What B-Greek does best

Questions and discussion about B-Greek policies or the B-Greek forum.
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Jonathan Robie
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What B-Greek does best

Post by Jonathan Robie »

When B-Greek began back in 1992 (see the archives), it was a mailing list with little competition. In 2011, we moved it to a phpBB forum, and still had little competition.

These days, there are plenty of Facebook groups and other groups to discuss biblical Greek.

What does B-Greek do best, compared to other venues? I'd be interested in your thoughts. Here are a few of mine: B-Greek makes it easy to return to a thread repeatedly over a period of time, thinking it over and posting new thoughts as they occur, often a few days or weeks later. Threads do not get lost, it is easy to find them again. And there are organized archives going back to 1992 so we can see what others have said about the same topics in the past. This seems to be particularly useful for thinking about what a particular passage means.

What are your thoughts? What does B-Greek do best? How can we leverage that?
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Barry Hofstetter
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Joined: May 6th, 2011, 1:48 pm

Re: What B-Greek does best

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Jonathan Robie wrote: April 30th, 2021, 5:24 pm When B-Greek began back in 1992 (see the archives), it was a mailing list with little competition. In 2011, we moved it to a phpBB forum, and still had little competition.

These days, there are plenty of Facebook groups and other groups to discuss biblical Greek.

What does B-Greek do best, compared to other venues? I'd be interested in your thoughts. Here are a few of mine: B-Greek makes it easy to return to a thread repeatedly over a period of time, thinking it over and posting new thoughts as they occur, often a few days or weeks later. Threads do not get lost, it is easy to find them again. And there are organized archives going back to 1992 so we can see what others have said about the same topics in the past. This seems to be particularly useful for thinking about what a particular passage means.

What are your thoughts? What does B-Greek do best? How can we leverage that?
I think you've covered a lot of it. I don't know how many times I've done a google search on a particular topic related to Greek and B-Greek is one of those at the top of the search! Facebook is good for quick discussions and interchanges. A forum such as this is better for longer term, measured and reflective discussions. Plus if you hit return you don't accidentally send your message too soon... :)
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
MAubrey
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Re: What B-Greek does best

Post by MAubrey »

Most Facebook groups are too large, such that when questions get asked the good answers tend to be drowned out by lots and lots of noise.
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: What B-Greek does best

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Jonathan Robie wrote: April 30th, 2021, 5:24 pm What are your thoughts? What does B-Greek do best? How can we leverage that?
Most people I've talked to think the archives are best. Unfortunately, the forum interface isn't great for finding them, and the default form search bar (which always gets restored on upgrades) is poorly designed for finding old posts.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Matthew Longhorn
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Re: What B-Greek does best

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

I think the quality of response here is generally more in depth than on facebook. Facebook is useful for a quick and easy response, but the quick nature of adding a response means people can spend less thought in giving that feedback. There is a lot of duplication in what the responses are on facebook. Similarly, the knowledge that your answer is going to be visible for a lot longer than on facebook perhaps removes some of my more asinine responses!

The format of the posts is here is a lot clearer than facebook, with the ability to embed quotes better etc.

The fact that there are far fewer posts per day here also means that people have time to think about and come back and answer days or weeks later. Sometimes someone responding to an old post kicks of a stream of newer dialogue on it.

I also think that the smaller group of people here has a tendency to make it easier to work out where a question may be coming from if not totally clear. You get to “know” some of the users to an extent, so can tailor the amount of info you need to give in a post based on that user.
Daniel Semler
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Joined: February 18th, 2019, 7:45 pm

Re: What B-Greek does best

Post by Daniel Semler »

Jonathan Robie wrote: April 30th, 2021, 5:24 pm When B-Greek began back in 1992 (see the archives), it was a mailing list with little competition. In 2011, we moved it to a phpBB forum, and still had little competition.

These days, there are plenty of Facebook groups and other groups to discuss biblical Greek.

What does B-Greek do best, compared to other venues? I'd be interested in your thoughts. Here are a few of mine: B-Greek makes it easy to return to a thread repeatedly over a period of time, thinking it over and posting new thoughts as they occur, often a few days or weeks later. Threads do not get lost, it is easy to find them again. And there are organized archives going back to 1992 so we can see what others have said about the same topics in the past. This seems to be particularly useful for thinking about what a particular passage means.

What are your thoughts? What does B-Greek do best? How can we leverage that?
I don't know the numbers but not everyone interested in Biblical Greek is on Facebook so there's that. I use two fora devoted to ancient greek - this one, and TextKit. The strength of BGreek is its focus on Koine though there is in fact a lot to be said for broader reading as can be seen in many answers here. Another strength of BGreek is its deliberate avoidance of exegetical issues raised by the text - deal with the text period. Its focus on Greek as Greek rather than on translation is also a big deal.

Leveraging it ? I am not sure 100% what you are driving at there. Are you thinking about how to increase membership or posting rates ? Are you trying to use the data that exists in the archives in some way ?

I think to Stephen's point, a good search interface on the archives would be a good thing. That google searches work better in finding things in BGreek archives rather highlights that issue. I haven't looked but other forum software may provide better archive search support - that might be worth a thought.

Regarding the archives, I wonder if one could usefully plunder them for sufficient material that might make for an interesting and informative publication on Biblical Greek arcana - a curated grammar of sorts, and/or a grammatical commentary on the many passages inquired about. I've not looked into the archives like that, and sure plenty of questions arise that are a addressed in well-known grammars but perhaps the idea has legs in respect of more obscure topics ...

It's also conceivable that other tools might be attached to the BGreek site that might be of use to those looking for tools. I know a bunch of stuff like that exists in various places on the web, but some kind of reference library pages that point to where things might be found might be of use. Many of us know places we get certain kinds of information but I often hear about things I had no idea existed. I'm sure the archives could be searched for a bunch of that kind of information too.

Thx
D
Jonathan Robie
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Re: What B-Greek does best

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Carlson wrote: May 7th, 2021, 5:24 am
Jonathan Robie wrote: April 30th, 2021, 5:24 pm What are your thoughts? What does B-Greek do best? How can we leverage that?
Most people I've talked to think the archives are best. Unfortunately, the forum interface isn't great for finding them, and the default form search bar (which always gets restored on upgrades) is poorly designed for finding old posts.
I set this up for better search:

https://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/vi ... 005#p36005

I agree that it would be good to replace the search engine with this. Haven't done that yet ...
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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