’ve seen proposed is that by then, Constantinople was so sparsely populated, that its outer suburbs were effectively separate settlements, surrounded by farmland. And those suburbs, cut off and living from subsistence farming, could easily have organised their own surrenders to the Ottomans, ignoring what was happening downtown.

Michael Pothoven paints a depressing picture of the last days of Constantinople. The detail I’ve given here, I find even more depressing.

Hello, Olivia. I’ve noticed you post a couple of things on Race & Ethnicity, but I’m flattered you’ve noticed me enough to A2A me this.

I’ve only ever received a couple of warnings. My story on my first warning, which *I* thought was ridiculous, is recounted in a two-parter:

What happened next? by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency

My first BNBR warning by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency

My friend Jennifer Edeburn and I have discussed this since. I see the argument for it; it’s Tatiana Estévez: “Having people insult each other as ‘banter’ doesn’t create a good atmosphere” by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency. I think it’s silly. But there you have it.

John Gragson thought that was even more chickenshit than the warning he got, as he commented at https://insurgency.quora.com/My-…. He got a BNBR warning for *that*. The irony, the irony.

And then of course there’s the moderation actions against Michael Masiello, Habib Fanny, Gigi J Wolf, Lara Novakov, Red Subijano, and Jeremy Markeith Thompson, that prompted my deactivation (and later on, most epic comic strip), as laid out in Nick Nicholas’ answer to Do you believe Quora moderation is doing a good and responsible job of maintaining this site’s policies? Why or why not?

There have been bans for formatting: I have seen a user who consistently used way too many bolds and caps and italics (her stuff read a bit like a ransom letter) get banned. (Don’t remember her name, but she was Indian, and posted a lot on Hinduism.) A very dim view was taken by Quora management in the Top Writer lounge, against a current teen user who used red colour in his posts. (“Severe violation.”) The ransom letter user was annoying, but “banned for formatting”… yeah, that looks bizarre.

There’s plenty of ridiculous-looking reasons about. Yes it can be argued that we only ever get one side of the story. Yes it can be argued that moderation needs to be “rule-bound” (translation: robotic) if it is to scale to deal with the population of Quora. Yes it can be argued that the guidelines are clear. (I’d argue against that: many of them, you could drive a truck through.) Yes, it’s Quora’s site, and they owe nobody any first amendment rights. Or anything, really.

And I still get to find some of the reasons for moderation sanction silly.

The Filos Pergamos Bible is the 1993 translation by Spyros Filos, published by Pergamos publishers:

• Η Αγία Γραφή—Μεταφορά στη Νεοελληνική: Παλαιά Διαθήκη/Καινή Διαθήκη, Σπύρος Φίλος, Εκδόσεις Πέργαμος, Αθήνα, 1993/1994.
• Η Αγία Γραφή-Μεταφορά στη Νεοελληνική – Βικιπαίδεια

As discussed at https://www.quora.com/Are-there-… , my assumption is that the NTV is the “Four Professors’” translation of the New Testament, which was published by the Bible Society in 1967. But I don’t know that for a fact, and I don’t know what NTV stands for (New Testament Version? Neohellenic Translation Version?):

• Η Καινή Διαθήκη των Τεσσάρων Καθηγητών: Καινή Διαθήκη, Βασίλειος Βέλλας, Ευάγγελος Αντωνιάδης, Αμίλκας Αλιβιζάτος και Γεράσιμος Κονιδάρης, Ελληνική Βιβλική Εταιρία, Αθήνα, 1967.
• Η Καινή Διαθήκη των Τεσσάρων Καθηγητών – Βικιπαίδεια

To add to the others:

• Vote #1: Humphry Smith’s answer to In Ancient Greek, how common is this declension? It’s in the second declension group but called “attic declension.”
• Vote #1: Robert Todd’s answer to In Ancient Greek, how common is this declension? It’s in the second declension group but called “attic declension.”

The Attic declension is indeed specific to Attic: it represents a sound change specific to that dialect, whereby V̄ο > V̆ω, where V is any vowel that can be long. So Doric νᾱός, Ionic νηός, Attic νεώς.

As Robert Todd said:

Personally, I didn’t memorize these. I pick them up in continuous reading and apply the following mental adjustment to the “ο” stem second declension specimens – it it’s ο, ου, α then ω, if οι then ώ.

With λαγώς, you’re also seeing some vowels being merged together.

This is an annoying peculiarity of Attic, and Koine dropped it like a stone; abandoning the Attic declension is in fact a major source of Doric words in Koine.

I don’t even go as far as Robert in my memorisation: I just think “Oh, an omega is there. Attic Declension. I’ll treat it like an omicron. Or an omicron upsilon. Whatever works.” They really are just second declension nouns with a long final vowel.