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The purpose of this thread was to collect questions for the questionnaire. The questionnaire is now live, and you may find it here.

Biblical Hermeneutics is scheduled for an election next week, October 5, 2020. In connection with that, we will be holding a Q&A with the candidates. This will be an opportunity for members of the community to pose questions to the candidates on the topic of moderation. Participation is completely voluntary.

Here's how it'll work:

  • Until the nomination phase, (so, until October 5, 2020 at 20:00:00Z UTC, or 4:00 pm EDT on the same day, give or take time to arrive for closure), this question will be open to collect potential questions from the users of the site. Post answers to this question containing any questions you would like to ask the candidates. Please only post one question per answer.

  • We, the Community Team, will be providing a small selection of generic questions. The first two will be guaranteed to be included, the latter ones are if the community doesn't supply enough questions. This will be done in a single post, unlike the prior instruction.

  • If your question contains a link, please use the syntax of [text](link), as that will make it easier for transcribing for the finished questionnaire.

  • This is a perfect opportunity to voice questions that are specific to your community and issues that you are running into currently.

  • At the start of the nomination phase, the Community Team will select up to 8 of the top voted questions submitted by the community provided in this thread, to use in addition to the aforementioned 2 guaranteed questions. We reserve some editorial control in the selection of the questions and may opt not to select a question that is tangential or irrelevant to moderation or the election.

  • Once questions have been selected, a new question will be opened to host the actual questionnaire for the candidates, typically containing 10 questions in total.

  • This is not the only option that users have for gathering information on candidates. As a community, you are still free to, for example, hold a live chat session with your candidates to ask further questions, or perhaps clarifications from what is provided in the Q&A.

If you have any questions or feedback about this process, feel free to post as a comment here.

10 Answers 10

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What distinguishes this site from questions about the biblical texts on Christianity.SE?

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  • 1
    An easy question (there's no overlapping scope anymore) but a good one to check a potential mod knows how the sites relate to each other.
    – curiousdannii Mod
    Sep 29, 2020 at 4:44
3

Do you agree with the principles outlined in these site distinctives? If not, where and why do you disagree?

2

This site has traditionally allowed a wide variety of hermeneutical approaches and does not (explicitly) favor any religious belief. Is this a policy you'd be interested in changing? Why or why not?

2

Someone has asked a question that is off-topic, perhaps asking for what the Bible says about a topic, or looking for verses. It has already gotten several well received answers, has been put in the Hot Network Questions list, and has thousands of views. What do you, as a moderator, do?

(Example question of exactly this situation.)

2

Suppose there was a member of our community who writes good questions and answers, but who also shows a distinct lack of patience and respect for certain hermeneutical approaches. Perhaps they don't accept source criticism, or they reject traditional authorial ascriptions. Perhaps they can't stand esoteric or Kabbalistic approaches. Perhaps they oppose any Christological readings of the Hebrew Bible. They may not reach the line of objectively offensive, but they're quick to say that others are wrong or their posts are nonsense. What would you do with such a member (especially if you'd frequently agree that the posts they critique are nonsense)?

1
  • (If you can't tell, I'm describing myself to a large extent ;))
    – curiousdannii Mod
    Sep 29, 2020 at 4:28
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Do you feel like an evangelical Protestant Christian worldview1 and hermeneutical approaches are assumed in the majority of questions and answers on this site?

If so, are you OK with such unstated assumptions in

  • questions?

  • answers?

Why or why not?


1 I've elsewhere attempted to define the ideological biases inherent in this worldview.

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Here is a set of general questions, gathered as very common questions asked every election. As mentioned in the instructions, the first two questions are guaranteed to show up in the Q&A, while the others are if there aren't enough questions (or, if you like one enough, you may split it off as a separate answer for review within the community's 8).

  • How would you deal with a user who produced a steady stream of valuable answers, but tends to generate a large number of arguments/flags from comments?
  • How would you handle a situation where another mod closed/deleted/etc a question that you feel shouldn't have been?

  • In your opinion, what do moderators do?
  • A diamond will be attached to everything you say and have said in the past, including questions, answers and comments. Everything you will do will be seen under a different light. How do you feel about that?
  • In what way do you feel that being a moderator will make you more effective as opposed to simply reaching 10k or 20k rep?
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Do you believe this site needs to significantly revise its stated purpose and/or distinctives given the reality of the types of questions and answers typically posted?

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Do you intend to uphold and enforce Stack Exchange's Code of Conduct (including its clause on "No bigotry")—even if elements of this Code of Conduct are in conflict with your personal religious (or other) beliefs?

Note that one BH.SE moderator has already resigned related to this (read his lengthier explanation here) as well as a(nother) Christianity.SE moderator, and a Judaism.SE moderator was forcibly removed related to this issue. There have been numerous moderator (and user) resignations across the Stack Exchange network related to policy changes and how these changes were handled.

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  • 2
    It's not exactly accurate to describe Monica as having been removed for this issue. She was accused of violating a policy that didn't exist and which she didn't know the content of.
    – curiousdannii Mod
    Sep 29, 2020 at 12:23
  • Citing '... including clause on "No bigotry" (as though the issues were about that, rather than other matters) is misleading.
    – Nigel J
    Oct 5, 2020 at 16:39
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Over the past year we've had a lot of questions putting the challenge to Trinitarian Christianity. Now there's no question that non-Trinitarian perspectives aren't welcome on this site, but a lot of these questions, particularly those asking about subtleties of advanced Greek grammar, were not well received: 1, 2, 3, 4.

How would you characterise what was problematic with these questions, and how would you encourage the askers of questions like these to ask good and constructive questions here?

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