Category: Uncategorized

I seem to answer a question like this every few months. This is this trimester’s iteration:

• No transparency
• Low clarity
• The policies are often as vague as any article of the US constitution
• Low visibility
• No visibility of updates
• Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is Quora’s policy on adding images and videos to answers?
• No equity (consideration of circumstances)
• No accountability
• Worse still, if you aren’t aware of Tatiana’s email address or role as a user: random accountability. There are any number of moderation decisions that Tatiana has publicly repealed and apologised for, but only when they were pointed out to her in public. Most users don’t know who Tatiana is; and less do now than did 6 months ago. Whatever is happening with appeal, the normal avenues are clearly not always working or getting escalated up to her.
• Infantilising tone-policing, as part of BNBR
• Enforcement by robots
• Robotic enforcement (even if they aren’t robots)
• Culminating in Bodnick’s Bodnickism that moderation does not consider content when judging infractions. Not context. Content.
• Low community confidence in enforcement
• Widespread suspicion of selective enforcement
• I think we can all name the TWs who seem to repeatedly get away with murder. I’ve blocked most of them already.
• Breathtaking arrogance on the part of their defenders
• No, just because Quora is a private company does not mean it is morally neutral.
• No, just because Quora is a private company does not mean I should joyfully accept their constraints on my speech or others’.
• No, just because you follow the letter and not the spirit of BNBR does not make you a better person, argumentative and arrogant TW from my home town that I have already chosen to block, and who has expressed shock that people don’t do BNBR in real life. Thank God they don’t do BNBR the way you choose to, anyway.
• Breathtaking radio silence on the part of their implementers
• Although it’s not much better when they aren’t silent

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… How would I fix it?

Going back to 2013 would be a start. There are things Achilleas Vortselas or Christopher VanLang or Tracey Bryan or Marcus Geduld have written here over the years as community moderators, that I’ve disagreed with. But when Marcus says that community mods used to agonise over decisions to ban people, I believed him, because I trust people who’ll show their face in public, and take accountability for what they do.

Trust in-sourced Quora Moderation, on the other hand? Whatever unholy mix of bots, contractors, and employees behind the curtain it may be? With so many visible errors and so little effort to restore trust in its processes? And with even former leads quite happy to throw them under the bus, as has happened on the pages of Cordially Resistant?

I’d fix Quora Moderation by having Quora be the kind of organisation that feels it is important to rebuild trust from its users. In fact, by having Quora be the kind of organisation that pays any attention to its users at all. Over and above giving a few of them a jacket and snacks, circulating the occasional SurveyMonkey form, or measuring their clicks when Quora makes the notifications menu piss-coloured.

Latin confirmed with a check in the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. Latin was clearly on the wane from the 7th century, but it seems not completely lost:

Lawyers preserved some knowledge of Latin, often superficial, from the 8th to 11th C., and Constantine IX’s novel establishing a law school in Constantinople prescribes the teaching of Latin. From the 11th C. onward, closer, if sometimes hostile, contact with the West led to increasing knowledge of Latin in leading Byz. circles; Romanos III spoke Latin and Psellos claimed some knowledge of it. Still, cultural arrogance usually marked Byz. attitudes to the West and its language.

Knowledge of Latin was even greater after the Fourth Crusade, and Maximus Planudes and the Cydones brothers even translated Latin works into Greek in the 14th century.

Nonetheless, Mehmed II’s diplomatic correspondence with the West was in fact in Modern Greek.

Hieraŭ? Nu, hieraŭ estis dimanĉo, do ripoztago. Kaj mi pli-malpli ripozis, laŭ mia kutimiĝinta maniero.

Mi iris kun la edzino por matenmanĝo ĉe franca dolĉejo, kie ni kutimas dum la semajnofino. Mi tie legis du el la tri gazetoj de la urbo, kaj plendis kiel kutime pri la faŝismo de tiu kiun posedas Rupert Murdoch. Mia dekstrema edzino, kiel kutime, min malatentis. Ni poste iris por taja masaĝo kune, ĉar ni maljuniĝas, kaj la ostoj de ni ambaŭ plendas. La mia pli plaĉis al mi ol la ŝia al ŝi. Ni iris por meztaga manĝo ĉe komerca centro (tre bona nigiri), kaj diskutis afable nian geedzecon.

