What is meta? ×
Meta Stack Exchange is where users like you discuss bugs, features, and support issues that affect the software powering all 131 Stack Exchange communities.

Along with this question on religious salutations on SO, since Islam.SE went through private beta, I need to know if the same policy holds there.

Some users get offended when I edit their religious salutations out and they think they must be allowed. Their reasoning is Islam is a religious site and should be excluded from other SE sites. I wanted to make sure if what I do is right and while it is an SE site, we have to follow the network policy.

share|improve this question
7  
Sounds like a case for their Meta IMO. If they decide they want to keep them, I don't think SE should overrule them. –  Pëkka Jun 21 '12 at 8:37
3  
This is a perfect example of why privileges are not (and should not be) transferred from site to site... Whats a valid edit on one site might be considered vandalism on another. –  Lix Jun 21 '12 at 8:38
1  
@Lix good point. –  Pëkka Jun 21 '12 at 8:39
4  
@DiscountGucciHandbags: While I agree with you, I think the "Low Noise, High Signal" applies on the whole SE site...and salutations, of whatever kind, are noise. –  Time Traveling Bobby Jun 21 '12 at 8:43
1  
This is not a global Stack Exchange issue. Each religious site that sprouts up can have its own discussion on whether that community wants to allow something like that or not. It's not up to us here to decide that for them, as a lot of us here don't know anything about that community. All we can do is cast our general opinions about "salutations" which are already well documented in several questions here. –  animuson Jun 21 '12 at 8:44
11  
Programming is my religion. Can I end all of my Stack Overflow posts with EOF? –  Lix Jun 21 '12 at 8:45
1  
@Urist yeah. I agree in principle, and I probably wouldn't like to be active on a site where every post is preceded by a huge salutation. But when the salutations are so close to the site's topic, I think it needs to be left up to the community to decide. –  Pëkka Jun 21 '12 at 8:46
2  
@Lix: Of course you're capable of doing such a thing, but they all will be edited out. (evil grin) –  Gigili Jun 21 '12 at 8:49
4  
@DiscountGucciHandbags: So close to the site's topic...ahm, so if I past a C++-Hello-Everyone code at the beginning of all my questions on SO, does that make it more appropriate? Just because it is related to the site's topic, doesn't make it less noise. –  Time Traveling Bobby Jun 21 '12 at 8:52
1  
@UristMcBobby If you started your posts with "Hello World", I wouldn't edit it out ;P –  Yannis Jun 21 '12 at 8:53
1  
@Lix: You mean EOP, or more explicit: EOQ and EOA. –  Time Traveling Bobby Jun 21 '12 at 8:56
1  
I would love to hear what the sites mod's have to contribute to this discussion... –  Lix Jun 21 '12 at 8:56
1  
@Lix: You mean the wild wild middle-east? *ducks* –  Time Traveling Bobby Jun 21 '12 at 8:59
4  
Another question here is whether the site is there to practice religion or discuss it. If it is the latter (which I believe it is) then salutations should go just like user signatures on any other site... –  Lix Jun 21 '12 at 9:01
2  
@Lix that's a fair point. But that's a question for their Meta, too –  Pëkka Jun 21 '12 at 9:02

2 Answers 2

up vote 11 down vote accepted

Enforcing such network-wide policies on a new site with a significant number of users without SE experience means you'll have a lot of explaining to do. We shouldn't just hand down those policies as immutable pieces of wisdom or absolute commands, we should always try to explain the reasoning behind those policies.

There are sometimes valid reasons to ignore site-wide policies on a specific site, I don't think that is the case here, but the network-wide policies are not absolute law, with a few exceptions like policies on abusive language or behaviour.

You'll have to convince the community that removing salutations benefits the site in the end, not just leave it at "it's a network-wide policy".

share|improve this answer
3  
Shouldn't people using a religious site be happy dealing with immutable pieces of wisdom and absolute commands? –  Josh Caswell Jun 21 '12 at 19:25
    
By making exceptions for a specific SE site, you've got some explaining to do too. Why should a religious site be exempt from the rules? Anyway, I think this is red herring; the example given at the linked question is not a religious greeting at all, but merely an arabic language salutation. –  Robert Harvey Jun 23 '12 at 3:19

Ultimately, this should be left up to the local community to decide.

On the one hand, there is a network wide policy in place that forbids salutations for the sake of a better signal to noise ratio.

On the other hand, on a religion-related site, deleting out a salutation such as this one is fit to alienate new users who know nothing about the Stack Exchange system, for no real gain. That is a very strong case to make an exemption from the network wide policy.

However (as hinted by Mad Scientist in his answer), it might make sense for a SE representative to make the case for the network-wide policy and the reasonings behind it on the local Islam.SE Meta. Maybe they can be convinced of the value of editing them out, and educating new users about this.

share|improve this answer
3  
Oh pekka, I didn't recognize you! –  Gigili Jun 21 '12 at 8:53
2  
Christianity and Judaism sites seem to work fine without salutations, I'm not convinced the religion factor is important here after all. But it's also not my decision to make. –  Mad Scientist Jun 21 '12 at 8:53
1  
@Mad yeah. I guess this is why it's an issue on Islam.SE: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basmala –  Pëkka Jun 21 '12 at 8:53
7  
@Gigili want handbag? Is genuine. –  Pëkka Jun 21 '12 at 8:55

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .
http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/137066/religious-salutations-in-religious-se-sites/137069
meta.stackexchange.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-35
93471
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:LAMJYA4HBF3H6EPWW2FX7LYTERALZOX6
<urn:uuid:c65c3998-28e7-4219-b123-dd72aac6981b>
2014-08-27T17:17:35Z
198.252.206.16
sha1:Q7DBGGEKWM7MIBI7D7S4VVBZINZIHM37
<urn:uuid:a9cf7a48-2733-4f2f-a13f-61ce38468c85>
http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/137066/religious-salutations-in-religious-se-sites/137069
response
<urn:uuid:f8c93a94-1de6-4296-8802-3657919c9423>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-180-136-8.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-35
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for August 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf