text:
Refute this vs Why do they believe this?
I have been thinking about this for a few days (mostly because I would headhunt Refute This! questions because I love debating; even small details). However, I agree with the community that this site should avoid the "Oh, yeah, well, this and this ..." attitude. But something feels missing.
The "Refute This" type question holds a certain value, I think, that we would not get if we disallowed any semblance of it. That value is deep exploration into the thought process of specific viewpoints. So I thought of the "Why do they believe this?" question. Do we not all hear "these people believe x" and sometimes wonder why, saying "how did they come to that conclusion?" The weaker version of this is "is it true that these people believe x" which the community clearly allows, but it is such a boring question and asks for very little. Answer: yes. Whoopee! That was exciting! Not.
Does the community think we should allow "Why do they believe this?" questions? I think if we do then those types of questions need to be closely watched to prevent them from falling into debate in the comments. Push that into a chat room. Perhaps they should automatically be protected.
Justification Questions does point out a legitimate concern with Why do they believe this questions: That they might discourage users from returning, feeling like they are constantly under attack.

To sum a point that Jon explains well: Refute This is challenging by its very nature and is generally unproductive. Why do they believe this is truly inquisitive and encourages a positive response.

please refute using the phrase 'refute this'. just joking. just ask for the biblical basis to consider x as sinful or in error.  a more positive way to put a hatchet to the tree.  cutting trees down is a skill you can learn a whole lot.

For what it's worth, I don't think refute-this questions are automatically bad or should be disallowed.  The thing I noticed is that they can be subtly unproductive (for reasons I noted on that meta-question).
On of the reasons to avoid such questions is that they frame the debate in a negative light:
   Jimmy: Uhh, Mr. McClure?  I have a crazy friend who says its wrong
          to eat meat.  Is he crazy?
    Troy: Nooo, just ignorant.  You see your crazy friend never heard
          of "The Food Chain".  [Flash to a picture of "Food Chain",
          with all animals and arrows pointing to a silhouette of a
          human.]  Just ask this scientician.

—The Simpsons, "Lisa the Vegetarian"
Jimmy's question sets up answers that bash on the philosophy in question (vegetarianism in this case) without showing any attempt at understanding the philosophy's argument.  It sets up answers like Troy McClure's that just make a joke out of the whole thing.
You question type is better if only because it puts the matter in a positive light:

Jimmy: Why do vegetarians believe it's wrong to eat meat?

There are still some issues with the question (not all vegetarians think eating meat is wrong but just a good idea, not all vegetarians agree on the answer to the question, do we even have any vegetarians around do defend their beliefs?, etc.), but at least avoids being a loaded question.
Your suggestion also has the virtue of being honest.  One of the problems I have with refute-this is that I suspect the asker cares more about gathering ammunition for an argument then they do about learning anything:
 Lisa: Stop it Stop IT!  Don't you realize you've just been
       brainwashed by corporate propaganda?
Janie: Hmmph, apparently my crazy friend here hasn't heard of the food
       chain.
 Uter: Yeah, Lisa's a grade A moron!
Ralph: When I grow up, I'm going to go to Bovine University.

Again, phrasing a question as "Why do they believe this?" is not a get-out-of-jail-free card; some questions are going to be poor fits for the site no matter how they are formulated.  But your suggestion seems a good way to transform a refute-this question into something more productive.

Kudos for the Simpson's quotes. LOL. Yes, refute this "frame[s] the debate in a negative light." I was going to mention that refute this is challenging in nature and why do they believe this is truly inquisitive. I wholeheartedly agree.


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About the answers on this question?
How can Heaven exist if we know that people in Hell will suffer?
I think the question is okay. Might need a little work, especially clarifying a preferred opinion to answer with, but it is still good and belongs on the site.
I am very disappointed in the answers.
It seems everyone* has given their sort of opinion answer. "I interpret these scriptures like this" or "this is how I cope with this, having been an atheist" or "this is what comforts me" or "the RCC Catechism says" when it's not even a Catholic question, although, at least that last one has the merit of demonstrating that it is the official opinion of a denomination.
I think the problem is that people will naturally upvote the answers they agree with rather then the answers that best answer the question, which we are supposed to avoid, right?
I nearly downvoted one because I didn't like what it said. I don't want to do that. This site is better then that and we need to restrain ourselves from witnessing for Him lest we forget Brothers, we are not Christians‼ Rest easy about lost opportunity though; I heard our brother, Alypius, say in chat that if you point to truth they will eventually find Truth. I agree.

*Except me, of course, but I'm biased. Maybe mine is no good, too. Let me know. Maybe I'm out of line and your answers are good. Downvote accordingly.

I figured the question was going to be closed so I'd just get my 2 cents in.  That's probably not the right thing to do, but oh well.

@Peter I've done it too. I think it's perfectly fine. But ultimately I think this question will not be deleted.

The question is talking about a certain type of objection to the idea of heaven. An appropriate answer will explain traditional Christian responses, will cite relevant works, or will provide interesting novel and non-heretical explanations.

Peter's answer is good beacuse he mentions C.S. Lewis (non-Catholic), the Catechism (which is in this case a useful demonstration of tradition and in line with other denominational views) and then another source.
David Morton's answer is good from a Christian perspective (only issue for me is that it seems to imply that the love of Christ might cause us to stop loving others).
David Stratton's answer clears some things up, and lists sources, which is good. Not sure if "we just don't know" will satisfy the atheist question-asker, but it's true and should be mentioned.
My answer says what Jesus said. Wasn't sure why no other answers mentioned this, since He devotes so many parables to the relationship between the saved and the lost. Then, without speculating on heaven, I tried to point out situations on earth where you sort of don't feel bad about bad things, which I think answers the question by establishing possibility.
I think your answer misinterpreted the question, which is asking us to assume that hell does exist and that the asker will go there, and that the mother will go to heaven. It lists various minority views that I think are unrelated to the question.

I don't wholeheartedly agree with all the answers, but they are generally fine in my view, and I haven't voted down, though I do think yours misses the mark a bit. Yes, people will vote up/down answers they don't agree with, but your question doesn't really get into that general issue, but seems to be saying "are people being biased in this particular question?". No, I don't think they are.

Honestly, why does it matter how people vote?
This gets us to the purpose of this site to be honest, and how well we are actually able to achieve that purpose.
As far as I can tell this site serves the purpose of giving people answers to their questions about Christianity and doctrine. We do all right on doctrine and not so great on Christianity in general because there is no general case Christianity.
If we could control the way people voted we'd always want them to upvote the right answer. And in lieu of a right answer, maybe the best answer. But ultimately, SEI has given the right to decide the best answer to the person who asks the question (don't bother trying to have this removed, it's been suggested and rejected, rightly so I might add).
Voting is inherently a private act, and act of a person's conscience. We don't require comments with downvotes for this very reason. We also don't reveal who you upvoted. We keep voting in very strict confidence (not even moderators can see who voted on specific posts).
That said, I don't think complaining about answers on meta is particularly constructive. The solution to a question with bad answers is to downvote the bad answers, commenting where appropriate and, if the spirit leads, post your own answer. Nothing is really accomplished by this post from what I can tell. What were you hoping to accomplish?

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Why are some questions closed with less than 5 votes?
The faq says this:

When a question reaches 5 close votes, it is marked as closed, and will no longer accept answers. Closed questions may be opened by casting reopen votes in the same manner. However, you may only vote to close or reopen a question once.

So I would figure that it takes five users to close a question like this one, but it only lists two.
Now this one took five before it was closed.
What is the difference between these two questions and why does a question close after less than five votes sometimes?

Moderators (currently me, Caleb, waxeagle, and Mason Wheeler) have "super-votes". That is, if we vote to close a question, it gets closed immediately. This super-vote of ours actually modifies our inclination to close a question by making us less likely to cast a close vote. For a regular member, if they're not entirely sure that a question should be closed, they can still cast a close vote and it'll take four others to agree. With us mods, if we're not sure and we close a question, we can (and have, and will) take flak for it. Hence, we close only when we're sure, or when we'd be the fifth vote. The majority of the time, we prefer to let the community close the question themselves.
Either way, it takes five reopen votes to open a question (and mods have the super-vote there as well).

