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Comments on Divrei Torah Category
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Divrei Torah Category
It's been previously suggested to create a Divrei Torah category. With Elul coming up I'm sure there's lots that the community has to share — should we create this forum in which people can do so?
The idea, if implemented, is to create a new category, alongside our current Q&A, Challenges, and Meta categories, in which community members could post their own novel Torah thoughts, or share Divrei Torah which they heard and felt should (and could!) be shared.
- What types of themes are acceptable to discuss? Should any topic considered in-scope for questions be in-scope for posing Divrei Torah?1
- In the previous discussion it was taken for granted that such a Category would be for Articles. Should this be the proper implementation of it, where people could post their own Divrei Torah as Articles, and people can respond in its comments? Or should it be written as a Question-type post, in which people have the option to write counter-Divrei Torah in the Answers to amicably respond to the original piece?
- Currently we have the Weekly Topic Challenge ongoing. Should this be extended that the Theme of the Week would encompass both Questions on the topic as well as Divrei Torah thereon?
- Should we include a rotation, on a volunteer basis, for people to submit Divrei Torah on the coming Parsha/Yom Tov?
- Any other suggestions on how the Category should be set up?
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Please note that the CYLOR policy would extend to Divrei Torah as well. Just like we don't accept questions asking for halachic advice, we would not accept posts constructed as platforms for their poster to spread their halachic advice. Discussing others' halachic opinions, however, would be entirely allowed, if the community agrees. ↩
I think we should reserve this category explicitly for original writing by community members. Some people might be inter …
3y ago
We need to think carefully about editorial standards and process. We don't want to become a platform for people to post …
3y ago
Summary of Proposals The consensus seems to be strongly in favor of pursuing this idea, so long as there's strong qua …
3y ago
I like the idea of divrei torah prompting "response" divrei torah. If we make the original d'var torah a question and u …
3y ago
On the question of quality control, I'm much more in favor of a passive approach over an active one. You might consider …
3y ago
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On the question of quality control, I'm much more in favor of a passive approach over an active one. You might consider it l'havdil some form of "turn from evil" given priority over "do good," where rather than expecting high quality posts of users, we instead expect that they just not be spam.
Consider the following two policies (and remember that a post starts at 50% when it has no votes):
- "All posts at least one week old with a Wilson score less than 75% will be removed."
- "All posts which drop below a Wilson score of 40% will be removed."
My problem with #1 is in its demanding something of the user, almost a threat: you must satisfy this or else we don't want your post.
Contrast that with #2. The bar is much lower; even if everyone is completely apathetic toward your post, it's still welcome here. All we ask is that it not be so terrible that it receive an overwhelming negative response.
The other issue that needs to be balanced is the fact that a single downvote with no upvotes is equal to a score of 33%. Suppose we use my example number above, with 40%; that makes the following helpful™ table:
| Downvotes | Minimum upvotes to stay above 40% |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 1 |
| 3 | 2 |
| 4 | 3 |
| 5 | 3 |
| 6 | 4 |
| 7 | 5 |
I don't know about you, but I find it problematic that, especially at fewer downvotes, such a proportionally small amount of upvotes is sufficient to keep it above the threshold.
Now, one solution is just to increase the threshold even further. For the aforementioned reasons I strongly believe it should be set no higher than 50%, but the higher we set it, the more weight we give to downvotes.
Whatever system we implement, it needs to be sufficient to not give undue weight to neither upvotes' ability to keep a post open, nor downvotes' ability to remove it.
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