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Is this site just for Bible-based questions and answers?
I've noticed a large number of answers (and a fair number of questions) are quoting the Bible without context or any verifiable source for the interpretation of the passages being quoted:

If the Ten Commandments say “thou shalt not kill” how can a Christian fight in a war?
Does believing in Jesus Christ save me, or do I have to do something more?
What is the basis of my fractured understanding of  "Sola Scriptura"?
God will judge the world based upon righteousness but what about Jesus?
Does the Bible give us a purpose to life?
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego - who is understood as the fourth person in the fire?

Just to mention a few.
Are we comfortable having this site be solely about finding the relevant passages from the Bible to support or dispute a question (essentially making this site akin to a Bible study) or are other perspectives, particularly ones that draw from authoritative, definitive, or at least verifiable sources going to be welcomed or encouraged?

@Mark_Trapp what other verifiable sources exist for the answer to many questions pertaining to Christianity? Another meta question I've answered deals with Apochrypha

@Patrick One example might be the Magisterium for Roman Catholics, but even just other people like Luther, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, or other prominent figures. "According to X authority, this means Y." Seems like the only valid source being presented is directly quoting the Bible.

I think as the site develops and the 'easy' questions have been answered, there will be more discussions based on the studies of Luther, Wesley, etc...

@Patrick the private beta isn't for easy questions, though: it defines the character of the site and what we want to be. If we leave beta and all the questions are about finding relevant passages in the Bible, that's pretty much what the site is.

Also, there are a lot of historical texts and archaeological findings that are relevant to Christianity.

@Mark Trapp good point, I guess we need to get some good questions in here that pit one biblical philosopher against another. Any good question ideas? :-)

I'm answering questions like a Catholic answers questions using Scripture, Magisterial Teaching, Tradition (and the internet).
If people downvote my posts, God bless'em, they did more than that to the Martyrs.

+1 I actually smiled a bit at your comparison to martyrs :)

Other perspectives should definitely be welcome, as should all "competing" Bible-supported answers.
However, I do think basing answers on the Bible should be enough on a lot of questions. Considering that most SE sites don't require referencing answers at all, I think referencing the Bible is a good starting point.

There's a proposed site currently in the committment phase called Biblical Hermeneutics that is:

For professors, theologians, authors, and anybody else interested in an exegetical understanding of the meaning and proper application of the Christian scriptures.

Several of the questions listed by OP should be migrated to that group if it existed.  I'm thinking the questions on the Ten Commandments and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abendego in particular.
I think the Sola Scriptura and the what does it take to be a Christian questions definitely belong here because they are relevant to Christianity in general.  The answers to those questions should (or at least could) quote the Bible but there are other relevant sources that could be used to answer the questions.

The sooner the Biblical Hermeneutic site comes online the sooner some of the biblica interpretation issues ehre will be sorted out.

I think this site is very much destined to be centered around the Bible and whatever other scriptures are deemed to be relevant.  This is mainly due to the nature of SE sites, to be oriented around objectively-answerable questions.
On the subject of Christianity, the only way to objectively answer a question is really to quote God himself.  And, the only universally-accepted source of God's direct words is the Bible (and associated scriptures, depending on your particular sect or denomination) - although that in itself is open to some interpretation, depending on your beliefs.

I guess the flip side of this is if a question is asked that does not specifically say "what does the Bible say about X" would an answer that quotes from a non-Biblical Christian source of scripture be welcome? For example if the answer was given based on the Book of Mormon (the book of scripture, not the musical)?
Likewise, if a question was asked about a point of teaching in the Book of Mormon, would that be considered on topic? I picked the Book of Mormon because it specifically says "Another Testament of Jesus Christ" on the cover, but yet is only accepted as such by a small minority of Christian faiths. I am sure there are other books that are considered to be Christian scripture by members of some faith's but not others.
I realize I am answering a question with a question. Maybe this should be a question of its own.

Some of the best answers do not have bible verses.  Here's an example.
Because of that, I think that we should allow non-biblical questions and answers because often times you aren't wanting questions and answers that are directly from the bible, but more practical.

In addition to the Bible, should anyone ever ask a question about what my denomination believes, I would not hesitate to use hymns or other liturgy if applicable.  If people confess it every week, it would be reasonable to say that they believe that.

Considering that from beginning to end the Bible is God's salvation story, it will naturally be the foremost source to cite in answers.
That being said, Christianity as a subject is much more quoting scripture.  What the Catholic Magisterium, church fathers, and other theologians have to say carries (or should carry) quite a bit of weight.  Offering a source for your understand or interpretation of Scripture should be welcome here.
The short answer is that any question involving what Christians believe is going to have some or a majority of answer straight from the Christian Scripture.

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How do we reconcile the guidance in the global FAQ with the site's purpose?
A question just asked reminded me of a problem I think we're going to run into a lot:

Is murder allowed if God tells you to do it?

On the face, this seems like a pretty good question for this site. However, we have this clause in our FAQ under What questions should I not ask here?:

Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much.

For this particular question, I can think of at least one: Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling. I suspect nearly every question on the site has a book about how to interpret it.
So how do we reconcile the general Stack Exchange guidance about scope with the obvious on-topic content for this site?

Isn't there a Judaism SE?  I wonder what lessons on this could be learned from them?

The problem with books is that they give too much info, which is really wonderful however people usually want a summary of the ideas and a quick but accurate answer. I feel that the questions should be allowed on the site.

Another part of the FAQ to consider as possibly irrelevant / limiting to the scope of the site "You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face." Many (perhaps most?) interesting questions related to religion are not 'practical.. based on actual problems' in the strict sense of SE (does this needs its own question or does it fit here?).

@Iszi there is indeed a judaism.se. It does have plenty of examples of what would benefit what would detract from this site (I leave it up to the user to decide which is which).

Quick fix: Reword it to "If you would need an entire book ..."

So much ink has been spilled over the past several thousand years on Christianity topics that I can hardly think of a question for which an entire book has not (or at very least, could not) be written to adress.

I agree... Anyone would be hard pressed to find a single Christian topic that does not have one or more books written on it. However, we still need to limit the scope of questions somewhat. Perhaps we can find a reasonable way to re-word the FAQ suggestion so that it's more applicable to this site.

I think it's safe to say that that general guideline for SE sites does not apply to this site and we can have it removed. One of the steps for coming out of beta will be to work up some site specific FAQs. Each SE site has it's own FAQ page and while there is lots of overlap, many key details are different on different sites.
I wouldn't worry about what it says in the FAQ until building our FAQ comes up as a meta topic. Until then let's do the best job we can at defining the scope of the site through voting on (and asking) questions.
Edit: I hereby change my mind. The only reconciling that needs to be done is that we need to take this point in the FAQ seriously. See this meta post for my reasoning: Can we reverse the trend on low quality posts?

Ideally such a question should have at least two kinds of answers:
There are often several books on a given subject, in addition to other resources. A helpful answer would summarize the scope and position of a number of resources. Making that answer "community wiki" could be helpful.
Another set of "community wiki" answers that I'd like to encourage is collections of the major Biblical source material on the topic; see, e.g., my community wiki answer about God's voice.

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How should we cope with questions that contain (possibly wrong) assumptions?
On a site like this, we're going to get some questions that contain assumptions we think are incorrect.
Here's an example: What were Martin Luther's main disagreements with the Catholic Church?
What's right way to handle these questions?  The one I cited was voted to be closed. I think closing it was a wrong decision.  Refusing to address the question left cut off an opportunity for somebody to teach.  (In this case, the topic was the role of conscience and free will in Martin Luther's ethics.)
Sisters and brothers, with any luck we're going to get plenty of seekers here.  We'll get trolls too. To what extent should we give people the benefit of the doubt?
My answer to my question: let us act with charity and hospitality. Let us be polite to strangers, just as we would in our places of worship.
Let's be as hesitant to close questions as we are to chew people out by name from the pulpit.

FWIW, if you haven't done so yet... Look at the history of that question. It has changed almost entirely from its original form, and could probably have benefited from some more careful editing. BTW: most charitable thing you can do for a question that's getting flack is to edit it (for clarity, scope, etc.).

Sorry for my ignorance, but how does a fish like myself see the history?

Heh, sorry - click on the bit below the question where it says, "edited some amount of time ago"

Meh. A lot of questions on this site are going to be assuming that God exists. Is that a problem?

Firstly let me remind you that closed is not a death sentence, if that question you wrote for your example was edited and narrowed it could be reopened rather quickly.
Second, all of us are going to have to cope a bit with people making assumptions and statements that we believe are wrong. I am going to cringe every time someone says that they "chose" to be saved or "chose" God. But I'm also going to answer questions where I can and try to defend my theology when its called for, and I'm going to move along on questions that are outside of the purview of what I consider to be the truth.
As for how to recognize trolls, do your best to answer the question, if the person seemingly only wants to start an argument, move along, let a mod know or just simply ignore them. Its not healthy for any site to feed its trolls and it becomes obvious who they are very quickly.

'twasn't my question that was closed.  I'm making the suggestion that we only reluctantly close questions.

