text:
Newcomers: Be patient. You will get there if you follow our direction. Keep trying
To the newcomers:
I am thrilled that you have come to this site. I am excited that you want to spend time contributing to this site, and even more so that you want to learn more about Christianity. The users like you make the content on this site and they are what make it fun.
However, you may be tempted to jump into the deep end of site policy and moderator actions before you actually know how to swim. I certainly did when I first started on the site and made a terrible a-- of myself. I hope that you can avoid that embarrassment and take my advice here in this post.
Before you go any further on this site and even in this post please read these meta posts:

What Christianity.StackExchange is (and more importantly, what it isn't)
How we are different than other sites

There are about four stages of frustration on this site that I hope you can avoid completely.

You think you have made a really good post, but the community does not and you cannot understand why.
You see questions that are good, but they get put on hold and closed and you do not necessarily agree with the reasons.
You are butting heads with the mods and they never admit they are wrong or listen to your suggestions for site policy.
You think the mods and everyone else who tries to help you is a jerk and think they are making the site worse.

These four steps are a progression that I have noticed in new users that eventually leads to the user never coming back or deleting their account. Some users have skipped one or two of them and others have hit every single one before being suspended or never coming back.
My hope is that you avoid all of these completely and become a regular, happy, and productive user of the site.
Stage One
Your chief complaint will likely come from the frustration of making a bang up answer or question that is good (and we agree), but it gets downvotes and little to no upvotes. The posts also likely receive criticism from mods and high rep users, but you are having trouble understanding what the issues actually are.
That's okay. Almost all of us made posts like that when we started out. And occasionally still do. Just take the bumps, try your best to see what the issues are, then try again. Don't worry too much about the actual post in question unless it is really important to you. Let it be what it is, then wait for another question to answer or make another question that interests you.
Here are some meta posts that might help you if you are in this stage:

What makes a good focused question?
What is a well-sourced, dispassionate answer?
Types of questions that are within community guidelines
Guidelines for writing effective answers
Good Subjective, Bad Subjective

Stage Two
Your next complaint will likely be that questions are good (and, again, we agree), but they get put "on hold". If you currently do not understand the reason, for now, just trust the mods and the community members that are listed with the reason. I know it is frustrating, but believe me, as someone who has been there too, you will be much happier using the site if you just take the lumps, trust that the mods and users are trying to help you, and then try again with what you learned.
Here are some meta posts that might help you if you are in this stage:

Brothers, we are not Christians‼
Refute this vs Why do they believe this?
Are truth questions inherently off-topic, or just a bad question smell?
Pastoral Advice Questions
Tips for editing a question to make it suitable for re-opening

Stage Three
Your next most likely complaint is probably that the mods do not admit that they are wrong. Well, that's because they are probably right. All our mods have been around for years. They know what they are doing, and I have seen all of them spend pages and pages in chat and comments trying to help users just like you with exactly the same issues that you have. Remember that nothing is new under the sun and your concerns about this site are very likely no exception.
Here are some meta posts that might help you if you are in this stage:

You're reading it right now.
Let's thank our pro tempore moderators!

Stage Four
Finally, if you have not taken the above suggestions, you probably think that the mods are jerks and everyone else who is trying to help you is too. You have probably even accused them of not acting like a Christian should, or at least thought it. They are the reason the site is not fun for you and if they would just listen to you the site would be better. You couldn't be further from the truth. These guys keep this site moving, alive and well oiled. For those of us who have been around long enough to see them in action many times, we give them the utmost respect.
But let's just say this is where you are right now. That is fine. Unfortunately, what has led you to this stage has probably made you extremely defensive and combative and maybe even rude. We are still patient and hope that you can come through (maybe you have noticed that mods have not suspended you yet, but rather are still spending a lot of time on you).
You are probably a well intentioned person and have only acted according to what you think is right. We do not blame you for that. But now, more than ever before, you need to seriously and deeply evaluate what you are thinking about this site and the people you have interacted with on it. They are well intentioned too. Their primary concern is the quality of this site. Their next concern is the user that contributes to that quality.
That is you! You are the user they care about because you make the site what it is. If you do not understand their reasoning for what is "quality" and what is not, then just trust them for now and heed their advice. If you feel like they do not listen to what you are saying it is because they have already heard it before and thought about it long before you were even a username on this site. You will understand soon enough. They are the master black belts and you are the new arrival and have barely dirtied your snow white belt. In time you will wear a black belt too, but for now, listen to your masters (mods and high rep users who are trying to help you) and heed their instructions.
Users in this stage are why the following meta posts were made:

Brothers, we are not Christians‼
Another reason this is not a Christian site
Christianity.SE vs. Survivor
Guidelines toward a polite, academic tone

This is amazing!  Can I award a bounty on it?

Typing fifteen characters to say: like

@PaulA.Clayton Thank you. I have corrected it. The site always needs willing proofers. If you are willing to make spelling and grammar corrections you can just go ahead and do them. You don't have to ask.

On Meta one cannot make suggested edits (even on the main site, suggested edits need to be six characters or more--yes, one can cheat). I do not have even half the reputation required to make non-reviewed edits. Edits also bump posts in activity lists (like the main page) which makes them less attractive when clarity would not be noticeably improved.

@paul I see. Well carry on then.

This "question" should be required reading of all newcomers. In vBulletin software, admins can make a thread "must-read". Is that available on SE software?

@Adrian I think the faq tag is similar. Caleb has since added it.

New users: Do NOT use the old, highly-rated questions from highly-rated users or mods as a template for your own.
Even if they seem very interesting, politely worded, drew expert Q&A answers, and generated no rancor.  The standards for a good question have changed so as to make many (hundreds?) of them fitting for "Reasons to Close".  There is a very good reason for neither deleting the "newly bad" questions nor realizing the new guidelines are overly harsh and don't really address the issues that caused prior rancor.

The same applies to answers.

Yes, if it is older than 6 months you should not use it as a template.

You may however, use all my (non-closed) questions as a template.  Not to boast of anything except that which is boastable, but being a survivor of [programmers.se] I knew what we were in for.

@fredsbend as user #4 (technically #1) I kind of take issue with that statement, I've seen the quality of questions stay very consistent over the year and a half or so of the site being live.  The only time things were really bad was when the materialist fanboys poured in to celebrate our graduation from private beta.

@PeterTurner I agree that a good portion of the stuff older than 6 months is is good and on topic, however, it seems to me that nearly all the open questions in the last 6 months are as well. Therefore, why take the risk in giving a poor question as a template?

@PeterTurner: I don't think anyone is saying old questions aren't as good; but some questions (such as this) would probably be closed today as too broad or opinion-based, but seem to have been popular in the past. The fact that it has been upvoted does not necessarily mean it makes a good template; new users won't know that, and (theoretically) more recent questions will fit the site's current scope/guidelines.

Related: Types of questions, or template questions, that the community generally finds acceptable

Do we not apply Historical Locks here?

I've noticed that most users who are received very negatively or in a mixed manner by the community leave as quickly as they came, although some don't:
50 Users Who May Need Some Feedback for Improvement
Most users will find that they are positively received by the community, despite some hiccups inherent to the learning curve:
Overall Community Impression of a User

lol you posted this at the same time the data explorer went off line to move to NYC, I'll check it out when it comes back online

haha nice - whoops!

IMO, how well a user is received is almost exclusively about his attitude and his ability to improve. If He has a crummy attitude he looses credibility very quickly. If he continually posts crummy content and cannot seem to improve based on the suggestions he looses credibility with every post.

It looks like my queries were not saved. I hope that is temporary. That was a lot of work.

After the migration, that is.

@Dan something was borked with the backups and was only just found out. The devs are on it and hopefully correcting the issue.

still not there - oh well

It's back!!! The SE team restored them for me!

Thank you for this Dan. I don't particularly agree with the way the terms positive and such are being described here, but this is useful information to see. If you could put in a column that shows suspensions and date of suspensions then that would be cool. Also, if you could have a column for flagged chat questions. Some users are "mixed" on the site but quite "negative" in chat. Flags might help show that.

Out of curiosity, why the use of floating point and casts and not multiplying the other side of the inequality by 10 or 3? Is overflow an actual concern or is this just defensive programming (i.e., good habits)? (I am not a programmer and tend to be overly concerned with computational efficiency [and I know just enough to be dangerous--integer multiply is cheaper than casts to float, multiply, and cast to integer].)

@fredsbend I may just have to play with that.

@PaulA.Clayton because I'm paranoid.

fredsbend, it looks like you put a lot of effort into that content and it comes across as genuine, thanks for that.
What I might venture to add -- with a significant measure of deference to the community, bearing in mind that I've yet to make substantial contributions to the site -- is the following:

At least until the second coming, there will always remain theological dissension on the nature of the human heart, whether people are "basically good" or otherwise, Total Depravity vs. Semi-Pelagianism, etc., etc.;
For a variety of reasons, life tend to run much more smoothly when we practice patience and forgiveness, and hesitate to attribute malicious intent;
However, it is also important to bear in mind that there are some people who, for whatever reason, happen to be at a place in life where they just want to inflict damage, and aren't interested in listening to anyone. Many of us have likely, at some point, watched an online community -- from old WWIV BBS's to modern internet message boards -- get torn apart by a relatively small, but vocal group of immature users with a severe empathy deficiency.

I wouldn't presume to offer any prescriptions about any course of action to implement, and I may well have inadvertently and unknowingly stepped on some toes myself. And maybe the community here has some ability to reform wayward users that I know nothing about.
Still, it seems worth pointing out that there may be a certain line that denotes a requisite level of intellectual maturity.
Here's hoping that any users that may find themselves on the wrong side of that line are able to reform their approach sooner rather than later, and make a positive contribution. Thanks.

Typo: "life tend to run much more smoothly" --> "life tends to run much more smoothly" (i.e., tends not tend)

You're doing just fine. Keep up the good work. Though you do have a propensity for answering off-topic questions, albeit in an on-topic and upvote worthy fashion.

I think not only "professionalism" but Christian charity require presumption you yourself are at fault, and misunderstood other guy. Protecting yourself against people who want to inflict damage will turn the clueless and frustrated into the same. Violence begets violence, so to speak.

The very fact that this post had to be made and is still being hyperlinked to demonstrates that there is still a problem with the way this site is conducted, and everyone who downvotes or deletes this answer is a part of the problem.
Rather than helping new users to construct productive posts, you shut it all down and require them to adhere to a very strict, unnatural, unintuitive set of standards that defeat the very purpose of having a site like this. Anything that you wish to be successful must be simple and intuitive from the start. What this site does is comparable to:

writing up a 15 page report of rules, expectations, and wants and handing it to someone after your first date
requiring someone to read the entire game manual and walkthrough before playing a video game
requiring someone to read the entire Bible before going to church
requiring a person to be perfect before they receive the Holy Spirit

Don't close posts that don't adhere to a strict set of rules; revise them so that their question will be answered and they can learn more naturally how to make proper posts.
Don't treat newcomers like they're automatically wrong and they have to join your cult to use this site; consider that maybe they are actually right about some things, even though you've made do for "years".
Don't tell people on a Christianity website that the goal is not to learn, study, or discover the Truth. That's stupid. That's like telling an employee that the goal of them working there is not to make money or feed their family. Of course that's the goal! Some have said, "we don't study the Truth, we study the Christian study of the Truth". Why would anybody want to study the Christian study of the Truth and not care to know what the Truth itself is? Better yet, why do you think new users are asking Truth questions? We're all here to learn what the Truth is, no matter how you skew it.

Lastly, it's a heck of a lot easier to answer questions in a particular manner than to force those questions to be asked in a particular manner. For instance, if someone were to ask, "Who is Jesus?" you wouldn't have to close their post. Everyone who had a different understanding of who Jesus is could respond and specify what denomination or beliefs or scripture they're adhering to in their own answer. Perhaps the asker was looking for a broad set of answers; why would you take issue with that? Let users of this site make use of it however they please, so long as it's appropriate.
I already know what your response to this will be: something like, "but that will resolve into a lot of arguing and trouble because of disagreements". Okay, then edit their question! Make it ask, "Who is Jesus, according to the Bible?" Alternatively, edit the answers! Make them say, "Denomination X says that ..." Perhaps a feature could be utilized where a question is placed on hold (made private) until the asker can revise it. But just because there are disagreements and arguments does not mean the question is bad or inappropriate!
Yes, I'm calling for Christianity SE to change its ways and traditions. I very much like the thought of having a vibrant, tolerant, yet open-minded community where anyone of any background can ask virtually any appropriate question regarding Christianity and get any appropriate answer in return, not just that which adheres to "acadamia"; where ideas, arguments, and responses can be voted according to their reliability, trustworthiness, sensibility, wisdom, and truth value, not whether or not they adhere to a strict set of rules; where anyone who thinks they have a valuable and noteworthy contribution to the pool of answers can give it without having it be hijacked or compromised; and where we can acknowledge that we're all here to learn about the Truth after all, regardless of what it is, where it comes from, how offensive it may be to our nature, or how difficult or complex it is to end up with.

Just in case someone responds by saying, "CSE is for studying doctrines, not the Truth", my answer is this: if I wanted to learn of different doctrines, I would go to websites where these doctrines are taught. I came here to get opinions, interpretations, and insight. If you want to answer with quotes and doctrines, you're certainly welcome to do so! But can we not also think for ourselves? Must our question or answer adhere to a particular established denomination? Give us users some breathing room to each do what we think is best.

Meta posts are rarely deleted. I can't even think of an instance where one was deleted. So no, your opinion here on site policy will not be deleted.

This post addresses one of your concerns: Why is putting a question “on hold” preferred over simply correcting the question?  You also mention, "Perhaps a feature could be utilized where a question is placed on hold (made private) until the asker can revise it." – this feature exists and is used.  Closed posts can be reopened, and deleted posts can be undeleted, if they are edited to fit the guidelines.

I'll certainly admit that the preferences and hard-earned experience of the long-time users here does make it difficult for new users to change how this site works.  We feel that this site fits a particular niche, serving those who have more academic questions about doctrine or history, while other sites, like normal discussion forums, or (even better) real-life churches and pastors, are better suited for dealing with "truth questions."  It's certainly not that questions like "Who is Jesus" are bad questions – we just believe it is better to ask them elsewhere.

Wow. I'm not sure how to respond. My first thought is that you've misunderstood the purpose of this site. But then you stated the purpose of this site clearly and accurately, and then just said you disagree. I guess that just means you disagree. I'm not sure why anyone would therefore bother trying to convince you.  You think this site doesn't meet your needs. You're welcome not to use this site then.

Those are well-reasoned responses, which I appreciate. I suppose my intention is to propose to you then that this site could be so much more. Forgive me that I get easily frustrated with the traditions of men.

@Andrew If you'd like to propose a specific change to the customs and rules of this site, I think we would all consider it seriously. It should be proposed in its own post though.


text:
Are we allowed multiple votes in the election
How many votes are we afforded in the moderator election?

StackExchange final elections are administered using what is known as the Single Transferable Vote method, specifically the meek STV algorithm.
Basically, each user gets exactly 1 vote. However you are allowed to select three candidates in order of preference. Your single vote will be divided up between these candidates in whatever fashion is most advantageous for your first selection, second selection and finally third selection.
If your first candidate of choice gets more than twice as many votes as anybody else in the election, he really only needs half of those votes to win. In that case 1/2 of your vote will be used to make sure your first choice gets elected, and the other 1/2 will be used to get your second choice elected. If that works out and there is still leftovers, it will be parceled out to your third choice.
In the event that one of your selections is un-elecetable (meaning even with all the people that voted for them using their full vote value won't put them ahead of anybody) then the candidate is eliminated from the race and your vote applied to the next candidate on your selection list.
In the end you have the power of 1 vote, but it is distributed across three selections in a mathematical way that is most likely to get your selections elected in order of preference.
Before the actual final election as described above, in the event that more than 10 candidates have been nominated, there will also be a primary phase. This phase works just like the votes on answers. Eligible voters get to vote up or down on as many of the candidates as they feel like. The result is to sort the candidates by some rough gauge of electability. At the end of this phase the top 10 entries by final vote score move on to the actual election phase and enter the STV system.

+1. Nice, technically detailed, but clearly explained answer!

The answer is listed on the right sidebar of the election page:

Each community member has 3 votes. Please cast your votes in order of preference, starting with the most desirable candidate first.

It should also be noted that everyone who can vote can vote for each candidate individually during the primary, either up or down just like questions and answers.

The summary in the sidebar is actually kind of a stretch of the truth presumably in the interest of brevity. Each community member actually has a total voting power of 1 whether they select 1, 2 or 3 candidates. You are allowed three selections but this is not three votes, it is one vote split between the selections. See my answer for more detail.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


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Would it be helpful to have a text box to explain flag reasons?
A few times when I have thought about flagging something I kind of wished there was a text box available to explain the reasoning for the flag. I could be tempted to check "other" just to be able to explain what I felt might be wrong (or to explain that there was some uncertainty).
(Part of this may come from personal difficulty with classification--that pixel seems to have a non-zero red value, so can one really say that the image is not red [not quite that extreme]--, but it might be helpful to the reviewer to have a short text clarifying the reason for the flag even if most people left such blank.)
I am posting this as a discussion question because it seems inappropriate to post it as a feature request on meta.stackoverflow unless it is something that actually would be useful to others.
(I am being lazy in not search M.SO to see if this has been proposed already. I may take a look later.)

If you find yourself needing a custom reason in addition to a canned flag reason you have one of two options.

You can leave a comment and go with a canned flag reason. This has the advantage of sending it to the 10k flag queue for review in addition to the mod queue.
You can just send a custom flag.

If your comments cannot be made public in some way, just send a custom flag.
In general I think this covers most cases. We want things to be as public as possible here and if you have a reason why a question or answer is low quality, or an answer is not an answer. Explain it to the OP. We're all here to learn, and it's helpful to original posters if they are given good feedback. It's also helpful if users are giving this feedback instead of it always being the moderators.

I take it you mean comment on the possibly offending post and flag the comment. In some rare cases I might like a more private posting because something like "This smells bad in [list of ways]." might be excessively discouraging to a new user when I am not sure about the badness (and have difficulty articulating criticism). Comment and flag comment seems like a decent solution for almost all cases that I would encounter. Thank you. (Usually others beat me to acting on questionable posts anyway.)

In the case you describe, a custom flag is the best solution.

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


text:
Is this on topic?
Who symbolizes Christ in J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings"?
This is certainly not about Christian doctrines. The works are certainly not theological, though may have religious and even Christian overtones
It is also not about Christian culture, which has recently been squashed by the community as being off topic, which I am still upset about. It is akin to Christian sub-culture. Is is only meaningful to a group of people that share nothing in common except an affinity for Tolkien and his writings, who was neither a theologian nor a Church leader.
That being said, the page will definitely draw traffic to the site. But will it draw productive users to participate? I don't think this particular one will (though I still think the questions about christian gun-culture and christian patriotism would have).
So what kind of question is this and is it on-topic?


text:
Why are some people reviewing new posts and not directing them to the meta and help pages?
Most recently, I noticed this question from a new user. I saw only a single comment that was a quasi answer, which is fine, but I also saw no other comments and that this user had two upvotes and only 11 rep. Well, it was no surprise that this was their first post when I had checked their profile. So I thought there must be a new review task available for this user, because this is their first post. There was no review task available which means someone did review this post, but without giving the new user any sort of direction.
Whether the post is good or not, I think it is vitally important to let the new users know immediately that we have help pages and a meta site and we are also very willing to help them ask well-scoped, on-topic questions and post well-sourced, well-thought answers.
I realize that it is an obvious matter of opinion for this exact question whether this user needed any help or not, but I submit that all new users deserve this as a bare minimum if you are going to do the review tasks:

A Welcome. They need to see right away that this is a community and we are all people who work together to learn about Christianity. We are not competitors (the way it feels on SO sometimes), we are certainly not enemies, and most of us like pretty much everybody.
Direction to the about and help pages. Well, first, they are new to the SE network; they may not quite get how to use the site and there is a bit of a learning curve. Also, the about pages give the site a description and lead the user to the meta. The only exception I give here is if they have other SE profiles with high rep. You can tell those by seeing the tell-tale 101 rep.
Direction to the meta. If there is a specific issue there are plenty of meta posts already written that you could choose from. If there is no specific issue I have written one that I show to all new comers because it links to some of our best meta posts on all the major topics.
An honest criticism of the post. If it looks good, say so and give them a plus one. That will encourage them to come back. If it has issues say what they are, how they might be fixed, or edit the post yourself, and link to an appropriate meta post that can help them.

On this question specifically I commented this:

Welcome to the site. We are happy to have you participate. This is a good question, however, we generally prefer the questions to be more definitely answerable. As this is now, it is dangerously close to an opinion question, because we just don't know the answer. Further, as Affable Geek pointed out, there is the issue that some Annihilationist groups will say that they are certainly not alive, unless they were resurrected. I'm going edit this to be a little more specific.
[and this in a second comment a few seconds later]
When you get a chance, you can see the about pages and help center to learn how to use the site and what it is all about. There is also a meta site where we discuss policy. See this post and the other posts linked there for specifics about site policy.

I know there is a "Looks Good" button option, but I really wish that would just explode and vaporize. I ask that instead of clicking "Looks Good", if you do not want to make any comments just click "Skip". I also know that you can do whatever you want, but I think I made a good case to do as I do.
Honestly, I think we have a high turnover rate and I want to bring that to as low to zero as possible. Every time I see a good (or potentially good) question or answer by a new user then never see that user again I think about the possibility that we lost a potential super user from whom we could learn many interesting things. So help me and do what ever you can to encourage the new users to come back and at least participate in their own question a second time.

Agreed. And I add to that, don't do drive-by downvoting, especially on new user posts.

Tip: you can use [ and ] around FAQ and help to produce: [FAQ] and [Help].

@Wikis I'd recommend not linking just to the help center, it's a nice page, but it's not good for helping new users, please make sure if you link to something on the help center that you use one of the magic links for a specific page. [Replace [faq] magiclink with [help]](Replace [faq] magiclink with [help]). That said, I highly recommend linking new users to the [about] page first and foremost

@waxeagle: I would also recommend not just providing links. Good tips for specific parts of FAQ and about link.


text:
What is wrong with this answer?
I asked a question yesterday and have received only this answer so far. I personally would not downvote it (nor upvote it), but it has received 6 downvotes without a single comment.
So what's up with that? You know I hate drive by downvoting, so I would like to hear what people think about the post and why it is/should be downvoted.

I gave it a commentless -1 because I didn't want to argue with the poster. if I had the time, I'd rather have answered it.  I couldn't suggest a way to improve the answer (other than maybe delete it!)

@PeterTurner Maybe you have something for it now? ;)

The answer would have people going on a wild goose chase. It makes Catholisism out to have turned completely mystic, upholding other religions as true and one of the late Pope's to be the Antichrist.
I realize it was an attempt to answer the question by pointing out a supposed premise flaw in your question (hence no mod deletion for being out of scope) it does so in a totally bogus way that is not actually representative of Catholic doctrine. In other words it's a wrong answer (hence my downvote).
So why no comment? First of all, it seems patently obvious to me that the answer was wrong. Further more a few clicks through to the author who wrote it and their other posts and profile lead me to believe that I wasn't going to convince them they'd made a mistake by leaving a comment explaining my downvote. It also looked like they were highly likely to argue with me, so I decided not to waste my time.
Frankly it looks like the system is working pretty well. I'd imagine most of the other voters went through a similar thought process. The answer is wrong (and dangerously so) and the community has clearly marked it as such. Comments should be used when a post can be improved and the OP can learn something, not for debating people with bogus theologies. At most it could use a comment would say "This is not representative of Catholisism", but I think the downvotes pretty much speak to that effect already and who wants to leave the comment that's going to make you the target?
There, bulls-eye is on me.

(I edited, but I haven't voted on this one way or the other.  I'm staying away from that bull's eye.)

I see your point. It is about half the particular user, and half that the post is disagreeable in general.

The question asks, "Where are these people coming from?"
Answer says, "They are unlikely to have come from anywhere."
Dangling footnotes, too.
Didn't vote myself, FWIW.


text:
How can one politely encourage answerers to provide an "identifiable perspective"?
On an answer to a question about the Protestant (excluding Seventh Day Adventist) perspective on Sabbath-keeping, I left the following comment:

What translation are you using for Matthew 5:17 which has "magnify it"? (Your other quotes were KJV.) I am also curious about what denominational perspective this represents. Googling (Matthew 5:17 "magnify it") was not helpful in finding a translation and hinted that this might be coming from a Church of God (or perhaps Church of the Great God) perspective. Identifying perspective can be helpful in cases like this where doctrines differ between denominations.

I am a little concerned that the request for a denominational perspective may seem a bit pushy or threatening ("What kind of heretic are you? I want to know so I can choose the right kind of stones to cast at you."). I wrote "helpful" to indicate that such is not required but would likely improve the answer. (I probably should have written "doctrinal perspective", especially given this Meta question--and waxeagle's comment distinguishing doctrinal vs. denominational.)
I can somewhat understand being hesitant to identify the perspective (such may invite persecution or just dismissal of the content) and having difficulty naming the perspective (particularly when one feels it is simply a Bible-believing Christian perspective).
Sadly, questions on controversial topics are the ones that would most benefit from identifying a perspective and the ones that would most discourage the inclusion of such identification.
(That particular question's topic has historically been somewhat controversial. I suspect the six or so "drive-by" downvotes to answers since the question was revived is a consequence of diverse strongly held views.)
Anyway, is there a better way to encourage such identification and avoid seeming intrusive or likely to persecute/ignore different views?

Just ask. I might work a bit more up later. But really, just ask. It's not rude to ask someone who they're claiming to represent when they answer. We've said over and over that we're not here to generate new theology but the accurately write about what's already been written.

I just vtc'd that post. "biblical, protestant perspective" is much too broad. So the problem here is with the question, not the answer. What the answerer wrote is fair because it was within the scope of the question. But the question is out of scope for the site.

@fredsbend I did not mean to imply that the answer was faulty (but that including a perspective would have been an improvement). I also think there is a place for overview questions, though as phrased that question is more likely to generate single-perspective answers (like mine :-( ). It is also not clear if excluding SDA is meant to exclude any perspective that has a similar retention of the OT law. The asker might also have been unaware of how broad the question is (so "on hold" with suggestions could be good).

Begin with a friendly greeting. It may put the reader in a good mood.

Hi, ____! Welcome to the Christianity Stacks Exchange. [for a new member]
Hi, ____! Welcome back to the Christianity Stacks Exchange. [for an old or returning member]

Make a brief comment about what you've read and what you think the question may be improved in a formal tone of voice. Pretend that you are a telephone operator, a librarian, or a sales clerk.

After reviewing your question, I am sorry to say that this question is not answerable at the present moment, because this question is not scoped to a doctrinal, denominational, or theological perspective.

Ask the questioner to specify or narrow down the scope of the question.

Seeing that there may be multiple good answers, I am wondering if this question may be scoped to a single doctrinal, denominational, or theological perspective.

End your comment with a closing.

Best regards, ____

While this provides some applicable advice, this Meta question was more concerned with answers providing an "identifiable perspective". Are you indicating that any question that could have different correct answers should be fixed rather than urging those providing answers to state the perspective? (This would seem to be standard for SE, but I have some hesitancy to embrace that strictly.)

