[Edit: Re Hermeneutics] There are also a number of experts there that intentionally won't stick their head in here. One guy that would be a great contributor said he "wouldn't touch C.SE with a barge poll". I couldn't fault him :)
@Caleb I understand that. What do we need to do to improve quality here? I would not be opposed to making this "Doctrine.SE" as opposed to more Christian life and living...
I've had some interesting talks with Mark Trapp lately and I think his ideas about raising the bar on questions to CALL FOR expert answers is something we need to take seriously.
@Richard Mark and co @ prog.se are trying hard, but they have a huge job, 12k questions or so. We have an opportunity to turn this site right at the beginning rather than waiting until its late in the game...but its going to take the 5 of us working hard, and we need strong community buy in
@waxeagle Yeah, they have a huge job ahead of them, for sure...
@waxeagle There's no question that we need community buy in. I think that's the most critical part. I'll go get some coffee and see what I can come up with.
@waxeagle Yes. I think we should organize some of the major issues into meta posts (not piece meal as we think of it, but actually with some organization to start with). Then we spend a little bit of time drumming up support and get whoever does support us to help on a cleanup/reform effort.
One thought: We should (if we can) create a new tag in Meta to group all of these posts together. (Particularly since the search engine here isn't very good.)
@Caleb I think that's a slippery slope that leads back to "everyone's opinion is alright", since I can make my own religion (with its own tradition) at any point.
Theoretially what do we gain / loose with that as a requirement? If not a requirement, could it be one genre of question and we have other requirements for other genres.
Regarding what to do with old questions, I think that once we get community consensus about scope, we need to completely remove all the old questions that are out of scope.
Personal opinion.
But, having them around makes me nervous that we'll keep fighting that battle.
I think that we should run with that until/unless we can think of specific exceptions where that would not be the case. We will likely have more than one class of question calling for more than one class of answer but ones that require supported doctrine isn't a bad place to start as the de-facto. Anything different would need an agreed upon reason to be different.
@Caleb I agree. Personal exegesis would be one example that might be allowed, but there has to be biblical support for it.
@waxeagle I agree with this outside of the FLDS/Mormon/JW issue. The minority still needs to be able to answer. Even if it's not much use for the public, I think that it could be useful for the asker.
Admittedly, that shouldn't be our goal, necessarily, but we need to make sure to not forbid other viewpoints.
@Richard right. Another issue I see is just how personal are we going to allow? If I interpret a scripture one way can I express that? even if its different (or counter) to what a specific church believes?
@waxeagle LOL. I agree! As long as there is external confirmation of the doctrine, we can accept it. If someone is posting doctrinal stuff on their own authority, I think it shouldn't be allowed.
Unfortunately, that completely goes against the "expert" concept of SE, but I can't think of any other way to make that happen...
@waxeagle Good question. But if requiring a POV becomes the norm they should be self-identifying in which case the usual voting/commenting system should help show what is real and what is posing.
also lets be clear that doctrinal self identification must be inpost. It cannot be in profile as those are A. subject to change and B. not immediately evident
@waxeagle I agree. Plus, if the user deletes their account, the doctrinal basis is gone.
I think this only applies to doctrinal statements, though. If you're going to be posting answering a question with no biblical backing or in a manner that implies application of the bible, it must be identified with a denomination or linked to denominational support.
@Richard right another good reason, or if they choose to strip it out for whatever reason. (we had a similar discussion about user location in gardening. This is less likely to change, but should be in post for the same reasons we discussed there)
@Richard right. exegetical statements don't needed to be backed up for the most part. However, some kind of commentary showing that its not just you who believes this would be helpful :)
Revelation 21:5 (NIV)::
He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
My pastor included this verse in his sermon today, and after reading it, he added his own emphasis, "And this means ev-ery-t...
@waxeagle I'm inclined to think that anything doing serious exegesis of a passage is going to have different needs (and probably not need to identify a tradition/doctrine). My inclination is that anything that wanders off in that direction is going to be more at home on hermeneutics anyway.
@Caleb I agree with this. But if someone is seeking a doctrinal stance, it gets a bit more tricky. For example the question about women being silent in church that showed up on BH.SE
Note that "unsubstantiated" is different than "unidentified/unaffiliated".
@Richard Ya. I think that would belong on SE. I think exegesis is very much on-topic here. And that answers should identify the theological framework / doctrinal tradition that they claim to represent!
@waxeagle I agree exegesis is still (and always will be) on topic here, but only in so far that the exegesis is related to making a doctrinal point or doing practical theology. If it doesn't have a tie in on at least one of those points I would say it's of marginal relevance to Christianity closable as off-topic or migratable to BH.
@Caleb The reason I think that this is difficult with personal exegesis is that many of my exege..s..tu..ic.. interpretation of the Bible don't line up with my background. I'm not sure what background they line up with, though. I think that personal exegesis should be allowed if it has sound biblical support.
