@pterandon: How do your first and third points (specific to "generic Christianity") work together? What would you do with the question "What does Christianity teach about the satisfaction view of atonement?" Allow, edit, or close (or other)?
I do like the idea of closing historical truth questions. I'm not sure of deleting them, especially if the person is still active and it can be edited to scope.
@RyanFrame First of all, my stronger objection is to forcing a seeker to pick a major denomination before being given an Answer. Secondly, I would hold that your question is answerable by a short C.S.-Lewis style summary if there were 2-3 major differences out there.
We don't actually do that here btw. What we do is ask the user to identify the denomination or doctrine they are interested in finding more about. We don't care if it's obscure, we just want a question to have some sort of scope and show some sort of research effort. If you haven't looked into the problem you have enough to have some level of vocabulary in the subject matter then what kind of answers are you really expecting?
@svidgen I'd be quite happy to see one or more good RC folks on the mod team. But being Catholic or anything else in itself doesn't strike me as a sufficient trait to nominate somebody. Finding somebody who the right qualifications AND happened to be Catholic might be a very good idea but it's not something to force the mold on I don't think.
@pterandon Theoretically yes, all questions that are too broad and are not scoped to a denomination could be answered with good overviews summarizing all the views. However this requires a high level of expertise from answers. I've actually advocated for this a couple of times, but we haven't gotten the support behind forcing the answer-bar to be raised so high as to always know about a lot of traditions.
2
The thing that always fell back to was a collection of answers, one per tradition, and that quickly turned into a mess when we tried it. Nobody liked it after about a week.
So we brainstormed and decided the bar had to be raised for either questions or answers and since we coudn't do it with answers we did it with questions. Which turns out to be a lot easier because everybody can help the editing process without the specialized knowledge.
@ryan I don't know. He doesn't hang out in chat unless we page him in for an issue so I don't have a feel for where he's at with the whole thing. I kind of expected him to but that isn't based on information, it was just a hunch.
@ryan Can I ask you in what way you expect being a moderator to have an effect on the miss-information problem, whether in a tag or in general? In what way does a moderator act that affects the accuracy of information on the site that a regular active user could not?
@Caleb a couple things: The first just being personal. I participate in the site a lot, but I don't have the privilege right now to delete or to close questions/answers. Second, whatever else is said, a mod diamond does have more weight. It doesn't always stop arguments (example would be the ex-user Ron Mirriam), but it does stop some.
Like I said it's not so much that I have that background in one tag, I feel because of my historical background, and my knowledge of the site/SE I'm as qualified as most to be a Mod. The main reason I've nominated myself was because it was useful that Mason was so active in the LDS tag as a mod. And if he's not around then I would like someone else to step up and do the same thing.
@ryan Okay let me refine that question a little bit. Let's say you had a couple thousand more rep and could VTC and delete. In that case would you still see a difference in being a moderator specifically in light of the miss-information issue with LDS doctrine?
@ryan Or I could ask this another way: what did Mason do that specifically affected the miss-information issue that he could not do just as well with his 20k rep as a regular user?
@ryan No it didn't, but maybe my question wasn't clear.
@ryan Please understand I'm not trying to discourage your running or anything like that. I do have a concern about an issue and I'm trying to hear what your thoughts are on that issue.
@Caleb it's mostly what I said, it can forestall arguments before they become arguments. Also there are not that many people on the site that are actually LDS, let alone active LDS who have the rep to close/delete bad information before it stays up for to long. Its for reasons like this that having Mason around was helpful.
@ryan I can see the active user thing making a big difference, what I'm trying to get at is where you see him being a moderator (or yourself or any LDS member) makes a difference on the miss-information issue.
Before you try to answer more, let me just voice my experience/opinion on the issue.
In my experience, being a mod has actually limited my ability to challenge bad information/theology in general and much more so when it is specifically representative of my own theological tradition. Being a mod means my reasons for hitting close/delete have to be much more concrete and much more about site guidelines than about actual content than when I was just an active user.
