As a long-time subscriber to the site, my impression is that over the past year the trolls have multiplied a lot, and the percentage of foolish questions and comments has kept rising.

Do you agree?

Completely. And in the past few weeks even more so.

@miky987

Telegram link for anyone interested

Or search for “Michael Abraham’s discussion group”

No one asked my opinion and presumably there’s no need for it, but with your pardon I’ll stick it in anyway. Every site and forum needs a gardener to weed out the wild growth and crack the whip. The flowery dream of treating everyone respectfully has failed everywhere people have tried it. A forum with management that is too soft gets overrun with thorns, and in the end the bushes and trees leave. When a pest arrives on the scene (and yes, I hear the criticism that I’m a pest too. I will definitely try from here on to reduce that), he doesn’t leave so easily.
And here is where I insert my opinion: a site needs funding. There is traffic here; it would be very worthwhile to have ads as well. There’s nothing negative about that so long as the advertising content is supervised in one way or another. I’m not talking about donations from the site’s users (though I would definitely donate. Most likely even subscribe), because that’s a bit grating, but rather normal revenue like any other site on earth. And then it would also be possible to hire, for a tenth of a position, some tracker-detective type who’d be snobbish and strict and drain the pus.

Tam. In my opinion that name is too official for a group that wasn’t opened by the person in question himself. Maybe it’s better to call it “A group for discussions about the words of Rabbi Michael Abraham”

Okay
Join and bring others in

The name was changed

That’s the level of the site, and especially of the site owner, so let’s not play innocent. Thanks.

Listen, for quite a while now, as a kind of independent exercise, when I see a question here (whether it was answered or not), I try to formulate an answer myself (if I think I have one. A lot of questions are simply outside the narrow cone of light available to me). And I also try to guess what the Rabbi will answer. Then afterward I compare it to the Rabbi’s answer. I think I learn a lot from this.
[A story. Once they wanted me to replace the official “summarizer” of a certain class. So for a few weeks I wrote summaries (one class a week) and then compared them to his summary. His summary—the original official summarizer’s—was much better. And I sat for hours trying to characterize the differences and apply them. In my opinion that’s where I made a very serious leap in my summarizing ability. Though since he was a smarter and sharper person than I am, sometimes he simply understood better than I did. That’s a separate matter. But even when I understood the content excellently, putting it onto the page in a short yet full way is one of the hard labors of the Temple.]
Making an independent answer, plus guessing the Rabbi’s answer, and then comparing it to the answer given, is very instructive in the sense that it gives access to subtler differences that are hard to notice without doing that. And sometimes it also makes clear to me that I simply got something wrong. Unfortunately there are no examples here, because it’s less suitable and a bit burdensome, so this will remain merely a statement.]

Trollrat.

As it seems, if it doesn’t come from the Rabbi, a group like this probably won’t succeed—unless people here join.
We’ll post questions from the responsa there, for example as you suggested, Ganyamin, and you can offer your wares before the Rabbi’s answers.

Tam. Gracefully.

You win again! Reb Poysek

Why lower the trolls when you can raise them?

When you give a substantive answer to a question that is bothering someone, even if it is presented in an improper way—it may be that the answer won’t help the person asking it if he’s asking in order to provoke and needle, but the answer will be of enormous benefit to someone asking the same question out of a genuine desire to get an answer.

With the blessing, “We are blemished and children of the blemished,” blemish-troll

You open a site and volunteer your time there for unlimited private lessons for all comers

The goal, if and when, is that the users will understand the type of person behind the question. If he’s asking in order to know, he’ll have grounds to explain himself, and if he’s asking in order to troll, good luck to him.
All in all I just wanted to save the Rabbi work, and in that way also refine the questions, so that not everything will look like trolling when it isn’t, and vice versa.

Ganyamin, why didn’t you join?

I don’t think I’d be more interested in discussions there than in other places online. But the thought of why I’m not joining the group did indeed lead me to draw some conclusions about my conduct here. That is, I understand that people presumably aren’t interested in all the many comments I shower here, under this name or other names, and I intend to cut that down significantly. All in all, people came here to hear so-and-so, and maybe the audience is supposed to participate mainly if it has something genuinely worthwhile to say. I treated the place like some kind of forum, but it isn’t. As a first step, maybe I’ll move to one fixed name, and maybe it will even be my real name (which I used in the past until I got ricochets from curious eyes that know me, and not everything I want to say to everyone. So I drew names by lot whenever the fork came up). That will restrain the free tendency to write a lot. During the day I take long breaks, and for me the learning and discussion here is also interesting (very), and enlightening, and also part of my break. But my breaks aren’t supposed to come at anyone else’s expense. And although I almost never get dragged into dead-end debates with the Rabbi here, I have indeed overdone my comments in various corners. So then, I intend to repent. And may my words be acceptable before my One-Who-Was-Formed-in-the-Womb.