Author: admin

My second BNBR violation. You’re gonna love this one.

It’s in a comment that’s been deleted, because that’s what happens when moderation dings a comment. Doesn’t even appear in the logs.

The context is the question:

Nick Nicholas’ answer to How well is the “new anonymity” policy on Quora working at filtering out bad content, as of March 20, 2017?

The trigger is the anonymous question (since deleted):

Why does Jack Fraser have pubes on his head? [Why does Jack Fraser have pubes on his head? Question details: “That’s not a hairstyle you dumbass. Those are fucking pubes!!!”]

My answer had featured an earlier instance of Jack Fraser being victimised by anonymous questions; I’d come across yet another instance, two weeks later, and saw fit to comment on the ongoing lack of vetting by quoting this new lapse:

Why does Jack Fraser have pubes on his head? [ Why does Jack Fraser have pubes on his head? ]

That’s not a hairstyle you dumbass. Those are fucking pubes!!!

How well is the “new anonymity” policy on Quora working at filtering out bad content, as of April 24, 2017?

Blockquotes in original.

That comment has been deleted as BNBR.

*golf clap*

Upcoming Changes to Anonymity on Quora by Riley Patterson on Quora Product Updates

All anonymous content will be reviewed for spam and harassment before receiving distribution.

Why yes. Good to know you’re on the case. Good to know that you’re continuing your track record of ignoring context, too.

I’ve appealed. Jennifer Edeburn, I know you’ll say here too that I should have provided more detail. Currently, I have to say, I don’t feel strongly motivated to.

Reading English is just flowing water to me. The information just snarfs up.

Reading Modern Greek, I’m hyper-aware of stylistic differences; every concession to Ancient Greek or opening up to dialect was a political act up until the 70s, and I learned my Greek in the aftermath of that. Journalistic rigid syntax dismays me; I can rejoice with good choice of words, to the point of forgetting what the prose is talking about. That can happen in English, but the threshold is far higher.

Reading Ancient Greek, which I’m really not comfortable with, is assembling a puzzle. With a sledgehammer. I know what the bits mean, although there’s a fair bit of running to the dictionary; I find it very hard to put the bits together.

Reading French, and reading German, is glimpsing a coastline through a fog. My understanding is foggy, but good enough that I can skim—especially if it’s scholarly writing, where the vocabulary is more familiar.

Reading Esperanto is surprisingly smooth; there’s less texture and shoals to get in the way. My eyebrow still arches if I see a stylistic choice I don’t like.

As a complement to Dimitra Triantafyllidou’s answer and Niko Vasileas’ answer:

There was an undercurrent of resentment of the ancients and their pagan wisdom, but it remained an undercurrent.

There’s the renowned hymn on the Pentecost by Romanos the Melodist, dismissing ancient learning with puns on the pagan scholars—and alas, a favourite of the Greek nationalist blogosphere:

Οὐκοῦν εδόθη αὐτοῖς πάντων περιγενέσθαι
δι’ ὧν λαλοῦσι γλωσσῶν;
καὶ τί φιλονεικοῦσιν οἱ ἔξω ληροῦντες;
τί φυσῶσι καὶ βαμβεύουσιν οἱ Ἕλληνες;
Τί φαντάζονται πρὸς Ἄρατον τὸν τρισκατάρατον;
Τί πλανῶνται πρὸς Πλάτωνα;
Τί Δημοσθένην στέργουσι τὸν ἀσθενῆ;
Τί μὴ ὁρῶσιν Ὅμηρον ὄνειρον ἀργόν;
Τί Πυθαγόραν θρυλλοῦσι τὸν δικαίως φιμωθέντα;
Τί δὲ καὶ μὴ τρέχουσι και σέβουσιν οἷς ἐνεφανίσθη
τὸ Πανάγιον Πνεῦμα; (On the Pentecost XVII)

Was it not granted to them [the apostles] to be superior, through the languages they spoke in? And what are the fools outside arguing about? What are the Hellenes [Pagans] bloviating and blabbing about? Why does their fancy go to Aratus the accursed [triskataraton]? Why are they deceived [planōntai] to follow Plato? Why do they care about Demosthenes the weakling [asthenē]? Why don’t they see that Homer is an idle dream [oneiron]? Why do they keep going on about Pythagoras, who was justly muzzled? Why won’t they run and pay respect to those to whom the Most Holy Spirit appeared?”

