text:
Please tell me why this question was so poorly received
https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/36314/jesus-apostles-and-protests-on-ferguson-blacklivesmatter
It's not great and is off-topic, but it seems -6 and basically no constructive comments is a pretty bad message. I doubt the user will be back.
So why no love here?

Here's my comment in case it is deleted:

Welcome to the site. We are glad you decided to participate. This question is off-topic and does not fit into one of the Types of questions that are within community guidelines If possible, [edit] this question so that it better fits into one of those question types. Specifically, this question contains too much opinion. Basically, you are asking what the Bible teaches on a subject, but that depends on who you ask.

For me it's all about framing: the question is about seeing Jesus through today's issues, rather than seeing today's issues through Jesus. The Bible almost always has something that can be taken to be wisdom about any issue, but questions have to be phrased better. A question asking whether Paul wrote about austerity measures in southern Europe would be similarly downvoted.

I understood what you are calling framing to be examples. Those would be the parts about marching/protesting etc. in Furgerson.

Also, seeing Jesus through today's issues is just as legitimate as seeing today's issues through Jesus. It depends on what the purpose of your study is.

At the bottom they ask whether they engaged in social justice. That's kind of the core issue. But instead of making that the main question, it asks whether they protested anything similar to some times last year when some young black men in the US were shot and their killers, including a police officer, were thought to not face justice, bringing systemic racism into the spotlight. It says that Jesus didn't argue for women to have the right to vote, but no one in Judea had that right! That's what I meant by framing: there is not enough recognition of cultural distance.

It says at the top: Here, by "protest", I'm referring to "in the culture of the time, whatever 'protesting' is closest to." Though the OP's ignorance of some things is clear.

@fredsbendtheGrinch Yeah they tried to some extent, and I'm not saying that the question is the worst we've ever seen. But I do think it's worth negative votes because of how it's presented.

I agree, a few, perhaps three. I probably would have downvoted if mine was the first vote. But by this logic there are three voters that think -3, -4, and -5 is not enough. It just seems uncharacteristic of this community.

I know I was one of the downvoters but I don't remember how many there were before I added mine. I think this answer best encapsulates what I was thinking. It seemed to be a non-researched question looking for an opinion on a very hot-button and also very complex issue.

I didn't downvote, but I commented that I didn't think enough research had been done on the question. I do think that even a cursory read through one of the Gospels would answer the question; one could see on even a quick read that there were no protests for Jesus to take part in, nor any encouragement on his part for his disciples to do the same.
If the question had been something like "Is there a biblical basis in the Gospels for Christians to engage in this sort of protest?" I would not have made such a comment.
Incidentally I don't think I would have said that this was off-topic based on "opinion based"; I don't think it's opinion-based; I think it's a pretty simple "No" based on a reading of Jesus' words.

I don't think it's as clear as you say. I immediately thought of Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple. It was very public and quite violent, involving a whip. I'm also reminded of the numerous times that Jesus insults the Pharisees, which looks like public criticism of public officials to me.

@fredsbendtheGrinch I think I see what you're saying, but I didn't make the connection between that and something like a public, organized protest.

There was also, at the top of the question, Here, by "protest", I'm referring to "in the culture of the time, whatever 'protesting' is closest to." I think the author is willing to recognize that people did things differently then.

@fredsbend fair point. I do not remember seeing that in the question as I first saw it.

Nevertheless I stand by my last comment. I don't think I'd feel comfortable describing any actions of Jesus as "close to protesting".

And in these comments, we see where the "opinion" comes in.

There are different reasons why people choose to down-vote a question, among those being that the question is off-topic.
I would argue that whether a question attracts only one or multiple down-votes doesn't say much, just that

The question attracted some attention
There is a common consense that the question is indeed off-topic. More people coming to that conclusion = more down-votes.

I'm not sure that 2. means more down-votes = "more off-topic" / worse. Maybe just "easier to recognize as off-topic" and "attracting more attention than other, similar off-topic questions".
Other thoughts? Am I way off here?

Well, yes, that is how it works, I suppose, but usually only sensitive topics, hate speech, rants, Muslims trying to converts us, etc. get downvoted this much. I don't think this question is any of those.


text:
Why did a Moderator respond this way after declining my flag? Please help me understand
Please help me understand: Why did a Moderator respond this way after declining my flag?
Background and facts
Because of my continual perceived unpleasant and negative interactions1 with @Ward, I thought of a way perhaps the interaction might be improved. Therefore I viewed his profile and his posts and reviewed this answer of his.
I decided to edit his answer and hinted to him in my comments what "might improve" his answer - please note that would mean a complete rewrite of his answer - and I then upvoted.
What I had hoped to achieve was not accomplished because @Ward rollbacked his post to a previous position. I then downvoted and flagged the answer it is very low quality, selecting from the 5 choices available to me.

A moderator declined my flag.

Repeating their response:

declined - flags should only be used to make moderators aware of
  content that requires their intervention

The issues
I am confused.

If it is very low quality is one of the options to select when flagging an answer, why would a moderator respond in this manner because it left me with the impression I shouldn't have?
And why wouldn't they intervene in an answer that has been flagged low quality and even a cursory view of the answer - reads like an opinion - shows that it is of very low quality?

Please help me understand. I am thinking that the one who needs to answer here is the Moderator who took the action.

cf. @Ward's answer: But if you actually read the text of the flag you cast (his emphasis).

Summary Church teaching and therefore answer

Advances in technology have now made it possible to procreate apart
  from sexual relations through the meeting in vitro of the germ-cells
  previously taken from the man and the woman. But what is technically
  possible is not for that very reason morally admissible. - cf. My answer.

Please note this other Moderator response after subsequently flagging it is not an answer: not an answer – FMS 10 hours ago declined - flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer - From Church teaching and because @Ward gave his opinion/understanding, I believe with a very high degree of certainty that his answer is wrong.

Update:  Notice added | @DavidStratton: Citation needed

It's right there in the text you quoted in your comment: "flags should not be used to indicate ... an altogether wrong answer"  And as I said in my answer, that text is not something a moderator chose to type, that's the system's canned response when the flag is declined.

@Ward Let's switch places and your answer is my answer, please share with me the steps you could have taken if any.

I have discovered a truly remarkable answer to your comment, but this margin is too small to contain it.  :)  (maybe later)

Ward has since edited the answer. It at least has a source, though I remain unconvinced that his answer is any good or even correct. However, that is not why I championed its deletion earlier. I no longer think it should be deleted.

The following is my original meta post.
I did downvote it myself. I did not flag it because I think I first saw it recently in the review queue.
The post is very low quality. And if not low quality, it's not an answer, being that it is just an impression the OP holds. It would pass as a comment, but not an answer. We regularly delete answers exactly like this.
If I were a mod, I'd probably have deleted it by now. It's pretty clear that Ward has no intention of self-deleting nor improving it. Especially in light of the fact that FMS basically gave him the answer in his post, but then he rolls it back.
So, yeah. I agree. It should be removed because:

It is low quality.
It is over a year old.
The OP has shown no effort to improve it.
The OP has refused obvious improvement with a rollback.
The OP has obstinately declined to recognize that it is a low quality post and should be self-deleted at this point.

So why are we spending so much time talking about the flags and how to use them and all that nonsense when clearly the point of your meta post is that the answer is crap and should be deleted, but the mods have chosen not to do so?

Thank you! So why are we spending so much time talking about the flags and how to use them and all that nonsense when clearly the point of your meta post is that the answer is crap and should be deleted - previously when I have gone straight to the point (see two prior posts to this one) there is always you could have done this or that, your are argumentative, you are not following the direction given, + other it's your fault, etc., I purposefully chose to jump through as many hoops as previously pointed to me. End result, the same.

It is over a year old. - Wow!

@FMS I can see why you are getting frustrated. I think the way you present meta issues is confusing to most people and that's why you get weird responses. I think the first thing I'd work on to improve the way you write meta posts is to keep it simple. In this case, I would have simply said, "I think this post should be deleted because (the points I gave above) but a mod declined my flag. What does the community think about this?" I would have left it as simple as that.

Like I said, there is always one more thing ...  I think the way you present meta issues is confusing to most people and that's why you get weird responses - please add this to my list above. This post follows suggestion from Ward in my previous post. Perhaps better approach is for others to try to see where the poster is coming from and not respond in very aggressive ways that make people defensive.

PS Just review the voting on my post, your post, Ward's and curiousdannii's. The latter three cannot be pinned on me. After having experienced what I have gone through, that could have also be done to me if that were possible. Why is it so difficult for a person/people to say   I believe a mistake was made here and we are sorry and this is what we suggest doing going forward Right now no Mod. has taken ownership for the responses.

After I have presented Background and facts what is lacking in the confusion I have and I have raised under The issues section? That ought to be the first step, let the user try as best as they can raise they issues as they see them and the others ought to assist but not point fingers put posts on hold or respond as I have indicated above. PS Please see immediate past posts and I doing all that was asked for me - post still unresolved. Leaves me thinking that there is more than meets the eye.

@fredsbend I wouldn't say that he rolled back an obvious improvement, as the quote FMS added was making a very different point. Ward was saying that IVF was akin to playing God. FMS' quote said that somehow IVF means the child doesn't have a father and that it betrays the spouses. Ward has now added his own reference which does seem to support his argument that doctors don't have the authority to do IVF.