Well, basically, I assumed ignorance, as in "I don't know which position is the true statement, so I am going to accept all answers as true statements and require everybody to provide their points-of-view."

Ignorance is probably the most common reason for such "too broad" questions, but I suspect that sometimes the asker wants to avoid having to ask five or more questions (with significant overlap) to get a reasonably thorough answer. In some cases changing the question will invalidate some answers (rather than just making them incomplete), which is undesirable but not a disaster. There is also the problem that the asker may not bother editing the question, so anyone who wants to save the question must guess (or independently ask a good form of the question).


text:
Can we do something about non-selected answers?
Take this post as the example.
It is an okay question and I think I answered it pretty darn good. No one else has even tried to answer it; mine is the only one.
Here is the issue:
The OP hasn't been back since May 23. That is almost four months! I think it's safe to say that he will likely not come back.
Here's my problem:
If he never comes back, or if his account gets deleted then he will never select my answer. I don't really care about that. I only need one more upvote to be eligible for the enlightened badge, which I will never get for this post. It is the badge that I care about.
So we have:

A user that will likely never come back and has not been to the site for over 100 days.
A single answer with nine upvotes that is well sourced and answers the question very well.

Why do we not have an auto-select for this scenario? Remember, like I said, it is not really the green check mark I am after. I want the badge.
This has been brought up on MSO a few times 123, but with respect to SO only and not the whole network.
I like the solution here, which is to have some sort of "accept answer" vote, where high rep community members can vote that an answer is selected. There should be a queue for posts that are eligible for this and the criteria for this queue filling is like the post I gave as an example. The criteria should be such that the queue fills with questions that have answers that will likely never be selected by the OP but the votes on at least one of the answers indicates that it is the correct or "accept worthy" answer.
Now C.SE is very different than SO. I can see why they don't really want to do this there, but on this site, when there is such an obvious, "should be selected" answer like mine I really do not see the hesitation. Also, on all those MSO posts, they are status-declined but none of the SE staff has actually given an answer.

Answer selection is completely optional. Creating a mechanic for answer selection outside of the OP returning and selecting the best answer is a nonstarter
In fact, there has been a proposal from this community to completely remove the answer selection option.
Neither of these things are feasible for the following reasons.

We're a part of the SE model. They do relatively little per site customization with respect to the mechanics. Ultimately this is asking for a model change that's not really a big deal and
The nature of SE questions is that the person inquiring should be the person to judge which answer works for them. I know that's a bit odd here when a lot of questions are very subjective, but ultimately, they asked the question it's their right.
Accepting an answer says nothing about the correctness thereof. This is true of all accepted answers. There are wrong accepted answers even on sites like Stackoverflow. That's because even though the answer was wrong, it's the one that the OP thought helped them the most. If a wrong answer is accepted then vote it down and move on, comment if you have something constructive to point out.

Suffice to say, if you answer questions by driveby users, there's a good chance you're not going to get the +15 for an accept, comfort yourself knowing that you'll likely have the highest voted answer and it might help someone who arrives via google later on.

"Ultimately this is asking for a model change that's not really a big deal." Says you ... Plenty of people on MSO think it should be implemented. Plus, I want the badge, not the +15. I would give 50 rep for the badge. The enlightened badge is hard enough to get, never mind the scenario I gave in my OP.

@fredsbend it'll be worth the wait if you do eventually get it. They aren't as hard as you might think though, they are by far the easiest silver badge and I get them regularly on the RPG site where I'm an active poster. And I've got plenty of +10 answers there they may never get accepted. Heck, this one might even turn into a guru if the OP ever comes back and accepts it.

Yeah, I'm actually noticing that some of my accepted answers will get the enlightened badge if they ever reach the votes, which might happen in time. The user on your linked post was active 17 hours ago. Ping him and ask him to accept. I have done it before with mixed results.

@fredsbend I will never, ever pressure someone to accept an answer. If someone is active and not accepting I assume they have good reasons.

Is forgetting about it a good reason? I didn't say pressure him. I said say something like this. I personally wait a good while to accept answers to see what else comes in. Then about once a month I look and see if anything I have asked has an answer that deserves my accept. I could see myself forgetting about a particular question for more than a few months.

I'd prefer someone not accept an answer at all than accept one sooner than their ready. Sure some folks might be unaware of the mechanic, but that's best discovered on their own or away form a post. I'm far more likely to post a comment encouraging someone to wait to accept an answer.

I'm not a fan of the way accepted answers work on this site, but I think your suggestion is going the wrong direction.  The original purpose of the feature was explained thusly:

The question owner is not required to accept an answer to their question. We view accepting an answer as a simple social convention, a little informal "thank you" between the asker and answerer, a virtual tip o' the hat to that person whose response, as the question owner, you personally found the most helpful.
That doesn't mean the community will agree with your choice. But as the question owner, it is your choice to make.

We want to move away from having a One True Answer™ and toward having answers that are reviewed by the community as a whole (i.e., voting).  So that I won't be the one to tell you this, I'll let Jeff say it:

Although it’s fine to ask and answer your own question—this is specifically encouraged in the faq—you'll have to rely on the community to upvote your answer and validate it as correct. You, sir (or madam), are biased. Of course your answer to your own question will be the best possible answer. You wrote the darn thing!

Basically, the feature you propose would be implemented only over my strenuous objections.  (Although, if you refuse to accept this very answer, I might change my mind. ;-P)
On Badges
At the risk of being called an old fogey once again1, I'll quote Jeff again:

The badge system exists for two reasons:

to teach new users how Stack Exchange works
to encourage activities we view as positive to the community

The Enlightened badge encourages people to answer quickly and teach them to edit their answers to satisfy the asker.  It's probably a bit overcomplicated to earn, but that's part of what makes it a silver badge.  The Nice Answer badge (which is what you got without the OP accepting your answer) is only bronze.
Finally:

Bear in mind that badges are (almost) never awarded arbitrarily by people; they are always earned by achieving a measurable numeric goal queried out of the site database. They are based on data! You don't have to worry about currying a moderator or another user’s favors to earn badges; just use the site like you normally would, and the site itself will bestow these badges upon you. That said, badges are supposed to be fun, too!

;-)  Seriously though, we are reluctant to mess with Jeff's original design for the same reason the farmer who owns a goose that lays golden eggs ought to be careful not to make a meal of it.

As always, Jon is far more eloquent and I am capable of

@wax eagle: Quoting Jeff is the secret to my success.

If it really is such a "personal" thing, then why would certain badges be awarded only in the case that they are accepted? When was that even written? I would guess years ago when the SE network was quite a different thing than it is now. Maybe even before SE when it was just SO. I don't see the quote from Jeff as relevant.

@fredsbend: You might as well know that Jeff's quotes are usually at least relevant.  Those old blog posts serve as something akin to a design document for the network.

Yes, badges are fun ... when you get them. On your footnote, the comments show that the way SO has worked in the past is different than how it works today. "Jeff's original design" no longer exists in this case. Is Jeff still involved in the network? If we are to appeal to his words than having his exact words on this issue is appropriate here. I mean, its really kind of a cop out to quote something Jeff said four years ago that might be in contrast with what I am saying now as the answer to this feature request.

On the badge encouraging certain behaviors: If there is no auto-accept feature I am no longer interested in answering (quickly, anyway) questions from new users. That's probably not the encouragement the badge is going for. In fact, it is the exact opposite.

@JonEricson it's a good secret :)

Speaking as someone who has seen his answers accepted months or years after the fact in some cases, and has plenty of "enlightened" badges for answers that took just as long to hit 10 votes, often after multiple revisions... I stand by this philosophy. There's something to be said for badges that encourage both prompt action and patience.

@fredsbend Jeff is still a part owner though he is no longer involved in the day to day operations of SEI. However, his vision still matters here, maybe not as much as it did 2 years ago, but he still wrote a lot of the essential documents that govern SE's core philosophies.

@Shog9 You mean the patience of waiting for a user to possibly come back and the patience of waiting for an accepted answer to gain enough votes. See what I just told wax eagle

I think I'm starting to make peace with this, but I still would like to see something that tries to account for the drive by users never accepting.

Yes, @fredsbend.

This might be better on MSO, but here's an idea for a tiny bit of incentive.
here's my suggestion:
do not award popular question badges if the question has high points answers and no selected answer.
That way people couldn't get badges for popular questions that they neglect.  Now, it is possible for a question to be "popular" without a good answer, but it's unlikely.
Might be work making a data explorer query to find out if these exist.

I avoided MSO because they would just close it as dupe and no one would actually answer me with respect to at least this site. I don't understand your suggestion; I mean to say I don't understand what you are saying.

forgot to the word "award", I'm just syaing, there shouldn't be popular question badges awarded to people who don't care enough to respond to popular answers of their popular question.


text:
Tag "soul" vs. tag "souls"
In trying to use the tag soul recently, I found that the tag in the system is souls.
It seems odd to me to prefer the plural over the singular. I propose converting the tag to the singular soul.
We do have the spirit tag defined as "the traditional component of a person distinct from 'body' and 'mind'. Perhaps the two should be synonyms. I personally favor soul over spirit as the primary tag, but it is not that important to me.
Alternatively, we have the tag human-body, so perhaps we might prefer human-soul. I do not, however, because I think we have human-body to differentiate from various Eucharistic body-tags (though the only one we currently have is incorruptible-body).
So I propose that we create the soul tag to replace souls and give it a definition something like this:

soul
  The spirit of life within the human body. Sometimes used to refer to an immortal essence of every human. Also, sometimes used as a synonym for any living human.