The fact that Romanos was Syrian is not relevant; so was Lucian. The fact that Romanos was writing in the 7th century is relevant: there were still pagans in the Empire, and Christianity was still trying to assert itself.

This was not the elite response to antiquity: the elite response, as Dimitra said, was to embrace antiquity, and the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nazianzus, pioneered the reconciliation of Christian and Pagan learning in the 4th century. But Romanos was not part of the elite.

I’ve elsewhere spoken of how Modern Greek peasants were in distant if suspicious awe of the ruins around them: Nick Nicholas’ answer to How do Greeks feel about references to Ancient Greece?

The unlettered peasants 300 years ago had a much more straightforward relationship with the Hellenes: they were this race of pagan giants, the folk who built all them ruins; and they died out because they fell over, and couldn’t get back up…

The Parastaseis syntomoi chronikai, a 9th century description of the sights of Constantinople, shows a similar confused apprehension of the highlights of the Ancient World that Constantinople was strewn with: little-understood receptacles of magic and fear. Like Romans, the commoners of Constantinople were ambivalent about their past.

And of course, there was the ongoing feeling of inferiority towards the ancients, memorably expressed by Theodore Metochites: Nick Nicholas’ answer to Do many modern Greeks feel a sense of failure or perhaps inferiority when compared with their ancient Greek ancestors? The ancients have not left us anything to say, he laments—in the introduction to an 800-page collection of essays.

There is widespread confusion on this one.

There are three iterations of the comment feature:

• Original
• Featured/Other: Featured Comments by Kelvin Ho on Quora Product Updates
• Recommended/All: More Visibility for High-Quality Comments by Diana Gerr on Quora Product Updates

Different people have had different versions of the feature rolled out at different times. Right now (weekend of 22 April 2017), some people are being moved from Featured to Recommended, and some other people (including me) are being moved from Recommended back to Original.

Which makes me conclude that Featured comments are being removed, but that Recommended comments aren’t: the move back to Original is a temporary glitch (though one I am ecstatic about).

How do I feel?

• Featured and Recommended were overengineering the problem of how to manage adverse comments, and the extra click is moderately annoying.
• I don’t have a whole lot of adverse comments to scroll through. But I don’t trust Quora to identify and sequester adverse comments; there have been a lot of innocuous and positive comments sequestered.
• In response to users complaining that Featured was promoting anything they’d upvote, Quora decided to recommend comments ignoring what the user upvoted. (The criterion appears to be somehow tied up with Top Writer status or being followed by the user.)
• So users asking for more control over what gets promoted ended up with less.
• The lesson being: do not give Quora feedback.
• Clearly opinion is split on whether three-tier comments (promoted, not-promoted, collapsed) was a good thing. I think it was not a good thing: I much prefer eyeballing through a single list of comments.

Ancient Greek made a distinction between thieves and robbers: kleptēs vs lēistēs or harpax. Both kleptēs and lēistēs are used in the New Testament; the men crucified with Jesus were lēistai.

The Modern Greek vernacular had lost the word lēistēs, and had kept the word kleptēs (as kleftis) to refer to both thieves and robbers.

Brigands are robbers are thieves. Brigands were also celebrated in folksong as indomitable rebels, and formed the backbone of the Greek War of Independence. So brigands, as Klephts, were much feted in the newly independent Greece:

Klephts (Greek κλέφτης, kléftis, pl. κλέφτες, kléftes, which means “thief” and perhaps originally meant just “brigand”) were highwaymen turned self-appointed armatoloi, anti-Ottoman insurgents, and warlike mountain-folk who lived in the countryside when Greece was a part of the Ottoman Empire. They were the descendants of Greeks who retreated into the mountains during the 15th century in order to avoid Ottoman rule. They carried on a continuous war against Ottoman rule and remained active as brigands until the 19th century.

The catch is that Klephts were really just brigands. As folk songs make clear, they would rob rich Christian and rich Muslim alike. They fought the good fight during the War of Independence—and after the War of Independence, they went back to robbing the citizens of the new Greek State. Which was more than a little embarrassing if the new Greek State is using them as part of its foundation story.

The Greek State had a means to deal with this embarrassment: the introduction of Puristic Greek, as a move back towards Classical Greek. The indomitable heroes of the revolution could go on being called klephts. The current scoundrels holding up Greek nationals in mountain passes may well have been the exact same people; but they were not going to be called the same heroic name. They were listis (lēistēs): the ancient and Biblical word was brought back, to castigate them. (Those folk songs featuring the brigands robbing Christians were judiciously ignored, too.)