@OllieJones - I disagree, some questions should be closed with abandon. Closure is actually a mechanism for question improvement if the author is willing to let it be so.

And i'll be cringing every time someone implies i had no voice in the matter :P +1 though.

Particularly at this moment during private beta we are trying to set the tone and scope of the site. The question as it stands right now includes a fallacy in the title that makes it difficult to answer fairly other than to point out the fallacy and move on.
If that is the question the OP intends, they should use this opportunity to rephrase the question to be "Did Martin Luther intend to start a separate church?".
That fallacy was added during an edit apparently to try to reduce the scope of the question because it was getting feedback about being too broad. If the original question was the intended question the OP should take a lesson from the feedback and break it out into smaller questions like "What were the main issues Martin Luther had with the Catholic Church?" or "How did Martin Luther's work contribute to the start of the reformation?"


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Questions about interpretation of Revised Common Lectionary pericopes?
Many of us are members of congregations that use the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) as a guide to scripture readings for worship.  Some of us, myself included, use RCL texts for preaching.
Is it the consensus of this community (or the will of this community's organizers) that we may post questions like "How do you interpret Mt 16:21-28 (RCL 22A)?" for consideration by fellow RCL preachers and readers?
I ask because some folks might think such questions are inappropriate.  For one thing, I am not sure they have a single "acceptable" answer.

A questions like "How do you interpret Mt 16:21-28 (RCL 22A)?" is really an open-ended question which is not well-suited to this type of Q&A. This site is designed to answer very specific questions with specific answers based on prior knowledge and expertise.
The question you ask is really polling the audience to solicit everyone's thoughts on a subject. There's nothing inherently wrong with opinions and on-going discussion in a Christianity forum. But there are already a lot of discussion forums on the 'net set up specifically for that type of threaded discussion. That's not really what we do here.
We specifically forgo open-ended questions because that's what differentiates this Q&A site ("What is the answer to this question?") from most discussions forums ("What do y'all think about…"). The purpose of Christianity SE is to build a canon of specific knowledge on the subject of Christianity.
This site is really much better suited to asking specific questions about problems you actually have. You might ask instead

"I was reading [verse] and had trouble understanding what they mean by [phrase]. What did Jesus mean by "take up their cross?"

I understand, but it's too bad.  First of all, the practice of most major world religions, Christianity included, involves a seeking for truth that sometimes doesn't yield crisp answers. Secondly, I was really hoping this medium's scheme for handling contributors' reputation could help overcome the typical trolling behavior on other open forums.  I guess it is not to be.  Thanks for considering my question.

Lots of us use StackOverflow for programming topics and totally ignore stuff outside our breadth of knowledge.
However, esoteric questions may not get satisfactory answers.
The one thing you can't really avoid is getting answers from someone who just wants to answer your question - who may have no idea what you're talking about. (like me!)  You feel bad to downvote 'em, but that's kinda the purpose and if you're nice, you'll tell them why.
But, on the other hand, if the breadth of the question doesn't expand past your mind, then it'll be closed because it's too localized.  Your class of questions, however seem just fine.

Well, OK.  The charter for the site says "This is a free, community driven Q&A for committed Christians, experts in Christianity and those interested in learning more." Many pastors fit the "expert" description having taken four year masters degree courses and served internships. The Revised Common Lectionary is, umm, common.  Claiming that it's an esoteric topic among this target community is rather like claiming that integer overflow is an esoteric topic among programmers.


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Should we rollback radical edits that invalidate the existing answers?
I was reading this question:
https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/169/is-it-true-that-teachings-that-contradicts-the-66-books-of-the-traditional-bible
and I noted that every answer had to be completely rewritten following an edit to the question that entirely changed the thrust of the question.
Should we not rather immediately rollback such and edit and request that the asker pose a new question instead?

See my comments on that question, but I think it should be rolled back.
First of all the original answers were alright to start with but the edits to make them to accommodate the new questions didn't really add anything of value.
Secondly the original was borderline on the not-constructive side of things, and the new version made it worse.
This kind of moving target question is a bad precedent to sent. New focused questions should be encouraged instead.

No.
Questions on SE sites are living documents which should be edited and can change over time. Sometimes this will invalidate the answers that have already been made.
However, its good practice for these changes to be made by the author only in response to a potential or actual close of the question.
Its also good practice to notify the answerers if the question changes dramatically.

I agree, but invalidating 4 answers by completely changing the question does not seem to be in the right spirit either.

If the question is in danger of being closed then it's ok. However, the question specifically addressed in this question was just changed for change's sake it seems.

I'm not sure which way to vote on your answer. I agree that editing is good but we can't have moving targets like this either. Editing should revise, extend and improve not wipe the slate clean and ask a different question. I agree that sort of thing would only be appropriate for a question that was getting closed, but since that is not the case here I think it should be rolled back.

-1 Why not ask a new question?


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Tag synonym suggestions
I thought now might be a good opportunity to have a thread specifically for tag synonym suggestions (from users who have less than the required rep for doing such themselves).
Post suggestions that you see fit as answers, and upvotes and downvotes will determine the community's reaction. 3-5 upvotes generally warrants a successful suggestions.

While this post may have made sense in the early days of (private) beta, I don't think it makes sense any more to add new synonym suggestions here as answers. That only serves to bury the suggestions and stifle discussion. Other recent synonym suggestions have done quite well in their own post. I have VtCed this post as 'Too Broad'.

Synonym proposal: augustine (7 questions), st-augustine-of-hippo (2 questions), augustine-of-hippo (2 questions).
Based on the question count, augustine seems a good candidate for the authoritative name.
(wax eagle caught the first tag; I did not notice that duplicate when browsing tags.)

One of the "of Hippo" tags might be better for authoritative as it's specific.

I agree with Ryan, and I prefer the [tag:augustine-of-hippo] version without the st- part mostly to reduce the overall level of clutter.

Are there other Augustines of sufficient significance in Christianity that they would get a tag? In theory, the wiki summary could provide some disambiguation. If the other two became synonyms (not deleted), then taggers could use them (they would be automatically converted to the smaller form). Question count and length favor the "bare" 'augustine', but I can sympathize with the desire for the more formal and precise 'augustine-of-hippo' being the primary tag.

Augustine of Canterbury, perhaps?

@RyanFrame Interesting. Now I may have to ask "What is the standard for unambiguous base tag naming?"

I suggest making translation and bible-translation synonyms.
There is one question which deals with translation from the Old Testament to the New Testament, but every other question with either tag covers translation to English. I am not certain what to do with that question.
Perhaps the problem is that people are using translation when bible-translation should be applied. In that case, we should retag the other seven translation questions before the problem becomes too widespread.

I just made an aliens tag without realising there's an extra-terrestrial-life tag. They should be synonyms. Personally I think aliens is better - it's shorter and a more common term.

proposal: 'apostle-john' should be a synonym of 'john-apostle' (based on previous handling of 'paul-apostle' (and, incidentally, question count)

Should adam be a synonym for adam-and-eve? (There is no 'eve' tag.)
Several questions using adam actually seem to be a better fit for adam-and-eve, e.g.:

Did God create Adam and Eve with free will and knowledge of right and wrong (good and evil)?
Why did the devil tempt Eve first?
Why is it a sin to eat an apple?

Why is the curse of original sin not specific to humans? is actually tagged with both.
On the other hand, some questions are somewhat Adam-specific.

lol is there a lilith tag?

liturgy-of-the-hours should be the canonical tag for breviary, divine-office and maybe book-of-common-prayer although that may be confused with the Anglican prayer book.

This would make sense except we don't seem to be getting any questions with any of these tags, so synonyms aren't really an issue yet. Maybe we should ask some!

Should prophecy (wiki summary: "the communication of messages directly received from God, either in biblical or modern times.") and special-revelation (no wiki summary) be synonyms?
If so, the question count would favor prophecy being the primary tag, but an emphasis on academic tone might prefer special-revelation.

What does [tag:special-revelation] mean, is that a Protestant term?  Fred's question looks like it might almost mean what Catholics would call Private Revelation (outside the Bible), but Caleb's question definitely isn't talking about that

@PeterTurner The Wikipedia article seems decent. Basically, special revelation is supernatural revelation as distinct from the general revelation of creation (which would include conscience). Wikipedia indicates that it is primarily an "evangelical" term.

This is an interesting one, as a Charismatic I'm personally for viewing them as synonymous, but I think there are certain schools of Cessationist thought that wish to preserve a distinction between them.

Both calvinism and reformed-theology exist, but should probably be merged. I read this blog post today which shows the difference between calvinism and reformed theology. The author actually recommends calling it Dortism! I wouldn't, no one else calls it that. But when you look at what has been tagged with both tags they're almost all about soteriology. So reformed-theology would be better, or perhaps even reformed-soteriology! Perhaps a reformed-sacraments tag could be made for the other parts of Calvinism/reformed theology...
http://proofofgrace.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/20140610-160806-58086154.jpg

mathew is a misspelling of matthew. All questions tagged as matthew seem to refer to the gospel-of-matthew, not to the gospel's author, so both tags (Mathew and Matthew) should probably be synonyms for the gospel one.