@curiousdannii I've see the updated answer and have likewise updated this meta post.

It's not clear what you think the problem with the answer is - buried in this question you seem to hint that the answer is too much of an opinion.  Fair enough, if you don't think it's a good answer, a downvote is appropriate.
But if you actually read the text of the flag you cast, it says:

this answer has severe formatting ... problems - doesn't seem to apply, there isn't really any formatting.
answer has severe ... content problems - not being supported with references isn't considered a content problem, so this doesn't apply
answer is unlikely to be salvageable through editing - apparently even you think this doesn't apply because you thought a reference would be an improvement

So none of the three examples of what "very low quality" means apply, therefore the flag was declined - with boilerplate text explaining why.  As the canned message says, flags are for dealing with things that can't be dealt with by high-rep users.

This is exactly right.

@FMS - See this post on what "low quality" is supposed to mean.

Do the 5 choices  reference this? 2) Check if the post can be improved. If you can raise its quality above the threshold of acceptability, Edit it. Keep in mind that editing within the queue will be a unilateral Looks OK vote, so be careful with edits that just make minor improvements (“repainting the titanic as it sinks”) - could this have been done to his answer? My post says a complete rewrite was required.

(cont.) To me BOTH the first and second review steps here apply to @Ward's answer. That being the case, a Moderator failed on at least three accounts.

@FMS  Have you seen A Theory of Moderation, which outlines what the role of moderators is supposed to be?  You seem to expect the moderators to do an awful lot that should, in reality, be done by community members such as yourself.  It's not good to have us be too heavy-handed.  The more unilateral decisions you ask us to make, the more you make it "Caleb's site" or "David Stratton's Site" (and so on for the rest of the moderators.)  The community should be handling these issues, not the moderators.

Ideally, mods should step in only when the community has failed to act, or if there's a serious issue.  I'd really like to see that happen, but if every little thing results in a flag or a meta post asking for moderator explanations or intervention, I don't see much opportunity for that to happen.  We especially can't be put in the position where we are determining if a post is "the right answer".

@DavidStratton I'm unclear on how the community deletes posts. I know there are delete votes for 10K+ rep users and the "recommend deletion" button on low quality reviews, but that's about all I know. Is there an MSE post that describes the process? The post, which I think should be deleted, is over a year old, so, yes, I do actually think the community failed to step in.

@fredsbend - I think I need to regroup and re-evaluate.  My main issue here is that even though I think it's low quality, and misses the boat, I don't think it's a wild tangent answer, and it does attempt to answer the question IMO.  My opinion may be off.

Yes I have @DavidStratton during my "time away." Please recall the steps I took before flagging.  We especially can't be put in the position where we are determining if a post is "the right answer" - that wasn't in any flag that I raised.

PS regards "the right answer" - the mods had a tool available in @AndrewLeach's answer. Please note that it is in our recent memory that one of my answers was given heat for much less. The issue I raised is still pending.

PPS ... which is selected ...

@FMS "Please note that it is in our recent memory that one of my answers was given heat for much less." Since you've been looking for feedback on your presentation in meta, here's one suggestion: leave out comparisons to how your own posts have been handled/flagged in the past. Other users may know what specific post you're referring to, but I for one don't and I don't see how it's constructive to raise an issue like that. It just looks petty.

To be perfectly frank, it's not really a great answer, and I don't really think Ward would disagree.
The main problem is that it's only expressing his personal understanding. It needs references.
What you could've done was to comment asking for some references for his claims. You could potentially even have flagged and asked for the needs-sources note to be added to the answer, but that's really a measure of last resort, and I'd usually only do that for new users who don't look like they're coming back.

Thank you for your input here. It is appreciated.

What you could've done - Say this perhaps after weighing in on the steps I have already taken? The general impression I continually get is that there is always one more thing that I could have done ...

@FMS The steps you took were 1) an edit, and 2) a VLQ flag. curiousdannii's comment on fredsbend's answer above explains his qualm with your edit, and Ward himself explained the problem with the flag. So in this answer it says, "The main problem is that it's only expressing his personal understanding. It needs references." What's normally done in such circumstances is to just downvote and/or comment, and move on. The point of this answer is that if you wanted to do more than that -- as your edit and flag indicate -- then you could've flagged to ask for the needs-sources note to be added.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Where on the Main C.SE site or Meta is the information discouraging "copying and pasting?"
Where on the Main C.SE site or Christianity Meta is the information discouraging just copying and pasting even when referencing the source?

Copying and pasting without doing additional work constitute plagiarism.

http://christianity.stackexchange.com/help/referencing

If your answer is entirely a quote of another work and nothing else, then you should expect negative feedback, even if you sourced it.
If your answer copies the content from another source and does not note that source, then it is plagiarism, which is a serious offence in academic settings, which is exactly the setting we are going for here.
I consider this common sense for anyone who went to high school.
The help center covers this exactly:

Plagiarism - posting the work of others with no indication that it is not your own

...

Do not copy the complete text of external sources; instead, use their words and ideas to support your own.

I consider this common sense for anyone who went to high school. - What is expected external to the site may not translate to the site - that too ought to be common sense.

This question was about quote only answers that were referenced, not plagiarism. No original content is a different problem than not sourcing.

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


text:
Is this answer OK as regards "referencing material written by others?"
Is this Geremia's answer to What is the Catholic interpretation of John 19:26-27? OK as regards "referencing material written by others?"
If yes, in what way?

Note: Please see the comments exchange below the answer.

No.  It's not OK.
From the help center:

Do not copy the complete text of external sources; instead, use their
  words and ideas to support your own. And always give proper credit to
  the author and site where you found the text, including a direct link
  to it.

In that answer, there was no "his own" answer, it was simply text copied from other sources.
If you flag items like that, be sure to keep it simple:  Flag it and just put "This is plagiarized from another source with not original work from the answerer" or something like that.


text:
Who is "community wiki Charles?"
Who is community wiki Charles who posted this answer to What is the Biblical argument that homosexual attraction is sinful by itself?

I guess I am not clear about the community wiki part.
I am having a difficulty understanding why his "answer" is at +1/0 votes when the comment by @fredsbend below it indicates it's not an answer.

Update 1: @fredsbend's comment has now disappeared. Why? See image capture below.

Update 2: "Community wiki Charles" is now just "Charles." What happened?

I think in general you attach more significance to vote counts than is warranted. In this case, one person upvoted the answer and nobody else did anything.

I remember that this was a community wiki post at first (Ward linked to where to learn about that). I don't know how that's been undone. I'm not sure why my comment was deleted. I think it was still current and constructive. Oh, well. No big deal to me.

@fredsbend Thank you for weighing in here. That's that was the purpose of bullet point 1. that does not appear to have  registered with Mr.Bultitude. I made this post because of noticing what to me was an unusual post, and trying to understand it. And now I have updated the post to try to understand why "community wiki" has now disappeared from "Charles".

The post in question had no business being marked as a Community Wiki post. It was not produced through a collaborative effort and marking it as such for a year attracted no activity. There was no point it such a marking so I removed it and made it a normal post again. Look at the edit history for the post to answer these kinds of questions. It will show how it changed at when.

@Caleb Thank you Caleb for the clarification.

Overall questions about how SE works are usually found on meta.SE.  e.g. All about Community Wiki posts.

I appreciate your post and the education.

Question edited.

Selected after Caleb's clarifying comment.

"Charles" is the name of the member who made the first post.
The "community wiki" part means that anybody including folks without any rep at all can edit post on this site. The point of CW posts is not to lower the bar but to relinquish ownership to encourage more collaboration. For the most part, it is a useless feature for this site.


text:
Please help me understand the deletion by "community" and their rationale for deleting this question
Please help me understand the deletion by "community" and their rationale for deleting this question:

In the Catholic Church, what rules are to be followed when
  interpreting the Bible?
It is well known that the Catholic Church does not rely solely on Holy
  Scripture when discussing matters of faith and belief; it adds what is
  known as Sacred Tradition as well, and the Church Magisterium, the
  authority which the Church holds to be inherited from the apostles,
  and by which it interprets both Scripture and Tradition.
There is also a historic difference between Catholicism and many
  Protestant denominations in that (as I understand it) many Protestant
  denominations encourage not only personal reading of Scripture, but
  personal interpretation of it—whereas Catholicism is strongly
  against interpretation that does not originate with, or at least agree
  with, the Magisterium.
All of which raises the following question: In the Catholic Church, is
  there an accepted procedure to be used in order to interpret the
  meaning of Holy Scripture (in agreement with Tradition, for example)?
  Or guidelines to be adhered to? Patristic writings to be aware of?
  Prayers to be said? Etc.?

This is a feature of all Stack Exchange sites to remove poorly-received questions.
My suggestion would be to consider carefully the final edit, which came too late to avoid collecting two downvotes. The version that collected those votes read:

In the Catholic Church, which is the sound rule for biblical interpretation?
The answer sought will first identify senses of Scripture according to Church Tradition.

This is unclear and far too terse.

Any chance to provide me with a sample proposal to assist me in re-asking this question?


text:
Do these posts meet the criteria for answers?
Given the requirements in the question posts, do these posts meet the criteria for answers?