Oh. Does the limit of being able to vote only once also apply to mods?

No it does not.

still takes 5 to reopen a question. Unless a mod does it.

@waxeagle What is the rep threshold that gives this privilege?

@fredsbend what privilege? closing and reopening? That's 500. Moderators are either appointed or elected. For now all of the moderators have been appointed by SEI, when we graduate we will hold an election. The minimum rep threshold to run in the election will be 300.

@waxeagle I had no idea about mods being appointed or elected. I thought all privileges were rep based. This is leading into other questions. Is there another post somewhere that details the graduation process and what exactly happens? I guess that is supposed to be happening for this site soon right?

@fredsbend there are several. but here is one from the SEI blog. http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/10/when-will-my-site-graduate/

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


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I really want to see this question asked in a constructive way and have the same answers, how?
This question: Why do religious people find it hard to accept that you don't need religion to have a good moral code?
It is currently closed.
I think the question deserves to be on this site, however, I can't think of a way that it might be asked without creating the same issues that the original closers objected to in the first place. I think the biggest issue was that it assumes the majority of Christians think this way when that is not really so, however, the assumption is quite common among non-Christians. Despite this, I think some of the answers really answer it well.
I asked this related question and received mixed answers, although the one I selected I think answers it perfectly, however, I came under the same scrutiny and objections, but I suppose not enough to close it and without downvotes or upvotes.
I want to get the closed question back up, either new post or reopened, with whatever made my question stay open. Anybody have any thoughts on this?

There is no way to re-phrase that question in a way that meets site guidelines and isn't based on false assumptions, and in a way that hasn't already been asked.
The root of the problem with the question is that it is based on the false assumption that "religious people" think that non-religious people can't do good things.  That's utter bunk.  There is nothing within Christianity that says that non-religious people can't do good, or have a "good moral code".
It's possible that people get confused because from a Christian perspective, a good moral code isn't what gets you into Heaven.
Another possible point of confusion is that the Christian perspective is that all good things come from God, that God plants a conscience within us, so even e non-religious person's morality comes from God.
The point is, that the only way you can even ask that question honestly is if you completely misunderstand central doctrines. The best we can do is to try up the misconceptions so that people asking this realize that the question is invalid in and of itself.
As an analogy, the question "Why are apples the size of an automobile in Mobile Alabama?" is a bad question because apples simpl aren't as big as automobiles in Mobile Alabama.  No amount of editing to the question could make it a sensible question.
Comparatively, Christians, religious people, etc. do think that non-religious people can have a "good" moral code.  No amount of rephrasing the question will change the fact that the assumption it's based on is flawed, and therefore the question isn't sensible.
If you take "why" out of the title of the question, it eliminates the issue of being based on a false assumption. But that has already been asked on the site.

Is it possible for an atheist to be moral?
Is morality possible apart from God?

We have many questions that have assumptions but the answers clear that up. You said so yourself that is good. Have you had a change of heart or did I misunderstand that post? Does the fact that this assumption is common mean nothing?


text:
This question should be re-opened
Can people in Heaven communicate with each other?
This meta post, which is good is quoted in the comments to help the user change the question.
From the answer to that post:

Tip 2: Change "Is x true" to "What is the basis for believing that x is true?"

I would think that the question already fits that format. He is asking "what the Bible says about x", which I would say is the same as what the Biblical basis for believing x", which is very similar to "what is the basis for believing that x is true".
The user appears genuine as well. He is trying to grasp what the Bible says about life in heaven.
A comment says that it was unanswerable and it was closed as non-constructive. That is junk reasoning. It has at least three good answers and one mediocre answer that addresses the others then quotes D&C, which is fine in this case, but I say mediocre because the Bible was specifically requested.
There are currently two re-open votes. We only need three more. If you disagree with me please tell me why in an answer.

Got a third and a fourth. Just one more is all we need.

Got the fifth vote. Thank you for the support.

When four answers appear that basically answer the question "you're asking the wrong question, to me that's a sure sign of impending close votes.
Some factors that went into me casting the third close vote:

I gave it a fair shake and it didn't amount to anything, I thought maybe someone could come up with a good answer that fit the question. But the question is asking "What does the Bible say about people in Heaven communicating with each other?" but ultimately the answer that's given 4 times over is "nothing." That to me screamed it needed to be closed.
The user had lost any benefit of the doubt he may have been entitled to as a new user. When a user posts a couple of questions that are off the mark, they are and should be given a bit of leeway, but when it becomes obvious that they are posting in bad faith all of their content becomes subject to more scrutiny. This one doesn't pass muster for me.

When you ask "What does X say about Y" and the answer is nothing, and you get between 4 and 6 of those answers in various forms, that's a bad question to me. The answers aren't so much then answering the question as asked, but as implied, and in that case the question should be fixed in some way that it becomes answerable.

Really? The actual answers do not say "nothing" and no one appears to be saying "you are asking the wrong question" to me. I know I did not. Some say yes, another says nothing definitive but yes in D&C, and mine says it is talked about but what it means is debated, which I explored. I also don't see how the user lost credibility. I mean, did you even read my answer to it? I know I'm biased but I think it is a perfect answer.

And how does it make sense that we should close it because the answer is "no there is no evidence?"


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tl;dr? - that's just lazy and not "expert"
I am starting to see this more often then I think we should: Instant Message language and computer geek jargon that frankly the common person will just not get.
Not only that problem, but it is just lazy on the poster's part and cheapens the experts feel we are going for, in my opinion. tl;dr. does not belong in any answer. If you didn't want to read the original posing that is fine and it's fine to make an answer, too, but why start it with jargon that looks like a typing error? Just type out a sentence at the top or bottom, or don't do anything at all. Let the votes and comments tell you if you lost the gamble and made a cruddy answer.
Then we have other oddities like using actual code syntax to say something is or is not the same thing as another thing. Just type out the words. How many more word are there really?
Then further, we are developing our own jargon, unique to this site and more generally the Stack Exchange Network. C.SE to refer to this site, for example. This gets really confusing because you can't even Google search what it means. That kind of jargon is ok in chat, but it likely confuses new users and the casual visitors and might lead to nonsensical responses.
Now I freely admit that I that used some of these before myself, but, hey, I'm only human, and now I've decided to make a conscious effort not to do it.
What does the community think?

Here's what the above might have looked like:
So apparently SNAFU: IM and geek speak / net speak everywhere. That's just terror for noobs.
More than that its just Patrick Swayze, imo. TL;DR is a bit like saying idc about the deets in the OP. It's usually used in a rude way. You didn't want to read, fine. Make a horror show answer anyway, but wo the geek speak.
Then we say code syntax. [item A != item B] != [item A and item B are not the same thing], although I admit the first is shorter plus you get the pow of the "!". Means null to non coders.
Further, our own jargon on C.SE and SE in general. Can't even google that. This will just lead to asdf responses and keep VTC's high.
So I've done this, too. Pebkac error. lol. But, I'm going to stop, sysadmin and mods hold me to it.
This jargon response was just for fun and to make a point that it hardly sounds expert/professional.

EDIT
When I first noticed "tl;dr" on this site I confess that I did not know what it was. I honestly thought it was a typing error. But I convinced my self that typing errors do not end up on lines by themselves so I googled it.
The convention in most forums for "TL;DR" is to use it as a snide reply on particularly long posts. It's kind of like saying "I didn't feel like reading your post but here is a response anyway." Or more rudely "A post this long from you is not worth reading."
On Christianity.SE the convention seems to always be a synonym for "summary" or "abstract". That is fine I suppose, but then why not just use "summary" or "abstract" or "short answer" and "long answer"? Generally, most of us here are geeky types and find it fun to do odd things like use weird jargon, but I think using "tl;dr" with either convention on this site either inappropriate or unnecessary because other real words exist.
So I still stand by my original post that we should not use this kind of jargon; and for the most part, most users never do.

lolz on the translation :)

Does Christianity.StackExchange.com have issues with answer length?

For what it's worth, I always say Christianity SE, with no dot. I don't know why other people do use a dot: it just seems confusing.

tl;dr This originated (not here) as a comment on other people's posts: "That was too long; I didn't read it." However, it is now sometimes used (and it is this usage which is prevalent here) as a way of staving off such a reaction: "If you find the overall post too long, here's an abbreviated version." I'd prefer the less jargony words abstract (if used at the beginning of a post) or summary (if used at the end).

