text:
What types of questions can I ask on this site?
Introduction
There are lots of important questions about Christianity and faith which cannot be effectively handled on this site: questions about personal lives, our relationships with God, and what is the ultimate truth in the universe. In order to prevent this site from descending into fights over opinions and bickering about the right way to do things, we have decided that questions should be focused on what can be objectively discussed about Christianity.
This page explains the major types of questions which can be asked here. 98% of questions that are asked on this site fit into one of these categories, and if you can edit your question to fit one of these categories then it will probably be accepted. And hopefully answered!
Theology & Practice
These questions are the foundation of this site. If you have a question about the theology or practices of a specific denomination (such as the Catholic Church, Anglicanism, or Latter Day Saints) or movement (such as Pentecostalism, Creationism, or Calvinism) then we're here to help. Please clearly identify the denomination or movement in the question, and also please tag it.
Examples:

At what point is a new soul created according to the Catholic Church?
According to Calvinism, why does God give mercy to some and not to others?
What works do the LDS Church recognize as Scripture?
How do creationists explain the genetic diversity of animals after Noah's Ark?
Why do Popes have seven candlesticks on the altar at Mass?

Biblical basis
Almost all Christians would say that their beliefs are supported by the Bible. Use the biblical-basis tag to ask what the Biblical basis for a belief is. Note however that we don't generally allow these questions for the beliefs of arbitrary individuals. You should consider showing in your question who believes the thing you are asking about, or at least be prepared to explain if challenged by another user. You should be able to point to a denomination or a well known preacher or teacher; someone's blog on the internet probably won't suffice.
Note that for denominations like the Latter Day Saints which have a broader scriptural canon than the Bible, the "Biblical" basis should be thought of as including all the texts of their canon. Note also that occasionally a belief is said to not have a Biblical basis by its own proponents, but this is really quite rare.
Examples:

What is the Biblical basis for Total Depravity?
On what do Catholics base their doctrine of the eternal virginity of Mary?
What is the biblical justification for permitting female pastors?
What is the scriptural basis for clerical celibacy?
What is the Biblical basis for Universal salvation?

Exegesis
Most exegesis questions should be asked at the Biblical Hermeneutics site. The exegesis questions that do get asked here must be scoped to a particular branch of Christianity and should indicate why an answer from that perspective in particular is needed. For example, many of the exegesis questions that get asked here ask how a passage that appears on the surface to be inconsistent with the teaching of some denomination is understood by that denomination.
Examples:

How do Calvinists interpret Acts 7:51 in light of the doctrine of 'irresistible grace?'
If Jesus was resurrected as a man how can Paul say his apostleship was not through a man but it was through Jesus at Galatians 1:1?
How can it be said that Paul taught a pre-tribulational rapture of the Church given 2 Thessalonians chapter 2?
How do Trinitarians explain John 17:3?
Does "all have sinned" (Rom. 3:23, 5:12) include every single human being?

History
We have many questions on church history, historical theology, and the origin and development of ideas and practices.
Examples:

When in the development of trinitarian doctrine was the word "persons" first applied to God?
Was the Nicene Creed accepted under duress?
What is the earliest known instance of a petition directed to Mary?
What of Augustine's ecclesiology was rejected in the Reformation?
What doctrinal changes did the Westminster Confession bring to the Church of Scotland?

Overviews
Overview questions are usually the hardest questions to answer, but they can also be the most informative. Unlike most questions here, they are not scoped to a single denomination, but instead inquire about all of Christianity. (Or all Trinitarians, all Protestants, etc.) The catch is that we require each answer to summarise the positions of all major branches of Christianity, and if possible, some of the smaller ones as well. Anyone wanting to answer an overview question should ideally cover: Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Protestant (with separate sections for Lutheran, Anglican, Reformed, Arminian, Baptist, etc. if they have significant differences), Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter Day Saints.
It may be hard to find answers from all of these; it's okay to come back later and edit the answer to add more. Many people may collaborate on an answer to cover all the branches. Each branch doesn't need to have its own paragraph, so branches with the same or similar answers should be discussed together. And it is possible for an overview question to be closed because it would be too broad. For example, asking for an overview of church polities would be closed because there are just too many.
Examples:

What is an overview of Christian viewpoints on the accuracy and truthfulness of the Bible?
How is Union with Christ understood across Christianity?
What is an overview of Reformed beliefs about hell?
How do various traditions define the term "sufficient grace"?

Minor question types
The five question types above cover most of the questions this site receives, but there are several other minor question types which are also acceptable.
Denomination survey
These questions ask which denominations meet certain specific criteria. Use the denomination-survey tag.

What churches identify themselves as being Modalist?
Which Christians refuse vaccinations on religious grounds?

Comparative religion
Questions asking for comparisons between Christianity and other religions are allowed if they focus on factual details or what Christianity says or implies about the other religion.

What is the basis for the belief that Christianity and Islam worship different gods?
Did the teachings of Buddha influence Jesus?

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


text:
Is it accaptable to say, “You're a cult and you’re going to hell”?
Are we allowed to call any group a cult and imply that they don’t have salvation, or that their faith isn’t good enough and they are going to hell?

You might find In what different ways is the word "cult" used as a label inside Christianity? useful in navigating the different ways "cult" gets used inside Christianity.

@Shog9 please help

@Caleb your version of hate speech isn't "correct".

Neither my comment nor the post I linked to says anything about hate speech.

Hate speech is, outside the law, speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of e.g. race, religion, gender, disability, or sexual orientation.

@caseyr547. @-mentions do not work for people who are not already participants in a conversation. (They work for post authors, post editors, and other commenter only.) In other words, you're not going to attract Shog9's attention by @-mentioning him here.

@TRiG yeah i was afraid of that and i dont have access to chat anymore...

@caseyr547 if you'd like to contact a community manager, please use the "contact us" page linked from the bottom of any page on the site. It sends an email to the community team.

@waxeagle i sent an email to shog i doubt he will respond i may go troll jon on bible hermanutics

Throwing personal accusations around like "you're going to hell" is never an appropriate use of this site.
On the other hand the term "cult" does have specific meanings that are relevant and the correct technical terminology for some contexts. In particular when answering from the perspective of a specific group, using the term in the way that they use in and identifying something as a cult in the way that they do may be appropriate.
As sensitive a topic as it is, some groups using the label "Christian" believe that some other groups have wrong beliefs that those wrong beliefs well end them up in hell. This is serious stuff and should be treated carefully. This site is not the place to work out who is ultimately right or wrong, but in the scope of some questions, these beliefs will come up and should be addressed frankly and in a way that is accurately representative of the groups that hold those views.
Is short:

Personal name calling and diagnosis of other users spiritual state is off limits.
Clinical, academic treatment of the views of various Christian groups is within the scope of this site even when it deals with such sensitive issues as various groups that believe others are wrong.

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


text:
Fix > so that it works for disabled people
As best I can tell there is an incompatibility with text to speech software for the citation material using ">". Would someone take a look at it?
How does calling someone an "idiot" make one bound for Gehenna?
User Bye can provide more information and correct me if I'm wrong.

There doesn't seem to be any point in downvoting this: reporting the issue seems to me to be the right thing to do. Having looked at the HTML of the question, I can't see any reason why web-to-speech should have failed to find the link, though.

The link in that question is actually before the quote block, not inside it.

I don't actually think the problem is with the blockquote syntax, but rather that the translation was embedded in the URL of the link and not listed in the text of the question.
I would recommend an alternate strategy of including the translation in the text of the post.

The HTML of the link is constructed entirely normally, though. Link text to read out The structure of the URL shouldn't matter.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


text:
Why do Christians need ratings to reply to your questions?
Why must a Christian have a high rating to be able to answer a question?

You shouldn't need reputation to answer a question.

@Victoria seems like SE was going through an update and blocked everything, try again

@Victoria: I migrated this question here as it is not so much about Christianity as it is about this site. As Alex said, SE was doing some work, so the sites went into read-only mode for several minutes. You don't need any rep to ask a question, so go ahead and try again.

I think you may be confusing a couple of issues as if they were one. Let me try to separate them out.

It sounds like the SE servers that host this site may have been having an issue as some point yesterday that kicked the entire site into read-only mode for a few minutes. Of course anything you make have tried during that window may have failed.
I suspect, however, that you are thinking of another issue:
This site works on a system of incremental privileges. As you earn reputation points for quality contributions you will earn more and more privileges on this site. That being said it does not require any reputation to either ask or answer questions. Everybody, yourself included, starts out at 1 rep and if you review the privilege chart you well see last item shows that 1 rep is all you need to ask or answer.
Commenting, on the other hand, requires at least 50 reputation points. You can actually comment on your own questions or answers at any time even starting out at 1 rep, but commenting on other people's posts takes a little bit more. 50 rep is not really that hard to earn if you are interested in the subject (just a couple decent questions or answers will get you there) and this keeps the system from flooding with rubbish comments from passers-by who aren't really interested in the subject matter so much as ridiculing it or whatever.
This is also a subtle nod to the fact that comments are second class citizens in the SE ecosystem. All SE sites are focused on the business of questions and answers and we really want the energy going into those, not into discussing things as tends to happen in comments.

