Hi

@Omar Let's stop with all those shîite/sunni disputes, and make unified answers, that's the only way Islam.SE will improve itself.

@Hakim it will also require better questions being asked

@Daniel True, and it seems the quality of the questions decreases.

This is what I meant in my Meta question

@Hakim

@Omar that is so not the case.

if someone explicitly wants a Shi'ite answer, then giving him anything that's not a Shi'ite answer is not helping him.

that's in direct opposition to the Stack Exchange model: Focussed answers to focussed questions.

-_-

Might as well just shut down the site entirely and post the text of the Qur'an instead. Because all answers are in there somewhere.

What you're suggesting is basically taking away everything that makes Stack Exchange valuable, and turning it into yet another forum. We already have too many of those, and finding actual answers in those is already a mess.

@goldPseudo shutting down the site isn't a solution. There should be some sort of discussion. The questioner/visitor decides which path to follow, the only one who decides his fate.

@goldPseudo Then SE should allow one and only one answer for each question.

multiple answers per question is perfectly reasonable.

the problem with opening an "all perspectives should be supported" policy is that those answers are rarely co-valid.

and the voting structure breaks down entirely.

becomes a popularity contest instead of a useful gauge to how useful a particular answer is.

that would be like if Stack Overflow decided to go "all languages are valid answers": Someone with a problem in C++ would end up needing to write a vague question and end up with answers in Java, Fortran, LOGO and Turbo Pascal. Which doesn't help him with his C++ problem at all.

which pretty much helps nobody: The person with the C++ problem still doesn't have his problem solved, and we have no reason to believe that anybody also has that same problem in Fortran.

so the questioner (and all the expertise he was able to bring to the table) is unlikely to return, because he didn't get an answer to his question. he got an answer to a bunch of questions that he didn't ask.

if we're not answering questions that people actually have then what point do we as a Q&A site even have?

voting needs to be based on the notion of how useful that particular answer is to that particular question. otherwise the whole SE model collapses.

@goldPseudo This is applicable if Islam SE is called "All Religions". But it's specific, Islam, not any other religion/creed.

@Omar so? "Islam" is a rather loose umbrella.

in case you haven't noticed, there's a lot of people who insist that their interpretation of Islam is the true Islam, and these people often disagree with each other at very fundamental levels.

opening questions to multiple perspectives is only really useful if those perspectives are co-valid. otherwise, it's pretty much the definition of "too opinion-based".

but if i, for example, ask a question explicitly seeking a Hanafi perspective on a topic, that's because that's all I want: the Hanafi perspective on that topic. i have less than zero interest in non-Hanafi perspectives.

@goldPseudo we all know that Sunna and Shiia are not alike. Both have different points of view in many major and minor topics.

yeah. so?

allow both to give their opinions at the same time

no.

let the questioner read and decide.

ok

that's what the questioner is doing by asking the question.

he knows what he wants. he asks for it.

you're the one suggesting we give him stuff he doesn't want.

what value is there in giving users stuff they don't want? all it does is add noise to the site.

@goldPseudo if you say so.

@goldPseudo But then one should replicate such questions to ask about all such viewpoints.

@Hakim @Omar if the OP is interested in all views, let him ask for all views or at least leave that part of the question out. @goldPseudo 's analogy to SO is very apt. If the asker is interested only in the Sunni pov, let him ask about the Sunni pov. If someone else sees that question and is interested in what Shia think, he can ask a new question.

Although in general, I think that a good question in most cases would request all points of view unless the question is only valid for one group

They want to avoid any lengthy discussions between different sects.

And a good answer, usually, should give both Sunni and Shia pov

questioner/visitors should know the difference between all views and choose what to take and what to leave behind

@Daniel +1 this is what I'm saying.

@Daniel That's what I was basically saying.

السلام عليكم @Mujahidمجاهد

@Omar but if only one pov is requested, don't give then extra stuff they don't want

@Omar وعليكم سلام

@Daniel back to zero, I will retract my "star" ;)

@Daniel But then one would have to make another question asking about the other pov

if someone has a different question, then it should be asked as a different question. what's wrong with that?

@goldPseudo Nothing, except that it would make things less ordered

if you want an answer that covers all perspectives, then ask that.

just ask for what you want. i don't know what's so hard to understand here.

don't try to shoehorn unwanted answers into someone else's question.

but vague questions with no actual criteria to determine what makes any particular answer actually useful are antithesis to the Stack Exchange model.

counterquestions is a solution IMO.

My personal opinion is that questions shouldn't restrict themselves to one point of view unless it only makes sense according to one point of view. For example, "Sunnis believe abc, so how could xyz be true?" where Shia don't believe abc so the question doesn't apply to them.

But a question about which different sects disagree, ask it in a way that allows both answers to come out, ideally from one answer

*answerer

But that's my issue with questions. When it comes to answers, I agree with @goldPseudo. Don't give them stuff they didn't ask for

@Daniel that would be nice in ideal, but in about two years of practice it just results in users regurgitating posts from their preferred scholars.

which helps nobody, especially since these regurgitated posts are usually already easily found on the Internet.

so rather than having a user doing a google search and ending up with half a dozen different perspectives and no clue which one to follow, they're just asking the same thing here and getting a half a dozen different perspectives and no clue which one to follow.

it's not making the Internet a better place, it's just making the Internet more efficiently useless.

@goldPseudo that is extremely interesting to me that you consider islam.se to be a place where people can go to find answers to practical problems. Over on j.se, we are extremely careful to always remind users that they shouldn't rely on us for practical decisions

"practical" is hard to define in this context.

for example, in my studies of Islamic finance, needing to know exactly the Hanafi position on riba was practical because it was directly applicable to exactly what I was doing. that was a practical question with a practical answer that this site (ideally) is perfectly suited for.

i do agree that a lot of "practical" questions are ill-suited to the site, better asked of a reputable scholar/imam/etc.

but that's less because of flaws in the SE model as it is about the questioner not really knowing what he himself is actually asking.

(in other words, they're asking for someone to solve their problems for them rather than expend the effort to solve them themselves.)

such questions should be downvoted to oblivion. they're not. that is a problem.

@goldPseudo it's not a flaw in the SE model, it's just not what the SE model it's designed for.

Also re: downvoting those questions, why not close them?

J.SE has a close reason that the question asks for a practical ruling

we probably should. i really haven't had time to do much of anything proactive meta-wise after all the energy moderating the site proper takes up.

and most of the users on the site just don't care enough about it to actually do it themselves.

Maybe I'll make a meta post this weekend