@Curiousdannii's answer to According to Catholic theology, why does God have an only Son?
@DickHarfield's answer to Within the Catholic Church, what are the main reasons given for the decline of Catholicism in the Netherlands?

If not, what is to be done with them?
Perhaps note this: Note that this matching perspectives rule has been the de-facto policy since the first weeks of this site. -Cf. this @Caleb's answer.

Image capture of the flag history since @Caleb brings them up in his answer.

Note that I commented suggesting you widen the scope to all trinitarians. Your reply indicated that I hadn't understood what you meant by 'only son', but didn't say why broadening the scope would be bad.

Note that I commented suggesting you widen the scope to all trinitarians. - That was not the scope I wanted.

Altering question scopes based on community feedback is a normal process for stack exchange. Questions belong to us all. Just because a question can be narrowed to a single denomination doesn't mean it should be. If someone essentially copied your question and broadened it to all trinitarians then yours would be closed as a duplicate. That means it might be better to just make yours broader to start with.

@curiousdannii I disagree because of ALL my posts that have either been put on hold, deleted, marked duplicate, given heat, etc., after following the approach you outline in your comment. I will let other weigh in because the comment you make is incredible to me.

Neither of these are great answers per-se but neither are they flagrantly out of place. Neither of them exhibit the classic NAA symptoms we deal with a lot around here and neither one seems to be in need of moderator intervention.

While the question mentions Catholicism it actually covers a lot of topical ground common to Trinitarians. While the answer only covers the Trinitarian part the OP clearly thought it applied to the question that was asked. If it is inaccurate in its representation that's something for voters to evaluate, not moderators. NAA that a moderator would intervene for would have been, for example, an a non trinitarian answer that argued against the doctrine in question.
While not directly citing sources, it does give an overview of the issue developed at least in part from the requested perspective.

I could imagine much more useful answers to both questions but usefulness and accuracy are for votes to judge not for moderators to dictate.
P. S. Please stop flagging the same things multiple times...and keep an eye on your flag history so you learn when you are flagging the wrong sort of things.


text:
Let's take a moment to remember Affable Geek
On February 14th, 2015, Michael Hollinger passed away. We all knew him better as Affable Geek.
Affable Geek was our top user. Not only did he have the highest rep count by over 20% more than the next user, he also was instrumental in forming the site policy, community, and culture. His activity was always polite, constructive, and interesting. Reading anything from Affable was always a pleasure and enlightening. Even on the day of his death, his last comment illustrated his enthusiasm for the site and its topic. It reads "This is exactly the kind of question this site was designed for. Thank you!!!!" He truly was the Affable Geek.
We will miss you.

It's strange reading his answers with the knowledge that he's no longer on earth... It's as though he's not quite dead, but that his wisdom and knowledge has been preserved, and still remains.

What a horrible loss.  I will truly miss him.  I, like others, am truly sad.

I still miss him. But I've accepted that he's now gone and am happy, not sad, when I read his remaining posts.

I almost forget he was gone today.

I didn't know Michael very well, but I did interact with him on chat quite a bit. He struck me as an honest man who lived to serve others with his time, talents, and knowledge. It's shocking to know that he completed his race so soon; too many people will never benefit from his answers to our questions.
Besides his prodigious contributions to the main site (and meta and chat), I will remember his posts on our late blog: Eschewmenical. Reading through his work there, I stumbled across a poignant line:

How can you possibly do Easter without Good Friday?

I encourage you to read the whole post, which describes the hope that Michael shared with Christians everywhere: because one man died we all can live with God forever. It's a hope that many find foolish, but I don't think Affable Geek was a fool.
As a community, we remember at times like this that people exist behind the avatars and screen names. Men and women, with families and friends and separate lives, sit behind the computer typing out their questions and answers. Let us not forget that.
And Affable Geek: we miss you already. I'm sure you would have had just the right words to say to us today.

I will definitely miss trading ideas and the occasional banter with that extraordinarily bright and gentle fellow. I'm going to go out of my way to bring positive impact to someone today, my own quirky way of grieving.

Personally, I considered Affable Geek a friend. Though I never met him in person, I'm finding it hard to keep from tearing up. In times like these we wish we could do more. We can't even reach out to his family to comfort them during this time of sorrow. But we can at least carry on and honor his memory. I'll never forget him and his profile and site activity will always be there. His memory is always with us.

That's not entirely true. We can post memories on his obit page. http://www.obitsforlife.com/obituary/1056741/Hollinger-Michael.php

@JimG. You are right, and I've added something there. Hopefully it will comfort some of his family.

I'm still in shock that one of our greatest contributors and participants is just...gone. I didn't know him personally, and we weren't close, but he was a regular sight on the site and in chat. His death is the fourth one that has and is affecting me significantly, following my grandmother, my residential-high-school neighbor, and my dog.
Honestly, I'm also a bit haunted and bothered that none of us noticed his complete absence and spoke up for a week and three days. Not until three days after his profile was edited to let us know of the fact. But now I will be keenly aware of his continuing absence.
His death was and is a tragedy, both in real life and for this site. Nonetheless, his spirit lives on. I look forward to seeing you up there, Affable, but until then, I'll remember your presence here.

How did Stack Exchange learn about his death? Who updated his profile?

We don't know who updated his profile. LCIII only spotted it today, and I did some research to confirm.

@El'endiaStarman We noticed, but didn't feel it was our place to ask. (Or maybe that was just me.)

He was like this site's "cool professor" that everyone wanted to be around in an academic celebrity kind of way. Getting an answer from him authenticated your question and made you feel good for asking it.
His answers, whether or not your agreed with them, always carried a sense of legitimacy. Not like you were hearing the opinion of some stranger online, but you were seeing the official answer of AffableGeek, the Jon Skeet of Christianity.SE.
Even now, what affects me the most is the self-awareness of how much his death has affected me. I didn't hardly know anything about him. He was just a couple notches above a total stranger. All I saw these last 8 months were his thoughts on Christianity, which, now knowing that I'll never see new ones from him again, has clearly left an emotional mark. The way he approached his answers, his wit, his succinctness, his laid-back attitude, and his super-human ability to not get all riled up over anything that went on this site but to keep the peace made me feel like if I knew him, I'd really like him.

He was like this site's "cool professor" that everyone wanted to be around in an academic celebrity kind of way. ... AffableGeek, the Jon Skeet of Christianity.SE. Exactly right. Thank you for articulating why we loved him so much.

I am shocked.
This is the first Stack Exchange member's death that I know of.
He seemed like a great guy. I didn't always agree with him,  but that made him a little more human to me.
Man. I am stunned. I kind of wish I knew him in real life.

Wow, I am truly saddened by this.  He was an awesome fountain of information and a blessing to this SE.  I looked forward to his answers on any subject.  I remember when he had some marital concerns a year or so ago.  I really don't know what to say other then I will miss him and I am truly grieving.
Here is something that I said about him almost 3 years before his passing.
Here is an image of him.

This speaks volumes: http://christianity.stackexchange.com/a/15404/4277

Been spending the last few hours pointlessly trying to discover what became of our friend.  I got a new job the week before he died and my participation on the site tanked so I missed out on all this and now it's sinking in, crying through reading the transcript of the memorial chat.
There are so many missed opportunities that people have in life, most of them probably would amount to nothing, but I'd sure wished I'd have spent more time learning from him.
The compliments he gave out on for answers he liked made you feel really good about yourself.

That's a fascinating angle that really gave me new insights. Not having thought of marriage as a sacrement, I wouldn't have considered this. +1 to you, and serious kudos to those of you who started this site for exactly this reason!

He was an exceptionally open-minded individual to have taken and a great writer, an inquisitive mind as well as an excellent teacher.  Everything about him and his work here shows how great he was at communicating Truth and I will sincerely miss him!

What happened to him??

Just wanted to circle back on this.
Last August, someone uploaded additional pictures of Michael during happier times.
R.I.P. @AffableGeek


text:
Should we have a "hagiology" tag?
I learned a new word today: hagiology. It means:

hagiology
[hag-ee-ol-uh-jee, hey-jee-]
noun

the branch of literature dealing with the lives and legends of the saints.
a biography or narrative of a saint or saints.
a collection of such biographies or narratives.

We have plenty of questions about saints and a good chunk of them are about the saints' lives or deaths.
I think these questions would benefit from an hagiology tag. Would this be  a good idea?
Here's a few that could use it:

Is there a sense in which Stephen was the first Catholic saint?
What exactly is the purpose of a Patron Saint?
Why does a beheaded saint have the halo above the stump?
Why is Mary Magdalene the patron saint of hairdressers?
What exactly is the purpose of a Patron Saint?

How would it be used differently from the [tag:saint] tag?

@curiousdannii I'm not sure at the moment. That's kind of why I asked the question.

Don't forget Where are the tombs of Jesus' original 12 disciples?

@Mr.Bultitude That would be the perfect question to have the tag.


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Should this question be closed or edited?
This is the question:
What did Jesus say about the end times?
Here's the problem I have with it. It is essentially, "What does the Bible say about x?" Which the community has decided is essentially primarily opinion based. This shows in that question's most recent answer. I can't downvote that answer in all earnestness because it does answer the question and within the frame of that question. To the answerer, this is what Jesus has said about the topic. This, of course, is exactly why questions of this form should be closed or edited.
Further explanation: "What Jesus said" is not limited to the Gospels. Jesus also speaks in Revelation. The SDA and JW believe that Michael is Jesus. An answer I read recently argued that Melchizedek was Jesus. One of the answers on the post in question quotes 1 Cor. and says "here's what Jesus said through Paul". In fact, any country bumpkin has a valid opinion to answer this question from anything in the Bible as something Jesus said, because He is God after all. If the question intends to limit to the Gospels, then it should say so (as in, it needs an edit). I guess I'm fine with that scope limiting.
Does the community agree? If yes, should we see an edit or just a close vote?

This question was apparently mentioned before in meta. I do not think this question is a duplicate of that because that question is actually about a different main site question and only references the main site question I'm asking about as an example.

Good question; I'm not sure. And this question is similar enough that I don't think it warrants a separate meta post (go ahead and disagree with this poor soul if you want).

possible duplicate of The fine line between good and poor question

The OP didn't ask "What does the Bible say about 'X'?" The OP asked "What did **Jesus** say about 'X'?" The latter is much more specific and limited in scope to just the Gospels.
So in conclusion, there's no need for an edit or a close vote.

I hope you don't mind that I edited this down to only the relevant information.  I don't think it's appropriate to use Meta to tell people, personally, what you think of their voting habits, but I do agree that this is more limited in scope.  I do wish I'd thought of a way to edit this and retain the Rogers pic, however.

"What Jesus said" is not limited to the Gospels. Jesus also speaks in Revelation. The SDA and JW believe that Michael is Jesus. An answer I read recently argued that Melchizedek was Jesus. One of the answers on the post in question quotes 1 Cor. and says "here's what Jesus said through Paul". In fact, any country bumpkin has a valid opinion to answer this question from anything in the Bible as something Jesus said, because He is God after all. If the question intends to limit to the Gospels, then it should say so (as in, it needs an edit). I guess I'm fine with that scope limiting.

Seems like you're on meta telling people to calm down and be more lax about enforcement a lot, and get downvoted just as much. Perhaps you're in the minority?


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I don't understand why I cannot answer this question
Why did Jesus say he came to create division?
It seems like this topic was closed because the mods didn't like the comments on it. That seems wrong. Why can't I answer this question? What is going on here?

That question isn't closed. You need only 10 reputation points to answer it: two up votes on a question or one on an answer. I really don't understand at all why you seem so angry.

This should be posted on [meta], but OP doesn't have enough rep to participate on meta.

So, you've left the faith because you can't figure out the site's functions? Yeah, that's reasonable. The question is protected because it has apparently received a bunch of spam in the past. Leave the faith for reason, if that's where it leads you, but this looks more like a rage quit to me.

Welcome to the site. Based on this question, it's apparent that you've completely misunderstood the basic purpose of Christianity.StackExchange.com.  We have strict guidelines in place to prevent EXACTLY the type of thing you're complaining about.
As you're a new visitor, I'd like to recommend the following posts, which are meant to help newcomers "learn the ropes":

The Tour
The Help

That question isn't closed, it's been protected.  That means that brand new users can't answer.  Most new users DO mistake this site for a discussion forum, where personal understanding is an acceptable answer.
On this site we don't do personal interpretation.  This site is intended to focus solely on what he various group within Christianity teach, not what is True.
Questions like the one you cited tend to draw answers about what's "True".  Newcomers who haven't had a chance to learn the ropes tend to post answers that argue over which doctrine is correct, rather than what doctrines are taught.
That then leads to discussion and arguments over who's right.  You can get that at any Christian discussion forum.  Or any discussion forum in general.  The bottom line is that StackExchange sites are intended to be an alternative to discussion forums as described in the tour.
The challenge this site faces is that it's extremely difficult to get people NOT to argue over correct doctrine.

First, there's a pretty wide variety of doctrines that fall under the umbrella of Christianity.
Second, most of us believe that knowing the right doctrine has serious eternal consequences to the individual.

That second point is the one that gets us all riled up.  None of us want's to see doctrines that we believe are false being touted as True.  None of us wants to see people being led astray.  That's one reason we stress that this site is *not about what's True".  We aren't allowed to post that other views are wrong, but yet at the same time we're not allowed to tout our own beliefs as True.  We simply answer the question asked.  That's explained in Another reason this is not a Christian site
The bottom line is that if you're here at all to discuss eternal Truth, to evangelize, etc, then this isn't the site for you.
Personally, I stuck with this site because it allows me to learn about what others teach, so that I can be prepared for it when I'm talking to people and witnessing in person.  It's easier to counter false doctrine when you understand the false doctrine.
At any rate, if you do decide to participate, and get past those posts, here are some more that drive the guidelines home:

Types of questions that are within community guidelines
Pastoral Advice Questions
We can't handle the truth
According to Whom?
How we are different than other sites?
we're not here to convince you.
On-topic and constructive examples
Tips for editing a question to make it suitable for re-opening

However, if you do decide you want to participate, your tone will need to change.  Again, this isn't a discussion forum, and rants don't count as questions or answers here.


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Why is there no auto delete for some "answers"?
I recently reviewed an answer that was apparently caught in the "low quality" filter, but the system stops there for some reason.
Here's the complete text of the answer:

It is bullshit. That is it. Nothing else.

Considering it is very short and includes profanity, why does the SE engine not just assume it is spam? It makes sense to me that any post that contains profanity and is under a certain character limit is always spam, so should therefore be auto-deleted.

My guess is that SE doesn't want to entrust such harsh punishment to an automated system. Plus, it would break user expectations. In any case, it has been deleted.

@El'endiaStarman SE deletes are a soft delete. It's not that harsh.

Sure, but would anyone notice a mistake and undelete it?

@El'endiaStarman The user, hopefully. Or it could be put in the review queue all the same, except you are verifying the auto-delete, not voting/flagging to delete.

While SE does not have an automated procedure for this kind of thing, the power is well within the reach of our userbase (nearly regardless of reputation).
Posts like this (with swear words, or spam), can be reviewed by the community and with enough of the proper flag, automatically deleted.
This is SE's first line of defense against spam and offensive content. And, at least on this particular site (where we take a harsher tone on swear words than most of the rest of the network, given our intended audience), this kind of post should be met with immediate offensive votes.
After 6 of these votes the post is deleted, hidden (10k users have to view rev history to see it's contents), and the user is docked 100 reputation.
Simply put, deleting content (especially answers), is just too hard and too severe for an automated process. There are some cleanup scripts that delete old, abandoned, poorly regarded questions, but none similar for answers (and these scripts are not content dependent, they are vote, edit and closure dependent). SE's automation does very little reviewing of post contents since that is a rather difficult task for a computer (but a simple one for humans!).
Keep in mind that this is the same engine that runs SO and the other SE sites, so a change that deleted short posts with swear words would not be a one size fits all solution (consider that there is a computer language whose name is a swear, and that many swear processors fall victim to clbuttic mistakes).
Further note, meta does have a short answer deletion process, it will actually delete and automatically convert to comment posts under a certain character limit.


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How may this question be asked here: Is God male and female? | BH?
How may this question be asked here: Is God male and female? | BH?
I tried to but was unsuccessful. The MODs may do well to make available the history to facilitate a better discussion.

Without knowing that it was posted over at BH, I tried to ask this question at C.SE.. I even set up a chat with I believe @fredsbend. If my memory serves me correct, it was @DavidStratton who closed it. I do not recall the exact reasoning.
I am trying to find out where I may have gone wrong in posing the question and looking for how I might asked it better, hence this META post.

If the question has already been asked on BH, why do you want to ask here? What would you do differently?

@JonEricson, Posting the question from a non-hermeneutics (text ual analysis) point of view.

@JonEricson Hence the META post.

I'm voting to keep this open, but until a link shows up, this is a rather unclear question. I'm guessing the question was deleted? Any mods that are reading this, please recover the question FMS is referring to.

@fredsbend Thanks for the edit. Do you have a link to our chat?

@Mr.Beatitude Thanks. PS It went through multiple edits in attempts to keep it open but none were successful. A discussion and suggestions here may help me figure what else I could have done.

@FMS Gee, I don't remember having a chat about this. Sorry.

@fredsbend And you do not remember me attempting to ask a similar question on C.SE?

@FMS I think I remember that, but nothing specific.


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Account access e-mail change
How do I change my e-mail address? There seems to be no way to access my account when my old e-mail address has been deleted. Upon changing my internet provider and using my Gmail account I cannot log on to the site.

You probably need to contact Stack exchange directly, though you may find the answer elsewhere through that link. This one might help you https://christianity.stackexchange.com/help/edit-credentials it details adding additional credentials to your account, if you remember your username and password to your old account, you may be able to log in there, add your gmail adddress and then remove your old one. If you don't remember you password, you probably need to contact stack exchange directly and see if they have a different way. There is a contact link at the bottom of each page, use this to get ahold of someone who can help.


text:
Why can't we ask questions?
I was reading in a article that asked whether Mohammed was supposed to be the prophet Jesus spoke about in the Bible. I asked that question here. Someone replied that this is not the place to ask about Islam. I don’t understand why. To understand my religion and to further it, don’t I need to ask questions?
This is the time to educate ourselves, as many Christians are backsliding to the cult of Islam. If you don’t believe me, go to YouYube and see all the Christians converting to that cult. For every four we lose it seems we gain one. If we are to fight for their salvation then all questions should be asked, from all religions. If we do not answer the questions with which Islam attacks us, we as a religion should just start facing Mecca and praying to the pagan stone.
We must defend our faith. If we don’t do it now, when shall we do it? When we don’t know the answers any more, where can we turn? I am a Christian and I don’t know everything; I can’t remember everything; but I have enough trust in my faith to know my brothers and sisters will help me fight the satanic religion which is attacking us.

