Surely you haven't made this conclusion because no one gave you quotes or references on the same day you asked for them (?)
Moiety in essence means 'middle' and it refers to the middle region (middle half) of the orb which goes all the way around the planet - front and back (and top and bottom too, it being circular). This is what Dariot and Lilly refers to and it's not the invention of modern authors who are unwilling to read up on the matter - I wonder why you would say such a thing?
Anyway, sorry to say, I don't have time to contribute to forum discussions at this time, and I think I would feel unwilling to add more than I am currently stating in response to such a comment. I will say that I have corrected several credible authors who have published comments to suggest that Lilly differed from older authors in his use of orbs. Lilly does not, for example, say that Saturn only has a 9? orb as I have seen published in highly reputable books, giving it a moiety of only 4?? - but states that it has 9? before and 9? after its body - making 18? in total. The moiety of this is 9? which extends 4?? forwards and backwards to be added to the moiety of the other planet. It has not yet been clearly established at what time the use of moiety became popular, although there are some interesting early references. It had clearly found favour by the time of Dariot.

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Re: Kepler - although he challenged some of the underlying principles of astrological technique, the examples I have seen of him *using* astrology appear to demonstrate a fairly traditional, conventional approach - house signification and all. So as a theorist he was challenging, but as a practitioner I don't believe he was particularly innovative.

This was specifically the conclusion reached by renaissance astrologers. It was not necessarily what was meant by the earlier medieval astrologers like Abu Ma'shar

I agree - which is why the known use of orb is currently older than the known use of the moiety approach - which doesn't make 'moiety' or 'half-orb' the invention of modern authors, but I'm not sure what Johannes meant by that; maybe I missed his real point (?) But it doesn't seem to me that the use of moiety is a misunderstanding of the technique described by Abu Ma'shar and his contemporaries, because several authors give various accounts of how orbs can be calculated, apparently clearly aware that different theories existed and were applied in practice by different authorities. Dariot, for example, only describes the moiety approach as one option - I don't think his own examples even show this was the approach he used himself. Earlier authors generally took a more static approach, which is what I now apply for myself - hence we can have the situation where Saturn can fall within the Moon's orb whilst the Moon fall's outside Saturn's smaller orb. Ibn Ezra describes this and it is very useful in horary for situations where we need to see who is capable of exerting an influence on whom.

Lilly's charts seem to show that he did apply the moiety theory, although by his own admission, at the time he wrote CA he was taking a practical but somewhat 'rough and ready' approach to orbs.

Back to signs - I felt unable to respond to this poll for the reasons you mentioned, and it was the same reason why I couldn't respond to the fixed stars poll - these things are very important at the times when they become important (which isn't all the time).

Lilly's charts seem to show that he did apply the moiety theory, although by his own admission, at the time he wrote CA he was taking a practical but somewhat 'rough and ready' approach to orbs.

Not all of Lilly's contemporaries followed him in applying the moiety theory as some appear to have still been using fixed orbs in the way you describe suggested by Ibn Ezra.

For example here is Richard Saunders:

The Menographick Aspect is, when two planets do behold each other, and yet the distance between the Centre of both their Bodies doth not differ from a perfect Aspect above the Semidiameter of one of them, and yet it must exceed the Semidiameter of the other of them ... if Venus were in the 4th degree of Cancer, and the Moon in the 12th degree of Aries: here the difference from a perfect Aspect is 8 degrees, which is less than the Moon her Semidiameter, and more than the Semidiameter of Venus, so that the Moon by her beams toucheth Venus, but not Venus the Moon, and therefore in that respect, the configuration between them is not so perfect.

'Menographick Aspect' -A new term for glossary perhaps?

johannes susato wrote: I hope you, dr. farr, will accept this out of poll question please?

Of course! It goes without saying. My only interest is in the poll results. And I'll give my reason for even asking this poll question (as well as my poll questions regarding fixed stars, and non-human mammal nativities):

There are a number of posts I have been considering to make, regarding the subjects of my poll questions: if only a small % of Skyscript members consider the subject matter of the polls to be of much importance in their astrological delineations, or to them in general, then I do not want to waste their time, Skyscript Forum space, or my time in making postings that would be of little interest to the membership. So far, in both the star and non-human animal nativity poll results, a significant enough % of the membership has indicated interest to justify me in making some additional postings regarding those issues. In the stars-in-horary poll, approximately 2/3rds of the vote shows little importance accorded to the stars in horary delineation by the membership, so I will not make future postings regarding that particular issue. So my little polls (perhaps not worded as precisely as many would like to see) are not intended to satisfy my curiosity, but to help me determine what subject matter to share posts with the interests of the membership, and what subject matter posts to avoid due to lack of membership interest.