Interesting question, and the way I’d want to tackle it is by defining what it is that unpaid work means. See also Could writing on Quora be considered voluntary work?

Work is undertaking an obligation to do tasks, that in themselves benefit another more than yourself. The compensation for work may take the form of payment, or barter, or incurring an obligation, or not being beaten to death as a slave; but the work itself is not meant to be its own reward. That tends to rule most of us out.

The closest to an acknowledgement of Quora contributions as work is by Stephanie Vardavas, in her answer. Community moderation tasks are less for fun, and more out of a sense of obligation to the community. But still, it’s community work; Quora Inc may benefit out of that work, but I trust Stephanie isn’t motivated to collapse trolls out of admiration for D’Angelo’s blue eyes. So it’s not the same as Work For Quora; and indeed, the community work Stephanie does benefits Stephanie as a member of the community.

I think it’ll be hard to find anyone considering Quora contributions as work to benefit another; possibly academics counting this as part of their Community Outreach?

The Ethnologue: Languages of the World guesses 850. On the one hand, the Ethnologue is best placed to know, since it is published by SIL International, and the SIL has the missionary linguists on the ground, who far outnumber academic linguists. On the other hand, the Ethnologue is consistently a splitter not a lumper. 850 is the best estimate that we have, but it is still an estimate on the high side.

Any literacy in PNG has been introduced by missionaries or linguists speaking a Western European language, and I am not aware of any PNG languages with a script other than Roman.

The languages of PNG belong in two groups: Austronesian, which are recognisably related to the other Austronesian languages of Indonesia and the Pacific; and the Papuan languages, which were spoken before the Austronesian languages arrived. We do not have sufficient evidence that the Papuan languages are even related to each other as the same family; we just lump them together as pre-Austronesian.

There is abandonment of tokples (indigenous languages) for Tok Pisin, Hiri Motu, and English; but I don’t have information on how rapid it is.

People of Quora.

I am shocked.

No, shocked I tell you. I am blown away. I am flabbergasted.

Verklempt, even.

Orphaned answers: No Notification

Herein, I had posted a month ago about the fact that we get no notification that questions we have answered have been deleted.

Well, we do now:

… I’d hate to think Quora UX got the idea from me…

I’ve already written Nick Nicholas’ answer to How can one use the word “Quora” in a limerick? But how could I pass up an A2A from Vicky?

1. I would have felt much jubilation,
   had Quora sent notification
   that User
   limericked mentioning me;
   but @-mentions… lack mitigation.
2. So, there once was a young synaesthete
   who gained fandom with Quora’s elite.
   She’s regaled us with stories
   of her working girl glories
   and entranced us with jokes indiscreet!
3. When on Quora, I write unabashed.
   A2A me? I’ll give it a bash!
   I make friends near and far,
   and I follow my star.
   But UX fails shall sting to my lash.
4. Where the erudite gather to grumble,
   and the recondite rally to rumble:
   where the droll draw their japes,
   and the heroes their capes:
   there you’ll find me, in rough and in tumble.
5. “Share and grow the world’s knowledge,” said D’Angelo,
   crisp as bacon, and sharp as a tangelo.
   Yet on Quora we socialise,
   because knowledge, we realise,
   is much harder to pin down than flan jello.

Thanks, Martin!

I went to my mobile; I didn’t even know that feature was on there. (And why it would be on mobile not desktop is puzzling.)

164.

I am not conscious or discriminate about topics I answer, although there are no-go areas for me—science for example. I don’t have humanities training as such (linguistics does not comport itself as a humanities), but the answers I enjoy most are those where I venture into cultural studies or history, armed with a couple of Wikipedia pages and my own good sense, and try and make sense of a narrative.

But I do have core topics of competency, and I write more about them than others. I do worry that I write too much meta-content (Quora), especially as my Quora answer count has recently overtaken my Greek Language answer count. But I don’t find that results in me choosing not to answer a question about Quora. The way I manage my mountain of A2As is to take my time about getting to them: if someone else has gotten to one before me, and has done a good job of it, I can cross it off my list in good conscience.

I do feel bad about not answering enough questions about programming, and none about IT policy; but I’m not used to doing it (despite Miguel Paraz’s best efforts).

Are there topics I won’t answer despite being knowledgeable about them? No, not really. I’m just not circumspect in that way. I barely even correct myself here…

Originally Answered:

What are some major social faux pas to avoid when visiting Australia?

Sitting in the back seat of a cab. I occasionally see Indian cab drivers unaware of the unspoken egalitarian norm here, hurrying to clear their crap from the front seat. But by default, if you sit in the back seat of a cab, you are taken as treating the cab driver as the Hired Help.