I hope this helps you understand just a little more about how this site works. I realize it's different than most sites on the net and works differently than a forum, but the signal-to-noise ratio resulting from these differences is well worth it!


text:
Should we encourage/discourage bait titles? Should titles stand on their own?
How strict should we be on question titles?
There are a few questions on the site that are on topic, but at reading the title on its own it appears off-topic. However, I notice that this is tolerated when the title is worded in a way that will likely help the page with SEO and generally is more interesting sounding than the actual question. I get the feeling that Richard baited the question with a catchy title, but was clever enough to make the post on-topic.
For example Was Jesus a separate god? has this in the body:

The New World Translation of John 1 seems to indicate that Jesus was a separate god from the Father.

1 In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.
2 This one was in [the] beginning with God.
3 All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence.

How does the concept of the trinity fit with this concept of Jesus being a separate God?

The actual question is the last sentence. For the record, I personally think they are close enough to the same question.
What should we do about this? Encourage, discourage, edit, let it be ...

A related meta post: What to do when titles and questions don't match

I think bait titles should be changed, because the title colors my perception of the description.

I'm not sure I see what you are getting at.  The question title seems like a general shortening of the actual question.  It might be better if it included "within the trinity" in the question, but that seems a relatively minor point.  My initial impression of the question was still the same as what the question actually was in this case.

@AJ That could be because your experience has taught you to only sort of trust the titles.

@fredsbend - out of curiosity, what do you see as the difference between what it appears to be asking and what it is actually asking?

@AJ "Was Jesus a separate God?" is a distinct Truth question. When I read it, I first think that's off-topic, then I want to click through because the way it is worded would lead to debates, which interest me. The actual question is asking if this 'separate god' idea can be or is reconciled with the common Trinity doctrine.

I actually don't have any problem with this, but I think it is happening enough that we should lay down a guideline for how lax we will be when titles and bodies don't match like this.

My two cents would be to edit the title and leave a note explaining why... And link back to this answer.
The bottom line is that for people searching for an answer it's counter-productive to have misleading question titles. The mismatch makes it harder for end users.  Most people just scan search result titles and only read the contents if the title appears to be a match. Good posts will be missed if there's a mismatch.
As a such, they should not only be discouraged, they should be removed or edited to remove the conflict.

David expanded on his thoughts in a second answer.

They look like two completely different questions to me.
"Was Jesus a separate god?" According to perspective X he was.
"How does the concept of the trinity fit with this concept of Jesus being a separate God?" According to Trinitarians that's a non-sequitur.

Yes, they are different. I'm asking what the community thinks we should do about this kind of scenario.

Well it's always bad for the title not to match the body of the question! I submit edits if that's the case.

Second Answer:  They should be discouraged.
Not to go too deep, but there are a few reasons it's just not a wise thing to do...  And it all goes to "who is our audience, who is our desired audience, and who is our unwanted audience?
While this site doesn't exist solely to serve Christians, and we're not a Christian site, it should go without saying that most of our traffic is going to be from one of the following groups:

Christians who want to learn more about Christianity or share their knowledge
Seekers wanting to learn what "Christianity teaches"
Non-Christians who have a scholarly interest, or a desire to participate constructively.
Atheists wanting to poke the funny little Christians to get a reaction or score some points
People from other religions that want to point out the inferiority of our belief system compared to theirs.

So let's look at those groups, and make generalizations about how they tend to view such questions.  I realize every individual is unique, but I doubt anyone with experience here would argue the general patterns I'm about to describe.
Christians that want to learn or teach: obviously that's a target audience.  We want to attract those people above all.
Christians, for the most part, get offended when the God that we love is mocked, or not shown the respect and reverence that we feel he deserves.
Generally, it's not a good idea to go out offending your target audience.  Any good business person, PR specialist, or marketing intern can tell you that.
Seekers: - Not exactly our target audience, but still the types of people we want to attract and feel comfortable here.  They're here to participate constructively.  Sure, they usually want to know about Truthy things, but usually they're honestly looking for answers.  If we can edit their questions into a format that fits the site guidelines, we will, and we'll give answers that are helpful, but skirt the Truthiness issue.  If we can't do that, and they insist on advice questions, etc. we'll kindly point out that we're not qualified to pass out that sort of advice, and they're better off finding a local Pastor than asking strangers on the web.
They're also likely to be turned off by juvenile or bait questions.
Non-Christians that want to participate constructively.  They are rare.  And their insight is valuable.  We've had a very small handful of atheists that fit this category.  They play by the rules, and are overall respectful, and often more knowledgeable than most Christians.  We want them here.
These are people mature enough to be able to participate constructively with people whose views they think are wrong, and perhaps even silly and naive.  People with that level of maturity aren't attracted by bathroom humor, they're attracted to intellectual stimulation, interaction with other adults.
Atheists who want to poke fun at the funny little Christians with their naive belief in some invisible "God":  Yeah... we've had plenty of them, and with rare exceptions, it never turns out good. In my entire time here, I can think of three people in the atheist category that participate constructively here.  Quite frankly, I personally don't want to deal with that sort of headache.
These are the ones who like to get a rise out of Christians, so they tend to love bait questions.  Bait questions will definitely attract and encourage these.  Just what we don't need around here.
People from other religions that want to point out the inferiority of our belief system compared to theirs.
This tends to be a mixed bag.  Bear in mind that "people from other belief systems that want to participate constructively" is covered in the third group.  Here I'm specifically addressing the ones here to tell us how Jesus was a liar, and we should bow down to (insert their god here) or face the consequences.
Bait questions don't generally attract these.  They tend to be as offended or more offended by them.  So for this group, it's a non-issue.

So, with all of that said, the harm is that such questions may draw traffic, but they draw exactly the type of traffic that we don't want, and drive away exactly the types that we do.  Why on earth would we want that?


text:
Should we accept "Help me find this thing" questions, or "identify this" questions?
Recently we received this question:
Kids christian music from the 80's
which asks us to help him identify some music he remembers listening to when he was a child in the 1980's (though I can't imagine why).
I first thought that this was close to the culture/fiction topics that the community generally does not want, but I do not think that fits.
Straight up, this is simply "Identify this" questioning.
It's not necessarily a bad thing. Other SE sites have had success allowing them. English.SE has word and phrase requests. SciFi.SE has story identification requests. Gardening has plant-identification requests. They do make for interesting questions sometimes.
On the negative side, it is far from academic, which we strive to be. Allowing this would be taking the site in a direction that is less academic than it is now, but that does not mean that we have to disallow the truly academic questions.
It is currently +5/-1, indicating that the community thinks it's alright, and has no close votes. It actually has my close vote now with a comment linking to this because that will put it in the review queue and get more eyes on it.
If not, we will simply link to this for close reasons.
If yes, then we have some work ahead of us. We will need to make a few new tags and change a few of the commonly linked meta posts explaining the site to accommodate this. We will also need to lay down some rules for it, the first being that they must have a detailed, textual description, which this one currently does.

The question is..

Definitively answerable
Not contentious (Truthy)
Within the realm of Christianity
A type of question allowed on other StackExchange sites
Useful to someone

I say let them stand. They may not be academic, but even the most esteemed universities have their trivia buffs. There's no harm, and it opens up the site to interesting questions not likely to push the site into an argumentative direction.
We could use more safe classes of questions. It's been too long since I've seen a truly interesting question that's acceptable. This seems like a type of question that's both safe AND fun.
As far as guidelines, I'm not sure we need to worry about it just yet. On the  sci fi and movies sites, people tend to handle unclear questions with down-votes and comments explaining the down-votes. If it becomes a problem, we can address it then.

"This seems like a type of question that's both safe AND fun." So why disallow it? I like the logic.

It's not allowed on all SE sites... In fact, it's disallowed on all the big ones.

I'm going to take the other position and say that we should not allow these questions.  David makes some valid points in his answer, but I think most of them don't actually apply. I will address them individually, then provide my own arguments in conclusion

Definitively answerable

Yes, it is answerable. But so are the vast majority of questions on StackOverflow and SuperUser. That doesn't make them on topic here.

Not contentious (Truthy)

"Identify this" questions are generally not contentious, but that doesn't make them good questions, or on-topic. The majority of SE sites prohibit them.

Within the realm of Christianity

Barely. But even so, that doesn't make it on-topic.

A type of question allowed on other StackExchange sites

On a minority of sites.  Movies.SE allows a very specific subset of "Identify this" questions.
"Identify this" questions don't really apply to the majority of sites, so to say they are allowed is a bit of an over-statement. "Identify this code fragment" isn't really a thing.

Useful to someone

Again not a valid test for on-topicness. If someone is asking, it's because it is useful to someone.
I see this collection of reasons boiling down basically to two meaningful things:

The question is good-subjective (although the minority of shopping questions are).
The question kinda sorta tangentially relates to this web site.

If that's all there were to the story, I would agree with letting such questions just "slip by." But there's also the stated purpose of this web site:

Christianity - Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for committed Christians, experts in Christianity and those interested in learning more.

Does a question about where to find 80's children music (even if it is Christian in nature) help to advance this cause? Does any shopping question (even if it is good-subjective) help advance this cause?
I think it probably doesn't, except in the slightest, most tangential way imaginable.
What Christian experts are going to know about 80's children music?  Perhaps those with children. But they're just as likely to know about Sesame Street or Power Rangers.
Does the answer to this question help advance the cause of creating experts in Christianity? Again, I think not. Me knowing about some 80's kids music no more makes me an expert on Christianity than knowing about Punky Brewster.
I believe this question is really a pop-culture shopping question posing as a Christianity question, only because it happens to overlap with Christian pop culture of the 80's.  But that's not enough to make it within scope for the purpose of our site (nor the majority of other SE sites).

