Refocusing Christianity.SE

Shog9

9:00 PM

47 messages deleted

Again, glad to see y'all tackling this with such focus. Kudos. Keep up the good work!

Richard

Thanks. It's been an interesting challenge.

dancek

Back to where I was. I'm a little concerned with the ideas to require all posts to have a doctrine/denomination represented. Were these just early brainstorming that now changed to requiring biblical/doctrinal/external support? I personally have learned from many denominations and doctrines. I often don't know the denominations and doctrines that support my view but still can find biblical/external support.

El'endia Starman

@dancek I would think that if your question is primarily doctrinal in nature, then you need to state your viewpoint AND(/or) what viewpoints you'd like.

Caleb

@dancek That's why any biblical/external support is included in that guideline. And it's not so much a requirement for a bibliography as it is guideline for what makes a good/bad answer that we can use to prompt/educate and as a basis for removing anything doctrinal that actually can't be referenced.

Richard

@dancek Yes and no. There are two sides to it: Questions and answers. The answers must have biblical, doctrinal, or external support. Questions... I think that's an open question in my mind.

Caleb

9:11 PM

It's more of a low-quality filter than it is scope change.

dancek

Ok, I'm fine with that. Like I've said many times before, I even support requiring references for all answers.

Richard

@dancek That's essentially what this boils down to: either a doctrinal reference, biblical reference, or some external reference (for non-doctrinal, non-exegetical questions).

El'endia Starman

@dancek I feel like that's necessary.

Caleb

@dancek We haven't been able to come up with a reason not to do that except lazyness. The kind of reference required has to be pretty loose tho.

Richard

@ElendiaStarman I agree.

@Caleb Agreed.

How does this play out for questions, though?

dancek

9:16 PM

I propose that we go through each others' questions and pick ones that are problematic / might be bad. That would help us really figure out what makes a question problematic. (It might be that I'm the only one here who has problems with figuring that out. In that case, forget about this.)

Caleb

@Richard Did you see the way I re-worked your "references" section in the top of the gdoc?

dancek

It's much easier to understand why someone would ask a bad question if it's your own :)

El'endia Starman

...well...going by upvotes, I don't really have any. :P

Caleb

@dancek True story. And good plan. Maybe we can use all our own questions and answers for the first round of examples showing people what we mean by good/bad under these refocused guidelines.

I'm sure I have plenty that need culling/fixing.

And then expand to whoever pitches in to help, then eventually on to those more reluctant to reform. (sorry I have to get that word back in here somewhere)

Richard

> Questions not answerable with doctrine must have some other way of providing referenced answers.

dancek

9:19 PM

@Caleb that's a good idea, it would really be good for the meta posts!

Richard

So, the asker will have to know right up front whether his/her question is a doctrinal one?

Caleb

@Richard No. That would never work. But we would need to comment and help with editing it one way or another.

I'm starting to see a couple general genres of good questions. We just need to hash out what the guidelines are for asking each.

El'endia Starman

Example question?

3

Q: When did Christianity originate?

How long as Christianity been around? Not how or why -- just when did it start. As a religion? As a name?

origin

It seems to me to be one of those it's-good-but-not-within-the-scope questions.

user2334

@Richard You can eliminate a lot of the guesswork by specifying the parameters for the question. "What do Catholics say about X?" "According to Luther, what does Y mean?" If a person can't narrow down the context to something more specific than "Christians" that's a problem

user2334

Christians believe a lot of things. Questions that don't narrow down the scope are not testable or verifiable. All I have to do is say I'm a Christian and bam, my answer is automatically correct

Richard

9:22 PM

I agree. There was a line in the document that confused me. I think someone has edited it now.

Oops. not edited. It just makes more sense to me now. I thought that the asker had to provide the means for answering the question. I was confused.

dancek

@ElendiaStarman I might be disqualified (having spent quite some time answering), but I do think that's a good question.

El'endia Starman

@dancek Hey, I +1'd it...

Caleb

@ElendiaStarman I agree that could use some help. It's been misunderstood by a lot of visitors anyway.

dancek

2

Q: Is "Bible In a Minute" accurate?

The Bible In a Minute video by Barats and Bereta has been enormously popular on YouTube, with 3.6 million viewers. The video quite literally goes through the Bible in less than a minute. Obviously, the video leaves out a lot. But as for what is included: Is it accurate? Is it enough? Consider ...

bible pop-culture

Caleb

I'll reform it eventually but let's go ahead and use them as examples in our meta post series and then act on them after we "call them out" so t speak.

dancek

9:25 PM

@dancek that is a bad question.

