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Making claims of attainments
I recently saw a Buddhism.SE profile claiming stream entry, and was asked today about my own attainments in meditation. I am disinclined to reveal these details, since it removes the focus from the teachings and practice, onto "things" (meditation attainments) "I"/"we" need to "get".
I am aware that some traditions/schools discourage revealing attainments, but not how this applies to most schools/traditions/practitioners. Should we discourage the proclamation of attainments on the site?
These attainments are not verifiable, and (as I see it) can easily turn focus over on things other than the teachings and practice of Buddhism. What are your opinions about that? What is the practice of different traditions?

"Have you finished your rice? Then go wash your bowl." "Achievement unlocked!"

Gamification of experience... :-)

All my Buddhism SE badges are my highest spiritual attainments.

@MatthewMartin right, isn't there an Enlightened badge? Just get that, and we win the game.

Just a devils advocacy: don't forbid statements/selfies about attainments! It helps you to discern, whose answers/advice you better should not trust...

If someone claims that he's highly realised I would treat all his opinions with a pinch of salt.
There may be a difference in asking about attainments though. I can imagine it might be ok revealing that someone completed Ngondro or attended some special retreat/ceremony. What is not ok is to claim that this made him advanced or that he experienced something specific. As one of the great masters said - doing advanced practice doesn't make one an advanced person.

Claims of such sort should not be encouraged but not sure what the course of action should be.

Surely the issue is whether our group Q's and A's should involve claims to attainments. Given the pre-existing SE guidelines on opinion, I think the answer is that such claims don't fit this kind of forum. There are places where such things are more openly discussed: dharmaoverground.org for example.
But I don't have any problem with someone claiming whatever they want on their profile. It's none of my business. I don't see why any of us should be bothered with what someone says outside the Questions and Answers (unless it's defamatory or in some similar way a problem).
I think an important thing to bear in mind is that not everyone who is interested in Buddhism, and so may visit the site, is Buddhist.

the reason to post this is actually that most Buddhism.SE users are not Buddhists. So in a sense a newcomer would evaluate an answer based on claims on their profile. However, like you mention, let's not make a problem of it.

While claiming complete Enlightenment is definitely disallowed per Vinaya, declaring smaller attainments on one's profile is a personal choice that I feel we should not restrict in any way. Except for moderators, whose "official" position implies more stringent propriety rules. Thanks for the call, I tweaked the wording on my profile :)


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What about providing sources?
What is buddhism.stackexchange.com 's policy on providing sources. Should it be mandatory or voluntary.?
If we make it a requirement to provide the source we can clear this website from personal biases. I only know about Theravada and any question related to Theravada can be answered by sourcing the Tipitaka.. It will make the site more reliable and less biased..
But there is a practical problem since it's not easy to point an exact location on Tipitaka unless you are an expert..

It is impractical to require users to provide scriptural sources, if only because some questions are eminently answerable by other means (e.g. here). That said, we should strongly encourage scriptural sources whenever possible and relevant, and encourage the provision of sources by upvoting good, well-sourced answers.

A related question would be whether we should allow answers in the form Zen koans, as here

@Yuttadhammo I'm definitely out of my depth when it comes to Zen koans - they seem kind of useless to me as a layperson, but I suppose that a practitioner of Zen would find that sort of answer most useful. Maybe post about that as a separate meta question? (btw, I think you meant here.)

Whoops, yep :) wrong link.

I do not believe it should be mandatory. Personal biases are acceptable in a lot of ways and on a lot of SE sites, we don't need to be purely fact based: we are looking for expert views. Great answers may have citations, but depending on the question they may not.
When sources are relevant then I am fully for encouraging (and upvoting) answers that show a depth of research.

I'm with @Hrafn on this one. This is not a Buddhology site to require references. Buddhism is a teaching of awakening and liberation, it does not work by the canons of western scientific method. The problem with Buddhism, most practitioners do not know what Enlightenment really is, what Jhanas really are, what Four Noble Truths are really about, hence expert's interpretation is more important than ever. If we limit answers to copy/paste from wikipedia and accesstoinsight.org, how much value are we really creating?

I think that unless it's a personal account type of answer, there should no doubt be sources. I don't think it can required per say, but strongly encouraged definitely.
I'm not master or guru so I always post a link to someone who probably knows better then me what the topic is about. Even if I somehow become a master I will still most likely do the same if its a topic I think another source will help my students.
When we are talking about "what the buddha said" type threads, then I always make sure I have a link to backup what I say, so people know it's not some joe schmoe named Jayantha saying it, but it is what the suttas say. It is very common on Buddhist forums to see " the buddha said xyz" in threads without any proof, and if people read this and don't know about what the suttas really say, confusion can occur.