@TRiG Yes, it is apparently used differently on this site. But that is no reason to still use it. Summary, abstract, long answer, short answer, and the rest are much more preferable. I have used the latter when making very long answers.

I think you chose a bad example to pick on. The issue here is not the individual jargon, but the person using it. tl;drR is perfectly legitimate piece of jargon that can serve a constructive purpose. If I sound like I'm on the defensive, it might be because I've employed it as a tool to make my sometimes long answers serve a wider audience:

How could a loving, just, merciful God have created such an unfair test for humans?
Under what conditions does the Bible support divorce?

However I am by no means the only person here using it:

How does the Arminian view of salvation account for God's sovereignty?
If the Bible has been changed over the years, can we still trust it?
How did the author of Jonah know about this conversation?
Did Pope Benedict XVI grant permission for heterosexual couples to use artificial birth control methods?
Is the biblical idea of being "born again" compatible with eastern religious ideas of reincarnation?

These are hardly lazy or non expert answers. In fact I would argue thatmany of the best answers on this site employ tl;dr. Of course it is possible to do the same thing without Jargon as evidenced in a number of Jon Ericson's answers:

When and how did the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John get attached to the gospels?
How should Reformed Christians deal with homosexual marriage of individuals prior to their conversion to Christianity?

Of course it must be used correctly. Using jargon like tl;dr in the manner you just did in your meta post is simply wrong. It is ungrammatical and doesn't serve the purpose it the jargon is intended to serve. A lazy answer might employ jargon, but in a messy way that obscures rather than clarifies what is being said. We do not want to encourage these usages.
Local jargon is should be evaluated very locally. For example if I am commenting to a brand new user, I will spell out "Christianity.SE" or even "Christianity Stack Exchange". However if I am commenting to a high rep user who has been around a while, I consider the abbreviation "C.SE" is perfectly acceptable. I would err on the side of spelling things out to avoid confusion for other readers, but lets face it: SE does have a lot of local parlance that you just have to get used to.
As for the related issue, I thoroughly agree that "text speak" is inappropriate. Not capitalizing, using unnecessary acronyms, leaving out vowels, intentionally spelling things wrong and all sorts of other shortcuts in that genre all come across as low quality. Experts can typically articulate ideas more effectively without such props.
TL;DR Use of "IM speak" that mutilates English grammar and shortcuts more articulate communication is not helpful in this setting and should be avoided. On the other hand some jargon actually serves a concrete purpose and has a place in both technical and academic circles and we shouldn't shy away from it.

How does tl;dr improve over summary? I didn't use either in http://christianity.stackexchange.com/a/9970/214, and I think the answer is the better for it.

@TRiG: It may not. In reviewing usage on our site, I think Jon Ericon's answer formatting is exemplary for it's clarity and usefulness. However I think the answers above are better off for having included a tl;dr rather than not. The usage was not lazy, it was an improvement to the overall post. Perhaps a further improvement would have been to format the entire thing differently and have a clearly formatted summary section, but that wasn't the point of this question. The question was is using tl;dr inherently lazy and detrimental. My answer is "no, it can be used constructively."

I'm sorry about my confusion. I thought a few people were saying with it "I didn't read your post, but here's an answer." That is the traditional usage 1 2 3. I can't find any examples doing that. However, I'm with @TRiG. Summary is more correct for this site. It seems you are attempting to reappropriate TL;DR. A responder is supposed to reply to the TL;DR or the whole thing. Since this is not a discussion forum it is out of place.

What about the code syntax? I think it is fine on SO but casual users here are likely not programmers.

yeah, I think Jon's methods are superior to tl;dr  especially abstract which, as far as I can tell means tl;dr

Summary doesn't mean the same thing, I don't think. While summaries do repeat things, they do so more like the final paragraph, wrapping everything up. They aren't meant to be read by themselves.
"Abstract" is closer, but I'm not sure everyone knows that meaning of the term. (I'd expect more people know what "tl;dr" means, actually.) Plus the abstract usually comes first, while "tl;dr" usually comes at the end.
It may not be all that formal, but I'd say using a preface of "Quick version:" or "Short answer:" or similar is closer to the intent of a "tl;dr" section. It uses words more people know, and implies that, if you don't have time, you can just read that section.
"Summary" would I guess work in more formal contexts, but I'd say answers here are rarely that formal. We usually respond at the same level as the person asking the question, and most question are somewhat informal.


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Should we close old, off-topic questions?
I have been finding old questions with close votes in the review section. Apparently someone is looking through old questions and voting to close because they are not within site guidelines. Perhaps they were, but they are not any more.
I have mixed feelings about this. I am new to the site and still feel like I do not have a full grasp on when to close and when to not close.
If we decide we want to do this we need to do it as a group. VTC's expire after a few days and you can only issue them once. The point is that if we are going to clean out the old stuff then there needs to be exposure to close the bad ones. I would like it if maybe we kept a current list on this meta post. If someone VTC's on an old question post it here or update the number. I think we should do this for any VTC's on questions that are 3 months or older. I don't have the rep for it, but once they are deleted that would be nice if this was updated as well.
Here's a starter list:
Does believing in Jesus Christ save me, or do I have to do something more? - 2 votes currently
What is God waiting for before He ends the world? - 2 votes currently
Are some people created to go to Hell? - 1 vote currently
Where did Noah find polar bears and penguins in Palestine? - 0 votes currently
Three Views on Salvation, Faith, and Works - CLOSED on 2013-03-31
If God is omnipresent, is he also in hell? - Marked as DUPLICATE on 2013-03-25

To be clear, my -1 on this post was to indicate disagreement with the method proposed here which seems to be the main thrust of the post. I actually agree with the issue raised in the title alone. Yes they should be closed. This just isn't how I'd go about it.

@Caleb Yep. It's the meta. That's what downs mean here.

Glad you know that, not everybody remembers how meta votes are so different than main, and in this case there are two possible things to be voted on, so in the interest of constructive feedback I wanted to specify which one I was going for with my vote.

I think cleaning up old questions is a good idea, but it should be done slowly and on a natural basis as people that are equipped to deal with them run across them. Often they can be fixed, but the edit process for each (particularly when there are already answers) takes time and care. Doing them as a batch will end up sealing their fate with a lot less TLC*.
The review queues already serve the purpose of getting enough votes together on individual questions. I don't see a need to maintain a list. Once one person finds and takes action in the form of a VTC on any question, the question is thrown into the queue and shown to more people who have the rep necessary to take action. They can choose to add their votes or vote against the action which will eventually cause the item to be removed from the queue.
One thing the close vote review queue does is show people questions that are specifically actionable by them. If you have already taken action on an item, it isn't going to show it to you. Once you take action, items will be removed from the queue for you. They may still show up in other people's queues until they are either closed or enough people have opted not to close that it considers it a no go. This is exactly the kind of work flow that will help cleanup these old posts without anybody having to keep an independent list in sync.
* Tender Loving Care for the jargon challenged.

Ok. I Still like the list idea though. Easy to see a record of what has been done and where we used to be. Thank's for the jargon footer ;) lol (laughing out loud).

@fredsbend Nobody is going to stop you from maintaining a list yourself, but my experience is they don't serve the purpose you are expecting of getting people to take action on the same things at the same time. The queue does. Chat also would if you wanted to make a concerted effort over a short period of time. If the purpose is to show where we used to be, wouldn't a few examples suffice? An ongoing hall of shame for questions we later learned were duds doesn't seem to serve a constructive purpose going forwards. (And yes the jargon was just for you :-)

I see your point. The review feature is new to me and there doesn't seem to be a way to just see a list of recent reviews. I have to click on the user and see his activity. Maybe around five that highlight particular issues that we have now fully defined is good. I think I will try to keep a few in here, as time passes, then try to pick out the best ones that highlight poor questions that we will not except. Maybe after a while it could serve as a useful link in the faq.

@fredsbend The close vote queue has a history here. But you don't need that. If a vote shows up on some old question, it will be added to your queue and shown there until you take action or enough other people take action to resolve it.