Well, I think you make some very big points, but how many questions do you think we will actually get like this. So far, we have two since this meta post. I'm look for some old Christian music from when I was a kid and I'm look for a red word Bible api or xml or something. I'm with you, I think, but I don't think there is any real danger to the site if we do allow them. Also, hard to undo 12 ups on meta in only 2 months.


text:
Is there anyway to request feedback/coaching about my activity?
I consider myself very open to constructive criticism. Is there a way for me to get a pulse on my behavior...other than random chatting. It would be cool to receive feedback about inexperienced mistakes made (i. e. spamming, bullying, etc.). Its possible that I am guilty without knowing it.
Proper etiquette only improves communities...
Forgive is this is already answered.

I've done something like this with a couple of users via chat, but usually only initiate it if I see the same problems cropping up over and over. And it takes a lot of my time so I'd prefer to only do it if its neccesary

Yeah, what Wax said. If you really want to do this, open a chat room, post some links to your worse posts, then maybe someone will stop by. But you don't really need it and it does take a lot of time.

Chatting and/or asking for input on meta (like this), both of which it seems you have done.  Meta is also a great place to ask general etiquette questions since this is where we can discuss how the site runs.  Coaching requests really work best on meta if you have a specific case in mind that you want to know if you could have done something better rather than general questions though (which are likely too broad).

Thanks everyone...very helpful.


text:
Why am I permanent banned from chat?
I am unable to access chat. Why am I permanent banned from chat? How am I supposed to communicate with moderators?

You are not..exactly.... banned from chat.
You are currently suspended on Cog Sci for 244 more days. As this is the site you selected as your chat parent site, you are banned from chat for the remainder of that suspension.
If you have need of chat, your parent site can be changed, although for now I'm going to leave that for you to discuss with SE.
Please feel free to use the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of the page to do so.

Ok why don't you just let Jon answer

@caseyr547 because you're more likely to get a rapid response via "contact us" than hoping Jon happens by our meta.

Wax your funny another person might buy that but we both know of ways of getting his attention

@wax Who is Jon?

@ElberichSchneider Assumably Jon Ericson, an SE Community Manager and former mod of BH

@wax Thank you.

@caseyr547: Just curious - What happened on CogSci.SE? Based on your activity, it looks like you were pushing the envelope a bit; but certainly nothing that would warrant a suspension.


text:
Should I delete my answer (after the question was edited)?
Why does God encourage humans to beat other humans? was edited to make it more appropriate for Stack Exchange. However, the edit effectively made both existing answers no longer answers to the question since they do not reference "prominent theologians and/or apologists". (My answer references a statement by Jesus, certainly a prominent theologian, on the existence of divorce in the law and extends/applies this exegesis to beating one's slave; however, Jesus did not directly address the law's permission of beating one's slave.)
Since my answer has received three upvotes (most of which were probably received before the edit and "I like this" voting might be more common on Christianity), deleting it would earn the Disciplined badge.
In any case, I intend to wait before taking action; the original poster may revert the edit and edit the question into one more appropriate for Stack Exchange without invalidating my answer.

I would wait a few days to see, then delete or edit.

Can your answer be edited to match the new question without changing the basic sentiment by citing references?

Another thing to consider is not answering Truth questions in the first place.

My opinion is that the question should have been closed, rather than edited in the first place.  The editor (who is a mod here, too), tried to narrow the question to fit site guidelines, but IMO, that did more harm than good since there were already answers.
A better solution would have been to close the question as Too Broad, and let the existing answers stand.  Later, the OP, or someone else, could have asked the more specific question if they so desired.

In retrospect, I agree. I think I was trying to be helpful to a newcomer, but maybe being consistent on what gets closed would be more helpful.

In general, a question shouldn't be altered in a way that makes the existing answers no longer fit unless it is an alteration by the original poster specifically because those answers didn't address his question or because the question would otherwise not fit the site (and thus the answers don't fit either unless you have some alternate way in mind to make it so that it still fits the answer and lets the question fit the site.)
In the case where the OP modifies the question, it is best that you delete your answer as it doesn't actually address what the OP was trying to ask.  If you feel it is of value to the site, you can post your own form of the question that you were answering and post your answer with it.
If the question was modified because it can not fit the site and your answer doesn't fit the site either, then it should be deleted as a poor fit.  If the argument is that your answer was answering a "Truth" question, then yes, you should probably delete it if that is the case.
If the question was modified to unnecessarily make the answer not fit, then the edit to the question itself is poor and should be altered or possibly reverted as there is a disagreement over the meaning of the question that only the OP can really answer.
In this particular case, it sounds like the middle option is the one that probably applies.

Since I made the edit, I'll just say that in my opinion, it was the middle option. The question wasn't a fit as it was, and could only have been salvaged by editing.  Most of the answers were of a "Truthy" nature.


text:
What would it take for the site to consider it a must to register a comment for a downvote?
From the understanding that the criteria a user votes +/- on answer is that the answer was useful or not, what would it take to ensure that downvoter leave a comment before their vote is registered?

Could having them leave a comment anonymously, if that is what is preventing them from leaving a comment, help?

Another suggestion is that, in the event of only negative votes, and if the answer has been properly supported, and if the user who answered flagged the mods, if the mods may maintain the voting at '0' if there appears no justifying reason for the negative votes.

Not giving up! Seeking solutions!
3 Give a value of -0.5 to negative vote w/no comments and maintain -1 vote w/comment? i.e incentivize leaving a comment.
Comments especially for a downvote do provide the feedback required so that modifications can be made to enhance the answer.

Commenting on a down vote (like I'm doing now) is etiquette.  You don't enforce etiquette!

dowvoting because pttttfffff.

See how helpful that was? ^^^^ That's just one on many reasons this is never going to happen. Other reasons have been discussed ad nausium on [meta.se] and the feature request emphatically declined. It's simply not compatible with the way the system works.

I think you are all missing a point. How does a downvote with no comments assist with the aims of this site?

@bruisedreed disagree. Any chance to point me to link that downvoting is etiquette. Either one is aiding in shaping an answer or they are not.

Thank you Ward for answering and for your comments and thank you bruisereed, curiousdannii, and Caleb for your feedback and comments. I appreciate your attention to me even when this topic has been discussed ad nausium. This is just me, though, I always seek solutions ...

A down-vote is an aid to shaping a question/answer that requires little effort from the voter - it's a strong signal that you're doing it wrong & you should think again.  A comment is an aid to shaping a question/answer that requires more effort from the commentor - taking the time to do so is a courtesy.

"that requires little effort from the voter"  This is the most important consideration:  I've voted more than anyone else on SE and there's no way I'd've voted as much if I had to explain every singe downvote.

You seem to be hung up on voting being for the person receiving votes. It's not primarily about that at all.

@bruisedreed You appear to be giving your own interpretation to this.

@Caleb If this was working great and people were happy about it, why would would it need to be discussed ad nauseusm as you say it has been? It seems the site/the user who could make a change are not open to feedback perhaps that's why a feature that provides no useful feature continues to stay.

@FMShyanguya It gets discussed ad nauseum because there are always new people (like you) that come along and ask the same question that's been asked before.  Sometimes the peoplet that have been on SE a long time will simply point newcomers to the existing posts.  In this case, you've had a lot of information given to you but you don't seem to have absorbed most of it.  Spend some time on multiple SE sites instead of just over month on one site and then see if you can come up with a better proposal.

Spend some time on multiple SE sites instead of just over month on one site and then see if you can come up with a better proposal. This is useful, thank you!

Can't shake the feeling that this must be a tool for those who do not want to change the system.

Here comes the illogical and unwarranted -1 downvote. Perfect example to my other posts on this site.

Who made that go away? The mods or the person themselves?

I don't really see the point of having this be a separate meta post. Now we have 4 from you on the same subject? Why can't you just add an answer to one of the previous ones? If I was going to link somebody to 'official' responses it would link directly to one of the Meta.SE posts (such as Jeff's) anyway, not to our meta which is more about local site issues than how the whole network does or should function.

Who made what go away? I can't make out what you are even talking about in that comment. As for downvotes on this, at this point the only thing illogical or unwarranted I see is your complaining about them. The downvote tooltip does plenty of explaining: somebody doesn't agree or think this is well researched of useful. At this point even I was reticent to comment along with my downvote because your reaction is so negative.

My previous comment about not seing the point of this as a separate post is obsolete because I merged that other question into this one (including comments and answers) so there is now one post, now multiple. I'm leaving the comment here for a bit to explain why I decided to merge.

This comment: 'Here comes the illogical and unwarranted -1 downvote. Perfect example to my other posts on this site.' and this comment 'Who made that go away? The mods or the person themselves?' were made on this Q&A post - I answered it - :  What is the 'official' response at Meta StackExchange to feature requests regarding downvotes w/comments? (duplicate) before it was marked duplicate and merged.

@FMShyanguya Don't know if you are aware, the voting on all meta sites is more subjective by convention. A vote on a proposal, like this one, simple shows agreement or disagreement. Since there are no rep points on the meta site, this shouldn't be a problem.

