Why Hinduism SE is still in beta? Where is it lacking?

Question

• why Hinduism SE is still in beta? Where is it lacking?

• Minimally, what exactly should be improved to make it graduate.

Answer 1

A site will be considered for graduation if it is according to the standards of Stack Exchange. It will not be considered if we as a site only think that we are eligible for graduation. There are some basic standards regarding this. One of them is Area 51 stats. Even our site requested for graduation based on those stats only.

I will say the same what I said in my comment.

User's attitude should be changed if the site needs to get graduated.

Now, a user has majorly four activities on the site.

1. Asking questions

2. Answering questions

3. Voting on the questions and answers.

4. Editing.

   1.Asking questions

   Users are not actively participating in asking questions on the main site. Questions are coming from some group of users. Sometimes 3 or 4 per day. With the efforts of those users, the site has achieved the rate of ~13 questions per day. I appreciate those users who are trying to keep the site stats in proper way but getting questions from only some users is not a good sign. A site should get questions from all the users. When the user has stopped asking questions the number has gone down to 7. So, this shows that there is not much activity from all the users. A site which is requesting for graduation should not be dependent on three or four users for its activity.

   2.Answering questions.

   Just the same case like the question. We need answers from different perspective and different users. We are not getting answers from wide range of users. We should welcome users who attempt to answer honestly. No new user knows how to answer in the first attempt. If you just look at the first answer I wrote, you will be laughing at the way it was presented. So, we should welcome new users and their answers which give useful information. User should post answers when they have information which partially answers the question. Community will help to gather sources which enhance the quality anyway.

   3.Voting on the questions and answers.

   Voting are an important aspect which encourages and discourages the user who is posting questions and answers. It is like fuel to the site. But the fact is we are getting way less votes. I have noticed that there are very less votes. Below is a graph of votes cast in the month of March 2018.

   

   As you can see, there were very less votes recorded. There were only 79 votes per day on the average. This shows that voters are not active on the site. There are already many posts written by various users to create awareness but it looks like there is not a very great result. Voting on the questions and answers provides encouragement to the user for writing more good posts. Especially, voting on new and active posts is important which gets the post to Hot Network Questions which brings the views across the network. This also increases visits from other users. So, voting is another field we are lacking and improved.

   4.Editing

   Editing the posts to bring them to good shape is also an important aspect which enhances the site quality. This is where the users are least interested except one or two here and there. Bad formatting and bad grammar of the posts make the even good posts unreadable and misunderstanding the original content. This is where the work of an editor becomes necessary. A good edit which improves the title, body and grammar of the post also attract upvotes to the post. Now what is a good edit is said in the help center. So, all the edits done should be following the requirements in the help center. Also remember editing is selfless. That gives no reputation if you are over 2k reputation. People should welcome constructive edits on their posts and should not comment on the editors who are giving their time for the site even when you know the editors get nothing from the edits except satisfaction (I must admit this is from my personal experience. Some people ask me to stop editing for various reasons one of them being losing upvotes after the edits. None of the edits were against the help center. When you are enjoying upvotes after the edits, then you should not complain vote cancellations of the edits). Appreciate the editors as you do voters, questioners and answerers. There is very much less love on the editors on this site when compared to other sites. So, this should be improved too.

Some honourable mentions are tags. Tags are also becoming a reason to damage the friendly atmosphere among the users. There are some edit wars going on the main site due to some tags. People have favorite tags (these are not favorite tags according to Stack Exchange, these are personal favorite). They add these tags to each and every questions and say some tags are useless on the site. The problem is people take tags literally. If someone edits out scripture, in the question, a feeling is falsely spread that the editor is opposite to scriptures. If a user is voting to close question about a pure Sanskrit language question, then a feeling is spread that the "user is against Sanskrit language which is language of Vedas. So, this user is against Vedas which are core of Hinduism. So, this user is against Hinduism." In reality, the user only edited out a tag. Tags should be seen as tag and nothing more else. They don't represent scriptures or Vedas literally. Addition or removal of the tag will be done and should be done according to its relevance to the question and nothing else. There is no necessity of saying the user has agenda on the site based on an edit. The situation gets worse when the user makes personal remarks on the editor. So, looking at the tags as tags and not taking them literally is what we should implement in this aspect. We should not show bias in tags. They should be used based on the relevance to the question.

Judging a user's comment or answer based on the faith they follow:

This is the most important aspect where we should improve. When a user posts a question, we should judge them purely on the content he provides. Looking at the personal background or religious back ground is unimportant. Every person on the site has some favorite God in their life. If there is voting based on the back ground of the user, that will be leading to the bias. This is also one of my personal experiences on the site. When I posted a question about Adi Shannkaracharya, who is a great Advaita philospher and acharya, some user said

this is disgusting behavior. knowing this poster's sectarian affiliation, why are they creating controversy in something that doesn't concern them?

This site is not created for a sect or a faith and it is Hinduism on whole. There is no rule that a person following a path of Vaishnavism should not question about Shaivism and a person following a path of absolute non dualism should not post a question about dualism. Such questions should be seen as questions asking some information or a query but not as an attack of one user on the other sect he doesn't follow. Having said that there is an etiquette on asking questions questioning respected acharyas and popular faiths. Such etiquette must be followed. Such questions should not be seen as propanganda every time. If you observe a continuous targetting of a sect or a faith, you can ask the user to be polite and limit the question or answer to that point only. This is a point we have to improve Focus on the post not the user.

If you read the comments under the question, you will get a basic idea that there is definitely not a very healthy atmosphere among the users because there are a couple of comments mentioning "sectarian clique" and "ruling clique". When this very idea that there are "some users" who are responsible for the roadblock of graduation is given up and realises that every user irrespective of reputation, privileges and sect are apart of the community which is moderating the site, then we can start following the points I have stated above.

Last but not the least, Quality is important.

Note: These are the points I have noticed from my experience on the site for two years. There have been users who have been active and also contributed in various ways since the beginning of the site. I also request them to give their perspective why the site is not graduating and where it can be improved.

Answer 2

This site will never graduate as long as members of a tiny sect (in numbers) make hateful posts such as below and other fellow sectarians defend it.

Does Shiva tell his devotees to offer human sacrifice?