@LeeWoofenden That ship sailed years ago. The consensus on meta has been, since well before you or I registered, that encouraging "many responses from many different perspectives" turns the voting system into a popularity contest, and that the ideal is for a question to have one objectively identifiable answer. If someone asks for your perspective (and YOU could be that someone!) then you can give your perspective. But if they don't, then it doesn't belong.

That's true whether your perspective is Swedenborgian, Presbyterian, Baptist, or Mormon.

@LeeWoofenden Kind of, yeah. I think it's a nice idea. I just have no good reason to believe that it's true.

@Mr.Bultitude Perhaps, then, I really don't belong here. I like answering questions, but if I have to wait until someone asks specifically about Swedenborgian views before giving one, it's just not worth checking in regularly. After the initial spate of questions (another ship that has already sailed) such questions are likely to be few and far between.

@TRiG Well, I suppose that would help to explain why you still hang around here.

@Mr.Bultitude Further, from what I've read about the ideals of StackExchange, the idea that there should be one answer per question is really not what this site is designed for. Personally, I enjoy reading multiple answers to questions. Yes, some of the answers are crap, and should be deleted. But different perspectives give different angles on the question, and provide more usable information than some ideal of "one objectively identifiable answer."

My wife generally thinks I'm wasting my time here, and that my time would be better spent doing more productive things elsewhere. Perhaps she's right.

@LeeWoofenden Eh, I'm here less than I used to be. Actually my time at Stack Exchange alternates between various sites. At the moment, I'm probably spending most time on Ask Ubuntu.

@TRiG My general impression (probably not entirely accurate) of atheists/agnostics who hang around religious-themed sites is that they tend to be either mad at religion due to previous bad experiences with it or sort of wish they could be religious but can't justify it in their minds. Or a mixture of both.

@Mr.Bultitude I think this view of the site is bound to consign it to obscurity. I took another look at the answers here that get the most views. Many, if not most of them don't fit into that consensus.

If the practice were to delete rather than just close (but leave available) questions that don't fit current site guidelines, or that run afoul of what the site really wants (according to your statement), it would probably cut site traffic at least in half, if not even more.

For the most part, this site isn't attracting the sort of "experts" that it says it wants. And though there are some good answers here, many of them are on questions that haven't even gotten 1k hits--meaning they're of interest to very few people.

Does Christianity.SE really want to consign itself to some academic obscurity, minus the academics?

@Mr.Bultitude For what its worth, I agree with @LeeWoofenden that answers from multiple perspectives is more interesting and/or useful to the reader. I don't mind people scoping their question for one view point if that is what they want, but think people who want a variety of points of view should be allowed to ask for that too. (I do realize the historic consensus was against me and have been encouraging new questions to scope themselves.)

There's a balancing act between allowing multiple different answers and a popularity contest.

@LeeWoofenden This is certainly correct - the readers (i.e. Internet searchers) want answers to the opinion questions. OTOH, Stack Exchange wants experts and experts don't tend to be interested in answering such questions

@El'endiaStarman Understood. I know that is why the broad questions were eventually shut down, despite being on topic at first.

@ThaddeusB It's not that hard to turn most opinion questions into more objectively answerable quotes. It's like the old newspaper adage: "You can say whatever you want. Just put it in quotes."

And IMNSHO, any "expert" who isn't interested in answering the key questions that people have on his/her subject of "expertise" is living in an ivory tower of irrelevance.

In my paid work, I commonly turn footnotes that are "opinion" into "objective" footnotes simply by adding the words, "According to Swedenborg . . ." so that instead of the note saying "this is the truth," it says, "This is what Swedenborg taught/believed was the truth." Presto chango, it's an objective, scholarly footnote!

It's exactly the same thing we commonly do here on Christianity.SE to transform opinion-based questions and answers into objective answers. As long as we know whose opinion it is, and (to satisfy Christianity.SE's guidelines) know that it is the opinion of a group of Christians, or of a significant Christian theologian whose views have affected whole groups of Christians, then we've got an objective answer rather than an opinion-based one.

@El'endiaStarman TBH, I'm not all that concerned about the "popularity contest" aspect. In some ways, it gives a rough estimate of how commonly accepted particular answers are. And in that way, even "popularity contests" actually do indicate something valid about the answers so ranked.

Beyond that, anyone sufficiently motivated to seek out answers to the questions asked will read, or at least skim, through all of the answers to a given question. That way they get a fuller range of answers, including less "popular" ones, and can decide for themselves which answers answer the question best for them.

So as long as we get rid of answers that don't actually answer the question at all, which would be a discouraging waste of time for readers, the system will tend to put the best and most widely held answers at the top, the least widely held answers in the low numbers, and the poor answers in the negative numbers.

And even though this means my own answers are often likely to be in the low numbers for that very reason, it works for me--and I think it would work for most readers.

@El'endiaStarman I think that as long as the denominational/theological viewpoint of the answer is give, and it's a reasonably accurate representation of that denomination/theologian, we're golden.

What bothers me more than the "popularity contest" aspect is when I see an answer saying, "This is what the Bible means by X," or "This is what Christianity teaches about X subject," when in fact it is what Protestantism thinks the Bible means by X, or what Lutheranism teaches about X subject.