@fredsbend Shows you what I know ... I appreciate the education. Thank you!

This has been discussed repeatedly on many meta.SE sites and it's never going to happen.  There are too many problems with requiring comments when you vote:

Voting is already low across every established SE site that I follow.  If you require a comment in order to vote, it'll result in even less voting.
Some questions and answers are so obviously bad that requiring a comment would be a waste of time.
Related: the tool-tip that shows up on the downvote button is usually a good enough explanation
There's no way to make sure the comment would be of any use.  My comment could be "Downvoted because hjgaopfqofjof fjfoijfjfioej"
There is some risk of retaliation if comments aren't anonymous
In some cases, an existing comment captures what's wrong with a post, so it'd be a waste of time for someone else to have to type in the same comment.
Even if the person who gets the comment/downvote doesn't retaliate, they often don't take it well, arguing about the feedback, which becomes an even bigger waste of time.
Or (as the OP did recently), the person who gets the comment simply ignores it - another waste of time.
What do you propose to do about cases where one person leaves a (negative) comment but doesn't downvote?  Shouldn't that also count against the post?

That's all off the top of my head, look on meta.SE if you want even more...

There is some risk of retaliation if comments aren't anonymous obviously you never read my question fully. Please see my second paragraph.

Of course I saw that part, but that's not the only reason people don't leave comments.

One more point: often someone else will have already left the same comment you would.

@FMShyanguya Anonymous comments wouldn't solve these objections and would bring a whole host of abuse opportunities. We have enough problems with non-anonymous comments; we surely don't need to add more.

@Caleb And there is no way to identify those who are abusing the system by downvoting and hold them accountable?

@FMShyanguya Downvotes are not an abuse of the system, they are part of how the system is itended to run. And yes they are anonymous on purpose.

No wonder we are not making progress. abusing the system by downvoting is not equivalent to downvoting.

@FMShyanguya  Then you'd better give a clear explanation of what the difference is - how can the system recognize it?

@Ward I believe no response is required ...

@FMShyanguya This would require a non-anonymous voting scheme, where at least the mods would have to see who made the comment, and therefore the downvote. Voting always was and always will be anonymous to everyone. In fact, only a few of the developers on the SE staff have access to that data and it is supposedly hard to get. The very nature of voting should not be hindered by any requirement, agreement, convention, rule, etc. They are what they are and over several posts over several days you can get a good idea of how a site works with only votes to tell you if the posts are good or not.

And the rep adjustments encourage good posts and discourage bad posts. The system is actually very successfully without comments, and indeed ran for about 18 months without them at all in 2008 and 2009. They added comments not so people could say why they voted one way or the other, but so they could address specific issues with posts, like erroneous facts.

@fredsbend Thanks for the history. I have come to accept it. I felt a bit better when Caleb told me that there wasn't any evidence of targeting. But the one on the receiving end wouldn't necessarily know it. It is annoying when one is putting in the effort to make great posts and contribute to the site. Thank you for the professional communication and for the support.

@fredsbend I think that history plays a huge role in the resistance to change. Those used to how they were introduced to the system and how they used the system, to them everything is just fine, to them has worked well, why change it?

"Some questions and answers are so obviously bad that requiring a comment would be a waste of time."  But it is probably not so obvious to the poster, otherwise they wouldn't have posted it.  More significantly, I keep seeing downvoted questions and answers for which I have no idea why (other than possibly personal disagreement with the idea) they were voted down.  If there is something wrong with  my post (or someone else's) I'd like to learn what it is, not simply be told that it is wrong.  The current situation is very frustrating.

"In some cases, an existing comment captures what's wrong with a post, so it'd be a waste of time for someone else to have to type in the same comment."  Exactly.  But it shouldn't be too onerous to expect people to upvote that comment before they are allowed to downvote the post.  Similarly if no one else has commented against the post yet, perhaps your reasons for downvoting aren't as strong or reasonable as you think they are.  Downvotes should be cast only for a good reason.  I'd rather see downvotes that are more meaningful and reliable, even if it means fewer downvotes in total.

Here are some relevant pointers from Meta.SE on this subject. BillyMailman provided this answer that points out what the 'official' response from SE has been:

The first was marked status-completed in this revision, by Jeff Atwood, around July '09. A quick look at the accepted answer on that question shows it was posted, by Jeff, around that same time. Thus, the accepted answer can be taken as the official position.
The other question there was similarly marked status-declined by Jeff around August 2011. He didn't post an answer, so the official position is mostly just "No.", though SE employees have explained in several places that anonymous commenting of any sort is basically a non-starter, due to potential abuse.

Further reading:

Enable Optional Anonymous Reasons for Downvotes on Questions
Require a comment explaining the reason for the first downvote on a question


text:
Anonymously ask a question
There is certain questions I want to ask but don't want them being linked to me personally. I know nobody knows me personally, but I want to show this sight to some friends and they can link my account to me.
If this is possible, I think it would be a great benefit to the sight if you could anonymously ask a question. Down-votes and up-votes will still apply to the asker of the question, but their points won't be visibly linked to that question.
So when your viewing a user's page, under the reputation spot, maybe there could be a section that says anonymous questions and it could just say points earned in that area.
Also answers and comments could become anonymous in this way too.

You can always log out of your account, or fire up an anonymous session and ask the question without it being linked to your account.
SE sites (all except SO), all support participation that is not tied to your account.
The other option is that if you have participation that you would rather not be associated with your account (questions or answers), you do have the right (per the content license) to request that your user name be removed (up votes and downvotes will also no longer affect your account).
Obviously this is not "Anonymous" in the sense that it's still tied to your account, just without your name. However, these are the two forms of anonymity that are supported and I do not foresee any additional forms being added.

You can also create a second account. SE policy is (or was last I checked) to allow this, so long as it's not being used for abusive behavior (i.e. be sure not to vote on your own posts from another account!)


text:
How does a downvote with no comment assist the answering of a question of the aims of this site?
Follow up on What would it take for the site to consider it a must to register a comment for a downvote?:
How does a downvote with no comments assist in shaping a great answer and contributing toward the aims of this site?

Considering your rough introduction to meta, I think it's probably worth noting that voting on meta posts signals something a bit different than it might on main. On main we discourage voting based on agreement/disagreement with the theology of posts. On meta votes usually do represent agreement or disagreement with ideas. They can also be about other things such as research effort or whatever, but here it's less about post quality than it is about agreeing or disagreeing on specific issues. Just because we all disagree with you on this issue doesn't mean it is wrong to ask on meta.

@Caleb I can live with that because I now have a the picture which I said I will share.

Can't shake the feeling that this must be a tool for those who do not want to change the system.

It's clear and direct feedback that (in the opinion of the voter) you're doing something wrong!  Receiving enough of them should cause you to reflect on why you've missed the approval of the community with your post.  Of course a comment or two could be a helpful part of the process, but considering (from the tour)  the aims of this site include -

We're a little bit different from other sites. Here's how:
Ask questions, get answers, no distractions
This site is all about getting answers. It's not a discussion forum. There's no chit-chat. (emphasis added)

Comments can actually work against those aims by distracting and provoking discussion/chit-chat.  The onus is on the OP to write a good post, not the readers to write it for them nor should they need to invest time in guiding them to do so. If they do in fact do that, it is a courtesy for them to do it.

It's clear and direct feedback that (in the opinion of the voter) you're doing something wrong! How does that help with no comments?

How does a downvote with no comments assist in shaping a great answer and contributing toward the aims of this site? This question is not answered!

How it assists is covered in my answer.  Didn't you read it?

Without a comment interpret a downvote as meaning that it is unclear, not useful, or lacks research effort. (I.e., what the tooltip for the vote arrows say!)

"How does that help with no comments?" - it's a spur to further reflection/research towards a) coming to grips with the community standards & b) improving your answer according to those standards. Before you can shape a great answer, you need to realise if your methodology or understanding of what is acceptable continually leads you to shape poor answers, and if so be motivated to correct that - down-voting (with or without comments) is a big part of that process.

You seem to be hung up on this issue, and I think the main reason is that you've mistaken the purpose of the voting system.
Votes are not primarily a feedback mechanism. In other words they are not primarily for you as a post author. If it was, you would have a point that it isn't optimized for that. But it's not. It's a signal you can use, but it's really for something else and the way it functions is for that other purpose.
The primary purpose of voting is to sort answers and signal site readers about the relative value of answers. It's a crowd-sourced sorting system amalgamating any number of factors about perceived relative usefulness, accuracy, etc. For various reason (that you should research on [meta.se]) for that to function properly the votes themselves need to be anonymous and are therefore strictly not correlated to other mechanisms such as commenting.
Votes are not meant primarily for you as a way to improve your answers. They are for everybody else. They further the aims of this site in that new visitors to a question find the best answer as ranked by the community at the top of the answer stack and less well received ones lower down.

Reasonable response. Thank you.

From the understanding that the criteria a user votes +/- on answer is that the answer was useful or not, what would it take to ensure that downvoter leave a comment before their vote is registered? I believe I understood the aims of the votes. I am one of those readers.

Another reason why downvoting without comment contributes to the aims of this (and all SE) site is something I touched on in my answer to your other question:

Voting is already low across every established SE site that I follow.

