The Library

Jon Ericson

12:00 AM

@JackDouglas Good night. (As you ride off...)

Ami

2:04 AM

I'm very pround of this: hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/badges/59/announcer

Monica Cellio

@Ami ooh, our first announcer -- well-done! Where did you share it?

Ami

r/Christianity

I was hoping for some feedback but I didn't get any.

Monica Cellio

@JonEricson ding ding ding ding ding :-) This is a lot of why I'm inclined to edit (as I've said already) -- when an edit can redeem a DV-worthy post into an upvote-worthy one, why wouldn't we want to do that?

@Ami bummer. :-( I don't hang out on Reddit so I don't know what the dynamic is like there.

Jack Douglas

5:29 AM

-1

A: Why is the "give to Caesar what is Caesar's" answer so great?

Jesus was talking to Jews, so the answer is 10%, they knew what he was talking about.Give to God what is Gods.

This got a flag as 'not an answer', which I declined. I also downvoted: the answer is extremely poor and Mike has not responded to Monica's polite comment or taken the trouble to register.

I encourage you all to consider voting too :)

Jack Douglas

10:00 AM

@Peter Hi, how are you?

Peter

@JackDouglas Hi I am well - this is my first time using the chat, so just figuring out what it is about!

Jack Douglas

@Peter Great. I can help if you have any questions, but basically the chat room is a service for our site/community to discuss things informally. It is very transient and difficult to search so most important stuff ends up on 'meta'.

Recently we've been discussing an issue that has polarised opinion on the site: whether to allow answers to contain 'bald' doctrinal statements.

Is that an issue that interests you?

(Your answers all seem to be referenced and supported, which everyone agrees is great).

Peter

What do you mean by bald doctrinal statements? Do you have any examples that sparked the debate?

Jack Douglas

@Peter An extreme example is the last proper paragraph of this answer

but it is this kind of answer that causes real debate (see the comments below).

Peter

Yes, it is a bit of an extreme example, isn't it :-)

Jack Douglas

10:15 AM

If you are willing to spend some time thinking about this, the answers on these meta questions (here, here and here) could really use some votes

(or your own answer if you feel there is more to be said)

Peter

10:41 AM

It is an interesting issue! Taking for example the cord of three strands issue, I went to a wedding recently where the cake was made to look like three strands (the third being God, as explained to me be the father of the bride).

Is the third strand being God a valid Christian interpretation? Sure, I believe many Christians would agree to that. I don't know too many people who would disagree.

Is it good exegesis? Err, maybe not, as the comments point out.

The comments are quite interesting...I enjoy them more than the answer, and possibly give a more complete answer.

@JackDouglas (I am just viewing the links you sent me, sorry for saying what's already been said...) :-)

Jack Douglas

10:55 AM

@Peter Not at all—I'm really glad you are taking an interest

Peter

11:09 AM

Thinking out loud on the issue, while reviewing different questions on the site, to me the questions seem to be at fault as much (or more so) than the answers. If people don't ask a question with an exegetical mindset (can I use that phrase???), then it doesn't get a solid exegetical answer (regardless of doctrine present in the answer).

To me an exegetical question would be along the lines of "Is XX a correct interpretation of YYY" or "Where else does the XX occur in YY", "How is this word used", not "What does this verse mean?"

Jack Douglas

@Peter Our rule for questions basically boils down to: "All questions must start from the text", but the general faq rules also apply

So good questions are answerable and don't lend themselves to speculation

We are very strict with questions—off topic questions get closed quickly. The big debate is about answers

Most of us (but not all) agree with you on 'what is a good answer'

ie "well researched and properly explained" as you say

but some want to encourage 'good' answers with the voting system (highly voted answers rise to the top) and others want us to consider editing out 'doctrinal' sections of answers

Peter

@JackDouglas I had forgotten about the FAQ - thanks for reminding me of it :-)

Jack Douglas

@Peter :)

"Is XX a correct interpretation of YYY" broadly, I think that even "well researched and properly explained" are informed and shaped by the framework/doctrine of the answerer.