@Caleb Hmm... Actually, I can see where your coming from
I believe that women should be silent in church. My church, my background, every doctrine I've studied doesn't believe this however. Would I not be allowed to answer a question about women being silent, since I don't have doctrinal support?
I just had a realization with this, though: Survey answers will become more difficult, since you'll have to find the doctrine that supports the theory.
I've come across several verses in the Bible that speak of "giants". For example:
Gen 6:4 There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare [children] to them, the same [became] mighty men which [were] of o...
@Richard I have a feeling we take OT stuff off the table, except as they relate to a modern doctrinal perspective (IE messianic judaism/covenant theology/dispensations etc)
What rule can we state explicitly (or how can we word it so that it's enforceable) in order to prevent any questions that aren't doctrinally related. Particularly since the asker may not even know whether the answers would be doctrine?
@Richard That's pretty tongue in cheek as far as the connotations go, but I think the English meaning is relevant here :) Hopefully everybody we involve is amiable enough to catch my humor.
This is a place for those with experience or interest in helping us talk through the issues before we make a mess of things :)
We have a google doc we've been doing some of our brainstorming and composing in that we'd like for you to contribute to. (@waxeagle link? Either my internet is broken or GDocs won't let me because you are the owner.)
@MarkTrapp when you do have some time if you could look at the google doc we've started and give some input. We are strongly considering changing the scope of this site to something closer to doctrine.SE than christianity.se
I'm not sure the "rescoping" vocabulary is going to go over well. Is there another way we can describe what we want without making people think that everything is going to be off topic? The real problem I see is "not constructive" formulation of questions, not the topic matter.
@Richard its an odd one because its rarely foundational for a denomination (as far as I know) and many denominations leave it open to personal interpretation/beliefs
Right now the only thing we seem to have solidly established is the boundaries of what a "Christian" is (which is very loose). It seems that we don't really have many guidelines outside of that except for the pastoral advice issue.
@Richard agreed. partly that is due to how loosely we have defined "Christian" in this context. However, I think we can probably refine it so that we have more guidelines without being any less inclusive
@waxeagle I don't know if we need to redefine it unless it helps go along with this push to improve/establish our guidelines. I can see that being useful so that someone doesn't go off and establish their own brand of Christianity just so they can say what they want to say on here.
A thought about the "who is a Christian" issue: we could put in a bit about having a substantial population in whatever division of Christianity is being considered. As in, we could say that some random person declaring themselves to be in some brand-new denomination wouldn't be considered Christian because there isn't even a single church in that denomination.
This includes Mormons/JWs/the other thousands of denominations.
@ElendiaStarman I think we sort of have been doing this to an extent by asking for some kind of support for strange views. But honestly we don't want to be gatekeepers....
@ElendiaStarman I was going to say something to this effect, but then I realized that it's probably better to leave the definition as is. If there's a nice solid reason for changing it, I'm fully in support. However, it would exclude almost no one that isn't currently excluded.
Hey, @dancek! Check out the Google Doc pinned over there (in the stars)----->
Hi y'all! Should I read through the backlog, or can someone summarize?
@Richard I guess that's what I was looking for :)
user2334
Just read through the transcript and the doc: sounds pretty close to what I would've envisioned Christianity as a site on SE to be, but it's nowhere near what Christianity as a site on SE is right now. I'm cringing because Christianity is starting to mirror Programmers pretty heavily at this point: major scope/quality change halfway through initial beta, most questions don't fit the new site
user2334
Anticipating a huge amount of pushback from the people who love the free-for-all-let's-talk-Christianity-in-an-open-forum style it is today
@MarkTrapp Yeah, that's why we're trying to tackle this issue now (with only 1K questions). Also, it's been hard to refine our scope until BH.SE came online.
@MarkTrapp Yes we know. This is why we're dragging you into it asking for your sage advice.
user2334
The issue right now isn't that there are some people who shouldn't be calling themselves Christian for the purposes of this site, but that everyone who has a Bible gets to pretend they're Augustine or Thomas Aquinas: people who aren't really experts and aren't relying on prior expert research are providing answers. Why, if I'm an expert, would I want to answer a question and be placed on the same footing as someone who appears to be talking about something off the cuff?
@Caleb I think the Google Doc should have a section about the new scope... errr... the new... philosophy behind the guidelines.
(That C.SE is about doctrine and exegesis and therefore all posts should have some doctrinal/biblical backing)
user2334
6:15 PM
Stack Exchange only seems to work well when answers can be verified: I don't really care what any one person thinks about an issue: if I want an opinion, I'll ask someone I know and trust. I want an answer that I can use and test. The majority of questions on Christianity aren't of that flavor (although there are some): "What should I think about X?" doesn't work unless the asker specifies under what conditions would an answer be correct e.g. "What is the Roman Catholic Church's view on X?"