And yes, the cab driver is the hired help. But woe betide you if you actually act like it.

Laura Hancock and Vicky Prest, especially when Laura changed her profile pic to what basically looks identical to Vicky’s profile pic at small resolution.

I said *small* resolution.

In fact, I saw a selfie on a post by Vicky once, and was about to comment “hey, I thought you never posted pictures of yourself”—only to realise oops, Laura.

And I think it’s more the profile pics than anything else. I mean yes, they have some similarities: both cool, both non-het, both sex positive, both “outspoken”; but really, not *that* similar.

While I roll my eyes at The Mission Statement, Quora has stated two rationales for its walled garden which guarantee that the Internet Archive will stay on their spider block list:

• Authors retain copyright for their contributions, and Quora only retains a non-exclusive license to publish. The terms & conditions do not authorise blanket republication elsewhere without the author’s permission, and Quora would consider spidering to be republication. It’s why Quora is so restrictive on author’s self-archiving: you can only archive your own posts, and you can’t include others’ comments.
• Quora wants people to be able to unperson themselves from Quora—to delete their accounts and contributions to Quora, without them being retrievable elsewhere.

Michael Masiello’s answer to Which would be better for humanity in the long run, everyone being a Catholic Christian or everyone being an atheist?

I would argue that what would be better for humanity in the long run has something to do with the cultivation of eudaimonistic virtues — ethical and civic values that aim to maximize human flourishing and minimize discrimination.

The Magister has defined eudaimonistic for us right there. It is a quite resonant word, though you have to be across Ancient Greek philosophy to pick up the nuance (as indeed the Magister is).

Eudaimonia is an Ancient Greek word for happiness. It comes from eu “good” and daimon “daemon”; originally the daimon was not a demon, but a spirit—and a spirit that people have with them. In fact, the notion was not too dissimilar to the notion of a guardian angel.

Aristotle famously defined eudaimonia as the highest human good, and the goal all humans should be working towards. It’s not just being happy for yourself, selfishly. It’s not about getting ripped with hookers and blow. It’s the happiness which comes with being virtuous, righteous. It’s the happiness that sees you flourishing to your full human potential.

It’s the warm fuzzies you get, as if you realise that there’s a guardian angel looking after you—but you know that the guardian angel is only going to be looking after you so long as you Do The Right Thing. And the philosophers weren’t Calvinists: their discussions were all about You doing the right thing, and the eudaimonia being its own reward.

OP, you know about the first translation of the New Testament into Modern Greek by Maximus of Gallipoli, in 1638! That is awesome!

And it would be awesome if that was the version that the channel used in the video:

But no. The text is Neophytos Vamvas’ translation, and you can read along here:

N. Vamvas (Bambas) Old and New Testament

You did some great detective work: of course it’s Byzantine Text Type, it’s an Orthodox translation.

The language does look a bit old fashioned, doesn’t it? Not just Koine old fashioned, and not straying very far from the syntax of the original: Τας εντολάς εξεύρεις “you know the commandments”. It sounds not just katharevousa, but positively 18th century.

And indeed: his New Testament translation dates from 1833, with the Old Testament following in 1850.

Here’s the Wikipedia article about the translation: Η Αγία Γραφή, Τα Ιερά Κείμενα Μεταφρασθέντα εκ των Θείων Αρχετύπων – Βικιπαίδεια. And here’s a speech about him from the Archbishop of Athens: Ο Αρχιεπίσκοπος κ. Ιερώνυμος μιλά για τον Νεόφυτο Βάμβα.

The Church of Greece seems to be friendlier towards him now than it would have been at the time: he (or his collaborators) translated the Old Testament from the Hebrew and not from the Septuagint, and knowing he’d get no support from the Orthodox Church, he’d cooperated with the protestant British and Foreign Bible Society, which the Orthodox Church loathed. (In fact his translation is the preferred translation of the Evangelical and Pentecostal churches of Greece, and had also initially been the translation used by the Jehovah’s Witnesses.) This Orthodox blog post attacks it as a translation from the King James Bible: Λάθη στή μετάφραση τοῦ Βάμβα. Χρήστος Σαλταούρας.

Vamvas got the idea for the translation in Paris, working with Adamantios Korais, started the translation as a teacher in Corfu, completed it as a teacher in Syros, and then got a job as a philosophy lecturer in the new University of Athens, where he ended up as Dean of Arts.

The Vamvas translation was the only modern translation until the 1960s that didn’t provoke street riots (unlike the demotic translation of the New Testament by Pallis in 1902); and given that it is not a Demotic translation, I suspect it is the favourite of the Orthodox church now, even if they distanced themselves from it beforehand.