This answer by Soldarnal gets to the heart of that issue for me.

But I don't want to persuade you to agree with my views, just to participate in the discussion!

I'll follow any consensus we eventually arrive at. There are only a handful of people who take an interest in the running of the site so far (though we are growing well in terms of traffic)

Peter

My gut feeling is to lean towards voting. In the case of Ecc. 4:12, I did learn something from J.C. Salomon's comments. Do we want the answers section of a question to be complete or accurate? (or is that me rephrasing the question at hand?)

Jack Douglas

@Peter Can you explain a bit more what you mean by "Do we want the answers section of a question to be complete or accurate"?

What we want is for there to be one or two excellent and helpful answers to a question and for the dross to be pushed down. Unfortunately people very rarely read the comments, so it is best if the actual answer contains all the important content.

The 'about' page is a good read for what makes this kind of site useful to the internet at large

Basically it's hard filtering out 'noise' on the internet on any subject

Peter

11:28 AM

Sorry, again am writing down things as I think them :-)

Do we want to encapsulate all answers for a question? Take for instance (a bad example, but the only one I can think of) someone asks "What are the thousand years in Rev. 20". The Post-mil gives his answer, then the A-mil, then the pre-milm then the dispensationalist, then the pauline disp, then the hyper-disp, then the jehovah witness, etc, etc.

If we were going after an accurate answer, then, for example, the hyper-disp would be voted out, and maybe an answer which explains post-, pre-, and a- would be voted to the top.

I guess I am meaning in the context of all the answers for a question, not just the one that gets the green tick.

Jack Douglas

@Peter I'd imagine the top answer would cover all, but I can imagine a few useful single-perspective answers too

it's a good example

You are in a very different timezone to me :)

Peter

A solution could be encouraging summary posts maybe? These would be on big questions, or questions where the answer is not cut and dry, and would summarise the answers given? That may lend the site to be more of a resource/wiki site than pure Q&A site though

I have seen several times questions where two seperate posts gave two halves of the answer. You just want to mark them both right! :-D

In the case of Ecc. 4:12, someone will post all of these points of view (Abrahamic, Literal, Trinity, etc) in once nice tidy bundle that will get voted to the top because everyone will be happy! Maybe... :-)

I am not to sure how this fits in with the stack exchange concept. I came here by chance from Stack Overflow (programming answers are so much more cut and dry), and was hooked!

Thinking on it more...I know I couldn't give a proper summary of every view (especially a Jewish view on an OT passage). Hmmm.....

Jack Douglas

11:55 AM

@Peter yes, we have a harder job working out the rules (though SO have the same issue on a smaller scale I think)

Peter

I am re-reading the chat dialogue from others above. In regards to using down votes as a filtering tool, I tend to only down vote an answer if it is utterly atrocious, as down voting affects my points.

If it is just poorly thought out, terse, or just plain bad I tend to ignore it, but I don't think that helps the site too much in my doing so.

Am I misusing down votes? Should I be more brutal? Obviously I should post more to increase my points, but the rest of my life doesn't leave me enough time for that unfortunately :-(

Jack Douglas

@Peter just not upvoting is enough unless you feel strongly about a post in my opinion

but a DV is only -2 (DVs on questions are free however, don't hesitate there!)

@Peter and I encourage you to concentrate on 'the rest of your life' whenever that conflicts with posting here :)

saying that your answers are great and we'd love to see you continue contributing

I'm going to be driving for the next hour or so, by which time I'm guessing you will have finally got to sleep :)

But I hope you'll pop back in here when you have the time

Peter

12:14 PM

@JackDouglas :-) yes, but I have to admit I have learned a lot through answering questions on the site. Has been more use to me than 3 years of university in that sense :-)

@JackDouglas Ok, will do. Good night from New Zealand :-)

Jack Douglas

Good night and take care :)

swasheck

4:12 PM

@JackDouglas Voting in what way?