@dancek Whenever you can. This will be ongoing for a while, it just came up that you might be helpful when it comes to thinking out how we communicate what we're thinking here back to the larger community.
user2334
Have you guys talked to anyone at SE? It was impossible to change Programmers's scope until SE came in and laid down the law
@MarkTrapp Not except for a few scattered comments. But we plan to. We hoped to conceptualize what we wanted to see happen and how we planned to communicate that, then get their input for more content on that step and back us up going forward
By the way, I know Caleb knows you can chat in Google Docs, but does anyone else know?
user2334
@ElendiaStarman 17 days. We launched 9/1/2010, the first rumbling on MSO was on 9/17/2010; Good Subjective, Bad Subjective and the enforcement notice came out on 9/29/2010. We've been battling with people about the scope since then.
If we use chat over at GoogleDocs then lets please keep it just to meta discussion about the google doc itself and the editing process. Anything conceptual about C.SE should be here in SE chat. That will make it easier when we bring SE staff and others into this discussion.
@ElendiaStarman Actually, it was earlier than that: 13 days. I made a post about the resentment on September 15th linking to an MSO post on September 13th
@Richard well it would make some sense, if there isn't a doctrinal reason for the exegesis does it really belong here? (IE is this the line between our coexistance with BH)
Our current policy on requiring references can be found at the following link:
FAQ - Must all claims be referenced?
This question contains the discussion that lead to the adoption of the current policy.
I struggle with the "No original research" idea. It could be useful for the exegesis and doctrinal issues. Since it would give us a sharp sword to divide good and bad answers. But sometimes it seems that personal belief doesn't always line up with doctrines. So, we'd have to research which doctrines support the belief.
(Although, really, I'm trying to decide if that's a bad thing.)
Ultimately, there is nothing new under the sun. But trying to find the old would probably lead us on huge efforts when really Protestantism isn't about outside support but biblical support.
@Richard I think you'd be hard pressed to find anything to belief that hasn't been believed before. Ecclesiastes 1:9 The hard part is finding the references.
@Richard This isn't Protestantism.SE. Some others that claim Christianity aren't going to fall into that line of thought.
@Caleb I totally agree that it's not Protestantism.SE, but we have a major portion of our community that believes in the priesthood of all believers. That means that biblical support and personal revelation are just as valid as historical/traditional/doctrinal ones.
And that is why I'm afraid we can't get rid of personal exegesis.
I think it's a sound argument; in any case it's the best we have. We simply can't make a guideline against personal exegesis because that would be to force a doctrine on users, but we can give quality guidelines for how it must be presented.
@dancek right. Most answers are at least hurt, if not completely invalid if they don't have references, the question more often than not is where to draw the line. Do we require them, do we suggest them, do we say "its a good idea but not necessary?"
I've been somewhat active on Skeptics.SE, and I quite like their style. Some of the major lessons learned/decisions made there are:
Answers must always have references; if not, they will be deleted. This is more about the specific site; this wouldn't work on SO. For many questions here, at leas...
My opinion is that if an answer isn't going to provide external doctrinal support for the answer they are giving, then they need to provide exegetical support showing how the Bible supports the answer. (regardless whether the question is exegetical in nature or not.)
@waxeagle Some of our questions can't really be answered any better with references than without. I'd argue such questions are bad (but I'm totally guessing and welcome any counterexamples). If so, we could require references.
@dancek you are on the right track. If you don't need references to answer its probably not much fo an "expert" question and its probably soliciting too much opinion
Why do we pray "Our Father who art in Heaven" and "Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death".
Should we instead pray My Father and "Pray for me, a sinner now and at the hour of my death"? Or is there a reason to always use the same words in those prayers?
I know there is some co...
@Richard sure. And some of that is unpreventable...but we need to see if we can cut the egregious stuff off at the knees. However more important than answers right now are questions.
emphasis needs to be on questions first. once we have that under control we can start in on answers. Its a lot easier for answers to be handled with voting than questions.
So, what do we do for questions that want multiple opinions? Not allow them? Require that at least some narrowing occurs (Catholic / Orthodox / Protestant)?
Few Christian doctrines are actually definable in a vacuum anyway, they are almost all responses to some other doctrine. Even the wording of the early creeds was often to counter heresy.
I'm also seeing that sometimes the asker doesn't really know if a question is going to have multiple opinions. If you don't have an idea of the answers, you might not know that there are divisions in doctrine among the different parts of Christiainity.
I've read both the New American Standard Bible and the English Standard Version for some time now. I frankly can't tell which one I'm reading; they're that close. Many passages are translated with the exact same words.
What are the differences between the translation ideologies of the two?
I think that this is a great question for C.SE (or even BH.SE), although it may be a bit broad. But, how does that fit given our doctrinal requirements?
So, exegetical questions must have biblical support; doctrinal questions must have doctrinal or exegetical support; non-doctrinal questions must have external references.
We could possibly use a new tag (like needs-fixing or something) so that community members have an easier time finding the ones that we want them to fix.