Voting - up and down - is extremely important to the way SE works.  The idea is that if lots of people vote, then the relative vote counts are a very good indicator of how good or bad an answer (or question).
Every site I'm active on has meta-discussions every now and then about how little voting there is, so an additional barrier to voting would actually hurt the aims of the site.


text:
In what way was my question about some Catholics and labels too broad and how could it be fixed?
A few days back I asked this question about labels in the Catholic church, after mod Caleb said that he would like to see such a question. I later self-answered. My question was eventually closed as "too broad".
The question listed some Catholics and labels and asked the question, 'who all these Catholics were'.

When are the various assorted labels for Catholics applied and how are they related? - on hold by Flimzy, fredsbend, Andrew Leach, Mawia, and Affable Geek

I would like to hear some feedback from especially the close voters (anyone else are welcome to contribute) on what it means in a situation like this that a question might have "either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format." As a point of reference, my question arose from Monica Cellio's earlier question about Vatacan II objectors which currently has 4 answers (with current upvotes 9, 7, 6, and 5) and is not closed.
My thinking is that if the Q was broad, the original question must have been broad because of the number of good answers, Jews/ Nostra Aetate portion remains unanswered, and my question which arose from it has been deemed too broad!
In what way is my question more broad than that? Can anyone suggest a reasonable way to approach this question in a way that puts all the assorted labels in context without being too broad?

It was quite discouraging and deflating to have the [on hold] decision come after I had answered.

I believe my answer to the question resolves this post and demonstrates that the Q & A is just fine and the answer is correct and the question not broad.

Curiousdanni understood I had answered, and I have resolved whatever his remaining concerns were, and therefore I have answered him fully from the way he understood the question.

I felt like your meta post here was difficult to follow, so I edited it to be what I think you were saying.

@fredsbend You did an excellent job! Thank you!

My impression of your original meta post was that it was very prickly—even combative—and was not inviting very constructive responses. I have taken the liberty of re-writing it from scratch in a way I think would be more representative of a constructive attitude in general. As the original Q and A are available for review, I also removed the full copies of them from this post as they made it very difficult to read and understand what the meta issue was. I hope this (and any subsequent answers) will be more educational and suggest a path forward instead of just arguing about a judgment call.

@Caleb Any chance to provide a Q&A example for comparison purposes with mine? After all I posted the Q in response to your suggestion.

@Caleb 'instead of just arguing about a judgment call.' Why keep misreading me when my original post asked 'demonstrate the reason'. I would appreciate you desisting from trying to cast me in a mold.

Your recent edit indicates that you totally misunderstood the last point of my answer, which was: when talking about votes and closing, don't compare your question with another one and say "this other question is still open, so mine should be, too."  That's not the way SE works.

@Ward Please recall you are the one who misunderstood my question in the Q&A. Here I am drawing a logical conclusion: if mine is broad that must be broad because mine arose from that. I completely agree with 'That's not the way SE works' on unrelated posts.

In the end, this has been a good example of why it's often better to just vote and move on: I don't think the extensive feedback has really done any good.

Not fruitful because those who put the question on hold (and closed?) can't support their decision. Nor consider their while to educate. On a basic level, there is also unfairness.

@FMShyanguya Just for the record I'm a guy not a girl. I'm not offended at all, I wouldn't expect anyone to know!

@curiousdannii I am so glad you were not offended. My sincere apologies. Thank you for all you do for the site. I do appreciate it.

@Caleb Thank you mod Caleb. I admire your edits. Very neat. I am learning something. If you noticed, I have reworded some of my sentences. This was because of your input My impression of your original meta post was that it was very prickly—even combative—and was not inviting very constructive responses. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. PS From this process, I was thinking of another feature-request, another format where all involved can collaborate to resolve an issue. I would like to explain myself and  know the best way to proceed.

You may have been able to come up with an answer, but the question is still too broad. Lots of broad closed questions have answers.

@curiousdannii I have moved on ...

I can't vote to close, but I did flag it as too broad and commented something like: "This is more like 10 questions."
It's too broad because what you're asking is, "what are all the different ways the Catholic Church can be considered to be structured."  And that clearly - to me, at least - calls for several very long answers.
You've kept your answer fairly short (I've seen longer posts here and on other SE sites), but it's woefully incomplete, which makes it confusing.  For example, your section on rites doesn't even mention all the Byzantine-derived churches or the Chaldean and Armenian.  Wikipedia's summary is substantially longer, and doesn't even get to the differences in rites.  This could be a reasonable question on its own (or, probably, a couple questions - about what the "Particular Churches" are and how they developed.)
Your section on Ecclesiastical Structures is also incomplete, leading to confusion.  You mention Personal prelature (there's only the one, so far) and the Personal Ordinariate, but you don't mention the parallel to Military ordinariate, how any of these developed and what they're for.  Again, the summary on Wikipedia about Personal prelature is quite long and could be part of a reasonable Q/A on its own.
And what about the overall hierarchy of the church?  Bishops, Priests, Deacons, Parishes, etc.?  Those are labels applied to parts of the church, but you've got nothing in your answer about them.
To me it's obvious that by the time you actually turned this into a clear, reasonably complete summary of all the structures of the church, it'd be way way way too long.
Finally, a couple notes about how SE works:

Close reasons are often approximate.  I'd say the original question could just as easily have been closed as "Unclear what you're asking," since it's not clear which structures you're interested in.
A legalistic approach is the wrong way to deal with a question you don't think should be closed.  Pointing to another question and saying "my Q is like this other one that's still open," is never going to work.  There are vagaries in voting and closing and anyone who's been around SE long enough accepts them (I'm tempted to link to a recent physics.SE discussion where someone is unhappy about a particular Q&A getting tons of votes from being on the hot questions list.)

Thank you for acknowledging the brevity of my answer. 1) the question wasn't asking what rites were. The question asked who all these Catholics were 2) None of the examples of 'who all these Catholics were' belonged to the Military ordinariate 3)The question never asked for the structure of of the Catholic Church, how it is organised, etc. Point on how SE works well made and taken.

"what are all the different ways the Catholic Church can be considered to be structured." This is where the misunderstanding is. Please see the comment above.

PS Your honesty is admirable and appreciated.

@Caleb There is no response from you, the mods, and all who participated in this post that a user has voted and made a decision based on his own misunderstanding of the question?

@FMShyanguya No, I'm sorry to say but at this point you are the one with the misunderstanding. Neither this user nor any of the others involved with their votes, edits or here trying to help you are doing anything wrong. They are using the system the way it was designed to work. You don't seem to be listening to what they are trying to show you. Do you want help with this question and with your posts in general? You've begged for feedback but you seem to be rejecting it when you get it. Are you really interested in accepting help including constructive criticism?

@Caleb  How can one one understand 'what are all the different ways the Catholic Church can be considered to be structured' from 'who all these Catholics were', when the Catholics and labels have been listed? That was a very pointed question.

You asked these questions:

In what context are all these labels used,
what do they signify,
and what is their canonical status according to the RCC?
Are some or all of them considered schismatics by the RCC?

about these groups/labels:

Traditional Catholics
SSPX - Society of St. Pius X.
Opus Dei
'Ultra-Conservative'.
Jesuit.
Conservative
Liberal
'Neo-Catholic'.
Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in the UK
Eastern Rite Catholic

To fully answer your question would require 4x10=40 answers. That's why I flagged it as too broad. This time I think the burden of proof is clearly on you to show that it isn't too broad!

I have already answered the question.

I don't think you covered each of those 40 combinations.

PS We may not always agree, but your input has always been valuable and appreciated. Your honesty is admirable and appreciated.

'I don't think you covered each of those 40 combinations.' Please specify which combination(s) I have yet to cover.

@FMShyanguya Your answer is confusing and hard to read. I don't think you really explained the context of how any of them are used. You don't explain what SSPX, Opus Dei, Jesuit or any of the political labels mean (or whether those political labels have any non-political sense like they do in protestantism.) I guess you've answered the last two questions in your post on this page, but you didn't do so consistently in the answer on the question itself. But in general it's very messy. Why not answer each question in turn for each group?

But in general it's very messy. Why not answer each question in turn for each group? Thinking .., I will rewrite, please standby. Thank you for the continued engagement.

Please see my re-written answer and the addition to the question above.

