chirp chirp

Man, it's quiet in here!

It would be if it weren't for all this chirping

Hey @Soldarnal, I realized my comment came off a bit harsh. Sorry about that! I've seen a bunch of your other questions and answers, and you seem to be a thoughtful guy/girl

@Ray I thought your comment was good. It was helpful to learn the difference between Strong's and a true Greek dictionary. It just seemed like you had the knowledge to write a better answer, so I was surprised that you did not.

@Caleb Are you around?

@JackDouglas Yes.

about this

I'm not the best communicator in the world

all I'm getting at is that think we should stop worrying about c.se, j.se etc

and just worry about bh.se

Have you participated on SE sites that have overlapping scopes before?

yes, dba.se and so/sf.se

Have you followed the beta over at C.SE?

(unrelated) did you get my message about userscripts yesterday?

@Caleb no, I never had any inclination to touch c.se with a bargepole

but I've been waiting a long time for a site like this to come along...

@JackDouglas Yes I did (I'm the one that starred it here so I don't forget to hit you up on that subject).

oh :)

didn't notice that

@JackDouglas Ok just a little bit of background. Up until now hermenetutics questions like we're mostly covering on BH have been considered on-topic there. We also have over half of the user base of the current beta in common. That community is also having to figure out how to define themselves and who their experts are etc. It's rough going actually. (I'm a pro-tem moderator over there). The discussion about how BH would fit into the mix has been ongoing for months.

My suggestion is mostly aimed at providing a stand-in solution that at least tides over the scope issue in both places for now so that people don't have to worry so much about whether they are in the right place and just put their effort into content.

There are a lot of people at C.SE that are worried BH is going to kill the momentum and pull over the experts. They might be right, but I was trying to show that there is at least one way both sites can exist without disagreeing over where the boundaries are.

With both sites in beta I don't think it's reasonable to define the scope of one site in complete isolation from what other sites are up to.

I don't see how showing them some concern as we move forward on BH is detrimental to BH. "Where do I ask" is always a confusing issue when a question is in the overlap zone and the more clearly we can define the purpose of each site the less confusion there will be for end users.

@Caleb I gathered some of that from this chatroom and area51 - didn't know you are a mod there though. My view is that we will eventually attract a lot of bible 'experts' here who will never go to c.se. People will just learn what to expect from both sites and post accordingly - sometimes even on both sites.

Some folk I guess will even answer the same questions on both sites, but I'd imagine their answers would be different on each site to reflect the different emphasis and audience. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on the "isolation" issue - both sites will stand or fall on their own merits in my view and need to focus on what makes their own site great: great answers.

FWIW I never thought a general Christianity site would succeed in this Q&A format - but I hope I will be proved wrong. b.se seems to fit the SE model much better to me.

@JackDouglas You won't get much disagreement from me there or some of the other C.SE'ers including some of the other mods and a lot of the most active users. BH is a much better fit for the format.

Also, (for better or worse) C.SE covers a lot of topical ground that BH is never going to so we'll have to see how it goes.

yuck! I'm glad it is doing ok. I think the mods will have their work cut out though :)

@JackDouglas Tell me about it.

Also FWIW I think what you say should be on-topic is right - it includes most of the ground where there is at least scope for a single correct answer and eliminates vast swathes of opinion fodder. You don't seem to be deviating from the faq: "Biblical Hermeneutics - Stack Exchange is for professors, theologians, and those interested in exegetical analysis of biblical texts."

Part of my reason for suggesting the DMZ zone like I did in my post was to set the stage for truly hermeneutics related questions to be encouraged to be here and on this site where there is likely to be more expertise and not fight to keep them on-topic on a site that might not have good peer review in that area.

The better defined the scope is here at BH the easier it will be to send stuff over from C.SE when it could get good treatment here and keep BH clean from the massive amounts of goose trails it could take outside of true hermeneutics.

I'd rather this site not have to deal with the shinanagans we get over on C.SE with trolls and the issue of defining "Christian". If we can stick to actually studying the texts, we can just not worry and leave C.SE to deal with those issues.

I cant imagine how anything on bh.se would not also be on-topic on c.se, and I think that should be ok. Sort of like the two physics sites - no need to migrate from the general site, but maybe a comment like "if you want something a bit more in-depth, perhaps try posting at b.se?"

Normally you don't want to throw junk at other people, but in this case (as a mod on the receiving site) I think I would say that if anybody is equipped to deal with those messy issues it is C.SE not BH and if you draw the lines around BH just tight enough to exclude them, you can make C.SE fight the other battles and win or loose them.

@Caleb Yes, just like any migration path we need communication between the two communities. Over time we'll work out what to trash and what to send over

It's really early days to be worrying too much about some of this though...

I think the site is shaping up really well and the whole 'on-topic' question is proving surprisingly uncontroversial

I have a list of people I'm going to try and encourage to join up when we move to beta...

I have other reasons for being here too (I hope my laundry list of questions shows that!) but part of the reason I and some of the other C.SE folks are here at all is to help facilitate that communication by being on both ends.

@JackDouglas Better to figure some of this out in private beta while you have just your most interested users!

@JackDouglas You can invite people into the private beta too now, did you know that?

Is there a set time period for a beta to succeed/fail?

@Caleb yes, I saw the link on the front page, but they are not on any other SE site and I have a feeling we need people who are to set the tone (they wouldn't understand half of the stuff we are talking about)

@Soldarnal Hi Soldarnal

@JackDouglas Hi, I just saw your remark about it being early in the process

So was just curious how long the process is

@Soldarnal Have you read this?

private beta is usually just 7 days I think

@Soldarnal Not really. There is a blog post about that on the main SO blog somewhere.

Thanks, I was looking at the FAQ and not seeing anything other than that our beta goes public in three days

(from today)

@JackDouglas Good point. It is helpful to have people understand SE sites in general.

@Caleb Are you thinking of the one I linked or something else?

@JackDouglas There is a more recent post on the issue here but both of them are relevant. @Soldarnal

@Caleb good find...

ok, I'll give you guys some peace. Thanks for the chat...