That only shows my close vote history. I mean to see all the questions that are currently closed. Is that possible?

@fredsbend Use search. Look for closed:1, sort by newest and go to the end of the list to find the oldest closed questions. Keep in mind those are also slowly getting deleted. We don't keep stuff around permanently unless it is hope or closed as duplicate. Stuff that doesn't stand a chance of coming back to life eventually gets removed.

Ok. Well there it is. Is there a list of different search codes that can be used?

@fredsbend Check out the Advanced Search Tips in the sidebar of the search page or ask or search on MSO for some fancy pants stuff if you need something more specific.

A manually-maintained list would soon be abandoned because it would take too much effort, and would be unfair to the listed questions because there is no "leave open" option.
I seem to have cast the initial close vote on 4/6 of the questions on that list. I do think the questions should be closed, but because it's the first vote, I'm intending it to be a suggestion. I'm not particularly concerned if it doesn't go through.

The review feature shows those old questions to people who either also cast a vtc, or leave it open.
If that fails, the mod tools have a list of questions with close votes, in addition to the close vote history tool already mentioned.

If that fails, we all try again next time someone else runs into the question and thinks it should be closed. This seems good and fair.

I usually VTC pretty quickly these days, but for the older questions, I've always left them alone because even though they're off-topic or not constructive by current site definitions, they weren't against site guidelines at the time.
Perhaps I'm looking at it wrong, but I've personally left them alone,thinking they should be grandfathred in. Otherwise we'd be forced to close most of the questions older than 9 months old.
That hasn't been unilateral,however. A month or two ago, I flagged one of my own top voted questions, asking a moderator to delete it because it was so awful I was embarrassed to let it stand.
I've voted to close some of the worst, but there is some value to having them around, for historical value - to show how the site has evolved. Even some of the really bad ones serve as good examples to point to when explaining why the site guidelines exist.
The only danger I see in leaving them open is when newcomers find them and mistake the purpose of this site. But it hasn't seemed like that big an issue to me.  So far it's been easy to say "this question was from before we had things figured out."
Personally, I think we should leave them alone, unless they are attracting a lot of attention from new users and are confusing them about the current guidelines, and then close them on a case-by-case basis.

I don't think grandfathering should apply, because we're not punishing the person (it would apply, for example, if we decided to suspend someone on the basis of old questions). Closing affects the posting of new answers, and the present guidelines should apply to those new answers. We should not permit little "bubbles" where people can continue to post opinions etc.

I'm Somewhere between you and @Alypius . I don't think we should make exception for all of them, but I think some are ok, and I would prefer to edit them if possible (considering the old answers and everything).


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Lets talk about this question and my answer to it
In Prophecy what does a beast represent?
It was closed as not a real question. I guess some people think it was a Truth question too.
I clearly disagreed in the comments.

His question is what does a beast represent. Daniel 7 tells us exactly that they represent kingdoms and empires. NOT a Truth question. [My comment on the question]

I would like to hear from at least the four people who closed it.
Now about my answer: two down votes and no comments about it. I'm really starting to think that if I say any thing bad about the Pope I'm going to get flack for it. I even gave a warning that it might be offensive and supported the other side too. Maybe that's not why the down votes, but it sure seems like it.

Here is my perspective -- not because I am interested in arguing it, but because you requested it.
The first problem: The question
This question is a truth question. Examples of truth questions would include:

Is the pope the antichrist?
Is Rome the fourth beast of Daniel 7?
In prophecy, what does the fig tree represent?

The problem with all such questions is that it totally depends on who you ask!! That makes them all off-topic (not constructive) for this site. In contrast, the following would be considered constructive questions:

Do Seventh Day Adventists teach that the pope the antichrist?
How did the Reformers interpret the fourth beast of Daniel 7?
What arguments are used to support a single symbolic interpretation of the fig tree wherever it appears in Biblical prophecy?

The second problem: The answer
I see several issues with the answer:

The answer presents a highly controversial perspective as the truth.
There is no indication of what tradition this represents
There is no warning about what methodology leads to this conclusion
One passage is pulled out of Scripture as a proof-text for what beasts represent everywhere in Scripture

Postscript
You said you are feeling like if you say anything bad about the pope, your post is likely to be down-voted. That may actually be true. But I am not sure why there would ever be a need to say anything bad about the pope on this site. If someone asks for a history of a particular perspective, that can be answered without the poster saying anything bad about the pope. If someone asks how a particular tradition has handled a particular passage, that can be answered objectively without the poster saying anything bad about the pope. Your answer just cut straight to your personal opinion that the pope is the antichrist, which is not what we're after on this site.

You've plowed right into one of the hardest things on this site to moderate. The question of what amounts to a truth question.
The bar for me is and will be "Does the author provide enough context that we can tell what version of truth he's looking for".
Even if the author doesn't state their desired perspective explicitly they should give enough context cues to you that you know what they're talking about. In this case a couple of sentences just doesn't cut it.
I haven't even looked at your answer. But looking now, you're writing an answer on a truth question with a potentially controversial bent to it, play with fire, you might get burned.

As the others have said, and I agree, this question is beyond too open-ended.
There is no scope whatsoever to it.
Here are the problems I see just on the surface:

These, of course, can not be taken literal since they are symbolic.

Hold on, cowboy - is prophecy typically symbolic? Yes and no. Sometimes it's symbolic, sometimes it's literal. The prophets themselves didn't typically know what they were conveying: they were told to tell, and they told.
Do I think these passages are symbolic? Absolutely. Can we say that with 100% certainty? Sadly, no. (I personally think we're in the neighborhood of 'five nines' .. but you must leave the possibility it was not symbolic.)

My question is what does a beast represent in prophecy?

Just totally changed the direction of the question. It starts off with "Revelation and Daniel talk about beasts" then goes off into EVERY prophecy.
There is no blanket answer for every prophecy and their inherent symbolisms (or literalisms). Ok - technically that is not true, there is ONE blanket answer for every prophecy, and that is that God thought it was important enough to tell us, so we should pay attention to it.

So there are the issues I saw at first glance. Surely this could be improved. Perhaps along the lines of the following:
What does the Eastern Orthodox church teach about the meaning of the beast in Revelation 17?
Do they link it to the meaning of the beast in Daniel 7?


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Should related question links be edited into questions or left as comments?
It seems that the typical practice is to link related questions in a comment on the question, but I seem to recall reading that the comments are not exposed to search engines and I think links are an important part of how search engines optimize results.
So, should such links be edited into questions or left as comments?  Also, if they should be edited into the question, how should they be presented?  (E.g., one might have a separate "section" at the bottom with "Related questions:" or "Possibly related questions:"--or one might try to provide better flow, e.g., "Unlike Why X?(link), this question seeks an answer in this specific context" or "When was X first done(link) does not address later occurrences", though better flow is more difficult, perhaps especially for a question.)
This might well be a question for meta.stackexchange (I only searched meta.christianity), though different SEs might have different preferences and expectations.
From the Stackoverflow FAQ
The "What about similar or related questions?" section of this answer to the question "How should duplicate questions be handled?" indicates one should have a section with a h3 (three # marks) header (with the text "See also") with the question title as the link text.
(In some cases, I think a brief parenthetical description/explanation might be appropriate to clarify the relationship. This would seem to especially apply when linking to one answer; if other decent answers to a question are not sufficiently related, the question title by itself is likely to be less helpful.)

Considering the transient nature of comments, I think it would be better if we edited them into questions.
Comments are often deleted and cannot be restored (or viewed by anyone other than a moderator) so it would be best if we have relevant related links to include them into the post itself.
As far as your last paragraph, while some questions are relevant on MSO, generally things like this are kept as per-site policies and should be discussed and debated here.

Links in comments are picked up for the "linked" sidebar, but... I agree that they're better off as edits in general, simply because this allows for others to revise them as necessary.

@Shog9: If for some reason a comment with a link is deleted, will the link disappear from the sidebar eventually?  I've seen them stick around, but that might just be caching.

Thanks for your last paragraph.  Global (SE) vs. local concerns are not always clear to me.  (Will wait a while before accepting this answer [but did +1].)

