Author: admin

I don’t keep track of them. 🙂

I solicit PMs from people, to let me know who’s been banned or blocked.

Or deactivated. In fact, deactivations really do require me to keep track of people, because I try not to report deactivations immediately—usually people come back on Quora shortly afterwards. I fail to keep track of deactivations, and I ask people to get back to me if the user is still deactivated after a couple of days. (Hence me giving lots of people a fright, by reporting User’s deactivation as early as I did.)

More to the point, I’m amazed how the people who regularly report bans and blocks keep track of them. I add in reports when I notice them, but I don’t notice them nearly as often as my regular reporters do.

I also subscribe to the Quora Account Suspension and Bans topic, so I will get news of some “Why was X banned?” questions before they are deleted. But PMs are far and away the main source of information.

Native speaker, which makes these all the odder:

• women as… well, women instead of wimmin.
• pronounciation. Analogy ftw.

More of a polyglot game, this, than a linguist game, but: switch the TV to a foreign language film halfway through, and try to work out what the language is. The fact that the language almost always sustains a local film industry does constrain the possible choices.

The rule of thumb I worked out quite early is, if they look Swedish and sound Turkish, they’re Hungarian.

It will not in itself make me leave Quora.

But it adds to the things that make me think badly of Quora—along with the UX Russian Roulette, the Black Maria of moderation removing people in the middle of the night and the headscratchingly inexplicable decisions, the lack of a clear mission, yadda yadda yadda.

I will leave Quora, as I’ve answered before, when it stops being fun—or to be more precise, when it is unfun substantially more often than it is fun. Outage is frustrating; if I’m halfway through a response on a comment, intensely frustrating, as was the case a couple of days ago. So long as its impact is less than weekly, I’ll put up with it. But these things can have a drip drip drip, cumulative effect.

Esperanto neurotically tried to avoid lexical ambiguity, but didn’t get there for compounding, and between that and soundalikes, it’s doing ok. Raymond Schwartz was the main punmaster of the language.

Examples: the sundry aĝo “age” compounds in La Diversaj Aĝoj de l’ Homo, or the groanworthy “tumble dry” of Molière in El “Verdkata Testamento” (1926); Ero (lava rulo; The Miser is L’avarulo).

Lojban really is designed to avoid lexical ambiguity, including at compounding, and I don’t remember much play there, if any.

Klingon has a fair bit of polysemy, and that has been used for jokes. I’ve mentioned here, I think, my spontaneous pun when I walked into my first Klingon meetup, and a guy I’d managed to antagonise said SaH ’Iv? (“Who cares?”) Quick as a pistol, I responded jISaH jIH, naDev jIHmo’: “*I*’m present, because I’m here.” (The verb is ambiguous.)

Polysemy also explains a joke by Okrand, which at first glance seems to be an anti-joke:

Doq’a’ SuvwI’pu’? ghobe’! SuD! “Are warriors red? No! They are blue!”

The chuckle by Michael Dorn on the recording was… unnerving.

But SuD doesn’t just mean blue. (Or green. Or, in violation of how human colour works, yellow.) SuD also means “to take a risk”…

Another recent data point: Abhimanyu Pallavi Sudhir

Quora ban

I wasn’t given a reason — all I know is that I was automatically logged out yesterday, and the next moment I’m locked out of logging in because I’m permanently banned. I lost a lot of detailed answer drafts, some content I’d written in response to questions in Quora messages, and a 8000+ word blog post criticising The Political Compass. I’m glad I’d at least posted the long comments I was writing before I got banned.

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.