As a practical matter, I've noticed that answers with sources are getting more upvotes for being useful than answers without sources in these early days of this forum.
That could simply mean that right now, quite frankly we don't know each other well and don't know who is an expert and who isn't. All most of us lay people can offer up is our own self image which can range from "I know nothing" to "I know everything" and everything in between.
But self images have nothing to do with being useful and helpful to another being. And some of the best teachers I've had in my life wouldn't consider themselves experts. They were humble and had beginner's mind themselves.
It certainly doesn't  have to be an either/or as far as providing sources. Answers that are useful to the op and the community will be upvoted whether or not they have sources. That said, sources are very popular right now.
As mentioned above, my newbie response What are the Four Immeasurables (aka Four Noble Abodes)?
received all the votes for being useful (at this moment anyway..that will change of course).
Hopefully, we'll be tolerant of each other'styles and let the community decide which responses are helpful to them.

This a valid observation, re: sources and upvotes. As for the notion of expertise, the question is not whether one of us is an expert or not, the question is: do we believe that experience leads to expertise beyond what can be read in books, or do we assume that non-bookish knowledge is unreliable and therefore does not have place on this site?

I understand. From the first comments, the sentiments seemed to be that it would be impractical to require sources is all cases. Certainly offering answers in the form of both book knowledge or personal knowledge would allow for more answers to be given which could be of greater benefit to the op. Hopefully this matter will be put to rest in a definitive way soon. :)

The basic question is: do we trust our experts, and do we believe that the reputation-based open community will correctly identify experts as such -- or do we presume that only published authors can be trusted?
IMHO limiting answers to quotes and references will nearly erase the difference between people with practical experience and mere good googlers or theorists. For example, the following answer about the Four Immeasurables was given by a member who declares herself "Newer to Buddhism. Have more questions than answers." Is this what we are looking for this site to become, a place were newbies can copy/paste answers from wikipedia or books without really understanding them, or do we want to see expert interpretations shedding light on Buddhist mysteries and pointing practitioners in (what experts believe to be) the right direction?

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

sort: votes


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Asking fundamental "beginner" questions
It appears that many of the visitors to Buddhism.SE are either non-Buddhist, or fairly new to the religion. Understandable that people are curious, and want to ask about it. My opinion is for Buddhism.SE to be inviting to visitors, we have to be welcoming of questions of beginner nature, such as about God(s), heaven and hell, and so on.
However, there is also a benefit in having most questions high quality, not a minority to the "how does Buddhism work" type of questions. So this question got me thinking about if Buddhism.SE should be "strategically" seeded with entry level questions?
Somewhat in line with Questions with easy online answers, but as people don't search/find on Google, they could perhaps benefit from the same/similar answer here.
Should Buddhism.SE be seeded with entry level questions?

"questions of beginner nature" Even a moderator's question can have beginner nature!

I see the arguments already given, but at the same time I can't help thinking, that even beginner's question can be answered and dealt with in an expert way. Of course, there is a slight (or not so slight) danger of getting pestered in the long run. But having on a site, along with expert knowledge spent on expert questions, also waterproof and good answers to beginners questions might also be a mark of quality.
There is so much crap out there in the net, especially, I guess, on religious topics, so very often the following quote holds true:

A person with a watch knows the time. A person with two watches is never quite sure.

So if there are good answers here on such questions, they will be found on google by people who are having basic insecurities about Buddhism. And seeing that this site is trustworthy, since it is full of expert knowledge, it just might reduce the number of watches.

Personally, I find seeded questions irksome; it's generally easy to see that the asker isn't really looking for an answer, so there is no sense of accomplishment in answering. It feels more like a chore, like editing Wikipedia or something.
I don't think we need to have answers to every question about Buddhism; we need answers to expert questions that one can't find by simply googling. I think we should keep pointing out when questions are LMGTFY-worthy, and encourage only questions that are truly looking for expert answers.

Well put. Not sure that others see Buddhist.SE as the place to get answers to questions requiring expert answers, though, many appear to ask questions, wondering what it is (and how it compares to 'their' religion). Can we perhaps add some community wiki entries to describe the basics?

This is how I felt too. Some of the best-intended participants are too eager to fill this site with useful content :)

The point of having a Stack Exchange site is to be a definitive source of well-formed questions and answers to a topic. Stack Overflow, the largest Stack Exchange site, doesn't judge questions by their difficulty. It judges them by how well-structured and helpful they are.
I think this site should follow that spirit. If a question is "easy" but brings something new to this site then it should be welcomed.

-1 according to your profile you sometimes need to ask questions about computers. What would you like better: Someone listening to you and trying to get a solution that fits your question or being pointed to google to try your own luck.

@Dawnkeeper if I can google it, I won't ask it on SO. In the case of Buddhism, I think the point is that if it's already on Wikipedia, we don't need to answer it here.

Religious questions are not "info only" questions. These questions are "life direction" questions. Every question, if possible, is crucial to the asker. At least, direct them to those who may be better able to help them. This SE should not be about US but about helping OTHERS. Otherwise, it will become abandoned quite quickly. (I really don't expect expert answers here, just good ones. Until folk like HHDL, Lama Zopa Rinpoche, etc., answer questions here, we are just "throwing life preservers until the boat arrives", which we will do to the best of our ability.

I think this is all missing the point of my answer; LMGTFY means it is something you could find easily by searching the Internet; there's no "life direction" potential in such questions, they are not bad because they are "easy", there is no "luck" involved in typing the question into google, etc. The question talks about "seeding" the site with beginner questions, which I'm against.

LMGTFY is so impersonal. When you want answers to something your going to mold your life around is something I would want an expert for, an google is not a expert it searches for words that are similar to your question, an that leads to anything. An being misinformed is worse then being denied an answer. One must ponder. How many times did Siddhartha get asked the same question? He had to teach beginning concepts to each new person he came across. If you dont make a strong foundation then your building will falter. Beginners will become Experts an more experts the better the collective wisdom.

If you only had to simply google for the answer then this site would really be unnecessary. Why come here if google is greater then experts? I seek out a expert because they are trust worthy an have experience an knowledge that a beginner does not. Google cannot relate to the human experience an some people dont even know how to ask the right questions only a experienced teacher knows what the seeker is looking for. They know what to say an how to help the disciple or pupil. A beginner will not know the vital wisdom needed or how to even go about searching for it. With all respect to all here.

I agree with not seeding the site with artificial questions, and of course I agree with experts answering expert/difficult questions. Also some people want to allow beginner questions as well, and some people (perhaps less expert) seem willing to try to answer those, so perhaps let's allow them too.

Simply put, the best way for a SE site to answer questions from beginners is for beginners to ask them. However, SE sites make for great Q&A sites, not for great reference sites.
Shog9 said when Hinduism.SE's private beta was extended:

Original content; more than just a Hinduism primer
There are a lot of questions here that are... Pretty basic. "Could be answered by a Wikipedia entry" basic. Questions that require no expertise aren't a particularly good way to attract experts. You gotta expect a few of these, but when every other question can be answered by a Google search...
...And worse yet, an awful lot of them are answered that way: by quoting external sources. A site that just regurgitates things that others have written isn't much good; answers like that just clog up search results without adding anything. It's important to cite your sources, but just as important to demonstrate knowledge of both the question being answered and the topic itself - this is where we can actually make the Internet a better place, demonstrating how to use this knowledge to answer specific questions. Answers that are primarily copied from Wikipedia or other forums / blogs - even when properly attributed - are just speed-bumps, annoyances to folks searching for good information.
I'd really like to see more questions that require some serious research and experience to answer... I know some of you have been studying these topics for years, and are well past the beginner stages of your education - what sort of problems do you encounter?

I do not mind beginners asking beginner questions. I do not mind experienced people asking beginner questions because they have a gap in their training or education.
Those are earnest questions that embody what a SE site does well. In the meantime, we want to attract experts–experts asking expert questions is one of the big things that predicts the success of a SE site, in part because success is defined that way–so it is best to focus on questions you are or have struggled with or you see someone struggling with (though asking them to come ask the question themselves is best).

Found myself agreeing with Shog9

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Theravada and Mahayana
I just need you to make your attention regarding these two concepts in Buddhism.
I think there maybe risk to have a conflict when someone asking a question regarding Thervada and what if someone gives an answer based on Mahayana?
How you think? What we need to do to avoid such a conflict regarding very sensitive subject like Buddhism? Maybe create separate sub sites for each one?
If you don't know what are the main differences between Thervada and Mahayana please read this article Differences Between Theravada and Mahayana Buddhism

Maybe create separate sub sites for each one?

Good heavens, no! The Catholics and the Baptists and even the Mormons get along fine at Christianity.SE, and the Sunnis and the Shias coexist peacefully on Islam.SE (well, sort of), and heck, if we want to talk about real religious conflict, Haskellers and PHP users even manage to tolerate each other on Stack Overflow!
It is eminently possible to have a site that represents the views of multiple different schools of thought. We just need to follow a few simple rules.