I've moved this to the META site, which is the proper venue for discussing what is and isn't on-topic for the main site.

There are some questions about mohammed that aren't closed, while others are. It's a matter of scope. The site has a specific scope that is strictly held to. The question you are referring to was probably outside of that scope.

You would need to demonstrate that there are Christians who believe that Mohammad is a prophet and then speak to that group.  This site is to ask questions about rites, rituals, and beliefs of groups claiming to be Christian.  It is not a place to ".. defend our faith.."

You spend one small paragraph asking about the policies of this site: perfectly on topic. You then spend two paragraphs ranting about perfidious Islam: absolutely off topic. Hence my downvote.

This is the time to educate ourselves: You're exactly right. That's why I asked this question:http://meta.christianity.stackexchange.com/q/1354/1100

It's also why I asked this question:http://meta.christianity.stackexchange.com/q/4070/1100

I understand your concern; but this site is intended to be a source of questions and answers about Christian teachings, practices, and history. Most questions (not all) involving Mohammed are likely not to fall into these categories.

Questions about Islam should go to the Q&A site for Islam. Often times, keeping on-topic is merely a matter of wording.
The site tour defines what is on topic as

the history of denominations (such as Roman Catholic, Anglican, Church of Christ, or the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and movements (such as Pentecostalism, Creationism, Calvinism)
understanding the Bible from the perspective of a specific viewpoint (like those listed above)
explanations of the beliefs and practices of a denomination or movement
the Biblical basis for a belief or practice

So if, For example if you asked "what is the biblical basis for the claim that the prophet Jesus spoke of was ____" (I'm not aware of any passage where jesus spoke of a coming prophet, so I can't fill in that blank) or "what is the biblical basis for the belief there will be no future prophets" these might be on topic. Conversely, several things are off topic:

a survey of all Christian views on a particular subject
what the Bible says about a subject (unless you specify a doctrine/tradition)
advice on how to handle certain situations (pastoral advice questions)
is "X" a sin questions that ask whether a certain action or belief is sinful
"Truth" questions that do not focus on what a specific group of people teaches
whether some group or person is "Christian"

So, if you asked "What should I tell my islamic friend who thinks that Jesus spoke of a coming prophet?" or "What does the bible say about islam?" these would be off-topic.


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Question about being a new user
I saw some interesting comments on your site so I signed up for your site; then I tried leaving a comment; it said I needed 'reputation' points.  I looked these up and these look very confusing and way too burdensome and cumbersome. It seems like with this approach you are limiting different opinions.
Just my feedback.  No response needed.

Thanks for your interest in  the site. This is a question and answer site, so personal opinions are not the important thing here. Answers showing what group of Christians believe something, with references, are preferred. We hope you will consider posting again when you have a question which can be stated so as to be within site guidelines, or an answer you can back up with references.

It seems like with this approach you are limiting different opinions.

Yes. That's kind of the point.
This site is not a discussion forum and we are really trying to avoid as much opinion based material as possible. Instead we want to see extant teachings of various groups explained from those groups' respective understandings. That's what answers should consist of, not people's opinions (right or wrong).
The comment function is deliberately limited to people who have posted a few regular questions and answers and gotten a feel for how the site works. Otherwise everybody that comes by off the internet would want to drop comments and turn every post into a discussion.
Even with 1 rep you are allowed to post questions an answers. Those are the bread and butter of the site and we encourage you to start there if you want to participate. Once you learn what is expected of regular posts it will be more apparent how comments are supposed to work and by that time you will have enough rep to use them.

Start with asking and answering questions. They are the centrepiece of this site. Comments are only for asking for clarification. Think of them as little sticky notes affixed to a real post (a question or an answer), usually to point out a way it could be improved. Once that improvement has been addressed, comments can be, and often are, deleted.
Comments are not really content: they serve more the functions of an editor or a curator. As such, they are restricted to people who are reasonably familiar with how the site functions, as demonstrated by their having posted a few well-received questions and/or answers.
See the Tour for more information.


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What does sufganiyot have to do with Christianity?
I was just awarded a hat called "Sufganiyot." Err...what does that have to do with Christianity?

It doesn't.  It has to do with StackExchange.  It's Winter Bash time again. Those hats apply to the entire StackExchange network, not just our site.
For the record, it appears to be an alternate spelling/play on words of a Jelly doughnut associated with Hanukkah

Oh OK. I thought the hats specifically applied to C.SE. Thanks for the clarification.

"Sufganiyah" is singular; "sufganiyot" is plural.


text:
Suggestion for a minor change to the marriage tag excerpt
Update
This proposal was suggested and approved.

Revision 10 of the excerpt
Revision 9 of the wiki

Original Post
A while ago, I endeavored to clarify the use of the marriage tag and its related tags:

Proposal for tagging questions that concern marriage, both traditional and non-traditional forms

There was some static from a few users, but the community seemed mostly supportive of the changes, so I made them, they went through the review process and were approved. Most notable was Flimzy's answer/comment, and recently Lee's answer, which lead to a long chat discussion (Read from this chat message down.)
Lee and I came to a simple compromise that a few have noted in chat that they would support.
The marriage tag excerpt currently says:

Use this tag for questions about attitudes and doctrines regarding traditional marriage (one male and one female). For non-traditional marriages, use the appropriate tags, such as polygamy or same-sex-marriage.

It should be changed to:

Use this tag for questions about attitudes and doctrines regarding marriage. For questions relating specifically to same-sex marriage and polygamy, use the appropriate tags.

This change is minor, but is only meant to do something simple. The current excerpt can and did lead to polarization on this sensitive topic for some users, and will likely do so again in the future. Since the excerpt is the most seen description for tags, it was needlessly provocative, possibly turning away users over an issue that does not really exist. Lee said it best and ultimately convinced me that this small change was worthwhile:

This [excerpt] would, I think, cover what the bulk of people in the culture think about marriage anyway, without being unnecessarily polarizing right in the tag excerpt.
Chat message

This meta post was made for two purposes:

The topic is sensitive and therefore deserves the full protocol.
The change may be viewed as too minor, and therefore rejected once it is in the review queue.

Comments are welcome in the answer space below.

Is the change intended to actually change the scope or just avoid the "polarizing" language.  That is, would questions about same sex marriage get both tags or just the same-sex-marriage one?

@ThaddeusB My understanding is that "polygamy" and "same-sex marriage" would be in the nature of sub-tags under the general "marriage" category tag. And as I understand it, the general tag is not necessary or ordinarily used when a more specific tag is appropriate. However, a question or answer under the "marriage" tag would not have to exclude same-sex marriage, which could be included in a question or answer using that tag. That would be the substantive change.

@ThaddeusB I don't think current usage actually changes much. Lee is parsing it oddly, but ultimately, I read his comment saying that current usage wouldn't really change.

Yes, in response to @ThaddeusB, I doubt we would have to change the tagging of any existing questions. The new usage would simply not exclude questions that may involve or include same-sex marriage from using the "marriage" tag.

I said in my comment to @ThaddeusB:

My understanding is that "polygamy" and "same-sex marriage" would be
  in the nature of sub-tags under the general "marriage" category tag.
  And as I understand it, the general tag is not necessary or ordinarily
  used when a more specific tag is appropriate. However, a question or
  answer under the "marriage" tag would not have to exclude same-sex
  marriage, which could be included in a question or answer using that
  tag. That would be the substantive change.

To provide an example, a question could ask:

What is the Swedenborgian view of marriage?

(I know, that's sorta broad, but bear with me.)
An answer to this question could include a discussion of same-sex marriage. The question is not specifically about same-sex marriage, so it would not be appropriate to use the "same-sex marriage" tag. Clearly, this question would call for the "marriage" tag. However, an answer to this question could include a discussion of same-sex marriage as part of the overall answer.
With the current definition of the "marriage" tag, including material about same-sex marriage would violate the tag definition, because the tag definition specifies "traditional marriage (one male and one female)." With the new tag definition, including a discussion of same-sex marriage in an answer, or even as one element (explicit or potential) in the question, would not violate the tag definition, as it would under the current definition.
So the substantive change from the old "marriage" tag definition to the new one is that questions using the "marriage" tag would not have to exclude any consideration or inclusion of same-sex marriage.
Questions under the "marriage" tag could still, of course, specify that they are about "traditional marriage (one male and one female)." In that case, an answer discussing same-sex marriage would still be "not an answer" to the question.
If a question is specifically focused on same-sex marriage, it would use the "same-sex marriage" tag because that's what that tag is for. And we have this tag because same-sex marriage is a major distinct issue within Christianity as a whole.
TLDR: Under the new tag definitions questions and answers about marriage could include a consideration of same-sex marriage and use the "marriage" tag, but questions focusing specifically or entirely on same-sex marriage would still use the "same-sex marriage" tag.

Edit: Another example of a question that could use the "marriage" tag under the new definition, but not the old:

What is the history of the LDS Church's teachings on marriage?