When there's only two questions tagged with a mispelled tag it's easiest just to edit them and the bad tag will quickly disappear.

I suggest making ethics a synonym of morality.

They are similar, but distinct enough that they shouldn't be synonyms.


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How do we deal with trolling in questions and answers?
Related to the question about trolling in comments, but it was only a matter of time after public beta launched that Christianity.SE would be linked to on prominent atheist communities. Indeed, it's already been linked to on /r/Atheism.
I've already seen a few instances of troll answers and questions in the last couple of hours because of that link: the answers received down-votes and comments for explanation, and in one instance, a question was revised to make an obvious troll question more constructive.
But how should we as a community deal with what is essentially systematic and methodical trolling by people who would prefer a site like this does not exist? Should we be trying to assimilate their content into the site, or flagging it for deletion?

I.... can't believe those comments. If they're serious, they're as bad as they claim us to be >.>

@RCIX. Meh. It's Reddit. What do you expect?

Don't feed the trolls
If someone is looking for satirical value in a post, don't give it to them.  I would think the best course would be to treat each post seriously (within reason, obviously trolling questions will get flagged naturally).
If someone comes here looking to get a laugh at a reaction to a question, they will only be encouraged if we bring their games to light.  Any ridiculous posts will be removed quietly, without incident.  All other posts, though seaming absurd, should be treated seriously.  Even if the OP doesn't benefit from the answers, someone else out there might.

Be careful in rushing to judgment.  Some questions that appear argumentative may simply be an unsophisticated way of asking a question that the OP legitimately wants an answer to, or even an attempt to clear up a misconception.
However, if it becomes clear that someone is acting maliciously, and they're not willing to clean up their act, then yes, we should definitely throw them out. This is Christianity.stackexchange.com and not IsChristianityValid.stackexchange.com. You have to be willing to find at least a modicum of common ground in order to have any sort of constructive discussion.

One comment from Reddit:

I think it's critical r/atheism gain some presence on that forum. I can tell already that the theists are creating an echo chamber.

Given that, I think in the long run we're probably going to need to delete a lot of content to keep the signal to noise ratio somewhere in the ballpark of humanly filterable while reading. We expect people to be able to find answers (and ask questions) about Christianity without being bombarded by Atheists.
If anybody has anything constructive to add, integrate it. If we need some correcting, let them correct us. However trolling for the sake of an agenda or "presence" on the site does not seem like it is in the best interests of this site any more than Windows geeks piling on to the Unix and Linux site would be welcome just for the sake of having competing systems represented.

I think we're largely over-reacting.  We had one troll come from your quote--the author of the quote. And he's already been suspended for a week.  I think the SE system works, and we need to give it time to work. If in a week or a month we're experiencing unbearable troll pain, that will be the time to consider changing the way we respond.

@Flimzy: That's actually kind of funny because I hadn't made the connection or seen the bit about being a self-professed troll. I didn't know they ever did that!

Hate the trolling, love the troll. :)

From: hate the sin, love the sinner. :)

I don't see that as a good example of "systematic and methodical trolling". Is it actually happening or is one example making you jumpy?
The example provided I wouldn't even put in the trolling bucket, its just a poorly written question. It may have even been written by someone who is looking for a genuine answer. Although poorly written, I think it is better than some of the other fluff I have read on here.
I would suggest not being overly sensitive and not being overly precious.
As a Christian you should edit any salvageable question (like the question linked above) into something viable, then provide a mind-blowingly fantastic answer.
I think if you can't provide answers to reasonable questions by atheists then you are just an echo chamber.

In turn, I would suggest reading the linked /r/Atheism thread, where the user openly implored people to troll Christianity.SE before getting suspended for doing so himself. While the /r/Atheism thread is one specific case, this question is about the general issue of methodical trolling, which will no doubt come up often in the lifespan of the site. It really has nothing to do with reasonable questions asked by Atheists or any other group of people.

@Mark - I think it does have to do with reasonable questions asked by others because you haven't provided an example of trolling. You provided a poorly written question, that seems reasonable to me, but labelled it as "obvious trolling". When it obviously is not.

@xiahouzi79 Again, I direct you to the /r/Atheism thread, where the person who asked the question specifically implored people to troll Christianity.SE. The words I used was "obvious troll question": the example provided is, in fact, a question asked by an obvious troll (he specifically labeled himself as such). This question isn't about whether reasonable questions asked by Atheists are obvious trolling: it's specifically about questions and answers by people who have already been identified as methodically trolling the site.

See the "they are unfun to us" column.
http://meatballwiki.org/wiki/UsAndThem

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Is "Some Christians say..." a valid justification for a question?
We've had a few questions lately that present an argument from a vague or ill defined set of "Christians" and ask for reasons why said group believes what they do:

Why do some Christians believe it is moral to be a homosexual?
Atheism is the default position. Isn't the burden of proof on the Christian to assert that God exists?
Is Christianity an experiential practice?
What are the common arguments against theistic evolution?
https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/1483/what-popular-arguments-are-there-against-young-earth-creationism
What is the biblical basis to claim that masturbation is a sin?
https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/1280/what-is-the-christian-definition-of-god
Why do some Christians think it's not a sin to charge interest?
What is the source of hatred often perceived by Christians in western society?
Should biblical laws apply to non-Christians?

This is a disconcerting trend for a few reasons:

These questions don't ask for any context, and there won't be any correct or most useful answer: what answer do you vote for? The one that you agree with the most? If all possible answers are equally valid (there is no "correct" Christianity, after all), what's the point in asking?
By saying it's "Christians" (as opposed to Roman Catholics, or Lutherans, or LDSers, etc.) who believe X, they assume that Christianity is a monolithic belief structure (i.e. all Christians believe the same things) which it isn't.
They open the door for straw man questions, where any claim can be attached to Christianity in the form of a question:

"Now, not all Christians believe this, but some Christians believe that kicking puppies is good. What's the basis for Christians believing this?"
"Why do some Christians hate others?"
"Can Christians be trusted?"

Which is something like the old interview trick to attach a trait to someone or something without actually saying it, "Some people say you're evil. What do you say to that charge?"

Our FAQ says questions need to be about problems we actually face: is "some Christians say" without any information about who those particular Christians are an actual problem?
Or should we require all questions to meet some basic notability baseline? That is, should all questions define who the Christians they're talking about are, and describe or cite the source for the claim that said Christian group believes what the asker purports the group to believe?

I'm not sure why my ark question is in that list, I tried to write it so that it would apply to bible literalists, which I think is a pretty well defined group inside christianity. I obviously didn't succeed in making this intent clear.  It is certainly not directed to all christians, as many don't take the account of Noah and the ark literally.

@Fabian there are dozens of denominations who believe the Bible is inerrant or take a literal interpretation of all parts of the Bible, but they all have different world-views and reasons for believing it. I don't think it's particularly onerous to specify where you heard the belief you're attributing to a group of Christians, especially when the belief is likely to be dubious to most readers. If it's a question about what the Bible says, that's fine, but a question about what a group believes can't be answered without explicitly defining who that group is.

I think Mark has a valid point; I think @Fabian's question was not at all a good example of the point.

@Flimzy the question as worded now is fine, as it's about understanding the Biblical passage rather than the beliefs of some unnamed group of Christians.

As I said in my comment on the question itself, I think it was fine in its original format, as well. The question was clearly stated, it was clear which view he was asking to have explained, based on the Bible quote he included. And as he has explained, his "some Christians" phrase was intended to not lump all Christians into the question, so it wouldn't be riddled with "But I don't believe that!" answers. That may not have been necessary, but I don't think it was harmful.

Now if his question had been simply "Some Christians think all the animals fit in the Ark. How can they make this claim?" without quoting the scripture that made that claim... then it would be a good example here.

+10! Other than the example about Noah's Ark which I think would be difficult to call out any other way than "those who do" and "those who don't" since the views on it are not neatly matched to any other sectarian lines and the OP would not be expected to know what viewpoints to ask for, I think your main point is right on topic.

While the original revision of the Noah's Ark question prompted this question, the site has no shortage of "Why do some Christians believe X?" questions, and I've replaced the Noah's Ark question with several new examples.

I think there are two types of questions:

Ones where a specific aspect of the Bible is being questioned
Ones where a specific aspect of a particular interepretation is being questioned

In the former, I think it's okay to just cite the relevant passage in the Bible and ask a question about it: the passage citation satisfies any need for notability. When it's a question about a passage in the Bible, it allows answerers to provide a particular worldview or perspective, and define who holds that perspective.
So, for example, in the question about how did animals fit into Noah's Ark, a valid answer would be "According to X tradition or faith or denomination, you're not supposed to take this passage literally." It would also, of course, allow for answers from other perspectives that also define the justification for any other possible answer.
We have several questions that do this already:

Does the Bible say anything about what demons *are*?
Why was the mark of Cain necessary?
What is the Biblical support for Hell as a singular concept?
Apparent Discrepancy in Mark 2:26

But once you start asking about a specific interpretation of a Biblical passage (e.g. "Some Christians believe X passage means Y, why?"), it's important to cite the specific people who believe this interpretation, as it provides much-needed context to the question to make it answerable.
That is, there are infinitely may justifications for why someone might believe something to be true: we can speculate as to why a Christian might believe the world to be flat: they're mistaken, they can't read, they're joking, the question asker misread or misheard, etc. Such speculation isn't really constructive, and questions invite that idle speculation when they don't specify a context.
A question asker isn't going to get a real or definitive answer because they're not asking about anything specific.
So if a question asker wants to know why there are some Christians saying "they believe X", they should at a minimum provide information about who those Christians are or a source for the claim. That minimum baseline of notability allows for everyone to be on the same page: to be answering the question the asker intended to ask instead of speculating about any potential group that might fit the mould.
Some examples of questions that ask about beliefs within a specific, well-defined context:

What are the main tenets and/or beliefs of the 'Emergent' Church?
The seven churches that were condemned; did any of them repent?
What is the relation between the First Baptist Church and the Baptist Church?
What is the SBC's stance on what/how salvation is/works?

Humbug. I'm going to have to throw out on of my draft posts on this issue, you put this together really well.

So, "Some Christians believe X; what is their justification?" questions are verboten unless you define "some Christians". That makes sense ... but. One of the questions listed is mine on the charging of interest. That could be rephrased as "almost all Christians". I know different groups may have different justifications. My preferred accepted answer would be a summary of all the main justifications provided by different groups (with references to published sources).

@TRiG I think such a question runs afoul of too broad a scope. It's akin to saying "What are all the ways programming languages implement classes and what is the justification for each of them?" It's not really solving a specific, practical problem. It'd be better to ask about specific cases you know of rather than trying to lump all Christians into the same pool by asking a general question about "some Christians" or "almost all Christians"

@Mark, But, while I accept that there may be more than one justification for this practice, I don't expect there'll be many. The vast majority of Christians share the same practice in this instance. I imagine they all do so for broadly similar reasons. (I could be wrong.)

@TRiG It's still safer to talk about the cases you do know of: Christians disagree about nearly everything, that's why there are so many denominations. The only thing we all agree on is that Jesus was a pretty cool guy. If you can't isolate it to one specific denomination or a few specific groups, I'd focus on the specific passage in the Bible and ask for a general justification for it (so, class 1 of the questions mentioned above).

Yes, it's a valid justification for a question and I'm not sure why these questions are all getting closed all of a sudden.
Of course "some Christians" say a lot of things.  But this is legitimate code for "some Christian groups, and I'm not sure exactly their identity, clearly believe X and I want to understand why." Sometimes I know to ask "Why do Baptists not believe in infant baptism," sometimes it's "Why do various Christians whose affiliation I'm unclear on say that rock music is unchristian?" The question in either case seems pretty clearly scoped and answerable.
Obviously "kicking puppies" questions can be closed, but that doesn't mean any inquiry into a valid and common Christian belief has to be closed on the site.

Because it puts a needless burden on those answering. Instead of looking for Biblical or extra-Biblical justification for the belief, there's an implication that any answer will be speaking for others - with the somewhat paradoxical result being answers that explicitly state "this is my opinion" and follow up with... the answerer's opinion. Opinion polls don't usually make for good, useful Q&A. That's not to say some of these haven't garnered good answers... But I've seen too many, "As a X, I feel..." answers that don't attempt to justify their position.

I think if you think that justification through, it eliminates large swaths of questions on many SEs.

trust me, I know. "What to programmers think about the chances of the Bears making it to the Superbowl?"-style questions have been a problem for three years now...

So it's not even OK if it's about a specific group?  Is "Why do Baptists reject infant baptism" an invalid question? Because, you know, someone who's not a Baptist might answer and speak for them.  This seems all silly since this SE is coming from the "hey anyone can speak here you don't have to be Christian or whatnot" so a lot of the content here is people speaking from another context anyway.

So yeah... I can get a good answer to that question from 1) Baptists who understand their own doctrine, or 2) non-Baptists who understand the Baptist doctrine. Either way, it's understood that the topic is the beliefs, policy, and doctrine of the Baptists, not just... Something that some Baptists happen to do. Contrast with, "Why do some Baptists drive trucks?" Ok. So now replace "Baptist" with "Christian"... Except, don't. The entire site is about Christianity - you don't have to put that in your question unless it makes no sense otherwise, in which case it's probably a bad question.

My point being... The policy of "we don't check your credentials at the door" is a practical one, but that doesn't mean we're extending an open invitation for anyone to come in and post anything they feel like... The expectation for someone posting an answer is that they know what they're talking about; the expectation for someone asking a question is that it must allow us to determine that someone answering knows what they're talking about and has answered the question.

So in other words unless a belief is a documented part of a mainline denomination, it's off topic?  If a random 100 Bible churches say something, it's not as much a Christian belief as if some small "brand name" denomination does? Sure, there are too many people who are willing to spout off answers here without a lot of domain knowledge about the question, but that is not at all correlated to this specific kind of question.

Yes, if you show up and ask, "Why does my local 100-bible church say I can't listen to rock music?", that would be off-topic. No, actually, that would be too localized... And it points us back to the crux of the problem: you don't even need to ask that; just ask if there's any reason - Biblical, doctrinal, traditional - that you shouldn't be listening to rock music. Ask when/why music might be a sin. Whatever... When you aren't specifying a specific subset of Christianity, don't specify at all - just state your concern, and ask if there's any good justification for it.

Semantic hoo-hah. So we can just edit every one of those questions and remove "some christians say" to "is there any reason" and it's OK?  Waste of time for common use synonyms.

no, you can only do that on questions that have a valid form. Try it: "Is there any reason why I should kick puppies?" and "Is not kicking puppies a sin?" are still lousy questions with an obvious answer. As for wasting time, that depends; I've done my best to explain my rationale, noting from the start how these questions encourage opinion answers; if you don't believe it, or can't accept it, or simply don't care, then this is a waste of time... Otherwise, I suggest you stop into chat as this is getting long.


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Question closed because it can't be answered by facts, experts?
my last question was closed because of following:

We expect answers to generally involve facts, references, or specific expertise; this question will likely solicit opinion, debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion

But how should I have asked that question differently? Isn't almost everything open to debate and different arguments? Even inside of Christianity there are many different opinion.

Why is Christianity the only true religion?

Your post is one of those extra-topical questions I'm sure we'll see over and over to challenge …
"How can you guys believe this stuff is Truth?"
Simply stated, your question outside the purpose of this site. This is not what this site is about.
The scope and purpose of this site is to create a canon of knowledge ABOUT the subject of "Christianity". Obviously, we are not checking credentials at the door, but within the scope of this site, users generally do not expect to be challenged on their belief system and, frankly, asking them to justify their own existence is not the purpose of this site.
But let's dispel the notion that this has anything to do with the hot-button issues of "religion" or "freedom of speech" with a quick analogy — We have an Apple site for experts and enthusiast interested in Apple products. If somebody were to ask, "Why do y'all think Apple is the best when so many more Windows and other users think otherwise…?" — it would be closed as "not constructive". The whole issue is largely irrelevant in the context of that site.
It's the same thing here. That's how you build Q&A sites. That's how you form and preserve community.
So, to answer your question specifically…

Isn't almost everything open to debate and different arguments?

No. In some other discussion or debate forum; maybe, where those issues are up for discussion… but this is not an open discussion forum. This is a tightly-scoped Q&A site to ask questions regarding the canons and teachings of Christian faith. That also includes good-faith questions about their Christian lifestyle where folks are trying to rectify their day-to-day issues with the ideals of those teachings.
We talk about building these sites for "experts" and "enthusiasts." But those terms also apply to "practitioners" and "supporters" and "believers" in the subjects these sites are set up for. If you're not a fan of Apple products, don't use that site. If you think video games are a big ol' waste of time, Gaming SE isn't going to hold your interest… and if you are not earnestly interested in the precepts being discussed here, without pretense, this site may not be for you.

I do agree that the question as posed was confrontational, even on a Christianity site where most people are in fact likely to believe that Christianity is the 'only true religion'.
I personally would have NOT voted to close a question phrased like this:

Do Christians believe that Christianity is the only true religion? Are there any scriptures to back this belief up?

It's not an obvious question - some religions believe that they are merely one (and presumably the best) of many ways to God. Bahai springs to mind, and I think there are others.

Except that asking for Scriptures is asking for something of a circular argument.

No, it's not. Maybe the Bible says that there are many ways to God? You don't know if you haven't read it.

@SoftwareMonkey. "Scriptures" !== "Bible".

Personally, I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt that the question was not meant to be offensive.  Also, I consider this a side issue since editing could have changed it to be a respectful question.  So, that wasn't really in my thinking when I VtC'ed that one.
The problem that I had with the question is that it was far, far too broad.  There was no good, solid answer to that question.
The closest I could come to even forming a decent answer for this would be citing a huge list of prophecies made in the Old Testament that were fulfilled in the New Testament (or in New Testament times).  The topic would cover the entire bible and a good majority of the prophecies made in the Old Testament (and a few in the New Testament).
Because of that, I voted to Close this.  I could not see this question leading to anything except huge answers, large debates, and extended discussions.