I think the tag should avoid more than that because there are many different interpretations on what the soul is or even that the immortal soul exists. I am even in favor of it being just the first sentence.

There is already a thread for tag synonym suggestions. Though this post is more involved than just suggesting a tag synonym, it might still have fit there.


text:
Can we change the "recommend for deletion" options? Would that be helpful?
I find that typically the recommend for deletion options are not usually the reasons why I would delete a post. Here are reasons I would use more often because I see these problems more often:

The post has many grammatical and spelling errors. It is extremely low quality and is an embarrassment to the site's professional image. Example
The post is blatantly personal opinion, and it does not answer the question at all. Example
There is too much content and little to no effort in formatting into paragraphs and headings. [I don't have an example right now, but I have certainly seen this]

There are probably more, but I cannot think of any right now.
I don't have the rep to cast delete votes, so I can't really say this would be helpful or not, but I think it would. Often I recommend deletion and just pick other because the other four options are not why.
Is this possible? Would it be helpful?

Bad grammar and spelling would only seem to be a deletion reason if the meaning/intent was unclear (and it was a post-and-run). (With clear meaning, such errors can be corrected.) Your bad grammar example seemed to have worse issues than grammar. Likewise, some wall-of-text posts are relatively easy to edit into decent posts, though usually such is associated with disorganized thought--core dump of data rather than presentation of information--(so just adding paragraph breaks, punctuation, headers, blockquotes, etc. would not do much to rescue the post).

I'm declining the [meta-tag:feature-request], but this is something the CM team has been putting some thought into.  As Affable mentioned, the Very Low Quality flag is your friend.  I'd also like to echo @Paul: an edit often fixes formatting problems (especially with missing paragraphs).  Many newcomers don't know or understand Markdown.

@JonEricson Thanks. It's always nice to see the SE staff address these things.

Good news!  There is already a means you have at your disposal to do what you what.
If you flag an item as <>Very Low Quality, you will see it says,

This question has severe formatting or content problems. This question is unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed.

As Paul states, bad formatting alone isn't enough to kill off an otherwise good post. That said, if it stinks, and there's nothing to redeem it, it veritably meets the 'low quality' definition in the text.  If a mod agrees, they'll delete it.  It's really a pretty good check.

Yes, that is on questions, but I don't think there is such a thing for answers. I was just thinking to help mods save time. I figure they see who flagged or recommended for deletion from the review queue and we all gain a reputation with them for doing that appropriately. So I would think that for some they skim, but others they read the whole thing anyway. I just want to be as accurate as possible when I make a case for why someone else's post should be canned.

@fredsbend You can flag answers as VLQ too, it's not just a question thing.

@Caleb As a mod you are saying that changing what is already there wouldn't help you any more?


text:
Guidelines on flagging obsolete comments
Many times I have flagged comments as obsolete, especially when the comment thread has gotten long and it is referring edits made to the post and there has been successful edits.
In the past I have flagged only the last message, only the first message, both the first and the last, and as many as five throughout the tread.
What would the moderators prefer?

You can also flag the post if there's a lot of cleanup to be done...

At the moment, I'm speaking only for myself, but I believe this is true of the other mods too.
In general, it doesn't matter. Usually, I look at the whole comment chain, and if there are other comments worthy of deletion, then we'll delete those too. This goes for unconstructive and chatty comments too.

Agreed.  Just draw our attention to it, and we can work it out.


text:
We've already heard this before
This is a proposal to have a post with answers that generally cover various things, such as the Muslims that we get regularly trying to convince us the Jesus wasn't killed, or the Atheists and others who try to convince us that the Bible is faulty, or, most recently, that Jesus is a myth borrowed from other myths. The point is to give the "refute this" type posters something to read instead of a platform to keep talking. The start of the post follows:

Welcome to the site. We are very happy you have decided to participate. If you were directed here by another user it is because some of your posts, comments, or chat messages are something that is both off-topic for the site, and we have already heard it before and are likely not very interested in discussing the topic. To be fair, the topic is allowed in chat and if you would like to post there and see if anyone responds, you are welcome to do so.
There are some of the following topics that we have already heard before:

To Muslims: Christians, whom many of us are, believe Jesus died and was resurrected. You do not believe that. We have heard this before.
To Bible Critics: You believe the Bible is false or corrupt in some way. Generally, Christians do not. We have heard these arguments before.
To Jesus Critics: You believe that the stories about Jesus are false or derived from other myths, etc. Generally, Christians believe the stories are true. We have heard these arguments before.

Scroll down to see others and read our generalized response. Please refrain from commenting on these posts here, instead comment where the person directed you or comment in the chat rooms. If you have another topic to add, simple post a new answer.

So we can start by having people post for the items listed or others they can think of, or, of course, I welcome posts about what people think about this idea.
I envision a post, say the Muslim one, where an obvious Muslim is saying Jesus was not killed and I can simply link to the answer that covers this and say "We have already heard this before." When they click the link they see my bullet point above in a 1st level heading right at the top.
Once there are a few posts, I will edit out the top and bottom sections of this post and then we will have this new resource to use.

I think it depends on what you mean by "faulty". If you assume that the Bible is a very human book and comes from humans, and humans are fallible, then the Bible logically supposed to be fallible as well, and praising it more highly than it should be would be overrating it. I'm not sure which definition of "true" you are using here to describe Jesus' stories. Stories can't be true or false in terms of correct or incorrect. They have a more qualitative, subjective appeal to them that makes them stand out personally. :)

fred., no, I don't think you are right. Folks often, if not always, look for an answer on SE network, -1.

@Elberich You rarely make sense. Right about what? That some people come to this site with the intention of having an argument? Or that they are already convinced and are trying to prove something rather than learn something? If think this does not occur then you are wrong. I can give three users off the top of my head right now that were/are like this in just the last few months.

fred., I'm only saying that people here want to learn something about Christianity -- i.e., they want to learn something. This is what a question is made for; but, as is known, Christianity is a sensible argument, thus sometimes some questions can reasonably be read as you say. Then, don't care, being a Christian means taking up the cross and carrying it with Jesus.

@Elberich That is exactly my point! You seem unaware that we get visitors to this site that are not here to learn. They come here to convince the Christians here that they are wrong in some way. Here is three users that have consistently probed the same issues "That we have already heard." You get it now?

fred., yes, I see, that member is surely under Satan's control. However, as I'm new here, I'm still not aware of the largeness of this phenomenon, but, until now, if any, I noted that this site is the reign (or should it be 'realm'? Sorry I don't speak English) of the so-called 'politically correctness', which is the death of Christianity -- i.e., a Christian should have the courage to say the thing as they really are.

@ElberichSchneider You say "political correctness", I say "basic civility". Please don't accuse other people of being under Satan's control. That is poisonous to constructive discourse and is a fundamentally unhealthy attitude to take towards other human beings.

Rather than a post, the Stack Exchange way of accomplishing this would be to link to the duplicate question.  Alternatively, we can close questions for being 'general philosophical inquiry' which is off topic.
I, too, am kind of tired of the 'refute this you silly close-minded idiots.  I read some thing on the internet that shows how stoopid you are so there!'
In general, I wish I could just have a macro that would apply to these questions.  It would simply say:

Dear OP. This is a place to ask questions. If you want to learn something, you're in the right place.  If you are just looking to teach something, please try Quora, Wikipedia, or better yet, your own blog. We are interested in expanding open minds. If yours is as closed as your question appears to be, you're in the wrong place.

I see what you mean by linking duplicates, but that is not what I am referring to. The type of questions I have in mind are usually off-topic, therefore, any duplicates would be closed as well or even deleted. Since the primary purpose of this is to let them know that we are likely not very interested, I figured a response to the basic question is in order, which they would read here, then they could go to chat if they want to discuss it with anyone.

I actually did consider proposing a macro that searched the post for certain triggers that signal this type of question. I figured the SE team would not approve of it though. Also, I would feel really bad it the macro caught a genuine question.


text:
Am I being too picky about what is an "accept-worthy" answer?
In looking back over questions I have asked at various SE sites, I was reminded of how rarely I accept answers. While part of this may be asking difficult questions (and waiting for other answers does allow one to forget to accept), I suspect most of the cause is that I want a perfect answer, one that is obviously correct and complete.
My specific concern is for my question "Is Christianity more friendly to its own Scripture translation than other religions? If so, why?".
Mawia's answer is decent, it was upvoted three times (and not by me yet), it gives some historical context which was not in the speculation included in my question. However, it mainly addresses part of the why; it does not give evidence that the Bible is more translated (e.g., by giving counts of language translations of other "sacred texts" relative to follower count or economic factors--admittedly literacy is, I suspect, part of the Christian bias, though Judaism probably has at least as high a rate of literacy and the Torah is probably not broadly translated).
(I would count Mawia's answer as the "most helpful/useful" of the currently provided answers, but it isn't perfect! Sigh.)
(I probably am a bad citizen for not posting a comment to that answer indicating that addressing this aspect would be an improvement.)
While I realize that acceptance is a matter of personal opinion, I hope that some further guidance can be given both on this specific question and the more general issue.
Related Meta Question
Is it ok to have 0% accept rate? (Caleb's answer was somewhat comforting.)
Weakly Related Meta Question
Stating there's still room for a better answer

Please feel no pressure or compulsion to accept answer.
It's not required and is a very personal choice.
Personally I will object to anyone trying to pressure someone else to accept an answer (I'm far more likely to try to persuade someone to unaccept an answer rather than accept one).
By accepting too early you essentially say "we're done here let's move on" to folks who stop by later. If you believe there is a better answer out there, then don't accept an answer. Maybe never.
A few months ago, SE removed the visibility of the accept rate statistic. The reason they did this was because it actively discouraged folks from answering questions by people who don't accept answers. This was not in the spirit of the network and as such the feature was removed. IE: accepting is not required and should not mechanically discourage folks from answering your questions.
Last thing, accepting an answer doesn't necessarily mean that it's right, it's just that it's most useful to you. If you find an answer that meets that, then maybe it's time to accept. But again, don't ever feel obligated to accept an answer.