Such a history would necessarily include a consideration of the original LDS endorsement of polygamy and its later repudiation of polygamy and requirement of monogamy.
The "polygamy" tag would not adequately cover such a question, because it deals both with polygamy and with monogamous, one man, one woman marriages. In this instance, the "marriage" tag with its new definition would be required, whereas the "polygamy" tag might or might not be used.
However, the old "marriage" tag definition would preclude its use on this question because the question necessarily deals with definitions of "marriage" that are explicitly excluded from that tag definition.
So once again, the "marriage" tag would be much more generally useful if it were defined broadly to include all of the various ways different (self-defined) Christian groups and denominations use the word "marriage" than if its definition is restricted to particular definitions of marriage within Christianity that are exclusive of other ways "marriage" has been and currently is defined within various groups and denominations of Christians.

I think you are saying the tag change only addresses the content of answers, not the tagging of specifically SSM/poly questions.  But, let me rephrase/clarify - Here are the 11 questions tagged "same-sex-marriage" and here are the 10 tagged "polygamy."  Which, if any, of these 21 should also be tagged "marriage" under the proposed change?  ... Would the tagging on the hypothetical Swedenborgian question have multiple marriage tags or just "marriage"?

@ThaddeusB why would we use a more general tag when a more specific one applies? If the tag "ezekiel" applies, a question would not also be tagged "bible."

Broad tags should still be used along with more specific tags, for ease of filtering.  See How do I correctly tag my questions? on MSE and Should questions use both tags when one is a subset of the other? here.  My general principle: try to make sure that all questions have at least one very broad tag and one narrow tag.

@Nathaniel From ThaddeusB's answer to your second linked meta post: "If both tags are useful (and there are many cases of this type), then the more specific one should always be used when it applies. The more general one can be used, but has a low priority." I doubt people will use the "marriage" tag to find questions about same-sex marriage or polygamy. So although we could use the "marriage" tag on questions about those subjects, I don't think it's necessary or even particularly helpful to do so. Both are distinct subjects, and both are likely to be searched for using the specific tags.

Remember that tags are used for favorites/ignored filtering, not just searches, as well as generating high-quality related links.  Broad tags add value in both situations, and though they might be slightly lower priority than the correct narrow tag, there are five tags available per question.  The way this new excerpt reads, I would normally tag "same-sex marriage" questions with the "marriage" tag as well.

@Nathaniel There's nothing preventing a user from using both the broad and the specific tags relating to marriage. I don't happen to think it would be particularly useful to do so, but I don't see any particular harm in it either.

My personal opinion is that same-sex "marriage" as a cultural norm will come and go, but this website will remain.  Lets be brave and not do anything which seems to even intimate that we care what the enemies of truth and tradition think since listening to their voices will only corrupt us.
As far as this site is concerned, if traditional marriage isn't marriage between a man and a woman, then I completely give up.  And if tradition doesn't mean anything, then how are we even supposed to answer any questions.  So the argument seems to be against using the word tradition to describe what we know marriage to be and the argument is with a person whom I would consider to be knee deep in one of Christendom's most awful heresies. So yeah, let him chip away at the truth and see what you're left with.

What are you suggesting then?  Keep the existing wording?

As has been pointed out many, many times to many, many newcomers to this site, Christianity.SE is not about the truth. It's about what groups and denominations of Christians believe is the truth. See: We can't handle the truth. Advocating for the definition of a general tag, used in all Christian denominations, based on what a subset of Christians and Christian denominations say is "the truth" is entirely contrary to the most basic guidelines of this site.

I would also point out (once again) that even under the new tag definitions, questions would could still refer to "traditional marriage," defined as "marriage between one man and one woman." Such questions simply would no longer have the exclusive use of the "marriage" tag. The new tag definitions recognize how the word "marriage" is used across all Christian denominations, and in the culture generally. Using the tags to define a general term as a subset of Christians define it based on their beliefs about what is true is taking a position on a matter of truth, which this site cannot do.

Further, your opinion of the "awful heresies" of other Christians is utterly irrelevant to the purposes and guidelines of this site. I happen to believe that you are "knee deep in one of Christendom's most awful heresies," namely, the Trinity of Persons. And my opinion on that subject is also utterly irrelevant to your right to participate in this site and have the beliefs of your denomination of Christians fairly represented here.

It is rank prejudice based on denominational views of "the truth" to disallow denominations that include same-sex marriage in their definition of marriage from using the general "marriage" tag to properly tag questions relating to those denominations' beliefs and practices related to marriage.

If you feel strongly about this, then I would suggest that you advocate for another sub-tag under the general "marriage" tag along the lines of "traditional marriage" or "opposite-sex marriage." In the discussion in chat that @fredsbend linked from his meta post, it was generally thought that such a tag was unnecessary. If you think it is necessary, you're free to make your arguments for it. But you cannot sustain defining the general term "marriage," used throughout Christianity, in the way your particular denomination or group of denominations defines it based on its view of "the truth."

@Nathaniel yeah, I'd keep the existing wording because it reflects the existing reality.  Marriage ain't broke, no need to fix it.

@lee that is very well reasoned and exactly what I want to avoid.  At first I thought what was proposed was cleverly phrased but benign subterfuge, but you've come out and said it.  Traditional marriage is not a subset of marriage, traditional marriage is marriage and everything else is the antithesis of marriage.

Those are truth statements. That's not what this website is about. See: How we are different than other sites. Personally, I'd be happy to banish most of "Christianity" from Christianity. But I can't do that. Especially not here. While I sympathize with your strongly and sincerely held beliefs, your beliefs cannot dictate how this site operates. This site must be open to all groups that self-identify as Christian. It cannot discriminate against some and favor others based on their beliefs.

@lee you're confusing the structure I helped come up with for allowing multi-denominational topics to be picked over without too much of a fight with the structure behind creating tag wikis, a topic which didn't come up much at the time.   If you consider the consequences, we'll have to burninate [tag:marriage] altogether because it will become a meta-tag; a synonym of [tag:subjective]

No. It will be defined, as the overall culture defines it, in a way that allows for the various sub-definitions of marriage that are used in various sub-groups, including various Christian sub-groups, of the culture. Some of those groups include same-sex marriage in their definition, others do not. The term "marriage" is used for both types of definitions.

@lee good, then keep it like it is until we as an overall culture get to have a vote on it.  Polls lie, the US Supreme Court is biased. But, most of us, as well as most people interested in Christianity, define marriage in the traditional sense.  Why they're not as offended as I am when someone tries to redefine it is their business.   But, we do agree on the what we think God's purpose for the sexes was in the beginning and it is not up for redefinition no matter who is offended by it.

I'm sorry, but the current tag definitions here define "marriage" as a subset of Christians define it. There are large, well-established Christian denominations that now include same-sex marriage within their definition of marriage (see LGBT-affirming Christian denominations). As strongly as you and your denomination's beliefs may be about marriage as traditional marriage, that simply doesn't define "marriage" for all of Christianity. And once again, this site must accommodate all Christian denominations.

@Lee who says this site must do anything?  It is not an autonomous being. It is not licensed in accord with the UN Commission on Human Rights. It can be illegal in Canada if it needs to be. As for me and my denomination. I don't believe that I have a denomination. As a Catholic, I believe that everyone is more or less in communion with the Church.  So unfortunately, I have beliefs that cannot be accommodated under any circumstances outside of complete submission.

I understand. But neither you nor the Catholic Church owns this site. And the site guidelines are clear that this is not a Christian site, no matter how much some of us might like it to be a site that endorses and promotes our particular version of Christianity.


text:
What does the community suggest be done here and what might be some site improvement suggestions?
Cf. This question: When did “he descended into hell” become part of the Apostles' Creed? Nathaniel's answer and my answer and the commens below each and the my chat with Nathaniel.
It appears that while he challenged the support for my answer, it now turns out from my answer that Philip Schaff, whom his answer refers to as a Church Church historian, is discredited or at least Nathaniel's answer drawing from Mr. Schaff has no basis. The reason is, as presented, by Nathaniel, both say Rufinus' (Alquileja's) version in AD 390 has DESCENDIT in INFERNA, while his answer fails to mention Rufinas'  Commentary on the Apostles' Creed - the first ever by a Christian writer [Cf. Catholicism.org > Articles > The Apostles Creed by Brian Kelly July 9, 2015] - which says that the Apostles' Creed is from the Apostles and that the Apostles composed it on Pentecost Sunday.
I see a few issues here:
While he providing an answer and supporting it as he does meets the site criteria, it now appears either he or his source were not thorough.
1) What does the community suggest we do to his answer?
2) What might be some site improvements to prevent such a misleading answer in the future?
3) Of course I do not know what were Nathaniel's motives, but I now view the Q & self A in a different light, as if it was meant to present and advance a particular view.

I now have a basis for my issue 3):
Nathaniel has provided a skewed view of Historian Schaff's work

which has:

The Apostles' Creed, or Symbolum Apostolicum, is, as to its form, not
  the production of the apostles, as was formerly believed, but an
  admirable popular summary of the apostolic teaching, and in full
  harmony with the spirit and even the letter of the New Testament.

