Internet time

[cellio]

This is how Internet time works.

Late Tuesday night, somebody made the following observation in the Mi Yodeya chat room: hey, the text of the Pesach haggadah is freely available in digital format, a key element of the seder is asking questions, we're all about asking and answering questions, and we've got a lot of good Pesach-related content...so why not publish a haggadah with material drawn from our site? Reality set in soon thereafter and the proposal was amended to: why don't we publish a haggadah supplement this year, as a free PDF download that people can print and take to their sedarim?

The real discussion started on Wednesday, with people posting lots of suggestions, voting positively, and volunteering to help. Someone asked how we were going to organize the content since some copy-editing, filtering, reformatting, and whatnot would be needed and we'd need a template and... and I said leave that to me. (Organizing multi-author writing projects on tight deadlines? Been there, done that. :-) ) So I proposed a format that could be easily transformed to the final product, mocked up a couple questions as proof of concept, and got buy-in. We were, by this point, collecting links for questions to harvest, and somebody collected a list of useful tags to search for questions. I said I hoped we could ask our site's designer to design a cover page for us. Style and review guidelines were suggested somewhere in here. I started planning the formal call for submissions and its logistics.

Today Stack Exchange's lead designer showed up saying he has permission to do our design and production for us if we can give him the content. Awesome! And he can work quickly. I never would have thought we would get that kind of support (and asking for it had not been on my radar). So tonight I posted the call for submissions with detailed instructions (designed to make this as easy as possible for everybody), and off we go.

I'm excited because not only is this a cool project, but I can personally benefit from it this year. I'm not going to Toronto with Dani, and if I can round up enough interested people I'll be holding my own seder on the second night for adults who want to engage with the text and who don't care how long that takes. In other words, I'm aiming for the opposite of the "when do we eat?" seder.

I will, of course, share a link to the results later. Meanwhile, if you have any burning questions about Pesach this would be an excellent time to ask them, and if you're somewhat knowledgeable in this area and inclined to do some editing, drop on by. :-)

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

This project sounds fascinating and amazing!
*tries to think of sensible questions*

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

Would you like The Four Questions in Klingon (http://mark.cracksandshards.com/klingon/K4q.html)?

[cellio]

That's probably not a good fit for this particular project, but thanks for the chuckle!

[magid.livejournal.com]

I'm always fascinated by the songs at the end, most of which have pretty much nothing to do with Pesach; how did they get accreted to the seder?

[cellio]

http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/857/472

http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/368/472

http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/15788/472 (looks like I need to do some duplicate-resolution later)

http://judaism.stackexchange.com/q/16261/472

For more: http://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/ask :-) (Creating an account is easy; log in with any OpenID, like Google, Facebook, LJ...).

[cjsherwood.livejournal.com]

"if I can round up enough interested people I'll be holding my own seder on the second night for adults who want to engage with the text and who don't care how long that takes. In other words, I'm aiming for the opposite of the "when do we eat?" seder."

Ummm..... how does one wrangle an invitation to this?

Not at all sure what's up with my family's seder(im?) this year (aunt and uncle always hosted the holidays, but my uncle was the driving force; with his death, it's unclear what's going on, where, when, etc.) but if I'm not obligated to them (and my folks can't come regardless which makes my wanting to be there even less but likely even more necessary, if my cousin or someone hosts it), I'd very very much like to be part of this. My family's seders have always been the kind that go to the meal being served and that's it. We never return to the seder. One year, on the second night, we started with the third cup just so we could see how it ends (so to speak). When I was in California on business a couple years ago, I had the opportunity to go to first night at the home of a Conservative couple and their family (the nationality combination of which was astounding... Hebrew was actually the dominant language until people figured out I had absolutely no clue what they were saying) and we explored a bit... but nowhere near enough for me who is pretty much starved of such things...

And I wish you luck with this new remarkable project! Can't wait to see the end results!!!

[cellio]

Wait, you live where? (I don't remember if you've mentioned. Your profile doesn't say. Your IP address is inconclusive. Yes I looked. :-) ) If you're willing to come to my house in Pittsburgh, you're welcome at my seder.

Fair warning: if this happens it will involve a great deal of good intentions, experience in service-leading, and not much direct experience in even attending, let alone leading, a "real" seder. So I hope it will be wonderful, but there are unknowns. :-)

[cjsherwood.livejournal.com]

I'm in Jersey City, a short 7ish hour drive from you. :-) Yes, I'm willing to drive that for this. Even with gas being as insanely priced as it is.

As for seder leading, my uncle always just went around the table having people reading the "leader" bits except when there was something he wanted to read.

The thing that blows me away about Passover is that Jews, all around the world, are reading and discussing the same story all at the very same time (ish). Some formally, some informally. Some reclining, some beating each other with celery (see Avadim Chayanu (http://uuja.org/holidays/lit/Sederfor_S_and_M.pdf) for that one), some discussing, some wondering when we're going to eat, some handing kids bags of pennies for finding the afikomen, some handing kids $20 for finding the afikomen, and on and on.

In short, there is no one right way to have a seder, lead a seder, and so on. The ONLY thing that matters is that you tell the story. Sounds to me like you'll be doing that, in spades. Which sounds amazing to me. And I'd be honored to be there, if family stuff allows.

[hlinspjalda.livejournal.com]

That all sounds splendid!