Important feature which differs Stack Exchange sites with regular discussion forums is having community moderation. That is we are the people help each other. Users having knowledge on how the site works will help the new users in understanding others. We need not to run to the admins for help every time. This is what attracted me to join Hinduism Stack Exchange. But in experience, that has been a disappointment for me because it is running like regular forums.
For moderation, we have comments and reviews. I can only speak of comments posted under questions and answers now because I don't have experience about reviews here.
When a new user joins a site and posts a question, it is natural that it goes to review queues. Some user who knows reviews work review the post and give some guidance how to improve the post. Or they might vote/edit the question/answer. But in practice, this is not followed properly. What I see most of the times is a regular comment template like this. For questions:
Welcome to Hinduism Stack Exchange. Take a tour and read help center.
For answers
Welcome to Hinduism Stack Exchange. You should cite scriptures in the answers. Otherwise, this is only opinion and will be deleted.
No edits, no improvement of tagging, grammar, language or formatting in the posts. Just a comment.
But the site's faq say the otherwise. There is a big list of sources valid on our site. What kind of references are valid in answers? Are modern works allowed? also Which scriptures / sources are considered valid?. There are many other discussions under sources-and-citations. So, we are supposed to point them to add some authentic references and help them how to write good questions or answers. Also, it doesn't guarantee a deletion of answer for each and every answer posted without sources. At least not immediately. The policy of deleting answers say there is a time of 2 weeks to improve our answers.
Some users also post comments like this:
Use answers only to write answers. Otherwise, leave a comment under the question to communicate with users.
This shows that the user who wrote comment do not know the privileges. A user can only comment when he/she reaches a score of 50. How can a new user directly comment on a question directly?
Many new users joining Stack Exchange Network do not know that there are faq and policies. They post question and answer like they do on a regular discussion forum. Even in those cases, the questions are upvoted and comments continuing the discussion raised in the question are also posted under the question instead of closing or letting know the user how to write a proper question as guided in help center or faq we have. When such a question is closed, there was a case users vote to reopen the question even though there is no without checking improvement at all. This defeats the purpose of comments on the site and closing off-topic questions.
New users by default do not know how to vote, ask, tag, answer from day one. Leaving everything to their choice can also be a problem. Guiding how to do it properly will help the users. Reviews and comments are handled by users who have an inaccurate understanding of help center pages and faq. Some don't even read the help center and guidelines themselves but advise other users to do. This is another problem.
There is also a misguidance in voting on questions. Recently, I posted a welcome comment under a new user's post and asked him not to accept and vote on answers which are copy pasted or poorly written. This is what help center articles say and there are plenty of discussions posted on Meta Stack Exchange and also on our site. There is clear guidance on what to accept and what to vote on on various sites. Even though it is a choice of OP, there is guidance to maintain quality.
So, I posted according to the guidance given in those pages. This type of guidance is given regularly to new users on howto edit, how to write an answer, how to improve question etc., and this is not forcing our will on the OP. But there appeared a comment by a user who has participated both on Main and Meta site (which got upvote).
you can always accept the answer you are satisfied with. It's entirely your decision. So, there was no need for you to un accept the answer after accepting it. When you get a "better" answer then you can always select that one by un-accepting the current one. No one can force you on this.
That is not the end. Another user who has access to review queues said something else:
Even if I had 1 reputation, no prob. I am not here for the sake of reputation. I am satisfied because the OP got the answer he was looking for. You seem to campaign against somebody, just like a political election. IMHO this is a holy place. Not a political arena. (Anyways, I have added the disclaimer at the start of my answer
How is this forcing or running a political campaign? According to that logic, all the moderators are also doing the same and all the users on Meta Stack Exchange is also doing and the same. Are they running an election campaign against someone?
The moderators removed the portion from my comment where I said not to vote and accept copied content. Why? Why was it considered offensive? Will they remove guidance from voting faq and voting help centers also?
Is giving guidance according to help center articles and faq pages forcing our will? Then what is the point of moderation by users and moderators?
Stack Exchange had made some changes to its features like adding unfriendly/unkind comments and added a new contributor indicator under a post so that experienced users would help the new users to understand the site better (in a friendlier way).
So, is site doing enough to differentiate itself from regular discussion forums and fanatic forums? What steps is the community taking for providing accurate guidance towards the Stack Exchange way of functioning of the site?
P.S : Having meta posts is not enough as I have shown how those Meta posts are not reached or not understood properly to reviewers and high reputed users. I am looking for something in practice.