Richard

@Caleb Is this line valid:

Bah... no copy paste from G.Docs. Grrr..

Caleb

@dancek Speak for yourself :) That could be re-formed to be "what doctrine" or "what tradition" does this clip/statement represent.

Richard

> To put this another way, all questions must be able to be answered by referenced answers.

El'endia Starman

@dancek Heh, with respect to our "new scope", that's definitely a poor question. Didn't get a +1 from me. :P

Caleb

@Richard I can. Linux/Chromium.

dancek

9:26 PM

@ElendiaStarman not from many others either! :D

Richard

Opera. :\

Caleb

@Richard Well. That answers that.

El'endia Starman

@dancek Haha, indeed. +3/-1. :P

Lol, I thought to go look at Mason's questions, because I remembered that he would occasionally have an answer downvoted.
...
Well...there's not much I can do with 0 questions... :P

Richard

@ElendiaStarman Yeah, he doesn't really ask anything. Just answers.

El'endia Starman

@Richard Indeed. 149 answers! :P

You're four answers behind him. :P

Richard

9:30 PM

@ElendiaStarman Nice. I'm only up to 145...

El'endia Starman

Ahhh...here we go...

2

Q: What can we do to grow closer to God?

Throughout my life, I've been close to God sometimes and further away at other times. This "distance" is present in both my emotions and also in my devotion. I mention both of those because there are times when I feel close to God emotionally, but far from Him in my devotions. Conversely, ther...

faith devotion

dancek

@ElendiaStarman but that's closed already. If we could close a question by current guidelines, we already know it's a bad fit for the site.

El'endia Starman

@dancek Hmm. True. keeps-hunting

Caleb

@dancek True. But remember this is more of a focus/higher bar issue than a radical chance in scope. We can still use it to demonstrate what is really good/bad. Extreme examples are good.

dancek

@Caleb ok, good point.

El'endia Starman

9:35 PM

Yeesh, we mods are too good. :P

Richard

OK, I really like how the questions/answers are hashed out. They seem to be pretty good.

(per the Google doc.)

dancek

Dropping a bomb here, but I think this question is unreasonably broad. Looking at the top-voted answer and how well it actually answers the question is some indication.

18

Q: Can man judge whether God is fair?

Over and over I hear people pronouncing in one way or another that God is "not fair"*. Sometimes this is stated directly, other times indirectly as in "that doesn't seem fair, therefore God must not be that way." My question is, are we humans in a position to judge whether God is fair or not? If...

nature-of-god nature-of-man judge good-and-evil

El'endia Starman

@dancek Ah, good example.

Caleb

@dancek Yes that needs to be like 10 questions with very specific scopes. It started out as a "make a point" question for somebody that was making rediculous claims in chat/comments. It could use re-thinking.

El'endia Starman

Here's another example:

-1

Q: What is the will of God?

There's a lot of discussion about whether or not what we do conforms to the will of God. But have we ever defined exactly what that will is? Can you provide scripture to show exactly what the will of God is?

nature-of-god

dancek

9:44 PM

what about this one?

9

Q: Should Christians proselytize other Christians?

I've seen many instances of Christians trying to convert believers from other denominations into their own. However, the teaching I've heard of this has always been against the practice. My personal experience is that where there are two Christians, there are two opinions. Still Christ himself is...

denomination evangelism

Richard

@dancek I think this could be a valid question if it's being asked from a certain perspective. Should Mormons proselytize other Christians? Should Jehovah Witnesses proselytize other Christians? etc.

Then the question, per the new guidelines would be better targeted to more expert answers.

Especially given the guideline that we have in place that answers should target the viewpoint of the question.

(That should be added to the Google doc, too.)

Caleb

"Should Christians do X" is probably always too broad.

El'endia Starman

Off-topic, but perhaps we could use this question as an example of someone accepting an answer because it was the best one for them, not because it was the most-highly voted or whatever.

9

Q: Is there any sense in being baptized as an adult after being baptized as an infant?

Around the time I was born, my parents were going to a Lutheran church. As such, I was baptized as an infant. In most cases in the Bible, baptism is connected with receiving the Holy Spirit. If so, then that may explain why I don't remember when I became a believer. However, there ARE verses such...

baptism

@Caleb I agree.

Richard

@Caleb Mormons actually require a 2-year mission. From the Mormon perspective, I can see this being very valid.

But, then the answers should link to the LDS websites and doctrines regarding that topic.

dancek

@Caleb then this question is too broad, too, and not as easily salvageable:

7

Q: Should a Christian read books known to be heretical / blasphemous / against Christianity?

