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I haven’t kept track assiduously, but out of 2k answers, it’d be half a dozen. Either deserved, or not really worth fighting.

I maintain a list of users who have been edit-blocked, banned, or deactivated, that I find in my own Quora journey, or that others have reported to me.

Necrologue

I’m withholding answers this fortnight. Jennifer will tear me a new one, because Time Out on Quora really is supposed to mean Time Out on Quora, where I would be just updating entries on Necrologue.

But, on the Necrologue:

2017–06–20 by Nick Nicholas on Necrologue

2017–06–17 by Nick Nicholas on Necrologue

Your account has been banned because it has been linked to suspicious and/or malicious activity that violated Quora’s policies and guidelines.

Without knowing about, or wanting to know about, the particulars of these bans:

Quora was giving no justification for bans for a long time. Then it was, and it was mostly BNBR. Then it wasn’t again.

Then it started giving justifications so vague, I’ve been counting them as equivalent to None Given: “Multiple Violations”.

This month, “Suspicious and/or Malicious” has shown up.

The acute problem with this is, “Suspicious” is not an assertion that an offence is proven, only that it is suspected.

Users being banned on the mere suspicion of nefarious activity? That’s even worse than not giving any rationale at all.

I’m now resuming my Quora Time Out.

When confronted with horrifically Kafkaesque opacity, one can only retaliate with sunlight.

This is an accidental find:

What’s happening to one of my answers on Quora? Are there upvote bots?

From the details:

UPDATE: After an investigation, it seems my answer was targeted by spam bots or spam profiles (unknown reasons). Attached is the message from a Quora Moderator. It pays to colour within the lines and to report suspicious activity!

So, whatever else it may mean, “suspicious activity” is a new word for Spamming.

EDIT: Maybe. Though this putative moderator was themselves banned, and the ban wording was “The content was deleted because it is in violation of our spam policy”: The Mystery Moderator. So my conclusion was premature.

P.S. I’m fascinated at my spontaneous themselves just then. It has a specific referent alright, but one whose true identity (and thus true gender) is under dispute; so I used the gender-neutral alternative after all…

Nothing as comprehensive or as well maintained, for the reasons given in Michael Chen’s answer: noone’s strongly motivated to reinvent NLTK when NLTK is already there.

There’s a list of projects at gopherdata/resources. There’s bits of what NLTK does among them.

If you want to make sense of English vowel pronunciation, Middle English phonology – Wikipedia is always a good place to start.

Do had a long ō. (As it still does, allowing for the Great English Vowel Shift.)

The Middle English 3rd person of do was dōeth, if the verb was a main verb, and dōth, if it was an auxiliary.

Long ō before a th normally became /uː/, as in sooth, booth; but it sometimes became /ʌ/, as in mōther, ōther. And dōth. (No, I don’t know what the rule was, if any.)

Does is a conventional spelling of dō-s replacing dō-th (evoking do-eth). As far as I can tell, a Middle English dōs could only have ended up pronounced as /duːz/: I doo, you doo, she dooz. The pronunciation of the oe in does, to rhyme with buzz, is clearly carried over from the o of dōth: the -th changed to -z only after the ō had changed to ʌ.

… Ah. I see Brian Collins’ answer to How come does is not pronounced as /doʊs/? is the same as I worked out.

Oh, shut up, QCR.

Masiello and Gwin.

Others applaud them. I panic for them. I want it to work out, they are both good souls who have earned respite, and find it in each other; I worry that they may not work out, because the world is a cruel place.

Yes, nothing ventured nothing gained. And at least, they are both old and wise enough to know.

I worry so much, that the first song to pop into my head was this. Lyrics Kostas Tripolitis, Music Mikis Theodorakis, 1981: late Mikis. Lyrics disillusioned and fearful; music soaring and yearning. Αγάπη: Love. stixoi.info: Αγάπη

Love of bread and fire,
Love of brackishness.
Billboards will choke us
and empty beer cans.

Where can I take you away?
Glass and sheet metal
have filled the years
with expired months.

Love of bread and rain,
Love out on the balconies.
You’ll see blood on the asphalt
and plastic containers.

Where can I take you away?
Glass and sheet metal
have filled the years
with expired months.

I worry, too, that you’ll talk each other mad. Too wise to woo, bickering constantly, exasperatingly, charmingly, like Beatrice and her Benedick. But they got to have their day in the sun, in the end. And so do you:

This marks my 2500th answer. This have I achieved; this noone gets to take from me.

Although I am now embarking on some answer downloading.

Hate Quora moderation? They have their uses. They have their blind spots. They have their tone deafness, and they have their mission.

When I was coming down from my erstwhile anger about Quora, I said:

Perspectives on the Insurgency #3: Where Jennie dings Quora and not just the Movement by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency

If Quora Moderation continues to be Moloch, and impassively and mutely receive burnt offerings… well, no point getting angry at Moloch. He’s just an oven.

After receiving two BNBRs in a day, I’ve gotten my answer count up to 2500; I’m downloading them; and I’m taking a couple of weeks’ break. I will be logging in to update the Necrologue, and maybe banter on the odd question, but I am withholding answers.

I’ll be back.

So will Moloch.

To quibble (and I’ve spoken about this before, as has others): Quora *does* support emojis, and does not (yet) have an explicit policy against them—only because it has made it hard for people to use them. If people do start using them, as Alexander Lee found with coloured lettering, the Policy Arm of Quora will surely spring into action.

See Nick Nicholas’ answer to Why doesn’t Quora allow the use of emoticons, when it would make the site more interactive?

Street or road name – Wikipedia

In Australia and New Zealand, some streets are called parades. Parade: A public promenade or roadway with good pedestrian facilities along the side. Examples: Peace Celebration Parade, Marine Parade, King Edward Parade, Oriental Parade and dozens more. However, this term is not used in North America or Great Britain.

OED parade.n1, meaning 4:

A public square or promenade; (also) a row of shops in a town, or the street on which they are situated. (Frequently in the names of such streets, squares, or promenades.)

That meaning is not at all restricted to Australia, and in fact it is attested since 1697; as a street type, it may be an archaism that is restricted to Oceania.

So:

• 1697, Dampier, New Voyage Around The World: This Square is calcled [sic] the Parade.
• 1775, Sheridan, Rivals: We saunter on the parades [at Bath].
• 1863, Hawthorne, Our Old Home: The smart parades and crescents of the former town.
• 1885, Phone Book, Brighton, England: Vizer E.B…154, Marine-parade.
• 1922, Virginia Woolf, Jacob’s Room: The parade smelt of tar which stuck to the heels.

The 1885 example clearly is an English street name.