Personally: 1. I think it is OK to ask, "would you like to accept an answer?" - some people don't know they can or just forget to accept. And I'd like to add that 2. You can always change an accepted answer.

@Wikis I agree, and I sometimes ask, "What's lacking in [answerer]'s answer?" Sometimes that led to the answer being accepted, sometimes the asker explained what they were hoping to see in a good answer and hadn't seen yet, sometimes nothing happened. I'm fine with any of those outcomes, but I don't see anything wrong with asking.

During my first few days in Christianity.SE, I was hungry for points. I accepted the answers because I get two points in return, but I always waited for at least two days for better answers to come. However, on some questions, I was not satisfied with the answers and simply left it unaccepted, or write my own answer.
Now that I have enough points, I become more skeptical and demands better and well sourced answers. I don't just accept them anymore. I accept only when the answer is well written with proper sources. I never accept answers just because I agree with it.
It is good to accept answers. It's a way of saying 'thanks' in S.E. But it is not compulsory.


text:
Unupvote then downvote plus downvote on another question?
This question was unupvoted and downvoted within the same hour. It has not been edited in over 60 days. I think this is weird because I thought that your vote was locked in after a day or two unless the post was edited. Can someone please clear this up?
Also this question was downvoted within that same hour. I get very few downvotes and I think this sequence of events is very weird. I don't know what to make of this, but if the downvoter(s) see this meta post I would appreciate an explanation or a comment on the questions that were downvoted.
I also think that neither of these questions have any issues at all. They are not even hot topic sensitive issues and are about as close to objective questions with objective answers as is possible on this site.

I also got an unexpected downvote on my women in Willow Creek leadership question. When I get an unexplained downvote I always ask for an explanation and leave it at that. If vote rigging / serial downvoting is going on, the SO team should be able to detect it.

To answer the first part of your question:

Up- or down- votes are locked in 5 minutes after they're made: after 5 minutes a vote can't be changed...
...unless the post is edited.  Once a post is edited, any up- or down- vote is unlocked and can be changed at any time.
But 5 minutes after a vote is changed, it'll be locked in again.

The idea is that if someone edits a question, it's almost like new (in terms of voting).  And since there's no notification to voters when a question is edited, it makes sense to leave it open for the original voter to come back any time and adjust their vote.

Take a look at the question I am talking about. It was last edited on September 27th. It was unupvoted only yesterday. It has been a bit longer than five minutes. Should I consider this a bug?

Not a bug... The question was asked 23 Sep and upvoted sometime before 27 Sep.  After the edit on the 27th, the vote was unlocked, and un-upvoted (yesterday, you said).

I get it now. The upvote that was removed must have been submitted before the most recent edit.


text:
More downvotes today: I think I am the victim of some serial downvoting
I made a meta post describing a peculiar sequence of voting events on some of my questions.
I log on today to see that three more of my questions have been downvoted and no comment was left. 1 2 3
I wouldn't call these my best questions, but they have no other downvotes and have at least three upvotes.
When something like this happens two days in a row and the last time I got a downvote before that was over 90 days ago it is fishy at best.
Do I have any recourse? Is this not serious enough to be looked into? I realize that people may vote however they choose and perhaps someone is looking through all my posts just because they want to see and evaluate them. But these aren't even my worst ones and there are no comments to suggest improvement.

Three more questions have been downvoted: 1 2 3
There is no longer any doubt in my mind. Someone is downvoting my posts without good reason. Just like the day before, all three downvotes are being done within a minute of each other. They seem to be focusing on my questions and are doing about three per day. I wonder if I offended them in some way.
When does this actually become an issue or will I have to endure every post being downvoted if this person so wishes?

NEWEST UPDATE
I see that three of the downvotes were reversed a few hours ago. Was that auto-triggered or did a Mod or SE employee decide it was necessary? Either way, thanks.

It has happened to me and several others before. There's really practically nothing we can do about it.

The alternative explanation to the serial downvoting is that those questions are just not good enough. Remember, what constitutes a "good question" can be a subjective process. As long as the downvoter thinks there may not be a good response, the item has the potential to be downvoted.

Yeah I have experienced this to a degree myself. People down vote an answer because it is contrary to their beliefs, no matter how well written it is or what evidence you have given. Even if someone answers with something I don't want or believe, if it is well written and researched I will still upvote it or just leave it alone. Downvote is for answers that are opinion based, not researched, or are not on topic, etc..

@El'endia What about the fact that one of the questions linked on the other meta post has not been edited in over 60 days yet an unupvote was allowed. I thought your vote gets locked in.

@fredsbend re: your other meta question, did you not see the updated answer?

Ohhh. I missed that in the explanation. The post has been edited, just a while ago, but the unupvote must be from a person who upvoted before the last edit. I guess that makes sense. Ha! They were only tag edits! Some people. Thanks for the help.

I have had someone do the opposite to me, someone voted every  one of my posts up and some of the ones I first posted when I first came to the site were quite bad.

@CecilBeckum I'm not sure that would bother me as much ;)

@ fredsbend perhaps you are right, but there are two things which bother me about it in that it gave me two badges which I do not deserve, and it causes me to wonder if just voting everything up is fair since gives the same status to bad questions as good questions, and since I am still learning how to ask questions it is useless for that. I take all votes to heart and try to learn from them whether they be up or down. The number of reps I gain or lose is immaterial to me I want to learn or pass on any knowledge I may have to help in God's work.

There is an automated process that will take care of most cases of extreme serial downvoting. This appears to be the case in the instance that prompted this (I have no more info here than you do).
If someone goes through and downvotes or upvotes a bunch of your posts, chances are they will get reversed by the script. This is normal behavior to prevent the very case you see here. Generally this is nothing to worry about, it's the system working.
We have very little (potentially no) information on who has done this and it would be very imprudent to share. In extreme cases we can and do contact the community team if something happens that the script doesn't catch and they will evaluate the situation.
One thing I should point out though, the system is designed to discourage you from going to a user's profile and upvoting several of their answers in a row. That's worth keeping in mind for all of us. If you do that, there is a good chance those votes will be reversed.

You wrote: the system is designed to discourage you from going to a user's profile and upvoting several of their answers in a row - how?

@Wikis SE keeps the details close to the vest, but a bunch of consecutive votes on a user will get invalidated (and the number is lower than you might think).


text:
What do people here think of the new top bar?
The top bar on SE sites seems to have changed on 4 December 2013. I am curious what people here think of the change. (meta.stackoverflow may be a better place for such discussion and there may already be a question there, but I thought I would post this here.)
One thing I miss is the link to meta (or main if at the meta site). I do not miss the chat link that much, but others might (though there is still a link at the bottom of the page).
The replacing of one's user name with one's avatar provides more horizontal room (perhaps an optimization oriented to mobile displays?), but I kind of miss seeing my name (such seems to give a feeling of self-importance).
The help dropdown is an improvement in my opinion because it provides more context yet takes up less immediate visual space. (I am guessing that "Tour" takes the place of "about" [though there is still an about link at the bottom].)
So what do y'all think of the change?

I like it. But I can't provide an unopinionated answer to that.

@LukeBurgess But opinionated answers are part of meta, particularly for discussion questions. While opinion here (by itself) is unlikely to significantly influence a SE-wide design factor, general opinion is significant. Also expressing an opinion might reveal strengths or weaknesses or otherwise encourage improvement (or just express gratitude to the designers [which incidentally would be an encouragement to continue good work]).

It turns out that if you click on the site switcher - "Stack Exchange" dropdown in the top left - you get "Christianity" and "Christianity meta" as the top two options here and on main C.SE. It is two clicks rather than one, but it is there.

The meta link is also under the help menu, near where the meta link used to be.  It's not intuitive and requires two clicks instead of one, but there it is.

One question I'm interested in is why there is now a log out link. ;)

The new top bar was first paraded on the main meta site about a month ago as a beta so many of us have been using it for a while now. It's various merits and shortcomings have also been discussed at length.
While I still have a few nitpicks, overall I think the experience is an improvement.

Yeah, it was hard to fathom the lack of a meta button when they only had it on meta SO

@PeterTurner It was easy enough to extrapolate from the lack of a 'main' link, and it was certainly a topic of conversation. You are aware of its replacement representation in the site tree and also in 'help', yes?