First of all, it shouldn't come as such a shock that your question was deemed to be too broad. I warned you specifically this would be a challenge before you even asked the question:

@FMShyanguya I would like to see a question that helps sort out the different labels used both inside and outside the Catholic church. It seems it might be hard to do it without being too broad, but maybe a couple for the various aspects (Rites, schismatic groups, other labels, etc.) Such question(s) would be a good complement to this one. –  Caleb♦ Aug 13 at 7:33

I specifically refrained from VTC'ing your question, but I was not in the least surprised it got closed. In fact I agree with the judgment call of those who did vote.¹ The question was too broad and too confusing. The first comments and answers being so different suggested that it wasn't clear to people reading it what the main focus was. Wax eagle commented asking for clarification about the requested perspective and The Freemason went off on the definition of 'Catholic' because you'd miss-quoted a creede. One answer ever took the liberty of addressing only one aspect of the question as if than was the whole question and we had to deal with that separately on meta. Not all of these only the fault of the question, but neither did it give a clear enough focus to avoid those sort of issues.
I believe part of the reason it was confusing was simply the formatting. Usually people make the opposite mistake and don't format their posts enough to be clean and readable. You quite often err in the opposite direction and format your posts to death! There is so much bolding and italics and sequencing schemes and line breaks going on that it becomes very difficult to just read your posts².
In addition to the excessive formatting, your posts have a tendency to be dis-jointed. Even if you can just read them through it is often unclear how the points connect from one paragraph (or ever sentence) to the next. The content just doesn't flow³.
These formatting and writing style problems may be a matter of preference and style, but they work against you when it comes to posts like the one we are discussing. When the reading experience is disjointed, even simple issues appear complicated. Excessive bullet points and bolded terms make a question seem broader than you might have intended it to be.
In addition to the general technique issue I see you struggling with, the question that prompted this meta discussion really does cover too much topic space. Dannii's response highlights just how many issues you tried to pack into one post. Besides the laundry list of labels that needed disambiguating, you also tacked on stuff about the RCC's views. This would require not only an overview of how people label themselves and how all the labels overlap, but dealing with whether each label was RCC sanctioned or schismatic, etc. The combinations quickly become unwieldy.
I would suggest this needs to be broken down into several questions, each with a specific focus. Some of these may already have been asked and they could be broken down in other ways depending on your interest as well, but here is a suggestion for one way it could be split up:

Who uses and how the terms that sound like political ones relate to each other (traditional, liberal, conservative, etc)?
Who is the SSPX, especially in relation to Sedevacantism, and what labels are appropriate for them?
How group names (e.g. Jesuit, Opus Dei, Neo-Catholic, etc. rather than general labels) relate to each other and the RCC?
What is a 'Rite' and how is it different from other kinds of labels?
What makes something schismatic according to the RCC and is what groupings does this tend to apply (e.g. would groups, labels, or rites be labeled schismatic)?
What does in mean when somebody identifies as 'Catholic' but goes on to include extra details such as a 'personal ordinate'?

There might be more, but those should be plenty to get started⁴. Most of those are still very broad questions, but I think if each one is focused on the specific issue without dragging in too many other layers they should be each answerable in their own right.

Footnotes:

Incidentally those who vote to close questions do so at their best discretion. Responding to your initial version of this meta post, the burden of proof is not on those who vote to close. They do not need to be put on trial for their judgment call. You can request feedback from them about why they made the judgment call they did, but they are under no obligation to participate further. Asking questions on this site is considered a privilege—not a right—and if you disagree with the community's collective judgment on issues such as closures, the burden of proof is on you to prove that your question fits the site guidelines. This is part of the reason I re-wrote your post to solicit feedback about how it could be fixed rather than argue about the closure.
I would hazard a guess that some of the unexplained downvotes you've been so concerned about stem from this. Even though you usually give accurate answers and often have good references, it's not always easy for a reader to process the way you present the the information. If the logic is hard to follow, somebody might be inclined to downvote even if the content is technically correct. Since votes are intended to sort answers based on relative perceived usefulness, it's possible that answers that are easier on the eyes with sequential logic and clear articulations are more likely to get upvotes than ones that appear to be piece-meal fragments (even if they make perfect sense in your head).
This is often exacerbated by your edits. You add relevant information and references (which is good) but they are frequently not well integrated into the other content (creating an even more disjointed feel). Rather than becoming progressively more clear and cohesive, they become progressively more of a hodge-podge.
I'm not saying you have to ask all of these. Maybe only one or two of them actually catch your interest. I would suggest only asking ones that you personally are interested in learning. It is very difficult to compose "staged" questions. Even though self-answering is encouraged, it is hard to do well and I have watches some of the most knowledgeable people with the best writing skills around struggle to do this well. I've also had this problem first hand. A number of questions I wrote so that I could answer them got closed. Some stayed that way, a couple others were rescued by a third party stepping in to re-write the question. Jon Erikson once wisely noted, "Asking good questions is hard and asking good questions you already know the answer to is exponentially harder."

Not worried in the least. Eventually all things will be revealed. It is truly amazing how stuff is edited, merged, and hidden ...

I warned you specifically this would be a challenge before you even asked the question Then the original question must be broad. That potion of the question and another remain unanswered.

It should not be forgotten that I was trying to get some answers for a user. I was trying to make a contribution. Perhaps those who targeted my Q&A, and it is targeting! especially Flimzy, Andrew Leach, Mawia, and Affable Geek, should come up with their own Q&A in the first place to contribute to Monica Cellio's question.

Why it targeting: A  couple of times that I have now tried to get to the bottom of things, it has been turned around, 'It's your posts, your formatting, etc.'. May I remind you that am the top new user in reputation. This may be just humans being humans, one reason could be just plain jealousy. ShadowWizard at META StackExchange wrote: 'I looked at your main profile, most of your stuff there is good and upvoted'. This is the issue: the targeting of good stuff.

Wow, that's a level of arrogance I haven't seen in a while - "I'm so great that the only reason anyone would downvote me is to personally attack me."

@Ward You are really amazing! Where is 'I am great' in my comment? Good stuff is not equivalent to great me and it is not me who said it. That person countered what some have been trying to project here.

I did not close-vote; I do not have the required reputation, and even if I did, I hope to consider myself a friend and thus would probably recuse myself.
That said, I do feel the question is too broad to adequately answer in the typical format. The question ends:

who all these Catholics are - and how does the Roman Catholic Church view those who –say– identify themselves as Traditional, Liberal, etc.?

(emphasis added) That "say" at the end gives the implication that information is desired on more groupings than just the ones specified in the question. Since no clear "umbrella grouping" exists for all these, the question invites the possibility that information is desired on all groupings in the Catholic Church—a very broad question indeed. I would suggest editing the question to remove that wording.
Even then, however, I think the question is over-broad. Consider the answer supplied. This does indeed seem to touch on everything, or virtually everything, asked: but in a very cursory way; it's not what I would consider a sufficiently complete answer. For example, I think a discussion of the Society of St. Pius X should certainly include mention of the excommunication of bishops for illicit ordination of priests; and a discussion of the status of Jesuits within the Church needs to include a discussion of the suppression of the Order.
I just feel that the amount of detail necessary to answer the question well would give an answer nearly as long for each organization as the single answer supplied for all organizations; and that's really too long to read in the Stack Exchange format. This, in my mind, is what makes the question too broad: to quote the closure notice, "good answers would be too long for this format".
Perhaps there could be one question about the Jesuits, one question about personal prelatures and ordinariates, one about rites, one about traditionalists and SSPX, and one about conservatives, liberals/progressives, and neo-Catholics. I think that is about as broad as one can get in a Stack Exchange question and still hope for the possibility of a good answer.

Thank you for the friendship and it is valued and appreciated. –say– identify themselves as Traditional, Liberal, etc.? The listing that follows puts a limit to the say. In any case, any suggestion to edit the question so as to limit it to the listing given? That should resolve your concern.

That will resolve the concern about the question. I'm still apprehensive about whether the answer will be too long. As I suggested, it may be necessary in my opinion to break up the question into several sub-questions. Does this make sense to you?

MattGutting curiousdanii would disagree as I believe she has been answered. Did you take a look at my rewritten answer

PS Do not forget my fiend the initial reach out to you to formulate the question ...

To be honest, I followed Flimzy's suit on this one. The text of your question was pretty long, Flimzy commented that it was too broad and already cast a close vote, and I am not terribly knowledgeable of the subject.
So, in fairness, if you get two reopen votes, I'll cast the third.

Thank you for your honesty and your continued professionalism. It is admired. That's what will make this site great.

So, in fairness, if you get two reopen votes, I'll cast the third. I have cast a vote to reopen. I believe a restitutive act from your end would be, in addition to casting the reopen vote, canvass for votes required to reopen.

@FMShyanguya Rather than arguing with people trying to get them to change their minds or disagree with the judgment call already made, it would be much more constructive to focus your energy on evaluating and fixing the concerns that were raised. At this point trying to get re-open votes without editing and resolving the issues that have been raised would be an exercise in futility as I (and I'm pretty sure a few others) would just vote to close it again until the issues get fixed and it is narrow enough that the question scope won't be an ongoing source of confusion.

@FMShyanguya You don't have the rep to make reopen votes. You must mean that you nominated it for reopening. That means it will be placed in the reopen review queue where we all will see it and decide. There is currently one reopen vote. I will vote to reopen if you garner one more.

@fredsbend If you feel you have done all you could to right the situation, then rest easy. Thank you!


text:
Should on-topic but better elsewhere questions be migrated?
I recently posted "Did medieval European monasticism provide a release from certain societal pressures?". It has been suggested that it would be a better fit for the History Stack Exchange (which seems likely to be true).
I posted it on Christianity because I was working toward the Curious badge (I have other questions that I have not gotten around to asking, so this one is not critical) and I dislike "userXXXX" marked posts and did want to "join" another SE where I would rarely participate. (It is bad enough that I signed up for Programmers and UX in order to upvote some posts! At the time I thought I might eventually write a question or two for Programmers.)
Assuming it is a better fit for History (and a quick search there found no questions on monasticism, so it should not be a duplicate) and that migration is appropriate, how should I proceed? It is technically not off-topic (I think), and it might require moderator action to migrate to History (since that migration path is probably not standard).
This answer by Shog9 on Meta Stack Exchange seems to hint that migrating might not be the best choice for this type of question (on topic but less on-topic than at another site). However, that part of the answer seems to be more in the context of being inappropriately exclusive and not in the context of trying to get the best answer possible for the question: "Don’t hit them over the head with your scope, help them tailor their question to fit into it".