Jack Douglas

@swasheck well I voted down, but you may vote as you please ;)

swasheck

@JackDouglas i see what you're saying. i thought there was a delete/close feature for answers that i was unable to see

Jack Douglas

@swasheck there is VtD, not sure what the rep required for that is, but anyway it's for 'not an answer' answers rather than poor answers I think

swasheck

@JackDouglas how does one distinguish between "that's not an answer" and "that's an extremely poor answer to the degree that it's not really salvageable"

i'd probably flag that answer (again) as unsalvageable given the lack of response from the answerer

Jack Douglas

@swasheck from another place:

"if an answer answers the question, it should be left alone (minor edits for style or grammar aside). If it tries to answer the question, it should be left as an answer. If it provides some sort of tangential information or asks for more information from the asker then it should be converted to a comment."

"Brevity is NOT an implicit problem; it's simply an indicator that is often associated with incomplete answers."

both are quotes from members of the SE team

swasheck

4:25 PM

ok, fair enough.

thanks for the guidance, @JackDouglas

Jon Ericson

5:29 PM

@Ami I've thought about posting there for the purpose of getting the badge, but I've never understood Reddit and wasn't sure it was the sort of attention we wanted. ;-)

Monica Cellio

@JackDouglas I hadn't yet seen this chat when I (a few minutes ago) flagged that. I was going to click "not an answer" based on the flag text, but I used the "other" option to suggest one of those "this answer cites no sources" annotations. Though it's pretty low-value and the poster hasn't been back, so at -4 and counting it probably wouldn't be wrong to delete it.

Jack Douglas

@MonicaCellio Left with -4 it is a useful signpost to anyone else wanting to answer the question

It says "we do not want stuff like this" large

btw I've invited the SE team to contribute on your meta question, so please expect some sort of input in the next week or so

(though not a conclusive solution!)

Monica Cellio

5:44 PM

@JackDouglas that's a good point. So perhaps consider the annotation too -- or not, whatever. It wasn't -4 when I flagged it. :-)

@JackDouglas great, thanks. Input would be very helpful.

BTW, do you happen to know what prompted that brief spurt of visitors yesterday, when 3 or 4 people (not BH regulars) came in within a minute? I didn't see anything obvious in TL at the time.

Jack Douglas

@MonicaCellio I believe TRiG flagged one of my remarks as 'offensive'

in retaliation for me deleting some of his I'd guess

you know mods get those flags if they are anywhere in chat?

Myself I rarely follow them, but I appreciated badp's remarks and felt they were timely and helpful

Monica Cellio

@JackDouglas oh, ok -- I've seen almost none of them and didn't get that one (perhaps because I was already here).

@JackDouglas I agree. I was just puzzled, is all.

Jack Douglas

@MonicaCellio that would make sense I guess—I didn't get one either

It's kind of weird isn't it

Monica Cellio

@JackDouglas or it's possible that it came and went. I was "here", but I wasn't looking at chat exactly when that went down.

Jack Douglas

I mean the mass arrival is weird for those in the room

Monica Cellio

5:49 PM

@JackDouglas my reaction was "what're they saying about us on TL?". Pre-diamond I would have had no clue what could be going on. Most people here aren't mods, of course, so I'm guessing "weird" was the common reaction for people who saw it.

swasheck

6:11 PM

@JackDouglas that was a strange thing

then ... "nothing to see here"

Jack Douglas

@swasheck it's also strange for the mods going in—they have no idea what to expect

some rooms are more than capable of giving them a rough ride

mentioning no names ahem The Comms Room ahem

swasheck

@JackDouglas i'm sure. i just had no idea what happened

@JackDouglas i've found SF to be unhelpful in general

Jack Douglas