Mi min retrovis hejme je ĉirkaŭ la tria ptm, kaj faris unu–du taskojn: mi promenigis la hundon, kaj poste prenis la aŭton por lavo. Dum mi atendis, mi verkis du respondojn ĉe Kvora. Mi revenis hejmen, manĝis kokon kun rizo, kaj poste okupiĝis pri du informadikaj taskoj de upwork.com. Estas surprize, kiel malfacile estas mezuri per programado la spezon de energio fare de grafika komputilblato, aparte se ĝi estas AMD-a kaj ne NVIDIA-a. La televido montradis la “realecan” kantkonkurson La Voĉo, kie Boy George kaj Seal vetkonkursas pri siaj egooj. Mi enlitiĝis frue, ĉar labortago morgaŭ.

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I’ve been asked to translate, and so have others. So:

Yesterday? Well, yesterday was a Sunday, so it was a day of rest. And I rested more or less, in the custom that I have become accustomed to.

I went with my wife for breakfast to a French patisserie, where we usually go on weekends. I read there two of the three city newspapers, and complained as usual about the fascism of the one Rupert Murdoch owns. My right-wing wife, as usual, ignored me. We then went for a Thai massage together, because we’re getting old, and both our bones are complaining. I liked mine better than she liked hers. We went to have lunch at a shopping mall (excellent nigiri), and discussed our marriage affably.

I ended up at home around 3 pm, and did a couple of chores: I walked the dog, and then took the car to be washed. While I waited, I wrote two Quora answers. I went home, ate chicken and rice, and then worked on two programming tasks from Upwork. It’s surprising how hard it is to measure programmatically the energy expenditure of a graphics chip, especially if it’s AMD and not NVIDIA. The TV had the reality singing competition The Voice on, where Boy George and Seal were competing their egos. I went to bed early, because it’s a workday tomorrow.

I would pronounce it [mæsˈjɛɫəʊ]. Same as Hilary Gilbertson and Alton Shen: Mass Yellow. Michael is doing [mæsˈɪjɛɫəʊ]: Massy Yellow, so I hereby deem me close enough.

The proper pronunciation, of course, is [ˈmaɡister ˈoptimus].

Nederlandia – Vicipaedia

• Country Name in Latin: Nederlandia or Batavia
• Name of inhabitants: Batavi or Nederlandenses

The Dutch may well want to avoid Batavia these days, but Batavophile is less of a mouthful than Nederlandophile. Marginally more hits on Google too (438 vs 299).

Hollandophile has 711 hits, which just shows how insensitive the world is to the concerns of the Eastern Netherlands.

Norway is Norvegia in Latin; although the entry has not been filled in on Latin Wikipedia, a Norwegian is Norvegus. So Norvegophile.

6 hits on Google. Though 154 for Norwegophile.

I leave any inferences to the reader…

A lot of these are going to be Modern Greek. This included.

Nikolaos Politis’ 1914 collection of Greek folk song was defining, not only for Greek folklore studies, but for the formation of Modern Greek identity. Generations learned how to be Greek from the songs published in the collection; and generations missed out on hearing the actual tunes.

In discussion with Turks here, we’ve noticed that while Turkish and Greek music are very similar, there is a sense of abandon in Turkish, and a sense of restraint in Greek song. Politis was aware of that too, and there was one song in particular he registered his disapproval of. In its excess of feeling, he said, this cannot have been Greek in origin. It must have come from the east.

Like Dionysus himself, you might say:

It is obvious that this is nothing but an image in the form of hyperbole depicting the wondrous redness of the beloved maiden’s lips. Of course, this hyperbole appears to belong rather to an Asian poet, and is alien to the restraint of Greek folk poetry.

It has indeed an excess of feeling. It is wonderful. I put it up on my website 15 years ago: Red Lip.