As a result, Modern Greek now has a word for robber, listis, a word for thief, kleftis, and a cognitive dissonance about the fact that kleftis is also a heroic indomitable hero type.

To add to Scott Welch’s answer and Loretta B DeLoggio’s answer.

Not only do new Quorans not find out about Quora policies when they join; old Quorans don’t find out about Quora policy changes. Several Quora users a couple of months ago complained about a Quora insider (Bodnick I think) using an infographic in an answer. Quora policy used to be that you could not use a third party infographic, and insistence on doing so got Xu Beixi a six month edit block.

Quora’s answer to What is Quora’s policy on adding images and videos to answers?

Why no, infographics are not mentioned in the current policy. That aspect of the policy got quietly rescinded a few months ago, in time for Bodnick not to be in violation.

Quora using the question and answer format to publish its own policies was criticised at the start of Quora, and the criticism is right. With no use of blogs or even answer wikis to publish policy, users have no easy way to stay up to date.

I don’t wear glasses much any more; just for driving or concerts, really, and I don’t do much of either. In fact, I had to go back one and a half years to find any photos of me with glasses at all.

So,

There is not one community. Something anticipated as far back as 2010: Seb Paquet’s answer to Does Quora actually need a community? There are clear splits in the community, enabled by the fact that different Quora users see very different feeds, determined by the topics and people they follow.

quora numbers by the departed Laura Hale demonstrated this with what statistics she could glean, and it is corroborated in all your experience. American Quora users notoriously know very little of what happens in the Indian Quora, and their demographics and interests are vastly different. Most Quora users have no idea who the Discord teens are, or who the Insurgents are. I certainly know very little of the Venture Capital old core of Quora.

Whenever I see too many people agreeing on something in their own interest here, I grow contrarian. It brings out the inner Michaelis Maus in me; there are uses to nihilism.

Others have spoken well, and to applause, about the anti-intellectualism and bias of the Urban Dictionary definitions. Michael Masiello has conceded in comments that there is plenty of vapidity on Quora, but that the anti-intellectualism of the Urban Dictionary definitions is the greater enemy.

I’ve given up on anti-intellectualism as something I can have any engagement with. Fight with the dullards of Urban Dictionary? Why bother? As we say in Greek, “from the miller’s wife’s arse, one expects no orthography.” But I do expect better of the vapid than of the stupid, and I’m going to be contrarian about this.

I’ll do my own close reading of the infamous first definition, and I’ll ignore its stylistic infelicities:

The internet’s self-conscious act of intellectual validity and authority.

Well, https://www.quora.com/about:

Quora’s mission is to share and grow the world’s knowledge. […] We want to connect the people who have knowledge to the people who need it, to bring together people with different perspectives so they can understand each other better, and to empower everyone to share their knowledge for the benefit of the rest of the world.

Quora Inc claims authority, and markets itself as such—whatever its actual users are doing. There’s a fair bit of hubris in that mission, and in those aligning to that mission—particularly in the notion (naive in so many fields) that there is a best or right answer to a question, and that that answer is to be had here.

Unsurprisingly primarily self-centered and authoritarian instead of rational.

This could be the response of a disgruntled libertarian, but the same Quora Inc would tell you that the Quora users had no business making the libertarian feel like that to begin with, because users should be made to feel welcome regardless of their ideology: hence Bodnick saying that BNBR applied to Trump during the election campaign.

Appeal to authority, to self-interest, or to one’s own righteousness in political debate are certainly nothing to take pride in—even if right wingers’ construct of “rationality” is often blinkered.

Some of the more objective or positive entries might at first make one assume that most people there are not just as insufferable as anywhere else and like any community on the internet,

Hold on to that concession. Have we not all felt that Quora is better than other fora, because of the elevated level of discourse, the relative civility, the conscious exercise of scholarship and objectivity?

albeit maybe at the same time with an even more all-encompassing entitlement and smug self-satisfaction.

… and have we then not all been disappointed to see that some popular writers here are still smug, self-righteous, know-it-alls speaking outside their domains of knowledge, and hostile to any questioning of their premises?

Surely it isn’t just me.

And assume that the triviality of most of the questions would be self-aware and not lost on most of the people.

The bizarre use of “self-aware” notwithstanding, have users not been complaining about the quality of questions, and political questions particularly, for years?

