Again, sorry if all of this seems, you know, too extra on my part. It's just... I guess I was concerned over the candidates who were nominating themselves in the election phase
> "I think hermeneutics should be less academic and more popular without losing scholarship. It should help participants to get closer to God and not just to satisfy the curiosity of the inquirers. This platform has the potential to serve as a unifying force for common Christian beliefs based on the formal process of objective and logical argumentation. Do not underestimate this. No such potentially unifying global platform has ever existed in the history of Christendom."
In one sense, yes I agree, Biblical Hermeneutics SE shouldn't be intimidating for newcomers (that was the sense I got here). I mean, I largely avoided this site for a while because it felt very intimidating with all the fancy Greek and Hebrew and citations, etc. But all the same, to say that the site should be less scholarly diminishes the point of Stack Exchange
My thought is that the text and its interpretation should be accessible to all. I kinda think of it like Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time for the Bible.
@JonEricson Right! I guess it would require a tremendous amount of effort per question though, considering one needs to analyze the context, meaning, and its relevant translation all the while keeping it succinct enough to avoid the wall-of-text effect
It's probably super difficult unless you have a PhD in the field :P
Anyhow, going back to tagging, do you mind if I do some more snooping around the site and propose a method of tagging? Again, I don't know exactly how the community is going to react to that, but doesn't really look like anyone else is interested
@JonEricson Okay. In the process of writing a full length response (about half-way through), by here's the Tl;DR I'll be starting with, so you can point out anything that needs clarification, is dubious, or something I need to expand on
> - My philosophy in tagging is "less is more". Tag what is essential for the question to make sense, tag what is essential for people to look back and reference to in the future. Avoid creating excess tags, because *somebody* has to write the excerpts, and also, you only have five tag spaces anyways. Those tags better be good. - In general, secondary tags in Biblical Hermeneutics should be somehow related to the TEXT itself. Whether these are questions on the text translation of the text (e.g., language tags, translation version tags, etc.), textual intricacies (e.g. grammar, word study, f…
If anyone else has any feedback as well, I would love to here some as well
@curiousdannii I go more in-depth about why we should use person tags in my meta response, but there's a lot of inconsistencies in how they're applied, and I think it confuses the scope of the question
@curiousdannii Inconsistencies and redundancies
Why tag a question as luke and synoptic-gospels? Why tag something as jesus when the question has nothing to do with Jesus?
@PrinceNorthLæraðr By all means point out specific inconsistencies and redundancies, but to propose a complete overhaul of tagging (which removing dozens of tags would be) you'd better have some excellent reasons
No doubt there are some badly tagged questions. Questions tagged "Jesus" that have nothing to do with him should have that tagged removed. That doesn't imply an overhaul is justified.
@PrinceNorthLæraðr I'd summarise it as: 1) tag the book of the Bible 2) tag a translation if that's relevant, or greek/hebrew 3) tag an approach to interpretation (source/textual-criticism/historical/etc) 4) add anything else you think is relevant and that might help you find other related questions
Tags don't determine the scope of questions. They are indexing tools.
Well, like on all sites in the network, anyone with enough rep points can make their own tags. We trust that most people will use their own judgement to tag in a helpful way. And on occasions when there are disputes we take it to meta.
@curiousdannii A cursory look through the "jesus" tag seems to reveal that a some of the questions are because Jesus spoke the word, while the other are because it deals with the topic of Jesus
Rather than starting a meta discussion, it might be better if you just started suggesting some tag edits. That will both make an immediate impact, and if any of them are rejected it will help you get a feel for what the community does and doesn't want its tag system to be
1) It easily identifies what the question is about 2) Helps people in the future to see questions related to said tags 3) It allows experts to either be notified if a certain question asks with a question with that tag or to find questions which include that tag
Let me think
The two primary functions are identification and back-tracking (is that the right word?)
Considering site traffic I guess people tags aren't bad but I'm still left with whether they're necessary. I couldn't really find a tagging philosophy here
@JackDouglas I think point #3 might be impaired by the tagging system. Some questions are either missing vital tags (such as language tags) in favor of tagging with bunch of the same tags
@JackDouglas Made up a tag for the sake of argument
I guess the main problem isn't perhaps with the tagging system (the community seems to be doing fine with its general methods of tagging), I guess I'm just confused because its very vague
sure, but my point was going to be that I could ask two good questions about enoch and I think it would be worthy of a tag if I did — though it isn't a hill I'd want to die on
I was talking more like messianic-prophesy over just prophesy? I understand there are big differences between the two, but quote shog9
> "Please resist the urge to create an unnecessary hierarchy in the naming of tags, or create tags that are excessively specific. Unless history would mean something completely different when paired with bible than when paired with, say, law, there's no need for this. You can let the tags stand alone, apply them when needed, and let the system give you bible history and law history questions.
Same thing goes for interpretation. Combine it with bible or catechism or apocrypha or whatever to give it context."
I'm not a hundred percent against messianic-prophecy. I do understand that there are people who specialize in Messianic prophesies and plenty have legitimate PhDs in the subject.
I'm not sure if it's necessary to create a messiah tag for that. But I would think maybe jesus (though I do have my issues with the Jesus tag BUT) and prophesy should easily convey the same meaning... though I guess Jewish users would disagree
specific suggestions like these are really useful on meta — I think more useful than the "let's change everything" sort of posts which never get everyone behind them
you can have an end goal in mind but getting there is sometimes one step at a time :)
True. But this doesn't really resolve the main question I have on mind which is "when they're supposed to be used, and how it should be used, and why it should be used"
Are you a big fan of neat rules? There are always the edge cases and grey areas. It would be nice to have a list of principles on meta somewhere though, if that is what you mean.
@JackDouglas I am a fan of neat rules, but I do know that no tagging system is perfect. With that being said, I would just like to see principals here though
We have two contrasting opinions on the review queue, but the reason for the rejection is because it was.. "deviating from authorial intent"? Because I removed two tags that basically said the same thing?
Jeff Atwood says, "It is my strong belief that the tags page is an essential map of what your community is, and is not, about." Many sites have a primary set of tags that categorize questions. On Arqade, those primary tags are the only tag most questions carry. It's easy to see the site is abo...
@PrinceNorthLæraðr I think there is probably room for a new, 'What is our tagging philosophy?' question that is actually asking for a broad overview of the philosophy/principles here
I got into a fight a few years ago with a friend of a friend. My friend was incredibly apologetic when we talked in person. He felt so bad. (And so did I.)
Jeff Atwood says, "It is my strong belief that the tags page is an essential map of what your community is, and is not, about." Many sites have a primary set of tags that categorize questions. On Arqade, those primary tags are the only tag most questions carry. It's easy to see the site is abo...
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