Conclusion as of Fri Jan 15, 2016
It appears Nathaniel in his answer left out two pertinent points and at least one is mentioned in his source:
1) That Rufinas was the first ever Christian writer to make a commentary on the Apostles' Creed, in that commentary his version has  DESCENDIT in INFERNA and that he says the Apostles' themselves composed the Creed. While the historicity of his account has been descredited, St. Ambrose speaks of the "Creed of the Apostles, which the Roman Church has always kept and preserved undefiled" and that it "was pieced together by twelve separate workmen". Thus while Rufinas story of how or when the piecing together has been dicredited, that part that the twelve Apostles all contributed to it agrees with St. Ambrose who has not been dicredited.
2) That the "the production of the apostles, as was formerly believed, but an admirable popular summary of the apostolic teaching, and in full harmony with the spirit and even the letter of the New Testament."
Thus Nathaniel's answer gives the false impression that there existed an Apostles' Creed without the words of interest and that this words were later inserted into the Creed at a aprticular time in history.
Closing
I will be honest here and say what is at play here is what I could term a "protestant menatlity" vs. a Catholic [universal] one, i.e., the pick and choose vs. considering the whole which is clearly in harmony.
Asking again,

What does the community suggest be done here and what might be some site improvement suggestions?

It's really not relevant to the discussion, but for what it's worth, I prefer including the clause in the Apostles' Creed.

It is clear this site C.SE [Main + META] has below-zero credibility.

@Nathaniel That you fail to see the issues here is incomprehensible to me.

In response to this discussion, I've also answered the broader question: Did the Apostles' Creed originate with the Apostles?

Can you clarify the point of your edit? I don't understand what that quote from Schaff has to do with the problem you perceived with Nathaniel's answer.

@Mr.Bultitude The Apostles may have not produced the Creed it in its current form, but all of the articles in the Creed in its current form,  including, the phrase of interest, was taught by the Apostles. All of the articles of the creed are from the Apostles as my answer said.

@FMS But nothing in his answer contradicts any of that...

Being beckoned yet again to go down the rabbit hole. I choose not to go.

If you're not going to explain your problem with the answer, then people are going to continue to disagree that there's a problem with it.

@Mr.Bultitude did my issue say Nathaniel presented a skewed view of or did it say it contradicted Philip Schaff's work?

"Skewed view." And I don't see how it does, hence my question. You can reply in our chatroom if you like.

...beckoned down to the rabbit hole ... ; the twist and turns continue

1) A comment on the answer indicating why you think it's incorrect is the usual thing to do, and you've already done that.
Posting another answer elaborating on what you think is the correct answer is another useful step, and you've done that, too.
2) I don't see that any site improvements are needed.  Your answer is only a few hours old, over time it should accumulate some votes if people think it's valid and the other answer should get downvotes.  (I'm afraid your style of answer may slow this down, it's a bit of a wall of text, and the formatting makes it harder to understand what your main point is.)
3) I don't see that this is a problem.
The most relevant Meta.SE Q&A about incorrect answers is here.

it now appears either he or his source were not thorough

I disagree. The source was only making claims about the earliest extant manuscripts of the creed. Rufinus claims that the creed as he quotes it (descendit and all) goes back to the apostles, but what else would you expect? Would you really expect a church father to say of an ancient creed, "By the way, I changed a few things. I like it better this way, don't you?" I'm not at all surprised that Rufinus claims that his manuscript is not the first to include the phrase.

What does the community suggest we do to his answer?

Downvote it if you believe it's misleading. Edit it if you think a simple change would make it no longer misleading.
I would suggest maybe a footnote saying that Rufinus wrote a commentary on the creed saying that the creed in its entirety goes back to the apostles on Pentecost. But ultimately it's Nathaniel's answer, and he gets the final say, whether to his benefit or detriment.

What might be some site improvements to prevent such a misleading answer in the future?

Even if I agreed it's a bad answer, I'd still see no reason for site-wide reform. Let the system run its course. As Ward said, leaving a comment plus an alternate answer should give the community enough to go on. There's nothing wrong with posting here on Meta either, but hold your horses on talking about changing the entire site just for one answer. Answers are wrong all the time, and the system takes care of it.

Of course I do not know what were Nathaniel's motives, but I now view the Q & self A in a different light, as if it was meant to present and advance a particular view.

If the particular view is correct then I see no problem. If it's propaganda, then it's a potential abuse of the system, but that's clearly not the case here. Clear to me, at least. If it's simply an incorrect view, then I'd repeat that a comment, an alternate answer, and a Meta post are more than adequate for the community to do the appropriate voting.

Please listen to yourself write: "Rufinus version is accepted  to show the wording came into the Creed in 390 AD but Rufinus is discounted because he is a Church Father who is expected to say things regarding his doctored version." - with no basis to say the version was doctored.

'Answers are wrong all the time,' - agreeing with my concern 'and the system takes care of it.' - no it doesn't and that's why we are here after following all the steps you have outlined.

This was the question in the body in agreement with the Title: Has the Apostles' Creed always included this phrase? If not, when did it become part of it? and NOT about claims about the earliest extant manuscripts of the creed thus you answer here just continues to higlight the issues that I have raised. Misleading answers that for whatever reason get upvoted and thus supported while the site ought to be about getting Correct Answers.

@FMS Ah, now I see. You wanted the question to be a Truth question. There is literally no way to answer that question without relying on the extant manuscripts, or else answering based on doctrine. But you've been here long enough to be well aware of the site's guidelines on Truth questions. But even if it were a doctrinal question from a Catholic standpoint, it's evident that the answer would be roughly the same, given Nathaniel's quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia in his new post.

And the twist and turns continue.  'You wanted the question to be a Truth question.' - This was not my question.

@FMS Then how exactly did you want the question about the earliest forms of the creed to be answered? His answer was based on manuscript evidence, and you objected to that because one of the manuscript authors made a factual assertion (contrary to the manuscript evidence) that he didn't include in the answer.

@FMS If you believe that answers routinely stick around (with high-ish votes) despite being wrong, after user action including comments, alternative answers, and Meta posts, you'd be better served by making a list of such answers in a new Meta topic. But make sure that each answer you include is 1) incorrect, 2) has had user action taken against it, and 3) is currently highly voted or is accepted.

I provided such an answer. 2) Let's do the opposite: You are welcome to look at my very many well suported answers that sit at negative voting or with no or just a single vote. One of them is an answer to your question and this is recent memory.

@FMS I outlined to you my issues with your answer, and my comment got several upvotes. As has been pointed out by others before, the format of your answers is often confusing as well, which makes them less likely to be upvoted (though not necessarily more likely to be downvoted). If all you're saying is that your opinions on what answers are good and what answers are bad are often at odds with those of the community at large, then this whole discussion has been pointless.

Like I said before 'And the twist and turns continue ...'

@FMS If you want feedback on why certain answers of yours have low votes, you could post a Meta topic about that. I don't know if you noticed, but bringing up your own answers was a complete change of subject. So a new topic (keep it simple though) saying something like, "These answers of mine [linked examples] currently sit at -2, -3, and 1 score. I believe they are well supported. Why don't they have higher votes. Do you spot any inaccuracies? Is the formatting an issue?"

Let us continue this discussion in chat.


text:
Is there someone targeting my posts? What does the community suggest?
After my last META post it appears my posts are being targeted.

1) What does this community think and what is to be done if this is the case?
2) May a mod/the relevant person investigate and give feedback?

If there's truly one person (or multiple) targeting you, then either the SE system will reverse it or there will be nothing you or we can do about it. In the meantime, complaining about it and/or acting like we're all out to get you won't help (and perhaps may give whoever is downvoting you more reason to do so, however misguided that may be).

I'm sorry, but "unresolved" is different than "the community disagrees with me".

Does this answer your question? A user just voted to close five of my questions. Who should I contact?

There is not a problem here.

This is not the result of one person's votes, it is at least a couple. One person cannot vote on the same post more than once.
7 downvotes across 3 days and 3 posts is not evidence of abuse.
You do not—and cannot—know who votes on your post. If you think you can guess you are wrong in two ways. First, it is almost always different than people think because quite frequently the people that comment with criticism are not the voters and votes often happen independently of comments. Second, it is not productive to try to guess. Just stop it, that isn't helping you or anybody.
You've raised quite a lot of noise on meta linking back to these posts. Drawing attention to problematic posts is almost guaranteed to bring more down-votes. People have expressed in comments and on meta why they think the posts are not as useful as you think they were, so it should not come as any surprise that others also vote on them in disagreement with your analysis.
Both now and in the past you've requested feedback on your posts. People have spent lots of time writing detailed analysis of them and explaining what could be improved. You have, historically, almost always argued with them rather than working to address the issues. We get it. You disagree and think your posts are more useful than other people find them to be. A lot of this probably has to do with writing style—they may make sense in your head but your train of thought is difficult for others to follow. Given how resistant you've been to being helped on this issue before, it comes as no surprise that you'd get such a high percentage of unexplained downvotes.
You refer to the other meta post as "unresolved", but it looks pretty resolved to me. The posts in question have been improved based on the feedback surrounding them and the community direction is pretty clear. The only outstanding aspect seems to be that you continue to disagree with the way this site functions overall.