Highly restrictive, not only in the artificial question and answer format,

Is the Q & A format not restrictive? Quora is not Medium; that’s why blogs on Quora exist. That’s why plenty of users use the questions as springboards rather than as requests for information. And let’s not even get started on Survey Questions, solicitations of anecdote rather than answers to questions—which are so contrary to what Quora thought it was about, they were on limdist for the first few years of the site.

You can retort that if you came to write on Quora, you came to answer questions, and if you want Medium, you know where to find it; yet there is clear evidence here of people wiggling against those constraints.

but also the ultra-strict length limitations

Hands up who has come up against the length limits on questions or question details. Even if you accept the rationale for them, they are restrictive, and Quora users feel those restrictions.

and rampant auto-correct functions, Content Review and straightforward censorship.

I’ve seen answers decrying the protest against censorship, as being democratic or in the cause of moderation decency. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone praising Quora’s auto-correct, topic bot, and certainly not Quora Content Review. And radicals of both left and right will tell you how tone policing and sanctions on speech is a repressive instrument that quashes dissent and advocacy of change.

I think BNBR is overall a useful thing too, sure; but do not pretend BNBR is politically neutral, or that Silicon Valley corporations are, just because they aren’t an arm of the US Government.

Moderation is more concerned with keeping up appearances than with moral tasks, consistency and transparency.

I’m actually not convinced Moderation is particularly concerned with appearances either, although I can see why a right-winger taken to task for the vehemence of their opinions might think so. And I certainly would not entrust morality policing to Quora moderators or mod bots, just as Quora itself is reluctant to.

But complaints about Moderation consistency are legion, and have been for years; and Moderation is notoriously not transparent by design.

Sanctimonious, arrogant, prejudiced and irrational and with a cult-like devotion to their brand and policy taken literally and subjectively.

I’ve seen all of this here. Again: haven’t you?

Actual psychopaths, either self-proclaimed in order to effectively show off or those whose practices are harboured there, are the hipsters of the place.

… Yeah, ok, that last bit made no sense. 🙂

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And what would I offer to Urban Dictionary?

To its users, Quora is a site where people who think they are clever write essays answering questions. Often in dot points, sometimes good. Quora is smarter than Yahoo Answers, more unfocussed than Stack Exchange, and less free-flowing than Reddit.

To its owners, Quora is a Google Trap that is going to make them gajillions of bucks in perpetuity.

The Triantafyllidis dictionary is online:

βλάμης [vlamis] “blood brother” < Albanian vlam: Λεξικό της κοινής νεοελληνικής. Obsolete, but certainly familiar from rebetiko and later songs. The 1951 song Παλαμάκια is probably the best known instance of the word—or rather, of its feminine vlamissa:

μπουραζέρης [burazeris], variant μπραζέρης [brazeris], was not familiar to me, and is not in Triantafyllidis. But it is in the Papyros dictionary, which is available (unattributed) online: μπουραζέρης. It is glossed as “blood brother”, and also derived from Albanian. (I recognise burrë ‘man’.)

The term occurs mostly as a surname in Google, but I found an instance of it in its literal meaning here: Ο λεοντόκαρδος και ακατάβλητος οπλαρχηγός Μ.Μπότσαρης . It mentions Theodoros Kolokotronis becoming blood brother of Markos Botsaris during the Greek War of Independence. Not coincidentally, Botsaris was ethnic Albanian (and not Arvanite: Souli is across the border from Modern Albania), and he wrote one of the earliest dictionaries of Albanian.

I note this article online: Αδελφοποιΐα – Βλάμης (Μπραζέρης)

Στην Ήπειρο, κι όχι μόνο, λέγονται βλάμηδες «από την αλβανική λέξη βλαμ» και μετά την αδελφοποίηση «οι βλάμηδες» το γιορτάζουν με φαγοπότι και χορό. Στη Μακεδονία και στη Θεσσαλία λέγονται μπράτιμοι «από βουλγαρική λέξη» και στην Πελοπόννησο μπουραζέρηδες ή μπραζέρηδες.

In Epirus and beyond, blood brothers are called vlamides, from the Albanian word vlam, and after the ritual vlamides celebrated with feasting and dancing. In Macedonia and Thessaly they are called bratimi, from a Bulgarian word, and in the Peloponnese they are called burazerides or brazerides.

EDIT: the Standard Albanian equivalents are given in Kelvin Zifla’s answer to What is the origin of the terms “Bourazeris” and “Vlamis”, obsolete from the 21st century Greek language? and in User-13249930999434776143’s comment below: vëllam, byrazer.