The Christianity site has scoping rules that help keep the kind of problem I experienced in check. If somebody asks a question about the Lutheran church or the Greek orthodox church or whatever, then answers about Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons or Baptists are not answers per site rules and are removed (if they're not edited to fix the problem). As I understand it, the site requires this kind of scoping to keep "doctrine wars" in check.
No such rules existed on BH when I was there. A question asking about the interpretation of some passage in Genesis, for example, even if it asked for text-based analysis, would invariably get "that's about Jesus" and personal opinions (no hermeneutic declared) or odd mystical interpretations having no evident connection to the text. And the community retained those answers, upvoted the evangelical Christian ones, and called this "pluralism" and "diversity".
I don't mind that Jewish (or other minority) perspectives had to compete with legitimate Christian ones; I mind that they were getting drowned out pretty much everywhere by inappropriate evangelical noise. The practices of the users and moderators were inconsistent with the stated goals of being welcoming to all and requiring answers to be relevant (and show their work). By being "welcoming" to evangelists and the fringe, they were by definition unwelcoming to religious minorities and, in particular, one that has been persecuted by Christian evangelists for centuries. Can you see how uncomfortable that would feel?
I was getting harassed by some users (and moderators), but that's not directly why I left. Rather, that led me to re-evaluate what I was doing there, and I realized that what was actually doing was helping to build a quasi-church online, and that's really not ok.
I did get SE employees involved, several times, with very mixed results. My complaints about a problematic moderator went nowhere. Tim Post was super-helpful in various ways I won't get into here. I'll tell you my user number in SE chat, and also why it won't help you as much as you think it will. My best bible-related writing is on Mi Yodeya.
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Re: Thoughts ...
Date: 2018-08-15 01:31 am (UTC)The Christianity site has scoping rules that help keep the kind of problem I experienced in check. If somebody asks a question about the Lutheran church or the Greek orthodox church or whatever, then answers about Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons or Baptists are not answers per site rules and are removed (if they're not edited to fix the problem). As I understand it, the site requires this kind of scoping to keep "doctrine wars" in check.
No such rules existed on BH when I was there. A question asking about the interpretation of some passage in Genesis, for example, even if it asked for text-based analysis, would invariably get "that's about Jesus" and personal opinions (no hermeneutic declared) or odd mystical interpretations having no evident connection to the text. And the community retained those answers, upvoted the evangelical Christian ones, and called this "pluralism" and "diversity".
I don't mind that Jewish (or other minority) perspectives had to compete with legitimate Christian ones; I mind that they were getting drowned out pretty much everywhere by inappropriate evangelical noise. The practices of the users and moderators were inconsistent with the stated goals of being welcoming to all and requiring answers to be relevant (and show their work). By being "welcoming" to evangelists and the fringe, they were by definition unwelcoming to religious minorities and, in particular, one that has been persecuted by Christian evangelists for centuries. Can you see how uncomfortable that would feel?
I was getting harassed by some users (and moderators), but that's not directly why I left. Rather, that led me to re-evaluate what I was doing there, and I realized that what was actually doing was helping to build a quasi-church online, and that's really not ok.
I did get SE employees involved, several times, with very mixed results. My complaints about a problematic moderator went nowhere. Tim Post was super-helpful in various ways I won't get into here. I'll tell you my user number in SE chat, and also why it won't help you as much as you think it will. My best bible-related writing is on Mi Yodeya.