Now migration would be made more difficult by a rather Christianity.SE-centered answer, which should get the upvotes it deserves as such and not be downvoted because it does not have a sufficiently strong historical focus (which might happen if the question was migrated).

History.se will be quite hesitant to discuss the underling theologies for historical actions, and, unfortunately, will get them wrong or only superficially discuss them. History relating to Christianity is already on-topic, so the only reason I would post on History.se is for the secular viewpoint. I love the question, by the way, and wish we got more like it. My primary interest these days is exactly how Christianity shaped the world over the centuries.

If you decide to post your question on History, I suggest doing that directly, rather than requesting a migration. As you mention, History-centric questions will be different than Christianity-centric questions, so after a migration you'd be left with some serious editing to do anyway.
One option which is often appropriate is to post in more than one place, if you are seeking more than one perspective.  This, I consider, distinct from simple cross-posting (which is heavily discouraged) precisely because you are seeking a different perspective on each site.
If you (and the community) still feel your question is on-topic on Christianity, leave it here, and open a new one on History (with the more historical focus).
Note that I'm trying to provide a general answer for the question, and not offering specific advice on your specific question.  Your specific question may or may not be appropriate in both places.  (I don't really have enough knowledge of the subject to know what a Christian-centric answer might look like, so I'll leave that judgement up to you and/or others here).

The second paragraph is exactly what I would say to Paul.

There are a couple of guidelines that have come up relating to other sites that have overlapping subject areas:

First of all, migrating to SE sites still in Beta stage is generally not appropriate.  Beta sites are supposed to live or die on their own, and not rely on migration of questions from other sites.  In this case, since it's just one question, this wouldn't necessarily be an issue, but at one point it was suggested that networking questions be migrated from ServerFault to Networking.SE and SE staff said "NO" very strongly.
If a question is on-topic for a site but might arguably be more on-topic on a different site, it doesn't have to be migrated.  If it's on-topic where it is, it can stay, even if there's another site where it would be a better fit.
OTOH, if a question is much more likely to get expert answers on the other site, then it's a good candidate for migtration.  Again, with ServerFault, security is on-topic, but there are way more security people on Security.SE so questions regularly get migrated there.

To me, your question would be a perfect example of a borderline case that shouldn't be migrated.  As pointed out in a comment, it has a good, Christian-focused answer, so it makes sense to leave it where it is.


text:
Why was the vegetarian question closed?
Seeing as how Caleb is always willing to give his keyboard a good whipping to explain his closures, I was hoping he could explain his reasoning for closing this question:
What does the Bible say about vegetarian diets?
Flimzy cast a close vote as well, which I voiced disagreement in the comments, and the issue seems to be a broader meta issue, which Flimzy has headed up resolving. Perhaps more than Flimzy and I can weigh in there. It might help us resolve this specific meta post.

We need a consensus on the whole "What does the Bible say about X" issue.  I know which side you're one. I'm on the opposite, and I just finally posted an opposing answer here.  I've set that META post to be a featured post to try to see what the consensus comes down to, since neither of the existing answers is a clear winner.

That said, even by my own belief that "What does the bible say about X" is a bad idea, the post you ask about here is salvaged by asking if there is a verse that says we're permitted to eat meat.  There is, and so that portion of the question is clearly, definitively answerable.  However, the title is out of sync with that portion of the question, so I think the title should be edited before it gets reopened.

Short version: I read it as a truth question. It seemed less about Christianity (or even vegetarianism) and more about whether it was right or wrong to kill animals.


text:
Do we need more reviewers?
I was not logged in for some reason (maybe the cookie expired or something) when I click my bookmark to the C.SE review queue. This is what I saw:

This is all the review tasks that are available for anyone who hasn't done them yet. Once logged in, they all say zero tasks available for me.
What I find a bit concerning is that there are 16 close vote reviews pending. I don't think we have anywhere near the problem as on the SO close queue. However, I feel like there being 16 posts just sitting there taking days to get the necessary close votes is not necessarily acceptable.
In part, I'm urging all the users over 3,000 rep to go through that review queue regularly (at least once every two days).
I'm also asking if others think this might be an increasing problem. EL&U is in a similar boat. Skeptics has only 1 in theirs. BH has only 2.

Maybe you just happened to see it at an above average queue length. It was at 8 for me today, which is only slightly higher than normal.

Also a number of old Christian identity questions were flagged which boosted the numbers.

@curiousdannii Do you mean there were 8 that you were able to review or did you open the page in private mode (imitate logging out then seeing what the page reports). But you might have a point. Flimzy vtc'd on about five or six old posts in the last few days.

@curiousdannii I'm thinking now that perhaps what I'm seeing is more complicated than that. Some of those posts may only have one or two vtc's but the community at large does not want to vtc them, so they have voted to leave open, dutifully doing their review tasks, but the votes still need to expire. I guess knowing when a question leaves the review queue by way of not being vtc'd would help me see what is going on.

It now says 19 posts in the close review at C.SE.

Only 3 for me currently. 19 if I'm not logged in, which I assume means that I've voted on 16 of the ones in the queue.

Strictly speaking an answer and not a comment: yes.

I think we're doing okay. I don't think I can remember any times when my close votes have expired on this site, unlike how they have on other sites; I don't mean when a question goes through the review process and enough people disagree with me that the questions stay open, I'm talking about when a question accumulates a few downvotes but not quickly enough that it can get closed before the first ones expire. If that doesn't happen here then we're doing fine!
(Now it could be that we're only doing fine because the mods are jumping in at the last moment to close them. But I haven't heard any of them say that they think we need more.)

More of a comment than an answer but it became way too long.
I agree with Neil, I like trying to help out on the site (not sure my efforts at reviewing are actually all that good, I skip quite a lot because I'm not sure what to do about them). Point is that questions and answers generally don't get that much rating on this site: it seems to suffer from a lack of voting.
For comparison I've asked 2 questions (and accepted answers) and answered 1 question on Skeptics.SE. I got more than 200 reputation on top of the starting 101: I'm about 303 at time of writing. I've got a pretty solidly positive record on Christianity.SE (1 closed question, 1 duplicate question, 1 question which after extensive editing I managed to get reopened) but after asking 26 questions (23 positive scored, 3 zeros), giving 12 answers (11 positive scores, 1 zeros) and doing plenty of edits, voting, reviewing etc. I'm at 1039 (at time of writing). To be fair I've burned 100 in bounties but 1139 doesn' make much difference. For the effort put in it is clearly much easier to get reputation on other sites. I've certainly poured 10s of times the time and effort into this site than over at Skeptics.
There is a natural through put of people on a site like this. I would imagine there are less than 20 regularly active members with enough reputation to work on close votes (and only about half of them actually seem to). This site due to its topic tends to build up a lot of bad questions. It's a problem. I don't know what the solution is, I certainly doubt that the standard stackexchange moderation reputation requirements will be changed just for this site but there you go.

I think, perhaps, your questions on Skeptics are an exception to the rule. Your one answer is pretty good though. On EL&U I have 1,400 rep because I usually only participate in questions that are in the hot list (those questions on the right there >>>). More traffic means more votes. Now we are in territory where rep does not necessarily imply that you understand the site guidelines. As you've said yourself about this site, you have over 1000 rep, but still skip review tasks because you aren't sure what to do, if anything. So I think the 3K rep mark for close reviews is good.

But if only half of the 20 regulars that can close vote don't ever, then I think there is a bit of a problem.

True but there are obvious close questions. Although I might not be fabulous at nuance and would skip say 1/2 the time. The obviously bad question would get closed a lot faster if people like me could participate. I don't know maybe there could be some kind of tip-it-over-the-edge system. For instance if users over 1000 could vote to close/reopen if there were already 2+ or 3+ votes to close/reopen it might speed things along when it is obvious.

@fedsbend Also look at your own profile on both sites. Your questions on Skeptics are recieved on average with a score of ~7.8. You only have 1 question out of 38 above that score on Christianity.SE - a site on which you are one of the top users. I think that says something about how easy it is to get reputation on these sites.

I have many questions above 7 votes on C.SE. You must mean something else. My top four questions on Skeptics ended up on the hot question list. None of my questions on this site ended up on the hot list. But in general, perhaps you are right that people do not vote enough on this site. The best policy is to be really liberal with voting. If there was research involved, it's easy to understand, is on-topic, and answers the question, then upvote right away. If it doesn't downvote, at least half the time, making leeway for cases where a downvote won't help.

You are quite right! I think I mistook recent questions for votes.

Maybe the 3000 rep prerequisite should be lowered. I would not mind helping with close votes but I doubt I'll be hitting 3000 rep anytime soon.

Oh that's only like five to ten good answers. You can do it ;)


text:
What does the participation tab on the users page on the meta site mean?
I was checking out the users page on the meta site (I know, must have been really board) and this is what I saw:

Does this mean I have the most participation on meta than anybody? That can't be right. Does it mean that I have the most meta participation within a certain time frame? I can buy that, but what time frame? I don't understand what the tab is supposed to tell me.

-1 This question reflects lack of research and as Ward pointed out, lack of hovering.  It may be a better fit in meta.stackexchange.com instead of meta.christianity.stackexachange.com due to the scope - where it would be flagged as a duplicate.  With that said, congratulations on being #1.