@Caleb I did not notice that the help dropdown was different for a main site compared to a meta site. On the meta site, there is a "What's Meta" link not a "Meta" link like on the main site. (This makes sense since if one is on meta navigation to meta's front page is easy. Having a link to explain meta is a nice complement to main-site-oriented "Tour".)

I like:

That I can see rep changes for all sites at a glance.
That the Christianity SE bar is now the same height as other sites.
Messages and rep now neatly handled separately.

I don't like:

The disappearance of the meta link. I used this a lot. I also think it will make it harder for new users to work out that there is a place to discuss this site.
The black background. On some sites it looks OK - here on Christianity, with its white background, it looks a bit scary (but here is a great improvement proposal from sci-fi which I have cross-posted to meta).
I miss the chat link. It's a long way to scroll down. :)

The StackExchange dropdown has links to blog, chat, log out, the main and meta sites for the current site and one's five highest reputation (main) sites. However, this is not obviously discoverable. Even the hover text "A list of all 112 Stack Exchange sites" does not make it obvious that such links would be found there.

Oops! that should have been "one's four highest reputation (main) sites" (I had mistakenly counted the current site).

Worth pointing out that the Help link also contains a link to meta. I'd still rather meta and chat links be visible and not hidden in menus, it is in one of the places people should look when they are trying to find their way around

Christianity.se is one site I had the most concern with the new top bar (vs. previously white). It does clash a bit with the originally design intent I had: the top portion of the site being open and airy. I gave this site's new top bar more translucency so the cloud and tones would jump out a bit more. It's growing on me.

@Jin: thanks for your reply. Personally I still think it clashes too much - and the dark colour does not fit a site which should be about light. I think the transparent idea would work really well - what do you think?

I like

The site-switcher dropdown has a permanent link to the blog: it doesn't appear only when there's a new post.


text:
Is freemasonry on-topic?
So there are a lot of different opinions of freemasonry, but many of them sound like malicious rumors. I would love to use this site as a resource to clear them up and get to the truth.
The problem: Some people claim that freemasonry is not a religious group, which makes them not a Christian group, which makes them off-topic for the site.
The difference: A lot of people think they are some kind of Christian group, so they would expect this site to have questions and answers on them.
What are we going to decide about this?

Ask this guy Freemason the satirist

@Mawia I pinged him in chat about Mason stuff, then the idea to post this question came up. He will see it eventually.

The most important question is "do Freemasons identify themselves as a Christian group?"
If the answer to that question is yes, then they are on topic. If the answer to that question is no then they aren't.
I'm not a Freemason so I have no insight into the question beyond that. Perhaps our resident Freemason could give us an answer.

I think that questions about Freemasonry from the point of view of some denomination are definitely on-topic. History, doctrine, attitudes, discipline - it's all there, and there's lots to talk about. For questions from a masonic point of view, I agree with you that it depends on how they identify (perhaps some subgroups are different?). I'm also not a mason.

Therein lies the question. Every mason I have met is a Christian, yet, most reputable sources insist that they are not a Christian/religious group.

It's kind of like defending a negative.  Imagine if I asked you in public and in front of a large crowd, "HAVE YOU STOPPED BEATING YOUR WIFE YET?"  How do you answer that?  "No, I never beat my wife" but people will jump on the first word.  Or if you answer, "Yes, because I never beat her in the first place" someone will jump on the first word and say, "see, you did beat you wife and you admit it!"

I'll formulate my comments into an answer but am interested in understanding other's hostility.  It's not even that people don't like Freemasonry (which I would be okay with) it's that people are hostile towards them and make incorrect and slanderous rumors which people assume are true.

@Freemasonthesatirist those aspects (where institutionalized) would be on topic IMO.

What do you think about this chat question?

I'm going to hit this from three angles.
First
I'm going to agree with wax eagle's answer:

The most important question is "do Freemasons identify themselves as a
  Christian group?"

combined with freemason the satitirist's statement:

On the surface, no. Freemasonry is not a religion and even more so, it
  is not a Christian religion. The majority of members (especially in
  the US) are Christian and there are specific "side bodies" which
  require you to be Christian - but as a whole, it is not Christian.

and say that this is enough to address that questions about what freemasonry teaches are off-topic.
That's fairly straightforward in my mind.
Second
The question could be reworded as "What to Christians teach about freemasonry?", or "why do Christians say x about freemasonry?".
Those are a bit more of a gray area.  Is it valid to ask what Christianity teaches about Freemasonry?  Well, I'd stick to the principle in Is it valid to ask if “Christianity” teaches anything?.  In short, not like that.  That's just too broad.  If you can make a nice, focused question, then it's probably on-topic.  Example, "does the catholic Church have an official statement on whether it's allowed to be a Freemason" would be OK.
Third
Is it constructive?  Are you trying to stir the pot?
I like to stir the pot as much as pretty much anyone else.  I try to hide it on the main site and here, but I love a good debate, and I'll often make statements that are over-the-top just to start some fun and see what happens.
Likewise, I see a lot of questions here about certain non-mainstream denominations that seem to be trying to point out flaws in their beliefs.  Questions that blatantly say "I don't believe any of that Joseph Smith nonsense" if you read between the lines.
Those questions make me shake my head and sigh, because they're clearly intentionally goading, but phrased in such a way that someone with an LDS perspective could respond and still be within guidelines.
I'd say that questions like that are on topic and fair, if the OP is allowing the LDS members to give a reasonable explanation for whatever difficulty the question describes.
However, I wouldn't say the same about questions about Freemasonry, because of the first point:  This site isn't here to discuss the Freemason's teachings or point of view.  So there is absolutely no way for a Freemason to  refute or address any of the charges against Freemasonry while remaining on-topic.
That just doesn't seem fair to me.
I could argue that such questions are within bounds because of point 2, but from a standpoint of "StackExchange's mission is to make the Internet a better place", No.  Playing within the rules while taking pot shots at others when the others have no recourse isn't making the Internet a better place.  It's not a standard VTC reason, but if I see those, I'll be voting to use the custom close as "Off-topic because..." with the reason:
"Off-topic because StackExchange sites aren't the the right venue to take potshots at others' beliefs."
Which is in line with the guidance in the help center.

Be nice.
Civility is required at all times; rudeness will not be tolerated.
  Treat others with the same respect you’d want them to treat you
  because we’re all here to learn, together. Be tolerant of others who
  may not know everything you know, and bring your sense of humor.

So if you can stay within the bounds of points 1 and 2, and not violate point 3, you're probably in the clear.

@fredsbend, not that I think YOU would use the site to take potshots, that's an answer geared to head off potential future problems from those who would.

This is helpful, David. Now that I have a real question going on the site, let's see what happens.

"This site isn't here to discuss the Freemason's teachings or point of view. So there is absolutely no way for a Freemason to refute or address any of the charges against Freemasonry while remaining on-topic."  You're absolutely correct and has been my experience so far.  There was a question that has been delete about Freemasonry which I responded which ultimately was off topic as an answer because it's not related to Christianity.  And you're right, it's just not far to not allow a reasonable defense however that defense may not be on topic for the site.

I attempted to make my own Freemasonry.SE however it wasn't popular enough to proceed.  There are two generations in Freemasonry which are not contiguous.  There are Freemasons who are over 70 (generally over 80 and WWII vets) and there are 35 and younger members.  The older and majority are generally not computer literate and have no use for social networking via the internet.  So, starting a SE or even a Facebook page has an added level of challenge to gain members.
Do questions regarding Freemasonry fit Christianity.SE?
On the surface, no.  Freemasonry is not a religion and even more so, it is not a Christian religion.  The majority of members (especially in the US) are Christian and there are specific "side bodies" which require you to be Christian - but as a whole, it is not Christian.
With that said, some Christians are very anti-freemasonry and slanderous towards the fraternity.  So then, IMHO, there should be a vehicle for Christians to ask about the relationship between Christianity and Freemasonry.  Especially when Christians can be aggressive against Freemasonry - and many of them do not know why.  From my experience it's been like this:

Oh, you're a Freemason?
Yes
Aren't Freemasons devil worshipers?
WTH?  No.  There could be devil worshipers who are Freemasons, but
Freemasons are not devil worshipers.
Yes they are.
What makes you say that?
Because you are.

Quite often the Christians who are against Freemasonry are Catholic or Christian Fundamentalists.  I'm very open about the fraternity and more than willing to explain what I see as conflicts between the orthodox Christian religion and the Fraternity.  Specifically
2 Corinthians 6:14 NIV

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness
  and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with
  darkness?