Being a mod means having a big hammer tied to your hand and you have to be more careful about what you touch because everything gets smacked.
My own personal understanding of moderation is that it specifically cannot be done based on accuracy of content. We cannot be accuracy police. When I was a regular user I used my delete votes on stuff that was rubbish content wise even when it technically fit site guidelines. I can't really do that as a mod.
Note my own nomination includes this as the primary thing I wanted to note about my own understanding of being a moderator. I would welcome some diverse entries into the mod team, having Mason around for example as worked out great. There are times when having somebody moderate an issue that does NOT have a theological iron in the fire is actually helpful. But I for one will not be voting if your idea of being a mod is having the tools to police based on content accuracy.
Does that distinction make sense? And explain what I was trying to ask?
I'm not saying that's your plan, just that it's not quite clear to me what your understanding is there and so I think the issue could stand for clarification.
@Caleb I agree with you completely about your view on moderation. In general you can't be accuracy police. And I wouldn't try to be. However this being a professional site about religion (I know it's not a religious site. I even read the blog, 'Brothers we are not Christians') you do have people that want to start religious wars.
So I guess my only point in mentioning it is the actual active user stand point. And the fact that their is not that many lds users.
Even Narnian who has asked some great LDS questions has posted some offensive/miss-information simply because he didn't know better. And it was Mason, Matt or I who caught him.
@pterandon I was actually going to ask you a similar question but framed a bit differently. I see your nomination is primarily platform based right now: as in you think certain issues need reform. My question is how do you see being a moderator make a difference there?
My answer to your meta question touches on this just a touch:
In stark contrast to almost all other structures across the SE network, elections are the one time when voting is done on the basis of the person not a particular piece of content.
The character limit is a fairly new thing across SE elections. As I understand it the purpose is to limit the tende...
As I see it of your four points, only #4 is really a mod thing, and that only half. I'm fully aware we aren't consistent and part of that has to do with how much time it takes and the fact hat a lot of what we do is hit the highlights that other community folks bring to our attention, so the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Being a mod won't necessarily fix that, although being a really active one might mitigate it.
So if a troll were to word things similarly, meaning, close and doesn't sound dis-respectful, but is in actuality a gross miss-representation of the LDS religion (it's happened look at some of Ron's old stuff) would you or the other mods know the difference, to remove the bad content before it was disseminated to many people?
@pterandon So 1/2 for that one. But for the rest, as I see it, those points aren't something being a moderator would give you free reign to fix. You would first need to get community support for the changes. Which you could do without being a moderator. I for one would be HAPPPY to close historic truth questions (and in many case have when they have gotten flagged) but we don't have much support for it from the community so it's sketchy. I'd jump at an excuse.
Another example: allowing personal opinion answers: that wouldn't be your call as a mod on your own, that is something the community has to agree on one way or another. And if the community agrees against you, will you still moderate in a way that restricts them?
The 2013 Community Moderator Election is now underway!
Community moderator elections have three phases:
Nomination phase
Primary phase
Election phase
Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are.
Please visit the official election page a...
In connection with the moderator elections, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.
This is an alternative form of the Town Hall...
Q1: What is expected term of service for a moderator?
Q2: If one were at risk of being completely offline the week of July 21, does this hamper one's election chances?
@ryan Ok I think I see your point. I might suggest making that distinction in your nomination. I don't know if other people will read into it the way I did but to my ears it sounded suspicious on that issue. Much more so that what I hear you saying here.
@Caleb anyways, I'm headed home for the day, hope I clarified, I might hop back on when I get home. P.S. Thanks for the work you have done for the site.
@ryan Um, I actually wouldn't support the removal of content even if it was a gross miss-representation. I might support it's removal because it doesn't cite sources or doesn't even claim to represent the right view or various other things, but I don't think removing bad content to avoid it's dissemination is something that falls to moderators to do.
Christianity 2013 Moderator Election
Christianity 2013 Moderator Election