Κόκκιν’ αχείλι φίλησα κι έβαψε το δικό μου
Και το μαντίλι το ’συρα κι έβαψε το μαντίλι.
Και στο ποτάμι το ’πλυνα κι έβαψε το ποτάμι.
Κι έβαψε η άκρη του γιαλού κι η μέση του πελάγου.
Κατέβη ο αϊτός να πιεί νερό κι έβαψαν τα φτερά του.
Κι έβαψε ο ήλιος ο μισός και το φεγγάρι ακέριο.

I kissed my love’s red lip; her lip, it reddened mine.
I wiped mine with a cloth; the cloth, it went all red.
I washed it in the stream; the stream, it went all red.
Red now the seashore’s edge, red the midst of the main.
The eagle came to drink; its wings, they went all red;
red now is half the sun, red now the moon entire.

Googling the lyric, I found that it was set to music in 1989. (Remember, Politis didn’t bother recording the tunes.)

It’s a red letter day when the first comment you see on a YouTube page is not only not stupid, it’s in fact from the singer-songwriter:

A friend pointed the traditional verses out to me. In two days I composed the tune and the parts, then I sang it in the recording. I was 25 years old. Thank you for uploading it. Nikos Grapsas.

• Not accepting food and drink from a household you’re visiting.
• Insisting on paying your own share of the meal (if not taboo, certainly frowned upon: you have to at least pretend to offer to pay for everybody).
• Failing to use formulaic expressions (“Happy month!” “Happy business!” “May she live long for you!” “With health!” “Life to you!” “Take this guy to your wedding, and he’ll wish you many happy returns!”)
• Waiting your turn in a queue isn’t a taboo, but it does mark you out as maladjusted to the social realities there. Even if there is a proverb encouraging it. (“Even if you’re a priest, you’ll go to your line”)
• No taboo about blasphemy: cursing in Greece really is still cursing.
• Ethnographically, I think there is still a taboo about dropping bread to the ground. It was enforced by the legend of how Hagia Sophia was inspired by Justinian dropping a crumb of communion bread to the floor, a bee flying off with it, and fashioning a mini Hagia Sophia of wax with the crumb at the altar.
• Praising people too vocally, especially if they are babies. Ritual spitting ensues to ward off the evil eye. That is probably on the way out.
• Saying nice things about Turks. That’s probably starting to be on the way out too.
• Saying nice things about Angela Merkel or Wolfgang Schäuble. That one’s definitely on the way in.

There’s a reason Konstantinos Konstantinides never heard of this practice: it had dropped out of use in Modern Greek early in the 20th century. As in fact had the initial rough breathing on rho.

The ῤῥ orthography used to be regular in Western typography, but has long since fallen out of use; from memory, it was routine in early 19th century editions of Classical texts, and rare by late 19th century editions.

The ῤῥ orthography reflects a phonological reality of Classical Greek, that the second rho in a pair was voiceless, something attested in Herodian. Allen’s Vox Graeca (p. 39), who mentions the evidence, also refers to writing ῤῥ as a Byzantine practice, and it is of course corroborated in the Latin transliteration <rrh> (e.g. Pyrrhus = Πύῤῥος).

Any dictionary of Greek before 1970 is going to be biased towards Katharevousa, and that includes any Greek dictionary you find online (legally). That includes, for example, the 1868 Contopoulos English–Greek dictionary, Νέον λεξικόν ελληνόαγγλικόν. It includes the 15 volume Dimitrakos monsterpiece (not linked, since bootlegged). It also includes any number of Greek–Greek or Greek–French dictionaries, such as Dehèque, Hépitès, Koumanoudes, and Skarlatos Byzantios. You’ll find all of these on Google Books or archive.org

The lexicographers at Trapp’s Lexikon der Byzantinischen Gräzität in Vienna use Stamatakos’ three-volume Dictionary of Modern Greek (Λεξικόν της νέας ελληνικής γλώσσης, καθαρευούσης και δημοτικής και εκ της νέας ελληνικής εις την αρχαίαν / Ιωάννου Σταματάκου, 1952) as their reference for Katharevousa.

Why aren’t my follows and followers shared if they also participate in other language versions of Quora?

I can only say that in my limited experience they are—certainly on the German Quora. I did not need to explicitly follow Clarissa Lohr or Joachim Pense, they came with the territory. As has Judith Meyer, who I have not interacted with in a long time.