Nick on Quora

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.

Interesting. I’ve been in a series of jobs and/or avocations where it is very hard to know, because there haven’t been straightforward quantitative metrics. A lot of what I’ve been doing has been government sponsored culture change (promoting IT interoperability), and that is slow.

• Writing policy papers: well, I dunno, I write the papers, the papers get drafted and redrafted, the papers go out. The board and the stakeholders say OK, but policy is normally a marathon; change is incremental, and there’s always another government department and another vendor to try to get on board.
• Writing IT standards: if you don’t get many requests to update the model, you may have done your job right in anticipating the requirements. Or then again, you may not have promoted the standard to the people that would stretch it into new domains. Getting a request for update is also a success, it means they’re paying attention.
• Promoting IT standards: less pilot projects. Thank god. The concept, it is proven, we don’t need to prove it any more. At least not with those clients.
• Writing software. The client tells you that it does what they want. I’m starting to get that freelancing. It’s hard to get in pilot infrastructure programming (e.g. messaging systems), because it’s pilot, and it’s infrastructure (not visible), though we’ve got ourselves a good instant-validation niche. It was hard to get in an unmentionable past job where the boss kept me completely barricaded off from all users, so I made up my own metrics. And was pretty happy with them.
• Scholarly papers. If you get feedback, at least they’re paying attention. If you get recognised in conferences, you just hope it’s because it was a good bunch of papers, and not because you were a fun drinking buddy last conference.
• Lecturing. Anonymous quantitative student evaluations can kiss my hairy arse: I filled those in as a student, and I remember giving the lecturer a 4 out of 5 so they wouldn’t get too uppity. What mattered to me as a lecturer was the qualitatives. One student saying “never allow Dr Nicholas to take a course again”, and three or four saying I was the best lecturer they had in their undergraduate career. University administration had no time for someone polarising like me. And screw them too.

  The kids that said that? They got it. And by that, and by polarising them, I knew I was doing something right.

Read about the sonnet: Sonnet – Wikipedia

Read lots of sonnets.

Get comfortable with writing in metre. Start with blank verse.

Get a rhyming dictionary.

Pick a sonnet scheme. The sonnet scheme determines the structure of the argument you’re going to be making in the sonnet.

• In the Italian sonnet (the Petrarchan), the octet (first eight lines) make one argument, and the sestet (the last six lines) makes a new argument: there’s a volta, a twist, a turn, at the start of the sestet. The rhyme binds the octet tightly together, and the sestet tightly together. The octet breaks naturally into two quatrains, and the sestet into two tercets. So there’s a finely poised thesis/antithesis, and a contrast in rhyming structure between the two.
• In the English sonnet (the Shakespearean), you have three quatrains, each with their own rhyme, and a final couplet; so there is less of a sense of the quatrains being bound together. (In the Spenserian sonnet, the quatrain rhymes are related.) Before Shakespeare the volta was still at the start of the third quatrain (same place as in the Petrarchan). In Shakespeare the volta is in the final couplet, as a badoom-tish. Each quatrain advances the argument, and the couplet is either a summary, or a Woah Didn’t See That Coming!

Why yes. You’re making an argument. That’s a critical thing about the sonnet, whether in Italian or English form. It’s not a spontaneous outpouring of inspiration: it’s art. The scheme corresponds to an ordered presentation of a thesis and antithesis. Maybe with a synthesis in the final couplet or the sestet.

I haven’t kept track assiduously, but out of 2k answers, it’d be half a dozen. Either deserved, or not really worth fighting.

For me, the words are very meaningful, and I do care if a person is feminine or masculine.

But then, noone would confuse me with anyone who’s answered the opposite.

I am also very much aware of the contingency and cultural specificity of femininity and masculinity as constructs. I am aware that there are plenty of people who have difficulty or malaise aligning to them. I am aware that they can lead to toxic consequences unchecked, and that there is a consensus in flux about how they are negotiated and defined and externalised and internalised.

Vote #1 Victoria Weaver of course: Victoria Weaver’s answer to For you, what are femininity and masculinity? I’m talking about the sociological sense here.

Are they real? As real as fashion sense or race or music. They’re all in the head. That doesn’t mean they’re not real. That doesn’t mean they can’t be a source of good in the world—they’re constructs that it is up to us to harness. And they don’t disappear in a puff of smoke, just because we’ve identified their downsides.

To talk of the psychological sense: I’m not going to apologise for finding femininity attractive, or for feeling good about certain aspects of masculinity. I have a socially conditioned sexuality, and having a sexuality is a good thing. In itself, having a straight sexuality doesn’t make me (to pull out some representative examples) biphobic, transphobic, squicked by agender or bigender people, or whatever else. For me; others will see it differently, I expect.

I do not believe that having a sexuality, informed by constructs of masculinity and femininity, automatically makes you a pig; I also have a superego, after all. And the norms that inform that superego, and that determine the sociological nature of gender constructs, are being remoulded and renegotiated. As well they should.

The problem with Quora’s policies is that they are fairly high level and vague, and they require the equivalent of judges to interpret them. Christopher VanLang and other former volunteer mods have expertise in the tradition of interpretation they formed, and they would be better placed than me to answer this.

In my opinion alone, a sincere question about a conspiracy theory should not be against BNBR. Hate speech is against BNBR. Advocacy of a conspiracy theory is close to hate speech, but it’s even more close to irrational speech (and I’ve been quite unimpressed by the instances OP has pointed to.)

Discussion of the conspiracy theory however is permitted: there is no block on irrational speech, and there is the expectation that it can be refuted rationally, and the requirement that it be conducted respectfully. Hence Bodnick, with his… curiously double edged wording:

Marc Bodnick’s answer to Should discussion of conspiracy theories be banned on Quora? As a community, are we valuing niceness over debating the truth?

Discussion of conspiracy theories is totally welcome and is consistent with Quora’s mission.

As Joshua Engel’s answer to Should discussion of conspiracy theories be banned on Quora? As a community, are we valuing niceness over debating the truth? points out, conspiracy theorists will tend to violate BNBR overtly anyway:

I suppose it’s interesting to consider the notion that conspiracy theorists are far more likely to violate those policies. After all, a conspiracy theory (more or less by definition) involves the belief that people are out to hide the truth from you, and so anybody who disagrees is either lying or stupid. It will be difficult to discuss that without violating the policies. And conversely, everybody disagreeing is nearly certain to think that the theorist is, themselves, either lying or stupid, and it will be difficult to avoid bringing that up. This is what makes “conspiracy theories” different from other matters of mere disagreement.

Add to that of course the fact that the conspiracy theory in question is based on religious antagonism, which makes hate speech even likelier to arise.

One can counter that the promotion of anti-Muslim conspiracy theories makes Quora unfriendly to Muslims, and one might investigate whether antisemitic and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories are prosecuted with the same fervour. I don’t know; The Protocols of the Elders of Zion exists as a topic, though the questions are pretty neutral, and the Love Jihad questions are not.

Those questions would probably fall afoul not in principle of the policy of BNBR, as Hate Speech, but of the guidelines for neutrally phrased questions (see Should questions on Quora be phrased neutrally? Why, or why not?); in particular: Quora’s answer to What are the main policies and guidelines for questions on Quora?

• Questions are stronger if they are phrased neutrally, ask for information and ask why
• Questions are stronger if they are phrased neutrally and minimise presuppositions.
• Questions are stronger if they do not contain assumptions. In particular, they should not imply false information.

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.

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• Passion for being part of an active writing community
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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.