Freemasonry as a fraternity promises to aid, support, and defend fellow members as far as truth, honor, and justice will allow.  That is irregardless of their religion, race, or social class.  If a Christian cannot belong to a group that non-Christians belong to, then Christians have no reason to be a police officer, in the military, or a doctor.
What does Freemasonry teach about religion?
Our lodge opens with the Holy Bible (as seen on the CBS clip).  Our prayers during are meedings end with "in Jesus' name we pray" because our lodge is full of Christians.  Should there be a Muslim visitor, we may end the prayer slightly differently as to not offend.  Imagine if you wanted to pray in public.  If you were at the nativity scene, you may end with "in Jesus' name we pray".  If you were elsewhere and attempting to be non-confrontational, you may end in "in God we trust" or something similar.
Freemasonry allows people to become friends with those of other faiths.  I would have never known how similar Islam is to Christianity w/o becoming friends with Muslims who are Freemasons (link to a question about them from me on Islam.SE).  They are just like us.  There are extremists who are Christian just like there are extremists who are Muslim, but the majority are in the middle (sometimes literally).  The Qur'an is violent, so is the Bible.  Both religions have been known to do evil things in the name of their religion to please (as they believe) God.
Freemasonry does however allow you to build your relationship with God in your own way, without dogma and without direction.  Your denomination becomes less important as you learn that we're all worshiping the same God differently.  This scares the crap out of pastors who are struggling to maintain membership for their salary.  Imagine if we all (as I believe Jesus taught) were to pray away from the temples and priests but instead pray and communicate with friends and alone.  Jesus himself prayed on a rock, I believe it is good enough for me too.  However, I help out at 3 different churches of different denominations.  Why?  Because I believe that the naive need a place to start and I support them where I can.
Who are Freemasons today?
I won't talk about past presidents or owners of large automobile companies.  However I will tell you who are members of my specific lodge.  We have a Protestant Pastor, an Episcopal Rector, a speaker of the house of representatives, a former superintendent of the local school system, an architect, a contractor, and computer programmers (me).  I have not met more pastors, fathers, etc on a personal level since I joined.  When I ask them why they joined, mostly they give me the same response.  It is a vehicle for them to be one of the guys.  As you can imagine, a pastor has to always be on church mode when he's out in public.  If he's at the supermarket, he may be stopped by a member of his church to pray for their sick cat or something.  They really are never off the clock.  However when they are in the lodge.  Their voice is just as important as everyone else.  They screw up their lines (parts we memorize and recite to each other in allegories / plays) just like everyone else and are humbled by it.  Sometimes, we humans need that as to not become too proud or full of ourselves.
Why would anyone join?
"If you guys just dress up, socialize, and raise money for charities, why can't I just do that w/o paying for a membership?"  The answer to that is simple, you can.  Freemasonry takes a special type of geek to enjoy it.  Generally we are introverts, intelligent, and free thinkers.  Freemasonry is away that we can come out of our shell a bit and be social.  You can join a small group session at church and get many of the same benefits w/o having annual dues.  However, just like the pastor example, people generally have their "church faces" on.  In the small group, you may have an itching question about something but you suppress it because you don't want to look stupid or go against / question the doctrine of your denomination.  Whereas in Freemasonry these questions may be asked - as long as it's not within the lodge session but at a social event afterwards.  During meetings, politics and religion are off topic and down voted worse that a bad SE post.
I am always willing to answer any questions that anyone may have.  If I feel uncomfortable with answering a specific question, I may defer you to somewhere else.  For example, you may ask me, "Do you guys do this for your EA ritual?"  I would say that there are things online that probably shouldn't be online.  I prefer to not talk about them, not because they're a secret but because I believe that when a person joins, he should have as little knowledge about the ritual as possible as to entertain and excite him.  If you knew everything about it, why would you join?
I will tell you that there are several things that are not known which should be before you join.  You should know in whom you place your trust because you will be asked ("Jesus Christ" is a perfectly good answer).  You should know what the heel and hollow of your feet are.

This was interesting to read, but I don't see you leaning one way or the other if Freemasonry is on-topic for the site. As I see it now, the only thing that I see as on-topic would be debunking the crazy ideas about Freemasonry being religious. Your section that says "we are all worshiping the same God differently" surely comes with many questions that would be on-topic for this site, kind of, if that is "official teaching" of most of the lodges.

You know, I want to say that history that is even slightly related to Christianity should always be on-topic, so do you think this question in chat is on-topic?

I believe it is on topic when in the context of Christianity.  Specifically where Freemasonry is at odds with Christianity.  "Can a Freemason be a Christian?"  Even in its worst case, that question is more about "Can a Christian lose salvation?"  I feel that general questions about Freemasonry are offtopic as much as political question are offtopic.  However the relationship between Christianity and Freemasonry is on topic.

Excellent. I think we will go with that. I will try to make a summarizing meta post then ask that chat question on the main site and see what happens.

I believe that the specific question of, "is Freemasonry a cult / occult" is not on topic because you are asking Christians to answer something that many of them do not know.  However I would personally LOVE to understand why a Christian would feel compelled to ask such a question.

If I understand you correctly, Freemasonry is not a religion at all. It's only a community or organisation, where people from all religions are allowed. If this is correct, I don't think Freemasonry has anything to do with Christianity and not even related to Religion. But I still don't understand why you have to pray in your meetings. Is it compulsory to pray? Can an atheist be a Freemason?

+1, but why did you add the satirist to your username? Is not 'Freemason' already enough to stay on here where several Christians see satirists as devils?

@ElberichSchneider I'm not sure why I added that.  I was in a mood for satire when I changed my name and didn't know that I had to wait 30 days to change it.  I plan on changing it on the 20th (when I can).  And no, I don't know why satire and a satirist would be considered devils by anyone nor was it my intent.

@Mawia atheists cannot be join in America.  However from what I understand Freemasons in France can be atheists.  Freemasonry is religious but not a religion.  Imagine a non-denominational church function where people do not talk about the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism but come together for a feast.  We know there are differences between the denominations, but we will not discuss them during the feast.  Now put that on a grander scale, where other religions can also meet.


text:
can't login, is God telling me something?
I thought it would be cute to use a "fake" OpenID provider, like openid.aliz.es/makeuptheusername. No password, just a cryptic username and you're good to go. I really like the idea. And if you want to make fun of it, read Richard M. Stallman's story about his MIT days.
But now, either SE or that site have a clock synchronization problem, and let me log out and try to log in to reproduce the problem, or use another browser to do the same.

Unable to log in with your OpenID provider:
This message has a timestamp of 12/14/2013 8:22:15 AM, which is beyond the allowable clock skew for in the future.

OK, how do I pick up my account?

Perhaps you should email SE support. I don't think anybody except the SE staff can help you.

Next time post on the main stack exchange meta: no minimum rep is required and you have the attention of the whole network not just this site. Posting on main like you did is not the right approach.

If the question is 'can't login, is God telling me something?', then, maybe, yes, but it is difficult to say what He wish you do.

You can use the account recovery system to gain access to your account. Note that this is linked in the help center section on accounts along with how to deal with other OpenID issues.

There is no e-mail associated with  an openID provider like openid.aliz.es/. That's the point of using a fake openID provider.

@user9055 If you provided fake information there isn't much we can do through normal channels. You can try the OpenID recovery related stuff from the help center or email support and try to authenticate your claim manually. Next time use legit credentials and you won't have this problem.


text:
Link to Christianity.StackExchange quickly
I just found out that Stack Exchange has their very own link shortener and I wanted to be sure that the community here was aware of it.
To link to Christianity.StackExchange.com quickly you can type:
http://s.tk/christianity

It might be too late, but I think it should be shorter than "christianity". Not sure what though. I might start a new meta post for that.

Their standard practice is to use the subdomain on the shortened link so i doubt it will get much shorter.

@waxeagle The Biology Site has requested bio I don't see why the SE staff will not do it for them.

I would think s.tk/christ would be acceptable. I doubt there's going to be a Stack Exchange about Jesus himself.

Or s.tk/jesus which is even shorter!

+1. I didn't think of that. I do wonder if that might be getting too far away.
I'd suggest Xian, but I don't think people would know what it meant, and I don't want to upset the people who believe that Xmas is removing the Christ from Christmas.

@trlkly If you try to prevent upsetting people who are upset about something because of their own ignorance then you are going to be walking on eggshells the rest of your life. Not to sound snooty, but the people I have met who actually think that the X is meant to replace Christ and secularize christmas and other things are not the kind of people I want posting on an intellectual site. They seem to not care that they might be misinformed and will continually spout this even after you correct them.

So far I like christ, short for christianity. I don't like jesus because there are a lot of clashing opinions even within Christianity. I am partial to xian however. Sounds really techie, like a linux distro or something.

@fredsbend: But, as a Christian, I have a requirement not to unnecessarily stir up strife amongst my fellow Christians. And I just don't see reclaiming the X as being all that important. Plus I think it would have the recognizablility problem that s.tk/xp would also have. You even thought it looked like a Linux distro.

Why not use the Chi-Rho symbol, the symbol of Constantine and the first two letters of Christos in Greek? It's not likely to clash with any other Stack Exchange site.
http://s.tk/xp

a little weird though for the casual christian that is unaware of these things. I was tossing around xian or chrstn or maybe just x but I bet SE would not accept that one.

I wouldn't want to be confused for a site about Windows XP. +1 for being pretty darn short and making some sense.

Windows XP won't be a problem after April. (I think it's April it goes out of support)

I remember in 2009 reading that XP support officially ends in 2014, but for some reason it will still be illegal to use the software without a legitimate key.

Wouldn't it be awesome if MS released the source and gave it to the open source community? What they could do with it would be awesome.

The problem I have is that those letters aren't Chi Rho or how those letters are usually transliterated. "XP" would work, as those at least look the same, but "xp" are completely different letters. I think even Christians who are knowledgeable of Greek wouldn't recognize it.