Because quite simply, the question is rude, and not constructive.  There is no knowledge to be gained when answering that question, and your statement can be offensive to those of other faiths.  As Christians we should be respectful and understanding that others do not believe what we believe.

Isn't it offensive already to say that only you are right? How can asking the question "why" be more offensive, rude and not constructive?

The fact is... this type of question doesn't belong on the site.

@Sven If you want to start an argument, go to a discussion forum.  The internet abounds with them.  Christianity.SE does not try to be all things to all people.


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Include scripture text not just a reference
For this site, Scripture references will be very common.  Can we establish a FAQ that requires or encourages posters to include the salient portion or extract of text in a post and link the text or the scripture reference to an online dictionary.
So instead of:

I would answer Matthew 5:27-28 sprinkled in with the stern warning of Matthew 23:25-26.

we would prefer:

I would encourage Matthew 5:27-28:

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’[a] 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

with a stern warning from Matthew 23:25-26:

25 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.

That will, I think help reduce any link rot and keep better context in answers without excessive clicking.
Thoughts?

I don't have any particularly strong thoughts either way, but link rot is really not an issue when referencing scripture. The Bible isn't going to disappear off the face of the Earth anytime soon: even if the links don't work, you don't need an inline quotation to ensure people can find the original reference.

My thinking is just that parsing the answer will be much easier if the text is quoted inline.

It should be both: text and link.  Text for not having to click.  Link for easy access to context.

@Jürgen: Yes, I think so too, precisely as per my example.

Wouldn't hurt to allow switching of Bible versions as well, NIV, NKJ, etc...

@leeand00: BibleGateway.com make switching version as easy as changing a drop-down list.

I think we can make this a guideline or suggestion and that it deserves to be in the FAQ, but that quoting/linking cannot be a requirement.
I foresee a lot of editing ahead of us as we help people keep things consistent and clean across the site. However I think requiring a specific format or content is problematic because it raises the entry-level bar too high. Not everybody will be able to figure out how to quote and link effectively and we don't want to beat them up over not adhering to a requirement when they first start posting.
Also people (myself included) will want to write posts where some verses are only referenced secondarily and only the primary focus texts are fully quoted. Requiring the full text for all references would make posts with lots of secondary verse references messy and detract from the clarity of the answers. The primary focus passages should be quoted for reference, but looking up supporting passages might be left as an exercise for the reader (although links are appreciated/suggested.)

Of course.  I would expect paraphrasing and partial quoting.  I meant to include the "salient" portion or gist of it.

It's a nice idea but there are a couple of things to bear in mind.
Firstly, we have to be very careful about copyright, and much depends on which version is being quoted. If using the NIV for example, it's important to remember that the whole thing is copyright protected. Provision is made for quoting it as follows:

The NIV text may be quoted in any form (written, visual, electronic or
  audio), up to and inclusive of five hundred (500) verses without
  express written permission of the publisher, providing the verses do
  not amount to a complete book of the Bible nor do the verses quoted
  account for twenty-five percent (25%) or more of the total text of the
  work in which they are quoted.
When the NIV is quoted in works that exercise the above fair use
  clause, notice of copyright must appear on the title or copyright page
  or opening screen of the work (whichever is appropriate) as follows:
THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973,
  1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights
  reserved worldwide.
These Scriptures are copyrighted by the Biblica, Inc.™ and have been made available on the Internet for your personal use only. Any other use including, but not limited to, copying or reposting on the Internet is prohibited.

The last paragraph I believe applies explicitly to copying from The Bible Gateway.
http://www.biblegateway.com/versions/New-International-Version-NIV-Bible/#copy
While we're normally only quoting one or two verses at a time in a post, this could soon add up to more than 500 verses or a complete book across the SE site, and I believe that could put StackExchange on unsafe legal ground. We would also need to get the copyright notice onto the relevant SE pages (and decided which pages they are) which could itself be problematic.
Secondly, different people have different preferred versions and translations of the Bible. If the purpose of referencing a piece of scripture is to get at the truth and meaning behind it, as opposed to the exact wording used in one particular version, then I would argue it's better just to supply a reference so that users are at liberty to choose which version they want to use.
In circumstances where you do want to use a particular version I would advocate linking to  the passage on BibleGateway.com rather than quoting it directly so that we don't have to worry about that copyright problem.

I don't think a bunch of individual answers quoting a verse or two at a time on a CC-BY-SA site add up to create a legal problem just because they are all posted on the same site. Also your argument for not including the text because a user might prefer a different version is backwards. Having the wording of the text the OP was using is very helpful. I can always reference the version I have but knowing the wording the OP has can be critical to providing a good answer.

@Caleb Good point on the OP text - I was thinking more about quoting text in answers. But if we're getting at the actual meaning of the passage, the differences between versions shouldn't matter.

@Caleb On the first point - "I don't think a bunch of individual answers quoting a verse or two at a time on a CC-BY-SA site add up" - I think we'd need qualified legal advice on that rather than venturing our own opinions. Is "the work" referred to in the provision notice I quoted each individual post, or the site as a whole? I honestly don't know, and wouldn't want to take the risk of having the site closed down based on a hunch.

Anyone care to explain the downvote?

I think you can leave that up to the SE team to worry about. Most bible copyrights specifically outline how their quoting restrictions only apply to individual pages or citations. You can't copy the whole book of Hebrews into your blog but you could write a post every day for a couple years commenting on a verse at a time and not fall outside the scope of most copyright limitations.

@Caleb In that case, I'm a happy bunny.

Yes. I downvoted because I think your concern about copyright is a non-issue in relation to the OP's question and because I disagree with your opinion about how often things should be quoted/linked due to people haveing different prefered translations. I feel that I am ALWAYS free to look at my preferred translation no matter what get's quoted or linked, but having quotes and links to the specific translations other people used in forming their questions and answers is a valuable resource and to be encouraged rather than discouraged.

Also remember that downvoting on meta means people disagree, not that you gave a bad answer. Also, it doesn't affect your reputation.

@Caleb Ah thanks for that. This is my first venture into the world of meta so I wasn't aware of that distinction.

Fair use allows five hundred word quotations. That should be plenty for most answers. The scripture publishers don't make a fuss about long quotations.

@Ollie Thanks; as discussed above, the issue with that is really whether it's an individual answer or the site as a whole that this refers to.


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Bible-scholarship integrity?
We are seeing plenty of questions and answers that say things like "St. Paul wrote in Ephesians" or "St. Paul wrote in 2 Timothy..."
There is a large body of textual-critical scholarship holding that St. Paul himself most likely did not write many of the epistles attributed to him.
This was drilled into me pretty hard by my teachers and ordination board, to the point where I want to say "wait a minute" when I hear discussions of St. Paul's theology based on writings in those later epistles combined with writings in the undisputed epistles.  For example, see Interpretation of the scripture "One Lord, one faith, one baptism?", see Raphink's answer.
To me, this conflating of undisputed and disputed Pauline writings makes for a theologically confused answer.
Now, I recognize that fellow Christians see St. Paul in those later epistles with their eyes of faith, whereas I follow a tradition that does not.
What's a fellow to do?  Downvote with explanation?  Ignore these questions and answers as adiaphora?

Edit: It occurs to me that I'm really asking this:  how can people who subscribe to the doctrine that the Bible is the inspired word of God (me for example)  make our pastoral and theological points clear while showing respect for our brethren who subscribe to the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy?  Both points of view are worthy of respect, and sometimes yield different understanding.

Are there other examples? Have there been any discussions here about "St. Paul's theology" or have the discussions been about theology in general referencing material from letters generally attributed to Paul as in the example you cited? If the latter I would agree with @waxeagle in that it is fairly irrelevant, but any schollarly discussion of Paul's personal theology vs other NT authors must of course take this into account.

For other books stay tuned to this question for discussion, but at least for the book of Hebrews I have proposed using "the author" in place of "Paul" as a generally accepted practice that can be used while editing posts: What is the generally accepted term for X?

The same could go for John writing in revelation vs John writing in his letters vs John the Apostle whom Jesus loved, but St. Paul's works seem more contentious.
It's much more important that the Bible itself says all these things and the audiences they're writing to are almost more important than who is doing the writing.
I'd say down vote only if something disputed is central to the point the author is trying to make and please, please don't edit in 'The Author' or whatever.  If someone did that to a question I answered, I would roll back the changes.
Chesterton sums up my feelings on the matter:

Many people have maintained the characteristic formula of modern scepticism, that Homer was not written by Homer, but by another person of the same name. Just in the same way many have maintained that Moses was not Moses but another person called Moses. But the thing really to be remembered in the matter of the Iliad is that if other people did interpolate the passages, the thing did not create the same sense of shock as would be created by such proceedings in these individualistic times.

I think it depends. My usual practice, when quoting the NT letters, is to use the name attached to the top of the letter. This is mainly to distinguish it from teachings found in the gospels, and not to make a case about its authorship, i.e., "Paul said" is meant to clarify that Jesus didn't.
It might make a difference for a question contrasting, say, a passage from Galatians with one from Titus. It might be beneficial in an answer to explain why many modern scholars dispute whether Paul wrote the letter to Titus.