Inspired by: May Christians read self improvement books? May we read un-Christian books? Should we? In what circumstances? What guidelines should be used to decide on this? Some examples of books that I consider relevant for the question: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins God is not Gre...

atheism books blasphemy

Richard

9:54 PM

@dancek That is an interesting question...

Caleb

@Richard At the very least such an answer would have to call out "lds doctrine says", but that would make those questions massive lists and vote-wars.

Better force to questioner to decide what tradition they want to ask about or two to compare.

Richard

Right. Definitely! The question itself would have to be modified to say "What do Mormons say on this topic?" Otherwise the question would be off-topic. Then answers would need to conform to that doctrine.

dancek

Reminds me of this question that I felt was a total vote contest:

christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/2485/…

(link to my (self-)deleted answer, spelling out what's happening there)

Caleb

@dancek Good one. I mean a bad one. I mean, good example of a bad question. That was a setup for a vote contest.

El'endia Starman

@dancek LOL. Nicely done there. :P

Caleb

9:59 PM

@Caleb Talk about a hidden gem!

dancek

@ElendiaStarman yeah... took some work, but I got so much pleasure from the +4 I got before deleting!

Caleb

room topic changed to Refocusing Christianity.SE: Meta post formulation chat by parties interested in improving the post quality level on C.SE (no tags)

Richard

OK... I think the New Guideline Suggestions section is complete. How does it look? Is there anything missing?

El'endia Starman

@Richard Looks good to me.

Richard

Are we ready to build some meta questions/suggestions?

(Is that the stage we're at? Or are we still brainstorming something?)

El'endia Starman

10:09 PM

Let's go ahead and get the uncertain stuff absolutely certain.

Richard

@ElendiaStarman Sounds good. What's the uncertain stuff?

=)

El'endia Starman

@Richard Well, it completely disappeared from the Gdoc, but I was thinking about what to do with old questions that fall outside the new scope of the site.

Richard

Isn't that Step 6? Cleanup?

Caleb

@ElendiaStarman That section got chatted on here then the answers we picked worked into the later steps.

El'endia Starman

Hmmm...not quite.

I mean along the lines of close-then-direct-people-to-edit.

Richard

10:13 PM

I think that we need to clean this site up. This entire purpose of this effort, in my mind, is to do just that. It would be kind of pointless to allow those questions to remain open going forward.

Still, I think we can at least broach the subject on Meta without having to have a plan on how to deal with the old questions. We still have to get community buy-in before that can happen.

Caleb

@ElendiaStarman Check the third-to-last meta post suggestion bullet point.

And the one on questions.

El'endia Starman

Hello there @JustinY! :D

Caleb

It's been good guys.

JustinY

Hello. I just dropped by to see what you all are up to over here. I'm having a hard time catching up.

Caleb

I'm going to have to call it a night.

Richard

10:25 PM

Me, too, Caleb.

El'endia Starman

@Caleb Alright. G'night! :)

Richard

Seeya tomorrow.

El'endia Starman

We can start writing the meta stuff tomorrow.

But we got a lot of work done today. high-fives :D

Richard

@JustinY Well, we're trying to get some initial ideas on formulating a meta post to deal with our issue of low quality answers.

(and questions)

@ElendiaStarman Definitely!

Caleb

Ya. If you guys want to hack on it great but let's hold off on posts until we get a few of them together.

El'endia Starman

10:26 PM

@Richard Somehow I don't think it's gonna be ONE meta post. :P

Richard

Nope. One. One BIG meta post!

LOL j/k

Caleb

@Richard There is a character limit man!

Richard

@Caleb Yeah, I have to take off too. WE can work on it tomorrow, I say.

@Caleb Really!? Huh. I thought I would've hit that by now.

Caleb

@JustinY There isn't much catch up, you haven't missed anything yet. We'll have some meta posts to vet some ideas soon.

Richard

@JustinY We all have been discouraged at the quality of the posts and really want to improve the site, but we don't know even where to start. So, we started a new chat room to try to get some ideas flowing. We have the basic suggestions donw:

Yeah, we are just, at this point, gathering our thoughts for the posts.

JustinY

10:29 PM

I'm looking forward to the meta posts.

El'endia Starman

@JustinY So are we. chuckle

Richard

@ElendiaStarman So true.

Alright... Seeya guys.

El'endia Starman

Anyone else get the feeling that this is exciting? As if we're starting on an adventure or something? :P

Anyway, I'm heading out too. I'll be back in a few hours though.