@Jon: they'll go away eventually, but the list isn't rebuilt in response to comment deletion (or, IIRC, addition, which is probably another good reason not to depend on comments for this).


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Should flip-side and different denomination-based questions be linked as related?
When asking this question the question of what constitutes a related question came to mind, in particular for "flip-side" questions (e.g., "What is the argument for X?" and "What is the argument against X?"), though some questions marked as specific to a different denomination could likewise be related (e.g., "Why do Catholics reject X?" and "Why do Lutherans reject X?") even if they could not be merged into a single question (is question merging ever done on Stack Exchange?).
Of course, the "Related" sidebar is supposed to provide some of this function, and I could easily see difficulty with adding too many links.  I wonder if allowing static (human-generated) related questions at the top of the list on the "Related" sidebar would be useful.  (My guess would be that such had already been suggested as a feature request for SE and rejected for practical reasons, but it is remotely possible that I might be the first to suggest the possibility of such and that it is something useful and practical!  However, I am skeptical enough that I would not present such as a feature request unless at least one or two others confirmed that it might be useful--practical is more for the SE people to decide, I think.)

This is entirely up to the participants in the stream. It may help the site and inform all involved if they are linked, but it might not.
Please evaluate this on a case by case basis rather than asking for a mandate to do so.
Yes, you are right that the related sidebar in theory might help, but ultimately that's some algorithm and a human is much better are determining this.
Sometimes, linking two related questions on the flip sides of very controversial question might actually be worse for both questions, so it might be better for them to stay completely separate. However, there is sometimes value in getting them linked so people can see both sides of the issue.
Again, this is a judgement call the participants in the questions should make, it should not be mandated from on high.

I suspect linking "flip-side" questions would actually work to prevent argument, as people see that their opinion is not unrepresented or unwelcome on the site, and therefore feel less need to "push back". But that probably applies more to newer users or to casual visitors than to regulars.

@TRiG I generally agree

By the way, I was not seeking a mandate so much as reliable guidelines including what different parts of the community feel.  A single highly upvoted answer without dissenting comments might be a quasi-mandate, but I was thinking that my question might generate more than one response and expose some less obvious concerns.  Personally, I would prefer a legalistic checklist; but having more information available on who my neighbors are might make not loving them properly more culpable/theoretically easier to avoid. :-\


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How long before Christianity is on the SE Data Explorer?
I noticed the data link in the footer, but following it I found that Christianity has not yet been added.  (With 3,410 questions we would be between Skeptics [3.8k] and Bicycles [3.2k].)
I am tagging this question with bug (since it is an unexpected behavior), even though I am guessing that this is just a less urgent feature that will be rolled out fairly soon.

I've got the DE open in a tab and keep hitting refresh. I think this is my personal most anticipated feature with our official graduation.

Why hasn't Christianity made it into the Data Explorer yet?

There was an extra hold up due to a small glitch, but we're live now!

There's a lag of around a week or so before the data explorer is updated.  Stay tuned!

Thanks for the quick answer and the tag correction. (I was really uncertain about how to tag the question; "unexpected behavior" seemed slightly more accurate than "help with use", even though I assumed it was not a 'bug' in the usual sense.)

Geoff I don't want to open another post if this isn't an issue, but I just noticed that all the other sites on the DE got updated yesterday but C.SE didn't make the cut yet. Can you confirm when it might be available? Did it not get marked correctly for inclusion?

@Caleb the se mods just know patience is one of the virtues we are supposed to possess in abundance. :)


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Does the new site design have any easter eggs?
Easter egg is a jargon phrase from game developers. It is a small, usually hard to find detail or feature that is not documented anywhere except by people who have found it.
It would be neat it the site had a few.
Here's what some of them might be called:

The gnostic page.
The C.SE Codes.
Jacob's ladder.

See also: Site design: 404/captcha/error page images.  (The first three links in that question might be of interest.)

I hope we didn't wait that extra 6-8 weeks just so they could queue up an Easter Egg. Besides which date for Easter would they use?

Which date. That's funny.


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LMGTFY questions abound?
Some questions show a lack of even the most basic prior research; exactly LMGTFY* questions. Who are "Born again" Christians? which is simply asking someone to regurgitate Wikipedia Born again (Christianity). I do see the answers are slightly different than wikipedia but they are very similar to other google results and the google algorithm has not chosen to first page this question only 2 of 10 page rank points with lots of effort by the community. The average pagerank is 3. Yet this question has 9 upvotes and one favorite. I know SE Overflow Chemistry Biology would downvote questions like this why is it rewarded here?
For comparison What is the meaning of “day and hour unknown”? was rejected by Christianity SE and sent to Bible Hermeneutics but is first page google with only 5 upvotes it does not have a pagerank. (If it does have a low pagerank in the future it will of course be my fault)
When google a fair objective outsider downvotes by labeling below average importance why are we upvoting?

*LMGTFY - Literally "Let Me Google That For You". To say a question is LMGTFY is to say that that it is easily answered by simply googling it. In other words, the internet is filled with information on the question's subject.

@fredsbend thanks for the clarification

Google ranks by popularity; it really has nothing to do with whether it is on-topic here or is a good question. And for clarification, are you suggesting "simple" or "basic" questions be closed?

Last week I was googling a topic to improve my answer, and one of the top four hits I got was my C.SE question!  Multiple times I have in fact googled a question, and ended up at a forum where the question was being asked & received a sarcastic LMGTFY reply.

@pterandon I'm not encouraging us to constantly give LMGTFY replies but I do think that we should encourage people to research their questions before asking like overflow does.

@RyanFrame the most basic questions are sometimes the most necessary however I think questions which show no research should be closed as they don't represent a problem someone actually faces.

Preliminaries

The "day and hour" question was migrated because it fits better with the sorts of experts that hang out on the Hermeneutics site.  (The question literally said "Some hermeneutics background may be useful", which is a pretty good sign.)  As far as I know, the topic of the question (and not it's potential Google rank) was the only consideration.
As you point out, the answers to the "born again" question are universally original.  Nobody chose to regurgitate Wikipedia.
Where a question turns up on a Google search depends a great deal on what you search on.  Obviously, its a good thing if we have questions with good, unique answers that are easy to find with a Google search. In fact, this is the criteria for our occasional self-evaluations.
Google PageRank is not nearly as important as you seem to imply.  Stack Exchange gets ridiculously high exposure in Google searches for reasons that are not entirely clear to me.  At least part of the reason seems to be that Google sees our content as "fresh" because we edit our questions and answers.
Question voting tend to have more to do with how well the question is asked than with how well it turns up in a Google search.  Votes also tend to accumulate over time, so you can't reasonably compare a question asked months ago to a question asked a few days ago.

Overly broad questions should be avoided
With all of that said, I agree with the basic premise that we should not encourage questions with answers that are easy to look up with a Google search.  The "born again" question might be one of those, since it's hard to find our question in the sea of material on the topic without a very specific search string.  If we have a lot of these questions, we are not living up to our promise as a source of "long tail" questions.  The best sorts of questions are those that really focus down on a specific point.

I liked my born again Christian answer.
In any event, I think you get perspectives here you're never going to see in the top 10 on google and that would never cut the mustard on wikipedia (even though the top answer will probably be similar)


text:
flag for overly broad
Following up this discussion LMGTFY questions abound?. 3000 points are required to vote to close a question and that most users will never have 3000 points. I found a flag for overly specific questions is there be a flag for overly general questions or questions which show no research on behalf of the asker? If this is already a feature where do I flag for too general?

The available flags roughly correspond the the choices we have when closing a question. The sort of question you are referring to sometimes falls under either "Not Constructive" or "Not a real question". We don't actually have a close reason for "Too Basic" which is what the LMGTFY thing is about, but usually when people try questions of this sort there is also another issue going on that we can deal with.
If you think a question really ought to be closed, go and flag with the best match you can think of. Whoever acts on the flag will still have to make a judgement call and pick the close reason themselves. The flag type doesn't actually determine the close type even if a moderator agrees.
In the mean time, 3,000k rep isn't actually that high of a bar. It's a big step up from beta, but it's a standard across other graduated SE sites that works pretty well as a threshold for new users to really get a feel for things. I hope to see a lot of regulars pushing through and being active close/reopen voters.

thanks for pointing those two options out :)

IMO "Extremely low quality" seems appropriate for those as well.


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When should an answer be made community wiki?
I made this answer community wiki because I only posted an extremely partial answer. Since the content seemed to be useful and too long for comments, posting it as an answer seemed somewhat appropriate, but the answer certainly required extra work. (This use of community wiki seems to fit with what is stated briefly in this blog post: 'An incomplete “seed” answer is a stepping stone to a complete solution with help from others'.)
This brings up the question of when a poster should mark an answer as community wiki.
For FAQ-like questions on Meta (especially those that generate short list answers for which elements in the list are not disputable), marking an answer community wiki might be reasonable.
A similar argument might be made for a question on the Main site to allow a single answer to better address the complex question. However, expecting others to sacrifice potential reputation gain by adding to a community wiki answer (rather than posting a less complete answer) may be somewhat unreasonable. (On the other hand, such would allow a user to add a very small amount of content which would gain little or even negative reputation if posted as a separate answer.)
So the question remains: When should an answer be made community wiki?

To me, you've got the gist of it.
there are only two reasons to make an answer community wiki now that suggested edits are in play:

To indicate the answer is incomplete and to invite community contribution to finish it.
To avoid gaining reputation for the answer.

The first is noble, the second is...odd? But those are basically the only uses for the format in the present structure.

I could somewhat understand the second, particularly early on in a site, when one is answering (and likely accepting the answer to) one's own question. Such seems almost unfair. OTOH, early in a site there is a desire for rapid reputation growth, so such might actually be less friendly to the community (as if saying "I do not want to help out in moderation [e.g., review] tasks any time soon"). C-wiki seems to say "I am not rep. farming" but might actually 'steal' rep. from others (if the community punishes "non-team players" who post separate answers).

@PaulA.Clayton yes, we need high rep users to supplement moderators so yes, in a way denying yourself reputation is not actually helpful to the community.

The "Community Wiki" feature is pretty much a relic of a previous social experiment on the part of Stack Exchange. It wasn't a complete failure, but the lessons they learned from it have mostly gone into other tools and it no longer serves a major primary purpose like it used to. In particular the "comprehensive list" type of thing that it worked for originally is not even an Q&A format we accept right now.
There are still occasional uses for it, but as you note they are not usually compelling.

I thought "comprehensive list" questions were still on-topic if the list was both short and objective. Such questions may have a "bad smell" as a category, but I thought that some members of the category were thought to avoid the "not constructive" close reason.

@Paul Yes there are certain ones that can be given a pass, but those are also the ones that don't require CW status to pull off.

I agree about not requiring such, but sometimes it saddens me that the best/accepted answer lacks some content in other answers (not from disagreement or awkwardness of fit but seemingly from unwillingness to "steal"). CW would only slightly help with that sometimes, but I do not know how to address this issue generally. (E.g., rf. my comment at SciFi and its context. The best and accepted answer excluded some agreeable content even after a reminder of CC licensing.)

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


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How should we handle questions about Christian culture?
We have recently received a few questions that were not on doctrine, per se, but actually reflected a curiosity about current Christian culture in a specific geographic area.
Here are some examples:

https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/16849/are-christians-in-the-north-usa-less-likely-to-be-republican
What Doctrine Supports The Christian Gun Culture?
https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/16883/what-christian-doctrine-supports-being-ultra-patriotic-in-america (My answer in the second one led the op to ask this one)

They are all closed right now. There is a reason given by Caleb on all of them going something like "This is more of a discussion starter for a forum." There also seems to be a sentiment in the comments that thinks these are better on Politics.SE. I kind of agree, but I ultimately think these kinds of questions can work well here on Christianity.SE and can lend a lot of good posts and make the internet a better place.
Here is a brief analysis of the three questions to support why I think they can be or are good for the site:

Well, I think this question brings up a very real issue. Most Christians are in fact politically conservative. This is currently outside of the site's scope (doctrine and history), however, I argue that this is culture, which is modern history. In a hundred years this question suddenly becomes on-topic: "Why were so many 21st century American Christians Republicans?" The asker only wants to see if things are roughly the same in northern churches as it is in his southern churches.
There is an obvious merging of patriotism and religion (Christianity specifically) in the USA today. The OP even showed a likely quote seen: "All I need is my Bible and a gun." Just today I saw a bumper sticker that said "I'm Catholic and I vote." I can't really say what this means, why it is happening, nor what it might mean for the future of the Christian church in the USA, but I can say assuredly that the merger of politics/patriotism and Christianity is very clearly evident for anyone living in that sub-culture. And the OP was asking about a doctrine that supports this culture, if one exists.
In my own answer to this question I was praised as having "hit it on the head" by a self proclaimed "gun-toting, right-wing, ultra-conservative, Christian patriot." I think that is clear evidence that there is an actual answer to the question that is useful.
Now we should look closely at caseyr547's answer. He illuminates a verse that some churches use to say that Christians should, not may, but should be armed in some manner. That is incredible! I think we are witnessing the birth of what might become a common doctrine in a few decades.
The OP was apparently ignorant about this sub-culture of "ultra-patriotic Christians" that I reflected on in my answer to question 2, thus, he made this question. Again, he did stick to the site guidelines and asked for relevant doctrine that supports this behavior.
Again, caseyr547 brings up that the church he actually attends preach what his answer gave, which is a version of "honor the king" applied to democracy. I can't speak about it, but I would guess that this doctrine would not call a person "King", but rather the law of the land, that is, the Constitution (this kind of thought is certainly in line with my personal knowledge of this sub-culture). I say again: I think we are witnessing the birth of what might become a common doctrine in a few decades. That is so exciting and I don't see how the community in general does not want the facts about this phenomenon posted on this site.

Summary:
I think two of the three were on-topic as originally posted because they request specific doctrine that might support observed behavior.  All three of the questions hint on something that I think the site is missing: the fact that Christianity is a living religion and is evolving daily. As conjecture and speculation become proven fact, questions like these become relevant and on-topic to this site.

EDIT:
Just so it is clear, because there seems to be concern over what I am saying, I do not in any way want to forge new theologies. As the site's purpose says, I want to see academic posts about extant Christianity only. I don't want to talk about what might be I want to talk about what is. Christian culture of various sub-cultures like the one mentioned in these posts is making doctrines about these issues. I only want to see posts that discuss those doctrine and can prove that they are indeed doctrines of a Christian organization.

Sure, there are socially liberal Christians.

I believe this answer shows that these kinds of questions can be managed and answered really well.

I think wax_eagle covered a lot of the major concerns I have with these points. However one thing you said in particular stood out to me. Please understand this isn't going to be a personal attack on you. I assume you didn't even intend to trigger this issue, but since it's come up in my mind I'm going to air it out here.

I think we are witnessing the birth of what might become a common doctrine in a few decades.

Early on in the history of this site, before we even figured out we had a problem with truth questions, before, I think, I was even nominated as a pro temore moderator this was a big issue for me. It still is and as far as this site is concerned, this is a hill I will die on.1
Speaking as a user voicing my opinion: The scope of this site should be extant Christianity, we should never be the ones going out on a limb to scope out a next step for Christianity or forge anything new in theology or practice. Individuals who participate may well discover things new to them; Christianity has a wealth of history in both doctrine and practice that few people are aware of. While these personal discoveries may play a role in individuals lives, the scope of our questions should never be the future. We shouldn't be the ones trying to decide what the next step to take is.
Doing so would be to invade on the role of the church. You probably all know what I have to say about that. Not to mention the ecclesiastical implications, I think it would ruin the academic atmosphere here and attract an entirely different kind of expert.
One could draw an analogy from journalism. In today's media world the lines have gotten blurred almost beyond recognition, but a newspaper should have two basic kinds of content. There is reporting and their is commentary (or maybe "everything else" is a better label). The reporting should stick to the facts. It shouldn't try to convince people of a cause2, it should give people the relevant pieces of the puzzle so that they can then apply their own world view to the facts and come to a conclusion. Everything else - your commentary, advice columns, talk shows, etc can argue for or against various causes. These should purpose themselves to sway people. But the bits that give the facts should be as unadulterated as possible. As a site, our scope should be that bit. The raw data. The nuts and bolts of current and historical Christianity. "How does X perspective justify Y?". "How did Y come to believe Z?". "What makes Z different than Q?". What sets this sort of question apart from "What should we do about B?" is that they can be given verifiable answers by experts orthogonal to the church.
This may or may not be what's going on in the questions you use as a case study. I'm ranting about principle of the matter here. If the end product of a question and answer thread is newly developed theology, we need to fend it off with a barge pole.
I am also not the only voice to say this. I'll let Affable have the last word here:

Additionally, this site is not a place for working out theology - it is for the examination of extant theology. In the same way that lawyers have a "discovery phase," in which evidence is considered before introduction, so too new theology may not be simply introduced whenever one feels like it. This site is for critiquing and understanding existing theology, not introducing theology that would be called "peculiar," "novel," or "innovative."

1. Of course in my roll of a moderator I am here to act on behalf of the community, enforcing community policy. Already that includes policies I didn't personally sign off on or even like. I do promise to keep serving the community in this manner and not to abuse my mod powers to make my version of things happen. But I am also a community member and I'm speaking out here because meta is the right place to win friends and influence people make my opinion known and hope enough people catch the same vision. If it ever does come down to a clear community consensus to make this a place to forge new theology, I will respectfully turn in my badge.
2. This is mostly a lost art today's media. Even the most basic "reporting" of events you read about is done in such a way that events are already interpreted for us. Rather than having to examine an issue based on the facts, we are left with nothing to do but "catch up on the news". Rather than being more informed on the world, most people only end up more indoctrinated by whatever perspective they choose to get their "news" from.

Maybe you missed my last sentence: As conjecture and speculation become proven fact, questions like these become relevant and on-topic to this site. I don't want to forge anything. I want to encourage that reporting you are talking about. I don't want to talk about what might be I want to talk about what is. I made an edit to the post. These things are becoming doctrine for churches today, not decades from now.

@fredsbend: I didn't say you were advocating for this. However you are advocating for a question being in scope for our site that you then commented on as being "might become a common doctrine in a few decades". Just because you ended on a different note doesn't really mitigate my objection on this point. I don't care about "becoming doctrine today", I don't think we can pick up the tune until at least "became doctrine yesterday". The kind of reporting I am suggesting is rather opposite of what the case study questions in your post do: open an ongoing current localized topic for discussion.

Today and yesterday I think are the same thing in the way we used them. I meant to say "really quite new, but now extant." caseyr547 claims that it is taught in his church. All he really needs is a link to prove that it is a doctrine. I see your concern, because the only thing causing more fights than religion is politics and we are talking about doctrine that exists because of current politics. It is a thin piece of ice that would require close moderation if we were to walk out on it, but it is still real, extant, and questions on it can have factual, academic answers.

This assumes something major:
that there is such a thing as "Christian culture"
Christians come in all shapes, sizes and political leanings. Identifying a pervasive "Christian Culture" is kind of ridiculous. The scope of this site precludes any such demarcation in my mind.
Let's go through each of these questions and see if we can find some constructive things and pull about part why they aren't constructive:

Are Christians in the North Less likely to be Republican. I don't see any potential for constructive discussion here unless it's on the politics site. 1. It's not related to Christian doctrine at all. 2. it's tangentially related to Christian culture, but it's making broad generlizations. 3. It's looking for speculation rather than fact which makes it a discussion starter rather than a good SE question. Lastly, the idea that most Christians are politically conservative is both over generalized and only true in the US. There are plenty of both liberal and conservative Christians and I would hesitate to make that judgement without real facts in front of me (and remember for the purpose for this site, anyone who claims to be a Christian is one).
What doctrines support the Christian gun culture? This one actually might be relevant. Specially in light of casey's answer. The original form of this question was rather NC, but as it stands now it's probably OK. I'd rather see some community support behind reopening it, but I won't be opposed to get getting reopened if it swings that direction. However, it's still worded in a way to be politically charged rather than motivated to learn about doctrines and beliefs so I'm not inclined to reopen in it's current form via a binding vote.
This is broad. Oh so broad. I'd rather the OP do some significant research and try to narrow things down. a lot. Because patriotism is a spectrum and ultra-patriotism is essentially undefined. He would have to identify an ultrapatriotic group or subgroup even and ask what doctrines they use to support their patriotism. As it is there are (or could be quite easily) books written on the subject.

In general, I'm likely to close anything that starts "why do Christians" because I'm of the mind that we're not a generalizeable group, especially those of us on this site who hail from a wide wide swath of both US and international Christian groups. There are too many minority groups that will get marginalized when we deal with macro ideas like this.
Asking why Christians Do X or Believe X is not constructive because "Christians" is not a meaningful people group in the context of this site.

How could there not be a christian culture? And I am specifically referring to a sub-culture that you would be hard pressed to deny the existence of. I don't feel like there are any concrete answers in this post.

I'm not denying the existence of a so called "Christian culture" I'm mostly just saying that I think the concept is meaningless because Christians don't agree on anything substantial enough to build a culture out of and identifying such a culture is counter productive.

Well, I think your post makes a terrible case for that assertion. I wholly disagree.

Those questions ought to have been left open if they were asked in about there connection to such and such a heretical doctrine such as Americanism.
But since they were just off the cuff discussion starters with no theological framework to back them up, they were closed, as well they should be.

I suppose if you wanted only Catholic doctrine that rejects this behavior. The questions, however, requested doctrines that support this behavior. Some of the answers showed that such doctrines do exist (I would bet in non-denominational churches).


text:
When to post in chat and when in Meta?
When should a question, suggestion, discussion-starter, or the like be posted in chat (The Upper Room) and when should such be made a Meta question?
It seems that for items with little historical significance, posting to chat might slightly reduce clutter in Meta.
Given the definition of The Upper Room as "General discussion for Christianity.SE, pseudo-meta support, and help formulating questions", I guess I am mainly asking "What is 'pseudo-meta support'?". ("help formulating questions" also seems to have a boundary shared with Meta, but chat does not seem to work well with low-interest items that would involve significant content--a post can more easily fade into history.)
(Obviously, items not related to the site do not belong in Meta.)

May I add a tangential comment? Once a mod wanted to take me aside to discuss something in chat. After looking at it the first time, I couldn't find it again.

@pterandon Chat also seems to require a minimum 20 (SE total) reputation for posting. (Is there an exception for replying to directed messages?) This would seem to make chat less suited to helping truly new SE users. Read The Fine Manual suggestions might not be sufficiently helpful. (Somewhat related issue: some post comments as answers because they lack the rep. to post comments.) By the way, I think making a post a favorite helps search--but such requires foreknowledge. (I am not very active in chat, so I am mostly uninformed.)

Chat and meta serve quite different purposes and as with different tools you can sometimes use them for something that they aren't quite designed for, but it will do the trick anyways.
Generally we use chat for discussion, it provides an outlet that is not present in the stricter context of the main site and only slightly looser context of meta. So it tends to be less on topic and much more about getting to know the other chatters.
The "pseudo-meta support" aspect of chat comes in that sometimes you've got a question that might be a bit quicker than a meta post deserves. "How does functionality X work?", can "X do Y?" Generally we've got a few users who are very familiar with the engine or know how to find the answer. It wouldn't hurt if these queries went to meta, but generally they can be handled quickly in chat.
On question formulation, back and forth is sometimes necessary to hammer things out and that's often better done in chat than on meta. Often, rather than pasting the entire text into chat I'll link to a document with my post in it as that seems more convenient to me and doesn't gum up chat with long form messages (although they are supported quite well).
As far as knowing when it's time to take something to meta. It never hurts to start it in chat and sound it off a more experienced user who can then tell you "hey, it's time to take this to meta if we're going to continue it. Meta gets a lot more eyes (And has a better presentation) than chat does where there are just a few active users.
Meta also exposes ideas to the most important of SE concepts, voting. Things that are site policy discussion, or even tag-synonym requests get posted on meta so that people can vote and comment on them. Meta is naturally more pointed than chat and it's easier to vet ideas on meta than it is in chat.

+1 as useful; will probably accept since this sounds like a relatively  authoritative answer. Too bad there isn't an algorithm for this--a computer could decide which humans should be bothered (if any :-).

Post in meta if you want someone to come by at midnight and tell you to post in meta.
If you post in chat you're likely to get a mod response, but since they're almost always wrong about everything, you probably only want to do that sparingly.  But it's good to know they're there when you need them and they mean well and are usually very nice unless you go out of your way to insult them, but then you're more likely to get ignored. So it's probably a good idea to only post positive upbeat messages and links to funny YouTube videos in chat and leave everything else to meta.

This answer is soooo meta...


text:
Guidelines toward a polite, academic tone
Because of the strong feelings associated with much of the subject matter at Christianity SE, the need for a polite, academic tone is particularly important. However, some people coming to Stack Exchange might not be familiar with what constitutes a polite, academic tone.
Providing guidelines on this could be useful to new users and to those seeking to help new users adapt to the Stack Exchange culture.
Possibly related questions from elsewhere on meta (auto-suggested):

Are C.SE questions getting too aggressive?
Is this hate speech? [closed]
Tips for editing a question to make it suitable for re-opening

So, what qualities actually comprise a polite, academic tone?
What practical steps can be taken in composing posts so that they do not come across as confrontational or accusatory?

I posted a community wiki answer with only an extremely limited amount of content to start this off. I am hoping that a substantial amount of specific advice can be provided. Unfortunately, I find it difficult to articulate what exactly makes the tone of a writing polite and academic (even though I have some sense of when writing misses the mark and can often approximate that tone in my own writing).

I think this is a good idea, but I think it would be helpful to use the voting system to sort suggestions so the most urgent ones will get seen first.

@Caleb That makes some sense, though I admit that also find some attraction for narrative flow. Separate "answers" also allows vetting of less certain guidelines. (BTW, thanks for making the question community wiki.)

No problem, the major thing is that now all answers will automatically be CW. I like narrative flow myself but I think that is better compiled by one writer or editor later after a bunch of suggestions have been vetted.

@Caleb Regarding an outline "answer", I agree that such should wait for a more complete set of answers. (The idea came from the development on What makes a good answer? at the Writers SE. (Unfortunately, the asker of that question provided the outline "answer", so accepting would not have the effect of giving the outline top billing. I may ask someone to repost that answer so an acceptance would move it to the top.)

@Caleb By the way, would it be possible to purge the deleted answer?

No I can't actually purge it, but we can certainly re-purpose it. I'm totally fine with seeing it edited into something else and undeleted. By the way it looks like you've already worked through this problem a lot farther than I'd expected and if you plan on bringing in a lot of other content across feel free to organize it how you think best, I was just trying to help and not actually trying to hijack where you were going.

@Caleb On this specific topic, I do not have a good grasp of what guidelines to provide. I really want a lot of "hijacking". As for the formatting of the question at Writers, Monica Cellio proposed this idea.

Does this comment count as polite and professional?

Prefer descriptive over than prescriptive language
Words such as "believe", "conclude", and "teach" should generally be preferred over words such as "recognize", "know", and "affirm".

Avoid we/you and we/they phrasing
The use of "we", "you", "they", et al. may seem innocent, but such can easily be perceived as meaning "We right-minded Christians recognize" or "You [Those] misguided so-called Christians suppose". For example, rather than writing "We Presbyterians recognize that Divine sovereignty mandates limited atonement" a more neutral phrasing would be "Presbyterians believe that limited atonement derives from the principle of Divine sovereignty".

Stick to the Facts
The internet has plenty of forums that provide the opportunity to share user-generated editorial content. Christianity Stack Exchange specializes instead on providing factual content that is verifiable by reference to various historical documents and/or evident reason.

In This Setting, Theological Language Can be More Effective than Devotional Language
Christianity Stack Exchange understandably attracts many individuals who self-identify as Christian. Perhaps owing in part to the fact that a significant amount of Christian literature is intentionally and appropriately devotional in tone, users -- especially new users -- sometimes offer content that seems almost prayerful.
While worship is an important aspect of religious faith, C.SE is a secular site that seeks to provide factual content about history and doctrine. The most effective questions and answers usually reflect this perspective.

This is a difficult point, particularly for some answers (and perhaps some questions). Avoiding a dry academic tone typically involves expressing some enthusiasm, and an enthusiastic tone can be difficult to distinguish from devotional tone and can easily flow into a devotional tone. (I also suspect that reasoned and somewhat devotional answers tend to get upvoted and not just because they are more moving as literature but also because the tone/content is agreeable to a large fraction of the audience.) Perhaps advice in distinguishing the enthusiasm of a teacher from that of an ...

... evangelist or a worshiper would be helpful. As noted, this seems to be a difficult point.

@PaulA.Clayton: There are many elements to a good C.SE answer, on that we agree. If in this particular meta question, however, we are focusing on the specific characteristics that lend the qualities of "polite" & "academic" to an answer -- only a subset of the many elements that make for a "good" answer -- then I would continue to contend that theological language serves that goal more readily than devotional language.

@PaulA.Clayton: Your comment gave me the idea for a new meta post, similar to this but with a broader scope. It sounds like you may have some good answers for it. Thanks for the thought.

I already linked in a comment to the Writers SE What makes a good answer?. I had hoped that such would be an exemple for SE sites--writers should be good at developing general writing guidelines. (I started it before I discovered the FAQ for SE sites.) I should work more on that, but I was hoping for more community involvement there. Even what is currently there may be useful for your new question (C.SE does have site-specific concerns)

Polite guidelines extend to comments too
Your post might be good, but if you quickly show a poor attitude in comments, it will taint your post and people will downvote it based on that. Not really fair, but that's just the way it is. It's just easier and better to be polite all the time.

Do your own research
If you reference a Bible verse, at least look it up, consult it to be sure you remember it correctly, and quote it in your post. The same goes for any prominent theologian from antiquity or book that you have read.

Avoid slang and use proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

Consistent Moderation
Someone along the way complained that one of the sites' most popular questions was, plain and simple, a Truth Question posted by Caleb. As one who at the time was experiencing some frustration with how to word questions here, I'll admit it was infuriating.  It's not that you don't need standards, and that you don't have folks with an agenda trying to harm either C or SE, but the standards were either very poorly defined or wielded inconsistently.

There are litterally 3-4 hundred straight up truth questions from our early days still floating around. Yes, a a large handful of them are mine. I've gone through and outright closed a number of my own questions ( sample ), deleted a few and edited others so they wouldn't be as bad, but a few of them still need to go. I'm happy to deal with these as they come up and as the community feels they need dealing with.

However this seems like a separate issue. This meta post is more about writing guidelines. If you have an issue with moderation, please do bring it up in a meta post dedicated to the issue. I've never used those old posts of mine as evidence of anything except that we made mistakes early on.

P.S. Refraining from voting since it's about me personally, but I'd really like to see you open this up as a separate meta post.

I am guessing your early, highly upvoted Truth questions made a very positive contribution to C.SE.

Consistent moderation is a valid point.  And we've got it.  To pull up questions and answers from early on in the site's history and say "See... this moderator asked truth questions" is not valid.  At the time those questions were on-topic. The site guidelines hadn't been established.  if you look at history over the last year or so, you'll see incredible consistency.

When those posts were made, they were perfectly within guidelines.  Just like all fallible humans, we learned along the way.  If you look at posts over time, Meta posts, discussions, etc, you'll see that the moderators and the community zeroed in on the current guidelines, which have remained unchanged for at least six months, if not the last full year.  Referring back to old posts from before the guidelines were settled is like holding a sinners old sins against them after they've been saved.  There's a whole before/after reality to deal with here.

Leaving Truth Questions on the site provides opportunities for the bickering they engender, and make a frustrating example for those looking to high-rated people for example.   Another inconsistency: I write a good question, it's threatened with closing for being a "List Question".  Next question I post is poorly worded, and Caleb comes along and edits it to a perfect SE question, and a List Question.  THIS inconsistency creates frustration that leads to "tone" problems, moreso than cracking down on use of "they" would.

I know this is two years old, but I think you've gotten the friction here because this isn't really in the right place. On this post, we're just trying to lay down some guidelines for being polite and academic. Moderation regarding site scope is a different issue.