Interesting question. I would say for the most part its fairly irrelevant who wrote what books of the Bible. It may provide some small historical perspective, but if you believe that the Bible is God's inerrant word, its largely unimportant who the actual author was.
I would say that if you feel that the author is believed to be in doubt by a wide swath of Christian beliefs (say for instance Hebrews) then its perfectly fine to edit in the word Author instead of Paul. If its less certain but you are truly convicted about it a comment mentioning the disputed authorship would be appropriate.
If it doesn't bother you severely or is not blatantly wrong, I would leave it alone and realize that some traditions hold to Paul as the author to most of the letters, even the ones that more modern scholars are pretty sure he didn't write.

I don't think we want to get hung up on questions about authorship. I understand that there are scholarly doubts about authorship, but for most Christians these questions are not relevant. I believe that if an answer says "St. Paul writes in Ephesians..." and it could be changed to "The author writes in Ephesians..." without changing the meaning of the answer, then we should let it stand. For most Christians the important thing is that it's written in scripture, not who wrote it.
If the answer would be invalid if the authorship were different, such as relying on the assumption of Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch to deduce something historic, that would be different.


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Why are there different tags for communion and eucharist?

Possible Duplicate:
Tag synonym suggestions

Why are there different tags for communion and eucharist? I guess I don't know whether they are different. I always thought they were just different names for the same thing.

Because no one has voted to accept my tag synonym!!

This tag issue has already been brought up in this answer to another thread. We just need a moderator to start implementing some of those.
There is one context that eucharist is different than communion but I don't think we've considered it important. I believe the term can be used specifically to refer to the host (the bread?) as opposed to the overall celebration of the sacrament. For the purpose of tagging, I don't think it's distinction we need to make.


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Who is this site for?
In my answer to the Proposed FAQ question, I mentioned the first line of the FAQ should clearly state who the site is for. Examples on other sites:

Stack Overflow: Stack Overflow is for professional and enthusiast programmers, people who write code because they love it.
Gaming: Gaming - Stack Exchange is for passionate videogamers from all platforms, including consoles, computers, handhelds, and mobile devices.
Programmers: Programmers - Stack Exchange is for expert programmers who are interested in conceptual questions on software development.

We've had a lot of discussion about who is an expert, the role of non-believers on the site, and who is a Christian, but we really need to define who exactly the audience is.
So who is this site for? The placeholder FAQ says:

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

Is this still applicable? Does it need to be changed?

No, I think that's actually a pretty good explanation of what this site's here for.

I agree.  I think this wording is nice because it specifically excludes those who are looking to tear down Christianity or find holes in it.  It's the people who are earnest about their search.  I can't think of a better way to word it myself.


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Is it necessary to leave comments about deleting comments?
I have noticed a recent trend where mods are leaving comments about having deleted comments (example, example, example). I think its great for obsolete, chatty, unnecessary comments to be removed, but does a comment need to be left in their place? I feel like the comments left behind by the mods are almost as cluttery as the comments that were removed.

sign post, crumb trail, bread crumb... These are just terms to let the users know that we've been here and made changes.

I have an odd hangup about data going missing. If something exists, it should never be removed. And I also tend to find stuff by links: "There was an interesting question I was reading the other day which I want to find again ... oh yes, I left a comment on one of the answers. I'll find it that way." So I go to my Recent Activity tab, and if there it isn't, I get confused.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
We actually only do this on a fraction of the deletions we make. The crumb trail is usually left when we delete something that had content people may not have realized would be going away. This is part of an education campaign because we had a lot of vocal complains about comments being deleted. By leaving these markers we hope to show WHY things are getting deleted and have a few reminders around so that future commentors will understand what the purpose of comments is and use them more appropriately in the future.
The other major part of that education campaign was this meta post

How can we improve our guidance about the comment practices?

There were several other threads complaining about comment deletion that lead up to that.
Please note that we do try to only delete content that actually IS obsolete in that it has been integrated into the post or discussed to a resolution or moved to chat or something. However there is still a significant amount of people placing CONTENT that is not just comments about the post in comments. As long as that is still going on it seems to be useful  to make a note of what is being done so that everybody understand.

Necessary?  No, absolutely not!  But we leave them as signposts so that people understand what happened when they come back to their question or answers and all the comments are gone.
It's definitely not necessary.
However, there have been several people who have been confused when we delete their comments.  Because of that, we leave little signposts and breadcrumbs to let them know what happened and why it happened.
We want to make sure people understand our actions and so we err on the side of over-commenting rather than under-commenting.


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Source that examines OT authorship
Is well known that many scholars dispute the traditional authors of OT books and dating. For example for the Pentateuch we have the Documentary hypothesis, for Isaiah's book separation in three parts, and this happens for most books in OT. Do you know any source (book or website) that examine the arguments for both sides for each book? There are many books, such as study bibles, that provide sententiously the arguments for each side, but I would prefer something with greater details.

@Richard Book recommendations are off-topic on SE sites across the board. This us no more on topic on meta than on main. Are book recomendations considered poll/list questions?

Fair enough.  I didn't see it as a book recommendation.  Reading it now, I can see that point.

Have you tried Wikipedia?
Genesis/Exodus/Leviticus/Numbers/Deuteronomy
Joshua
Judges
etc...


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Examples of high-quality questions
After all of the discussion about increasing the quality of questions and answers on Christianity.SE I am left desiring examples of high-quality questions.
Post examples of high-quality questions here. We will keep a running list to serve as a repository for inspiration.

Why are there so many translations of the Bible?
Why doesn't the Catholic Bible include all books from Septuagint?
Why does the LDS church (Mormon) put so much more emphasis on the family than most other denominations do?
What is the biblical meaning of “sanctification”?

Questions regarding Doctrine that are focused

What is the Biblical basis the for Immutable Nature of God?
What did the Dominicans have against the immaculate conception?
Distributism and Subsidiarity beyond the counsel of Jethro in the Bible
What is the Calvinist view of God's sovereignty?

Excellent factual questions:

What is the earliest name ascribed to the book of Revelation?
How are Catholic priests chosen and assigned to specific parishes?
Was C. S. Lewis a "muscular" Christian?
What are the differences between the translation ideologies of the NASB and ESV?

Exegetical questions that are focused on doctrine.

Calvinist perspective on Luke 18:18-30
What is the biblical justification for permitting female pastors?

I may be a bit biased on that last one, since it's my own post.  It might not be an excellent question since it's been retrofitted to the new standards.  Tough call.  (But I was short on good exegetical questions.)


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Can I ask the same doctrinal question across many different denominations?
I just asked a question about marriage for Jehovah's witnesses. I could easily ask the same question regarding Roman Catholics, Methodists, Mormons, etc, and I would be very interested in the answers.
The answers for some denominations would be easier to find on Google, but for the ones which I can't find a straightforward answer, would this sort of practice be okay?
Obviously I would pace the questions instead of posting them all at once.

Yes, go for it!
I think you're coming at it with the right frame of mind. If the questions are too easy to find on Google (Catholics would be a good example), the question might not be the best for here. It'd probably be downvoted for "lack of research".
Also, I like that you would pace the questions.  I think this is a wise approach.
My only caveat... If you suspect that the marriage traditions for a couple of different groups are identical (say... Southern Baptists and American Baptists), you probably should lump them all together, when possible.  If you do that, it would be wise to ask if there are any significant differences between the denominations, though.  (Just in case there are.)
Obviously, Mormons and Quakers are going to have different standards, but LDS and RLDS will probably be the same.

RE: Catholic answers, our standards for good answers should be a lot higher than Google (I'd like to think so at least).  There's a lot of crap out there and furthermore that question (or a variant) comes up every week on http://relevantradio.com so a good answer would be pretty useful. But yeah, the question better be specific or else the answer will have to be in book format.

The idea is to limit questions that are "too simple".  That edict has been handed down by Jeff.  Catholicism was picked in my mind because I (more or less) knew the answer and because Google lead me right here on the first result.  It seemed sound, so I used Catholicism as an example of something that was "too simple".  Even then, the worst case scenario is that it might gain a few downvotes.


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Questions duplicated in featured question list
Notice one question shows up three times and another question shows up twice.

That's weird. What OS and browser are you using?

Chrome on Windows 7.

...and now it works again.

Same as I. Gotta hate those Schrodinger's bugs... :P

If anyone can figure out how to make this happen...

Possibly a rare caching issue?
We've since upgraded our caching servers substantially. If you see this again let us know.


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What is a good tag synonym for perseverance of the saints?
I tried adding the tag perseverance-of-the-saints to this question but I got an error telling me it exceeded the max tag length of 25 characters. What is a good synonym for it?

The tag is now perseverance-of-saints.

I hope this doesn't open a can of worms, since I know the various terms are often used by different groups with different theology in these areas... but what about eternal-security?  Even if it's not considered a precise equal to the doctrine of perseverance of the saints, it's pretty close, and for the purpose of tags, they're probably equal, no?  In other words a question asking about one could just as well be asking about the other, for the purpose of categorization and searching.

