8:08 PM
<please stand by for wall of text>
5 hours ago, by
Monica Cellio Many of my posts here have been well-received as far as votes are concerned (by the norms of this site). When there is also a Christian answer on the question mine tends not to do as well (and is generally not accepted).
@MonicaCellio Considering you represent a minority view (minority in terms of raw composition the overall field of Biblical Hermeneutics) and typically stick very closely to that perspective, answering with only Jewish sources and sometimes only addressing the parts of questions relevant to you, it seems to me your answers have actually been very well received, not just on par with competing views but shown extra appreciation for their quality.
I asked this because I was wondering if you saw the same thing. It seems to me that you might be reading far too much importance into metrics that don't actually matter matter. Which brings up the issue of voting. For example this:
5 hours ago, by
Monica Cellio For example, most recently I got a commentless downvote on
this. I know who it was from (it was obvious) and his dogma is very different from mine.
@MonicaCellio This is, in my estimation, a problematic assertion. Even as moderators we cannot see who is voting, and even going off of "solid" clues turns out to be more misleading than revealing. I've noted multiple times for example where I would comment and somebody would immediately piggy back on my critical comment to "cover" their downvote. I've even done something similar. Worse yet I've noted people to leave comments saying "-1" or "I downvoted because" but not actually downvote.
5 hours ago, by
Monica Cellio .
I've gotten downvotes when there was some issue in what I wrote, and when the person leaves a comment so I can address it that's tended to work out well. (That's how it's supposed to work!) I've also gotten dogmatic downvotes, ones that do not seem to be about flaws in the post but just because I didn't bring a Christian answer.
@MonicaCellio There is no such thing as a "dogmatic downvote". You simply don't know why or who downvoted in that case. It's widely accepted by experienced SE'ers that even trying to guess is bad news. One more articulate than I once said this:
"...and see that a couple high level users have come, picked some minor mistake..., voted it down, and answered the question..." You have exactly
zero idea whether the people who commented voted the answer down, unless they said so. None. Zip. Zilch. Don't assume. A lot of people comment without downvoting, and a lot of people downvote without commenting. To assume that someone taking the time to comment also downvoted is a mistake, and a useless, pointless one. Also note that people don't downvote
you, they downvote
the answer. —
T.J. Crowder Jul 5 at 12:10
Similar statements could be made for other voting patterns. It's simply not constructive to speculate on the whos or whys of an action that is intentionally a private affair. There isn't an exception to this for people who have a lot of information with which to guess or closely monitor the users known to be involved or for meta or anything else. It just isn't constructive behavior.
As such I'd like to recommend for your own sake as well as ours that you step back from doing it. It isn't just this instance that I've noted, there have been quite a few where you've speculated as to either identities or motives of voters. I really believe this isn't a small issue, it's a large one that's making your life here harder than it otherwise would be for no constructive gain to yourself or anyone else.
5 hours ago, by
Monica Cellio The answers that have fared best are on questions that don't involve Christian interpretations, e.g. what's wrong with cooking a kid in its mother's milk or why did Abel keep flocks. Answers to pure-history questions also do well. And there are some that Christians don't seem to care about; those do ok. But as soon as we get into stuff that somebody might interpret through a Christian lens, my answers do less well.
@MonicaCellio This I can see. I know it happens. Given the volume of users out there that recognize phrases and methods from their own background over unknown ones. However also implied from your own description above is that even when questions bring up subjects that Christians see through a different lens, your answers have been appreciated. They can and do serve a purpose here.
I would also add that quite often in cases where your answer stands beside others with different bent, your answers are often less complete. The example you cite is a case in point: you give a single perspective from a Rabbi, while the slightly more upvoted answers it stands with give far more exhaustive treatments of possible interpretations and various commentators.
5 hours ago, by
Monica Cellio .
I think my older, upvoted answers have benefited from open-minded or non-Christian users who are no longer active on the site. I don't think my answer quality has dropped, so I have no other explanation for the trend line I've seen. Do you?
Where I could spend half an hour working up a decent answer to just about anything during the first year and easily get 10+ votes out of it, after the first year twice as much effort into an answer would pick up a measly 4 votes. As traffic grows, vote patterns dilute. So yes, I would like to suggest that there are other explanations for the trend.
To my knowledge they have never been rejected by the site as valid contributions showing how passages are interpreted even if the conclusions of your perspective are not always adopted by everybody. Would you have it any other way? Would you have a minority view voted out of sync with other answers just because it was minority? Would you have your Jewish perspective be marked as accepted all the time when its in conflict with other views?
@MonicaCellio Reviewing voting patterns on your answers I do see a general down trend lately. However I would like to suggest that there are possibly alternate interpretations for this. For one thing, I noted something very similar across the board on C.SE. As we started getting farther away from the initial excitement of beta and a new site, the voting volume took a pretty heavy hit.
To compound that, you should consider the fact that you've been frustrated with the site for must of the last year, and however subtle this has/does have an effect on your answers. You are less enthusiastic about tackling issues than you were at first. You are less willing to step out and propose alternate views, sticking more closely to basic questions were you know your perspective will be less contested.
I'm not saying there is a radical shift in your quality, but your state of mind has subtle effects on the actions you take that easily compound into the effect you see -- without your proposed cause necessarily being true at all.
I'm not discounting that there might be more too it. Your heavier participation in comments, particularly critical of other people's content, probably has garnered you a few "followers" who know your name, don't agree or appreciate the criticism and are less inclined to upvote your content when they see your name.
It's not supposed to work this way, we all wish it didn't, but I also know human nature and some folks are going to be reticent to encourage a user that they just butted heads with somewhere else.
5 hours ago, by
Monica Cellio For the last several months my posts have been less-well received -- few votes, few or no comments, a whole lot of "meh". This does not seem to depend on the content; I wonder if there are people who are just not interested in anything I post. I don't know if my posts are even being read much.
@MonicaCellio So your answers aren't controversial? And people aren't as critical of them? Maybe the old timers pretty much trust what you're saying and we're all busy trying to teach the new guys? Maybe this is partly amplified by what I was saying before about you aren't stepping out into controversial territory as much. Maybe this is just a continued factor of higher traffic diluting attention from individual posts.
Obviously that's a lot of questions that I don't necessarily have answers for and a lot of suggested scenarios that neither of us can prove either way. But I'd be interested in hearing your feedback on this feedback.
I asked the question in the first place because I'm trying to get my head around ... exactly what I asked actually: how you feel about your own participation. Obviously none of this even even touches on our discussion about site direction and our overall aims or how we handle others participation.
But I've been having a hard time discerning from your various commentary how you view the difference between your participation as a contributing user and your requirements for every other contributor.
I don't want to assume too much about your motives. (Esp not after lecturing you on the point!) That's why I'm asking all these questions in the first place, and why I'd like to hear your reaction to my reactions. In the interest of you being able to correct my impressions, I will say this much.
Really I'm sure rationally it is NOT your intent to come off this way, but sometimes if feels like you have a "my way or the highway" ultimatum going on. It sometimes doesn't feel like you're willing to grant room for differing beliefs and opinions to exist in the same sphere.
Again, I put that feeling out there not as statement of fact or even what I believe, but specifically so you know how I sometimes feel and what I'm trying to correct. I'm asking these questions so I have something to put in place to counter that impression which I presume to be untrue.
...and please accept my apologies for the outrageous abuse of the chat format.
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