What changes would you like to see happen for your continued active participation on this site?

Question

What is that you like about this site compared to other SE sites?

In what areas is this site lagging and can be improved?

All opinions/suggestions are welcome.

Answer 1

• Have concrete rules for the deletion of answers and deletion of comments or moving them to chat rooms.
• Moderators should reject flags with a bit more explanation, especially when flagged by more experienced users; just declined or disputed doesn't help in the next flagging
• Stricter implementation of the Be Nice policy
• More participation from Mods on meta to resolve disputes/complaints
• People should vote more

If above points are not met, doesn't mean I will stop participating. But above points are definitely boosters.

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What I like about this SE is the heterogeneous people, which are coming from different faiths & philosophies. Due to enforcement of scriptural citations, the answers on the site give authenticity to the knowledge.

Answer 2

What is that you like about this site compared to other SE sites?

• I liked the open approach of this site when it started, we were not acting like fanatics and been welcoming to all curiosities which made it more welcoming for non-faith people too. As for me I expected this site to be more knowledge based rather than more religious.

• I liked the scripture based answers here and the rule to maintain quality by enforcing this rule.

• I liked that my own religion is getting a SE site too and it's more welcoming than other religious forms and sites.

In what areas is this site lagging and can be improved?

By solving these issues:

• Sect based fights: In blind fights about my sect and your sect, users here are crossing lines, like calling CMs and mods foreigner (in sarcastic way) even when they are trying to help here. _{Just a reminder this site is hosted by a foreigner company.}

• Anti-mod movement: There is wave of non constructive meta posts to target specific mod based on the sect he follows or the country he lives in. Maybe he is wrong few times or maybe not but the way it is portrayed on meta looks like bullying to me. This is the first SE beta site where I have seen so many moderator changes and still users are cribbing about them. So perhaps we need to think if problem is with moderators or the community itself? Maybe we all need to grow up?

• By becoming selfless: Most of the meta posts here are lately becoming my issue, my sect, my comment, my answer rather than we. It's a community and we should work together and get over it. We should respect rules and become selfless and work for the good of whole site rather than own reputation.

• Community engaging events: To deviate from all this drama, we should work towards some community engaging events like chat events, topic of week, specific scripture based discussion events etc.

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I have been common user and moderator both here and this is all my experience. It can be wrong or right but it's what I feel and should deal with.

Answer 3

• We need more answers to unanswered questions.
• We need more answers per question asked. One answer per question is not great even if that one answer is perfect. There are so many perspectives in Hinduism so I want to see answers from several perspectives.
• People should vote with their mind and not with their feelings. There is a bad habit of users downvoting something because they don't like the premise regardless of how useful the questions and answers might be for others. If we are faithful, we should not fear challenges to our beliefs.
• There is a very bad habit of some users hardening their hearts to someone who has gives one answer or question in a way the user doesn't like. Because of this users start scrutinizing everything that person posts. We need to stop trying to read hate into each other's posts. I certainly didn't come here for that, but I have been treated as if that is my purpose.

The vile are ever prone to detect the faults of others, though they be as small as mustard seeds, and persistently shut their eyes against their own, though they be as large as Vilva fruit.

—Garuda Purana 112

• Users are afraid to give answers here. I have never seen so many answers in comments on another SE. I feel it is better to try and fail than to not try at all. This is why our question to answer ratio is low. Compare to any other SE site and this is clear. Biblical Hermeneutics is a good example which is similar to our site in purpose.
• We don't retain users. Looking at the questions asked before 2017 you can easily see how many users are no longer participating. We must ask ourselves what drove them away and what we can do to get more experts here. Who can we talk to in our IRL communities, for example.

Answer 4

I have for long advocated for the habit of (dis)claiming one's position as so, let me provide my position via checklist -

1. When you ask a question, be specific - what is the school of thought/perspective/philosophy that you are most interested in to get the answer from? If there's one that you are aware of, ask the question along with specifying that you are interested in answer from that perspective.

2. If you're not sure how to ask a question tailored to receive answers from a specific school of thought or philosophy or perspective, add a tag - I propose the following tag sarva-darshana for this purpose. This informs the users that the question is non-specific and helps to inform that the following is to be followed/required:

3. If a question is asked tagged with sarva-darshana, then suppose you are answering from VisishtAdvaita perspective to this question even though it specifically doesn't ask for VisishtAdvaita perspective but invites the same by being tagged sarva-darshana - then add a simple claim: "This answer is from VisishtAdvaita perspective" preferably in italic at the top of the answer.

4. If you are answering a sarva-darshana question, and aren't aware of which perspective your answer falls into - leave a comment under your own answer saying that you are don't know which perspective it is from so that people become aware of it and can provide additional references or pointers to the same. If this is not followed:

5. A new banner created for this purpose (that allows users to flag an answer/question as "This question/answer is non-specific and requires resolution of the same") should be raised. Additionally, closing a question on this basis (as a separate option in the close menu) should also be allowed.

6. If your answer is applicable to all cases, simply add the disclaimer at the top of the answer that says "This answer is compatible with all perspectives" or viewpoints or is common to all darshanas or something to that effect. This invites meaningful debates/challenges, as necessary, since the position is made clear.

7. Finally, if the question is specifying its requirement of school of thought/perspective/philosophy, stay on specified topic! while answering the same.

I think with these seven rules we will be able to help resolve a lot of the issues with the site's struggle for cohesiveness and purpose.

Answer 5

Got 2 suggestions at the moment. Will add more later.

1. We should welcome all type of scripture related question whether it looks good or not, for example this question , it might not be looking good on reading, but since it has scripture reference, we should welcome it.

2. while writing an answer we should write in such a way that, the answer should look proper analysed. For example check these answers Answer 1 or Answer 2 or Answer 3 . There are many more, but you'll get an idea after seeing these answers. So, just avoid adding script references, but also write yours analysis against it.