How do you politely tell folks they have typos in their credentials?

I’ve pointed a typo in Stephanopoulos’ name to Irene Colthurst in her bio, and she did not immediately excoriate me. 🙂 Yes, it’s a confrontational tactic, but not everyone will take offence.

A less risky strategy is private message, if the user has them enabled.

A really roundabout way if they don’t, as you point out, is to find a mutual friend—someone they follow who you can message, and get them to let them know.

But I gotta say, I would not consider answer commenting to point out a typo rude, as long as your comment is appropriately deferential…

Should καί be stressed when writing Standard Modern Greek with polytonic orthography?

Yes. It was never written unaccented, because it was never treated as a clitic. On the other hand, the unstressed variant κι was indeed never accented.

What does this emoji mean “U0001f60b”?

There are several online dictionaries of emoji meanings.

The intended meaning of [math]unicode{x1f60B}[/math] is “Face Savouring Delicious Food”, which is the Unicode name of the emoji.

U0001f60b Face Savouring Delicious Food Emoji (Emojipedia) offers “Used to indicate a silly happiness; goofy; hungry.”

U0001f60b (Urban Dictionary) offers “thirsty; desperate

Face Savouring Delicious Food Emoji (Emojibase) notes that :yum: is used in some phones as an abbreviation.

A Google perusal suggests that the “food” association is prevalent.

What would be your response if a famous Quoran replied to you?

I’m not the starstruck type normally, and I’ve grown both more confident and more jaded the longer I’m on here. I did PM “Thank you for following me!… But why?” to a few people in my time: Kate Scott, Jeremy Markeith Thompson, Sabrina Deep, Buster Smith.

Early on, I was proud to get a comment from Dan Holliday, but my answer was as courteous to him as if he’d had two followers. I may very occasionally still say I appreciate the attention, in my response to a famous Quoran, but I think the more jaded I get, the less it registers; I tend to appreciate reactions equally by people I don’t know, and more by people I do. 🙂

Where can one find the obscure works (i.e. plays and poems) of Nikos Kazantzakis (“Julian the Apostate”, “Odysseus”, “Tertsinas”, etc.)?

In Greece, it’s not particularly difficult to find all the works of Kazantzakis in any middling bookstore; and bless you for mentioning the Terza Rimas, that I have a lot of affection for.

In the Anglosphere, a university with a Modern Greek teaching program will have them. A university that used to have a Modern Greek teaching program, like the University of Melbourne, will have banished them to storage.

From Nikos Kazantzakis – Wikipedia, I see a lot of translations of the more obscure works have appeared in very obscure places—literary journals in the 1970s, limited edition runs of 140. Neither Julian nor the Terza Rimas have been translated, although the Terza Rima I use as one of my email .sigs has been:

You can download that issue at: Issues 1-2, 3, 4

Will Brooke Taylor ever be unbanned?

trichotillomania

The Magister’s comment to Nick Nicholas’ answer to Do you find Thucydides hard to read in Greek?

https://www.quora.com/Do-you-fin…

I feel your pain. I am sorry to report that’s just Thucydides talkin’, too. Try reading Pericles’ famous speech if you want to develop trichotillomania.

I understood the word, and now, you will too:

Trichotillomania – Wikipedia:

Trichotillomania (TTM), also known as hair pulling disorder, is an impulse control disorder characterised by a long term urge that results in the pulling out of one’s hair. This occurs to such a degree that hair loss can be seen. Efforts to stop pulling hair typically fail. Hair removal may occur anywhere; however, the head and around the eyes are most common. The hair pulling is to such a degree that it results in distress.

The disorder may run in families. It occurs more commonly in those with obsessive compulsive disorder. Episodes of pulling may be triggered by anxiety. People usually acknowledge that they pull their hair. On examination broken hairs may be seen. Other conditions that may present similarly include body dysmorphic disorder, however in that condition people remove hair to try to improve what they see as a problem in how they look.

Treatment is typically with cognitive behavioral therapy. The medication clomipramine may also be helpful. It is estimated to affect one to four percent of people. Trichotillomania most commonly begins in childhood. Women are more commonly affected than men. The name was created by François Henri Hallopeau in 1889, from the Greek θρίξ/τριχ- thrix meaning “hair”, τίλλειν tíllein meaning “to pull”, and μανία mania meaning “madness”.