My suggestions? Slow down, take a deep breath and take a step back. Spend some time trying to understand other people's perspective and how you could learn from the past feedback you've gotten. Realize that truth questions are never going to be on topic and moderation does not happen based on the "truth" value of posts. Rather than fighting it, find other venues to deal with the kinds of things that are out of scope for this site. Come here for the things that are well suited to the format; figure out what this site is and play off of it's strong points.

I personally don't believe that anyone is targetting your posts. I'm someone who votes frequently on this site (total votes since joining - 2,826 upvotes & 193 downvotes) and am very happy to upvote well-sourced and well-argued post even if they represent a viewpoint I disagree with. From the stats it is apparant that I am not a heavy downvoter, but I do occasionally down vote (what are in my opinion) poorly-argued posts even if I agree with their overall perspective. From my observations of voting patterns at least a majority of regular voting users behave in a similar way, with perhaps the average voter being slightly more inclined to downvote more often than I do.
I've been happy to upvote many of your posts in the past and imagine that all things being equal I will be doing so again in the future. However...
I sometimes find myself viewing one of your posts and find that your material does not quite meet the standard I would expect. This tends to happen more for questions that do not specifically call for a Catholic viewpoint and far far less for questions that do. I don't often downvote in these circumstances, but when I see a few downvotes from others, I can certainly appreciate the reasons why. The main problem I notice in these particular instances is that you seem to put forward a dogmatic view as either the only possibility or the only reasonable possibility without giving due consideration to other possible viewpoints*. Such an approach does not normally cause problems on Catholic scoped questions, but on questions where non-Catholic perspectives are on-topic it is a significant weakness that in my opinion can lead to attracting downvotes.  It's not that you are merely advancing your viewpoint exclusively, it's that you often do not fairly or reasonably address alternative viewpoints.
I found supporting evidence for my opinion when I reviewed your 10 most recent answers and found that in the 7 explicitly scoped to Catholicism questions, you attracted 0 downvotes. In the other 3 questions, only the one you took to Meta attracted downvotes.**
*This particular answer seems to be a good example of what I was talking about previously - when I first viewed your post, I believe I saw revision three & it may have already attracted it's down-votes by that stage - if not I observed that they were made soon afterwards.  When I saw them I could appreciate the rationale for those down votes even though ultimately I decided not to vote that way myself - I merely abstained from upvoting. One thing that has influenced my behaviour in this regard (refraining from down-voting on your posts) is that you are often responsive to comments and make frequent revisions to your posts - so I feel it's sometimes better to wait to see the finished product before making a judgment. I didn't feel strongly enough about my reservations to post a comment.
My conclusion is that if there is any targetting against you, it has not been particularly evident in the last week or so.
**In defense of using this methodology rather than responding to the particular downvotes you've listed above, I put it to you that the lion's share of votes cast by the more active users on the site are made on new posts. If someone really was targetting you and downvoting old posts, you should expect to see many more than the downvotes you've referred to.

Maybe, but the SE engine is pretty good at identifying it and reversing it. With the most recent down votes, perhaps there is something going on, but the other posts have received multiple down votes, so that certainly can't be from a single person.
If it gets worse I'm sure the SE engine will catch it by then, and then reverse it.
It happened to me and the system did catch it and stop it, so there's proof that it works.
More downvotes today: I think I am the victim of some serial downvoting


text:
What are the user demographic stats for Christianity.SE?
I imagine that SE tracks IP addresses and keeps a chart of where people are coming from. It helps with advertising and legal decisions.
I know SE doesn't require you to tell, but what do we know of the racial and gender demographics?
If there really are no directly meaningful stats, as I suspect there is not, then what can we infer from the stats we do have?
For example, we probably know where a lot of users log in from, and we can easily look up the average demographics of those areas. We can also look up demographics for this site's topic. We can also take into consideration that a large percentage of us seems to be involved in professional IT work, so we can utilize stats from that industry as well. Can at least a best guess be made as to the racial and gender proportions of Christianity.SE?
As a last ditch, would it be appropriate to hold a poll here on meta or somewhere else?

Related: Are there any ChristianitySE community statistics?.  That post inspired a chat room, The Census, which contains some user-provided information.

The Quantcast numbers Nathaniel points to are the only real numbers I know of for this site. We do make some guesses about Stack Overflow users, but those are rather specific to that site.

Estimates of reader demographics are available on Quantcast.  Scroll down to Demographics, and hit the "Composition" option.  It says:

51% male
20% between ages 35 and 44
71% Caucasian

The Business & Occupation section says:

1.93 times as likely to work in a non-profit than a typical internet user
1.2 times as likely to work in IT than a typical internet user

Obviously, take this with a grain of salt; it's tough to know how accurate it is. In the Business & Occupation section, for example, if you switch the data source, the results vary widely.

Interesting, but certainly a category error if we assume reader demographics are representative of user demographics also. Considering the variance your mention and also this being about readership I'm not sure how useful this can be.

@fredsbend So you are specifically wondering about registered users, then?

Anyone who posts, so anonymous users too.

Quantcast estimates that we get 80% more African American visitors than the average website, which is a good sign I would think.

Quantcast also gives the top sources of traffic by city.
Some of the top non-Caucasian cities are:

Seoul (Korea), 2.4% of visitors
Lagos (Nigeria), 0.88%
Singapore, 0.88%
Makati (Philippines), 0.74%
Johannesburg (South Africa), 0.55%
Nairobi (Kenya), 0.48%
Bangalore (India), 0.42%

This is proof that the site is wickedly racist.

@Mr.Bultitude Do you think it could be proof that the site is wickedly Anglophonic?

Incidentally, if I read Quantcast correctly, African-Americans are disproportionately represented.  Am I right, anyone?


text:
Where did my answer go?
I believe I had an answer to Protestant arguments for perpetual virginity of Mary. Where did it go?
Mods?
If I recall correctly, my answer was based on this article:
Mary: Perpetual Virgin? 6 Biblical Arguments

There are no deleted answers on this question right now, so unless one was completely wiped from the database (which is done only in exceptional cases), you have not answered this question.
You did, however, answer the following related question:

Did Mary have other children?

This answer cites the article you mention. Is that the one you are thinking of?
FYI, I found this by putting the following in the search box:
user:13992 mary virgin is:answer


text:
Do we have a question quality problem from new users lately?
Go to the main site, sort by newest, then scroll down through the last four or five days. The fact that many of the newest questions over the last week are on-hold.
From February 7th to part way through February 10th, there have been 26 questions. 18 of them are on hold or will be very soon. All except one are from new users with under 25 rep and only one is from a new user with 101 rep (an transfer from a different SE site).
This sentiment has been shared in chat over the past few weeks:

You know it's been a rough day on C.SE when you notice that you've voted 45 times... [5 of the posts he voted on ended up deleted that day] - Nathaniel on January 20th
wow, lots of interesting questions from newer people today ... interesting as in, "I didn't read the rules or understand the theme before asking" - Dan Andrews on February 1st
Does it feel to anyone else like we've had a string of really bad questions by new users these last few days? - curiousdannii on February 5th

Is this is chronic problem that can try to remedy, or just a stroke of bad luck?
If the former, what are some ideas to curb bad questions from new users? I know plenty well of the typical methods, via commenting, linking to meta posts and the help center, and voting; but is there anything a little more out of the box that we can do? Start with simple measures (e.g. some better meta posts), then move on to more drastic measures (e.g. site name change).

Most of these will be deleted in the next week or two, so it's tough (impossible?) for non-moderators to meaningfully compare this week with a week last quarter or last year.  But I think a moderator can get counts of deleted questions by week of creation, and that would be interesting historical data.

@Nathaniel There is evidence in chat of a chronic problem. See my edit.

This query, if I did it correctly, shows the number of deleted questions by the month of their creation.  It doesn't tell us anything about the creator's rep, however, and one must remember that the rules for automatically deleting questions older than a year are significantly more aggressive than for newer questions.

I think it's just a stroke of bad luck, a natural cycle.

[Movies.SE] noticed the same problem recently.

The site seems to have returned to the quiet part of the cycle :)

Create a real tour
As much as I like unicorns, it would be much more helpful to new users if the tour page we pointed them to actually included a meaningful example of how to ask questions.
The trouble is that there's only one question on the entire site that meets the strict SE requirements, and it's not exactly an example of our best work (especially since David's answer would be passed over in favor of the two shorter ones below it).
If we rule that question out, we are left with two options:

Find a question that is close to meeting the requirements and muscle it into compliance by shortening it or its answers, or stripping out formatting
"Artificially" create a suitable question and answers

Personally, I prefer the second option.  A dedicated meta post may be in order to hash out the details of what our question should be (preferably not sectarian) and how the answers will be crafted (short, minimal formatting, but helpful).
It's not the simplest task in the world, but I'm confident that together we can come up with a tour question and answers that are more helpful to new users than daisy-eating unicorns.  And hopefully such a question would orient new users to our format more quickly than otherwise.

But who would get the rep? ;)

What about a FAQ hosted on meta, then link to it in the tour? Skeptics does that, but it is geared toward 101 rep users, not the total newbies.

This post is supposed to help define our "types" of allowable questions. When I wrote that, it was more like preliminary research, not necessarily meant for newbies to read. I think that can be turned into a newbie post and then linked from the tour.

@fredsbend I like that idea, of linking a cleaned up version of that post.  As for the tour question's rep, let whoever comes up with the best question (as voted on in a separate meta post) decide =).