Have you tried perserverance-of-the-sain ? :}
Not very helpful, I know.  Maybe perserverance-of-the-snts?
OK, these are bad ideas.  But it's all I got.

What about mapping this tag and

total-depravity
unconditional-election
limited-atonement
irresistible-grace

All to either the calvinism or a new tag tulip
This would clean up 5 tags at once and solve a character limit problem...

I would prefer tulip because its less of an abstraction than Calvinism, but it might confuse people not familiar with Calvinism.


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Is there an effort to rewrite the FAQ?
Wax Eagle recently admitted that the FAQ is out of date. Is there any effort to update it after the recent policy changes? Or are we still waiting for the new policies to be accepted?

Yeah, that's a good idea!  (That's about as far as we've gotten.)

Not yet, we were waiting to see what kind of reaction we got from the refocus/quality standards, however we can rewrite the FAQ at any time. If you'd like to propose some initial changes you are welcome to do so.
An important note, we have finally gotten some push back on the quality standards, not sure if its because of the enforcement of them (which has probably been both poor and inconsistent, something we need to work on) or because we need to reevaluate or revise them.
Part of the reason that we haven't updated the FAQ yet was because we were waiting to see what the reaction from the community would be and its been largely positive with a few hiccups. These are things we need to address.
So, 2 options, you can either start a new meta post asking for suggested updates to the FAQ, or just modify this one to be about that.


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Suggestions for FAQ Rewrite
The FAQ needs to be updated. It does not reflect the new policy well, and in my opinion its not simple enough.
Remember, we can edit anything above "What kind of questions should I not ask here?"
These previous FAQ changes were made after this discussion.

Only the first headline here is fixed. The other two you list are synthetic that we added, then the next one and the rest of the FAQ is fixed again.

In other words, everything above "What kind of questions should I not ask here?" was added by the moderators.

Oh. Thanks for the clarification.

In my opinion, the FAQ is very unapproachable. When I read it I feel like my mother is lecturing me about everything I can't do. I like how Judaism.SE doesn't do this.
I suggest we focus more on who we are and what types of questions are on-topic as opposed to focusing so much on who we aren't and what shouldn't be done on the site.
For example:

On topic questions include:

Questions about a specific doctrinal tradition (Catholic, Orthodox, Methodist, etc)
Historical questions related to Christianity
Questions about Bible translations
On topic examples (we would need a link to a meta post)

Off topic questions include:

Questions that ask for opinion
Questions that seek to make a point (no preaching)
Pastoral advice questions (we are not a church)
Off topic examples (we would need a link to a meta post)

I think that something almost as short as that can replace the the 550 words (3,266 characters) we have now. And we might even be able to do it without using bold text.

+1 for trying to do it without bold text. Bold text looks preachy, and preaching that we shouldn't preach on the site seems a tad hypocritical to  me

[First paragraph is original, I dropped the debate forum stuff, added everything below the first paragraph, and dropped the subjective stuff]

Christianity - Stack Exchange is for committed Christians, experts in Christianity and those interested in learning more. You may ask questions about any area of Christianity. Your own beliefs do not not preclude you from asking questions, but all questions must be directly related to Christianity.
You've come to the right place if you have questions about:

specific doctrines or doctrinal tradition (Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Young Earth Creationisim, Calvinism etc.)
understanding the Bible from the perspective of a specific doctrine or doctrinal tradition (like those listed above)
the history of Christianity

(More examples)
However, there are questions that are not constructive for the format of this site.  These include questions asking for:

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)
whether some group or person is "Christian"

(More examples here)
These types of questions have too many possible answers (many of which will be pure opinion).  Because of that, these types of questions are not constructive for this site and will be closed as such.
See also: What about my other questions?

Drop the entire section about subjective questions, since (a) it's somewhat implied above and (b) long-standing community members are better judges of that than first time visitors.

Drop the "What about my other questions?" section and create a new meta post with the link.  Add this to that meta post:

Questions asking for all views on a particular subject.
  (with explanation here)
What the Bible says about a certain subject
  (with explanation here)

We need to keep: "Who are considered Christians?" and the "Can I use comments..?" sections.

I've made this one community wiki to encourage everyone to edit this post!

Rather than showing the original and then listing the proposed changes, I would find it easier if we just show how the final version would look. If we want to compare it with what's there now, we can do that easily enough.
As it stands, this looks like it's adding even more content to a FAQ that's already too wordy. I much prefer Justin's approach.

Good stuff, looks much better

What do you think of this potential FAQ rewrite?
I should have put this here, but I started down the wrong track.  Perhaps someone could move this?


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Should the "evangelicalism" tag be created to match other denominational tags?
Most denomination tags are in the noun form: methodism protestantism catholocism etc. And then there is evangelical which is an adjective. Shouldn't it be changed to evangelicalism? We would probably also need to create a tag synonym.

Many denominations do not have an "-ism" name anyway.  Some examples that come to mind:

Mennonite
Brethren
Church of Christ

If, in the name of consistency, we had a mennonitism tag, it would be absurd.  I think the best we can hope for in terms of consistency is to consistently use the term most commonly used to describe a given denomination, regardless of whether the word is a noun (such as the -isms) or an adjective (such as 'Mennonite' or 'Brethren') or a more general descriptive term (such as 'Church of Christ').

I'm in broad agreement with Justin and Caleb that consistency would be good to aim for. Unfortunately it isn't quite attainable if we standardise on "-isms" as "baptism" could mean the Baptist denomination or the act of baptism (or doctrines associated with it). Using "baptism" as a denominational tag would be very confusing.
I also agree with Caleb that an evangelicalism tag  would be seldom used as most questions would (hopefully) be focussed on a particular evangelical denomination or would have a slightly wider scope (protestantism). It could of course be argued that protestantism is equally redundant as a tag for similar reasoning, but that's probably a subject for a separate thread.

I've been considering the idea that dropping the -isms on all of these might make things easier in the long run. It works well for a few things like Catholicism and Presbyterianism but it becomes really awkward beyond that. Those few example work with generic names like "Catholic" and most denominations have much easier monikers to use.

Also, I think in spite of the varied usage, "protestant" is a little bit easier to define than "evancelical".

Yes, I think they should be consistent. (And as moderators if this gets enough votes we can rename it).
However, "evangelicalism" is not a denomination and it is a very difficult to categorize word -- in my book it's nearly meaningless. I'm not sure what all should get that tag in the first place. I might argue that we don't have anything yet for which that is an important and definitive enough distinction to even have a tag.


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What's a good tag for priesthood of all believers?
What is a good alternative tag for priesthood of all believers? It exceeds the 25 character limit for tags. Does universal-priesthood work? Do they mean the same?

I like universal-priesthood.
I know that there's a tag limit, so I don't know if priesthood-of-all-believers would be too long or not.
Whichever is decided, we need to make a synonym from one to the other.

priesthood-of-all-believers is too long.

Aah.  Well, I guess universal-priesthood would get it.  Or just priesthood.  POAB and priesthood-of-all-belie would be bad.  ;)

I actually thought about recommending poab, but I figured the joke would be too hard to detect.


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Is a Stack Exchange style site really appropriate for religious questions?
In my experience the Stack Exchange family of websites tend to ask the type of questions that have specific provable answers.  Since your basic religious argument in-general boils down to faith, there is almost no question that can be answered sufficiently.  Compare any two Christian denominations they all differ on some belief or another.  Does that mean that one is wrong or right?  No. The main rub I have is that you should not be looking to SE for your religious answers but the resources that are provided for exactly that purpose.  In Christianity that would be the Bible, the Holy Spirit, etc.

I totally agree with you.  That's why we had the effort to move this from a generic Christianity.SE to a more specific site about Christian Doctrine.
The effort to make this site specifically about doctrine has turned this from an opinion-based, faith-based site into a site about facts.
A post regarding our new standards explains this fully, but essentially if the question isn't asking about doctrine, then it's not really appropriate for this site--it's Not Constructive for the exact reason that you mention above.

Thanks for the info. That makes sense I guess I was just missing the purpose of the site.

I agree.  If this were a Catholic SE then there would be less "correct" answers.  I also feel that the questions would be more direct.  "What is the Catholic view on homosexuality" would be an acceptable question where as "What is the Christian view of homosexuality" is more of a discussion question with no "right" answer w/o describing each denomination.