This is covered on Meta.stackexchange.com
Copy/paste answer below:

This is pretty much answered by the tooltip you get when you hover over the "participation" sort link:

Users most active on this site in the last 60 days (combined number of posts, votes, comments and edits).

-- that's all it is. Take the sum of those four values and sort the users based on those sums. The only minor details that are not in the tooltip are things like "don't count deleted stuff", and the fact that "votes" includes answer acceptance and that "edits" excludes edits to your own posts.

There's a tooltip if you hover over the Participation link that shows the same meaning.

Sometimes I move so fast that the tooltip doesn't even have time to pop up. Thanks for the quick and succinct answer.


text:
What causes someone to be question banned?
So I was about to ask a question on christianity.stackexchange.com and I got an error of "you're about to get question banned."
Now, I am curious -- how am I close to being question banned despite having a positive reputation (i.e. 225). ?

This isn't a question we can answer.
The algorithm for establishing question bans is secret, so frankly we don't know, and couldn't tell you if we did.
That said, looking at your question history, even though you have managed a positive reputation score, most of your questions are downvoted and/or closed.
I would advise you to edit and improve your existing questions prior to asking additional ones.
Or if you do feel led to ask additional questions, spend extra time making sure they conform to this community's guidelines laid out in the help center.

What is meant to be done with these closed questions? They can not be deleted after an answer has been posted.

The intent of closure is twofold. The primary purpose is to prevent answers until a question is brought in line with site guidelines. In these cases a few edits are what's needed. The second purpose is to denote content that simply doesn't fit the site at all. In these cases closure will likely lead to deletion either automatically, by the community or by the mods.

This happened to me recently on a different Stack Exchange site. I personally was a bit baffled because I consider myself a positive contributor on that site.
As was already said, the way they decided if you should be question banned is only known by the SE administration. This puts you in a weird spot that pretty much everyone else feels when it happens to them.
When I saw it, I looked exclusively at my ten newest questions. I had one -1, one -3, one +1, and the rest were 0 score. Overall, I was alright, just on a bad run I guess. My next question; which I made certain was well formed, definitively answerable, and on-topic; brought in four upvotes. Now I don't see the message anymore.
I recommend that any future questions you ask are well formed, definitively answerable, and on-topic. See the Types of questions that are within community guidelines. Absolutely do not make your next question any other type except one of the first six. Those first six are proven question types. They've been on-topic for a long time and are usually inherently definitively answerable. All you have to do is form it well (grammar, understandable, concise but detailed, etc.).
Also, just to be sure, run the question by us in chat first. We'll help you if you seek it out.


text:
Which edit on this question should be used?
What is the Biblical argument that homosexual attraction is sinful by itself?
I've had a bit of an edit war with another user. Would the community please weigh in on which edit is more appropriate.
All the edits are in the revisions. There are applicable comments on the post too.

@FMS I don't think your @ call will work if he hasn't previously commented in this meta question thread.

@Jas3.1 Comments are disabled. Perhaps he may be notified by the Mods.

@Jas3.1 We commented plenty and linked to this meta before it was locked. He'll see it. If he wants to stop by he will.

I believe someone should reach out to him. His input is required to resolve this discussion. Mods have e-mailed me before, they could do the same or utilize such other methods.

I favor the first revision.
And the reason is as follows:

The question, prior to editing starts with an a priori assumption that the act of SSA is sinful. Any attempt to alter this changes the meaning of the question significantly.
None of the later revisions provide meaningful changes while adhering to the spirit of the original question.

Based on point 2 (and nothing else), I've reverted to the first edit and locked it for a day. If a meaningful revision is developed in this meta post I will be happy to revert the lock early.

Thank you for locking it. In the future I can flag for that right?

@fredsbend yes, though the preference is meta discussion, so you're doing it right. If I'm going to content lock it should be because of pending meta discussion

I'd suggest

Making the question a What is the Biblical basis for ... question (both the title and question body)
Changing fundamentalism (which isn't clearly defined) to protestantism, or perhaps just removing the scoping entirely. Saying that the OP has "encountered Christians from a more fundamentalist background" is fine, but I think it would be better to broaden out the scope for answers. (Partly because I'd like to answer it ;))

Problem is, this is no longer a uniformly "Protestant" view. Evangelical maybe? I think Fundamentalist is clear enough, but perhaps something generic like "those who hold this view" would suffice.

Yeah it's not something all protestants will believe, but asking for the protestants who do is better than the fundamentalists who do. I don't think any scoping is really needed though... it can just ask for the basis from those who believe it.

@curiousdannii So you agree the body and title do not match?

@FMS Not really. They're basically the same. The body is just more specific, which I think should be removed.

They're basically the same' is NOT they are the same. And they are, my edit is just as valid as fredsbend's and better because title and body match.

@FMS Well if it helps, I'm suggesting that you're both wrong! :)

@curiousdannii I can't be if I am repeating what the body says!

I support revision number six.

Could you elaborate on why?

@waxeagle I thought FMS would be amenable to it. In my opinion it does not change the question in any significant way, but it seems like it does to him. I would also be content with revision 1, which you've now rolled back to.

I'll agree with this - it seems like it might not be a bad thing to specify in so many words (what I thought was probably obvious) that those referred to in the question body do in fact use Scripture to support their position.


text:
Should we flag posts that are obviously preaching as spam?
Sometimes we get posts that are not really trying to ask or answer a question. Instead, they intend to use the SE as a platform for preaching.
Examples:

https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/35242/3961
https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/35152/3961
Answer on Where in the Bible does it say that God doesn't have forms?

I do not think these are genuine posts and I would bet that the users are not going to come back to make them better and probably won't even post again.
These seem like spam to me. They are effectively an advertisement, though not a traditional "buy this" kind of pitch. I would be in favor of swift deletion, as we are with traditional spam.

Define "obviously"...

meh, meh and maybe?
None of these are exactly spam in the traditional sense, they aren't really offensive they're just...off with respect to the tone we generally expect here.
With questions like these, generally all we need to see is close votes, and that's what we have with these two questions. No need for flags here.
With answers like the one your linked, you still have to judge it by whether or not it answers the question within the defined scope, if it does, then you can try to edit it to be less preachy, if it doesn't (and typically posts like this don't), then flag it for deletion as Not an answer.

I see these questions as trolling, not as spam.  They aren't trying to sell anything, they aren't polluting our web site with links.  People should cast down-votes, close-votes, and delete-votes as normal.

But not flag?

I don't see any reason to flag it, unless it's also overtly offensive, in which case the appropriate flag is 'offensive'.


text:
Status of "What theological teachings of Watchman Nee, Witness Lee, and the Local Churches differ from Reformed Theology"
I recently updated this question: What theological teachings of Watchman Nee, Witness Lee, and the Local Churches differ from Reformed Theology. I'm wondering if this would be a good time to examine the "on-hold" status of the question. (And if it's still on-hold, please let me know how I can improve it.)
Thanks!

Remember you already have this question asking if they're reformed.

@curiousdannii I didn't realize that was a separate question. I thought it was the same one, just expanded. I've closed one as a duplicate pending some further clarification on how those two actually differ. It seems to be I'd be giving the same answer to both.

@curiousdannii : good call, I forgot about the duplicate question. Thanks for closing it / marking it as duplicate. :-)

It's still not a great question because there are a wide spectrum of differences that could be mentioned and it's not clear what sort of differences you are looking for, put the extra background does make it easier for an expert to make a stab at it so I have gone ahead and voted to reopen it.


text:
Is there a way to tell how a previously closed question was reopened?
I came across this question:
Did God create man to replace the fallen Angels?
I quickly went to vote to close only to find that I already had some time ago.
I can see two possibilities:

The close votes never reached 5 and then expired.
It was closed but later reopened.

For circumstance two, I want to see who voted to reopen and when. How can I do that?
For both circumstances, what were you thinking, community? Why is this not closed?

Seems to me it's a case of Why does God...? and ought to be closed.

@Flimzy Exactly, but something happened. Apparently my close vote, along with others, maybe, expired, because the five needed was never met. Feel free to vtc if you think it needs it. You probably already did. I see it has 2 votes already.

The edit history of the question will show close/open details ifany exist. If they don't register in there it must not have been closed.

Thanks. So circumstance 1 is what happened. What about my second question? Should this be closed or remain open?

Sorry haven't had time to review it and it seems border-line from first glance so I want to think about it properly before acting...

No problem. It's already generated three votes since my post here on meta.


text:
Splitting a question
high level
I asked Biblical basis for two aspects of the Gap Theory without realizing how complex the question would end up being.
I would like to split the question, and ask the following questions:
Q1: Using the Bible alone, argue for: Genesis 1:2 is a sub-event of Genesis 1:1
Q2: Using the Bible alone, argue for: Genesis 1:1 happened chronologically before Genesis 1:2
I am wondering what is the best way to do this.
motivation
I believe my original question is asking about two separate things:
1) chronological ordering of Genesis 1:1 + Genesis 1:2
  2) when did Satan fall?
I would like to analyze each question separately.
concerns:

normally I would just delete the original question; however there's already an answer; what should be done with the original question?
should either of the new questions have more "meat" ? the questions, as is written, seems very 'lean', but I'm not sure how to add more to either

Thanks!

Your question is already asking the second one. You can just make a second question to ask for the basis that it is a sub event.