I find the fact that medicos abbreviate it as TTM adorable.

I plan on retaining my full hair of head for a while longer…

Pericles’ Funeral Oration – Wikipedia

No, don’t you dare.

Thucydides’ Greek is notoriously difficult, but the language of Pericles Funeral Oration is considered by many to be the most difficult and virtuosic passage in the History of the Peloponnesian War.

I mean it!

Οἱ μὲν πολλοὶ τῶν ἐνθάδε ἤδη εἰρηκότων ἐπαινοῦσι τὸν προσθέντα τῷ νόμῳ τὸν λόγον τόνδε, ὡς καλὸν ἐπὶ τοῖς ἐκ τῶν πολέμων θαπτομένοις ἀγορεύεσθαι αὐτόν. ἐμοὶ δὲ ἀρκοῦν ἂν ἐδόκει εἶναι ἀνδρῶν ἀγαθῶν ἔργῳ γενομένων ἔργῳ καὶ δηλοῦσθαι τὰς τιμάς, οἷα καὶ νῦν περὶ τὸν τάφον τόνδε δημοσίᾳ παρασκευασθέντα ὁρᾶτε, καὶ μὴ ἐν ἑνὶ ἀνδρὶ πολλῶν ἀρετὰς κινδυνεύεσθαι εὖ τε καὶ χεῖρον εἰπόντι πιστευθῆναι.

AAAAARGH!!!

(Actual shots of TTM are actually pretty disturbing…)

What would happen if Quora added a video upload option? Would it become “QuoraTube”?

Read Scott Welch’s answer to When do you think Quora is going to end? Read it early, and read it often.

Quora is a business, and its business goal is to maximise the exchange of information—and the advertiser eyeballs that exchange attracts. That’s why they hated infographics: they’re not googleable, so they don’t raise the Google Page Rank of Quora pages, so they won’t attract viewers from Google (which is what advertisers want).

What would happen if Quora adds video upload? It would mean they’ve got a good deal going with a video host, and with Text-To-Speech transformation, so they can get more googleable text out of you. Presumably, they’d make the text googlable on the same page, otherwise there’s no Google benefit.

… I have to say, I think that means both Quora and Google would be very different businesses than they are now.

  • Google prioritising hidden text for Page Rank? I don’t see it. Google putting the effort in to make audio on uploaded videos searchable? Text-To-Speech has gotten astonishingly good, but it’s a huge effort, for not clearly enough payoff.
  • Quora embracing media hard to search with current tools—especially tools they don’t control, such as Google? Unless Quora is bought out by Google (which would not be such a terrible thing), I’m not seeing it.

If Quora pushes video answers, as opposing to tolerating videos accompanying text answers, then Quora will no longer be Quora as we know it: it will truly have embraced a social media role. And I gotta say, it’ll be a social media role even I wouldn’t be comfortable with.

It will, in fact, have become QuoraTube.

And I’d argue that, if you want a Tube site for social exchange, you already know where to find YouTube and FaceBook…

What would you say the word “protiforate” means?

Being a Greek linguist, my first thought would be to think of proti– as the Epic Greek equivalent of Attic pros– “towards”, as in prosthetic or proselytise or prosody, and to think: “Dude! you picked up the wrong Greek dictionary!”

Then I would notice the <f> of –forate, and realise that no, this has to be a Latin word, and it’s unlikely to be half Homeric Greek and half Ciceronian Latin.

And then I’d defer to Lotte Meester: Lotte Meester’s answer to What would you say the word “protiforate” means? And Lotte, you’re right: don’t put haplologies like that in any exams. 🙂

Why was my answer sent to the digest if Quora moderation deleted it?

It’s a commonplace that the people (or bots) selecting answers for the Digest are not the same people (or bots) that moderate answers. Answers that appear in the Digest are routinely collapsed after the fact, because the two tasks are undertaken by two separate parties.

Of course, answers get collapsed if they are reported by someone, and moderators agree with the report assessment: Quora is not resourced to collapse all answers proactively. The more visible an answer, the more likely it will be reported by someone, because someone will notice it and not like it.

And answers that appear on Digest are more visible than others.