It's no less appropriate than Parenting, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, or any of the other "soft" and "fun" sites out there.
By "soft" I don't mean to denigrate.  I'm referring to the fact that not all of the questions can be answered as indisputable fact.
There isn't always a hard-and-fast correct answer.  As with the Parenting site, answers like "Here are the choices, and the arguments for and against each, weigh the facts and decide for yourself..." are perfectly valid.  This happens on all of the SE sites, including StackOverflow.
While I appreciate the incredible effort that the moderators and others took in raising the level of professionalism of the site, I still think we're missing the point.  The measuring rod of whether a site, SE or otherwise, is a good site, is not whether those in control of it like it. The only valid measure of a successful site is whether or not people are drawn to it, and then, much more importantly, drawn back to it.
I've seen it said in an earlier Meta post that StackExchange is a business.  It is "somebody else's commercial venture."
In my professional life, I am in  charge of several commercial websites, related to the company I work for.  I inherited it as a jumbled mess of garbage that no customer cares about, mixed in with some mission-critical apps that our customers actually need.
I get requests regularly from different business unit that want to have a presence on our main corporate website.  To them, a blurb about the buying department, or the real-estate department is important.  I fight a constant battle because on the one hand, I have high-level executives that think they know what belongs on the site, while on the other hand, I field complaints from actual customer because they can't find what they want on the site because there's too much to sift through.
The point of all of that is that the Business Unit leaders are wrong 90% of the time.  Our Analytics data shows us that the people who visit the site could care less about that stuff.   When it comes tot he website that I manage and develop for, what our customers want is to be able to access the information they need, and all of the other stuff is a waste of time.
Christianity.SE is billed as a site "For committed Christians, experts in Christianity and those interested in learning more. "  If that is the target audience, then that is the group that we need to attract.  While the tone of the site has been much more professional, and again, I seriously thank everyone that's probably taking offense to this post for your hard work, the fact is, the cost has been too high.
The problem is that the questions that are deemed as acceptable - those with a hard and fast absolute answer can all be answered by a visit to Wikipedia, and if not there, then within the first set of Google search results.  Why on earth would a seeker bother to come to a site where the best answers need to be short and sweet, when they can get a full-length article by visiting Wikipedia?
The value to the SE sites is that you do get different perspectives.  The other soft sites I've been visiting all seem to get this, and they don't seem to have a problem with a "voting contest" on questions with multiple possible perspectives.  Even SE doesn't completely frown on this.  There are some very good questions out there that can only be answered by  giving options (here and here) - in other words, soft questions with opinions instead of solid answers that provide a real value, and give people a reason to come back.
Getting good advice, even if it's mixed in with bad, is still valuable, and people are more likely to come back to a site that's actually helped them decide something than one that has no interesting content.
I think that the problem, and I'm just as guilty of it, is that the subject matter here has eternal value.  We take it very seriously, but think of this:
The StackExchange sites all have one thing in common -they mirror real life, but better.

On SO, it's like going to a city filled with the best and brightest programmers out there, mixed in with a bunch of people that need the help of these expert developers.  The value comes from having multiple professionals and amateurs with different backgrounds and experience, but a common interest, sharing ideas, and learning from each other.

All of them have different approaches to their craft, and all have opinions, but for the most part, they're all professional, polite, and do their best to help each other out.  Nobody gets offended if someone else offers a different approach to a problem and the asker accepts a different answer.  Instead, we see a good answer and add that knowledge to our arsenal.

On Parenting.SE, absolutely nobody agrees on what's "good parenting", yet there's value to the site.   Where does the value come from?   The value comes from having people from multiple walks of life, with a wide variety of preconceptions but a common interest sharing ideas, and learning from each other.
The Sci-Fi and fantasy site is chock full of questions that are based on conjecture about what the authors meant on purely fictional work.  ("Why does harry Potter always cast spells out loud?")  There's no possible answer to that other than to just make up something that sounds good based on knowledge of the subject matter.  That site is doing much better than this one is.  Why?  Not because the answers are factual, but because the site attracts a wide variety of people with different tastes, and different ways of interpreting the subject matter, but with a common interest, sharing ideas, and learning from each other.
Project Management - More art than science.  There's some well-established advice, but even much of that is bunk, and open to debate.  But again, the value comes from having multiple professionals and amateurs with different backgrounds and experience, but a common interest, sharing ideas, and learning from each other.

The list goes on.
So what I'm saying is this:  This site is no less appropriate for the SE network than any other.  Rules about politeness are good. The standard of closing questions that become argumentative is good.  The same guidelines that apply to the other sites should suit us here.
The problem isn't that this is a bad subject for this format.  Maybe the problem is that everybody is trying to re-define what the StackExchange format is because the subject matter is so critical.
The StackExchange Network isn't defined by rock-solid answers with no opinion, and no voting contests.  the StackExchange network is defined because  it excels at providing sites that attract communities made up of people with different backgrounds and experience, but a common interest, sharing ideas, and learning from each other.
All of this works because the voting system, and the mods, do a good job of filtering out those that are obnoxious, rude, offensive, and just plain dumb.  (Well, maybe not the last one.  I'm still allowed on the sites so far.)
Christianity.SE can provide the same value as the other sites for a community that is either committed to, or curious about Christianity if we'd keep that in mind and stop focusing on the wrong things.  Christianity is a perfect subject for a site that is focusing on what really makes the SE network successful.

+1 for thoughtful and constructive input into this community, even if I disagree with some of your conclusions. Every SE community has a bit of a different culture, I don't think comparisons to Sci-Fi are particularly relevant. I would still like to think you were right and we could put some interesting soft-questions up here, but historically that didn't go very well. The cards don't fall where anybody predicts or wants.

I would challenge you to come up with a working example that demonstrates what you want to see either in past questions or a new test one. So far the only "soft" questions we've seen have been quantifiably "low quality" on other grounds than just lacking any framework for concrete answers.

Quick quiz:  how many of these "soft" sites have actually made it to launch?  (I'm not saying they won't just that they haven't.)  Of course, there's Prog.SE, but it's a site bucking back against its initial "softness".

I totally agree, but have largely abandoned this site because... Well, because I agree with this viewpoint.

I can only upvote this once, dagnabbit.  And to underline this, there's the other post (called a question, but this is meta) worrying that C.SE is in trouble.  Yup, because what David says.  Oh, and Richard: Sci-Fi made it to launch.  Gaming (Arqade now... for how long, I don't know :D) too, which is arguably more soft than hard.  ("What's the best build for a 2h-Bludgeoneer in DungeonCrawl3000?"... :D)

I disagree. StackExchange is exactly the right format for questions and answers about Christianity. Yes, the Bible and the Holy Spirit are sufficient, but we can learn so much more when we add the fellowship and teaching of other Christians into the mix. Walk into any Christian bookshop: they sell more than Bibles.
Secondly there are several Stack Exchange sites where the answers are not "provable" for the most part (parenting is a good example) and of course there is an excellent precedent for religion based SE sites in Judaism.SE.
I think when people complain about the Stack Exchange format for this particular site it's because they want to turn a straightforward Q&A site into a discussion forum, or into a church. This site is neither of those things.
Ultimately the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Does this site work? Yes it does. Does it produce interesting questions and provable, supportable answers? Yes. Is it beginning to attract new, knowledge users who stick around? Yes.
Is Stack Exchange really an appropriate format for questions about Christianity? Yes, it really is.

It's true that Christian book stores sell more than just Bibles.  However the other items that they sell are written by authors that have studied the material in depth.  Those other items have also been edited and verified.  Therefore, even if you don't agree, you can at least be comfortable knowing it probably isn't heretical.
To your second point, parenting is a field that can be studied.  Studies produce verifiable evidence for a given side or another.  Whether you agree with those results or not is up to you.  Also, using another religious site to answer the question is redundant.

The question was about "religion" not specifically about Christianity, so of course J.SE is relevant. Christian theology can be, and is, studied. And answers here are edited and verified by the community via the voting system.

Does this site work?  Well.... it does with the new standards.  With the old standards, I felt it was failing in a blaze of glory.  I think the new standards are the only way to make this work as a site.

@Richard We'll have to agree to differ on that; quality was certainly an issue but it didn't stop the site from working, or being an appropriate format for the subject.

"teaching of other Christians".  Nah, "we" don't want that here, we only want scripture (whatever that is from the POV of asker/answerer) and/or doctrine (since Sola Scriptura is doctrine, both are doctrine)

while we are not here to provide answers to all of your spiritual needs, Christianity and other religious subjects are also studied in an academic context (both in seminaries, secular and religious universities and other private and public institutions).
I do not see a reason why we cannot have an academic style discourse about Christianity.
Yes it is a more sensitive topic than many other Stacks, but we have largely shied away from things like pastoral questions or specific religious advice.
One of the things we have said from the outset is that we are neither a church, nor a ministry vehicle. This is a place to engage with other Christians in questions and answers. Much more academic in nature than what you seem to be looking for.

I'd add one more argument that SE is a perfect platform.  For centuries, Christians have often taught the tenets of the faith via 'catechism' - a question and answer format.
Obviously, we have sufficient diversity that we aren't going to be force feeding answers, but Q&A is the original pedagogical technique.


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How do I delete this account without affecting other SE accounts?
I logged in here once (was browsing) but don't participate here and don't want this account as part of my broader SE profile.  How can I either delete it or dis-associate it?  I couldn't find anything in the "edit" options for accounts, nor any sort of "delete" link.

See here: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5999/can-i-delete-my-account/7979#7979

As David notes, instructions for deleting your account can be found here. Note that you should have been able to self-delete your account, since you've never used it. However, since you've already gone ahead and emailed us about it, I've removed your account.
Reminder to anyone reading this that account deletion is irreversible under normal circumstances. But feel free to create a new account at any time should you later decide you want one...

In case anyone is looking how to delete his Christianity.SE account, here is the form.