If you have a question about a specific school, mention it in your question, and use the appropriate tag, e.g. theravada or mahayana.
If you post an answer based on the doctrine or viewpoint of a specific school, mention it in your answer, citing relevant sources if possible.
Be nice. This means (among other things) not getting into argumentative wars. Don't let sectarianism ruin this site.

That's all it takes!

Also, from a practical point of view, getting separate sites for different schools of Buddhism is simply not going to happen. If Stack Exchange was open to that possibility, I'm sure they would've split Islam.SE long ago, because internecine conflict is a serious problem over there. The idea of splitting Islam.SE has been discussed on their meta; it was generally agreed that that would not be a good idea.

You had me at Haskellers and PHP users.

The first thing we have to consider is how uncertain it still is whether we have enough interest in a single Buddhist site to allow the beta to succeed - we need to reach quotas on visits, questions, answers, votes, etc. in order to be considered for full SE status. So, even if we wanted to separate the site up, we would most certainly fail to create a lasting resource if we did.
Personally, I think it's nice to see a comparison of schools on the site; if someone replies incorrectly to a question about a specific school, just call them out on it.

Thank for the reply, but will it create something like argumentative war, anger, etc...

It seems to me that if a questioner who wants an answer specific to either Theravada or Mahayana, then they should frame and tag the question that way.  If an answer is given for the other tradition, then comments and downvotes can be used to alert the person who provided that answer to the question's intent.


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Lets choose the Logo
What logo do we need to use this site when it public?
There maybe couple of variations Buddhist symbolism

The most famous one is Dharmacakra
Other famouse one is Ashoka Chakra
In the other hand we have Buddhist Flag

Please read these resource as well,

http://people.opposingviews.com/buddhist-religious-symbol-called-6703.html
http://buddhism.about.com/od/eightauspicioussymbols/a/The-Dharma-Wheel.htm

lets choose what is the best symbol for the site logo. Any comments are really appreciate.

FYI - and this is not meant as discouragement - the site will not get a real logo until it graduates, and that's almost guaranteed to be at least a year away. There's no harm in talking about elements of site design right now, but it probably won't help all that much either.

Thanks for the comment @senshin I hope we can make the site get graduated

The Logo should be Dharmacakra
CC Image here
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dharma_Wheel.svg

Here's a draft logo I made some time ago for our internal Q&A site:

It was received with mixed reviews; some people thought it disrespectful to put the Buddha behind the bar in the A.

I agree that Buddha looks awkward behind that A. I like the left side though, it would make a nice logo by itself!

We have quite a bit of time before we reach the point where we need a logo. It's probably best to not focus on it now and focus more about getting quality content which would attract people!

I'm afraid my suggestion may look controversial, but let me still post it. Feel free to downvote if it's bad.
We have to negotiate with our friends in Hinduism Beta site.
Here's why.
As other answers say, the most famous/recognizable symbols of Buddhism are Dharmachakra and Asoka Chakra. I would also add Aum here.

All these symbols are also most recognizable for Hinduism. Moreover, Dharmachakra presents in National Flag of India.

So it is well possible that they will want Dharmachakra, in this case Aum will be best for us.
Hence, my idea is not to interfere with them, but collaborate and mutually figure out what's best for both Betas.
Edit: Related discussion at Meta.Hinduism.SE

Devanagari AUM is more Hindustic than Buddhist.

Agree with catnopsis - "aum" would not make for a good logo for this site, since it is far more strongly associated with Hinduism than Buddhism (at least by the people who will be reading this site, i.e. English speakers, who are mostly Americans).


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What language should our tags be in?
This site is going to have a rather unique issue with tag names that I don't think has been addressed on any other SE site so far. Many Buddhist terms lack canonical (non-borrowed) English equivalents, and Buddhism itself does not have only a single canonical language (unlike e.g. Islam/Judaism). We will need to decide what language our tags (specifically, the master synonyms for the tags) should be in, and I think the earlier we figure this out the better.
There are many possible languages for tags about concepts in Buddhism. Take, for example, "dharma". Do we use the Sanskrit "dharma", the Pali "dhamma", the Chinese "fǎ", the Japanese "hō"? In this particular case, I think we would all agree that "dharma" is best because it is most frequently used by English speakers, but I'm sure there are trickier cases that we will need to handle.
We need not select a single language for all our tags, but we do need a strategy for selecting which language we should pick for any given tag. The simplest heuristic is "what do the majority of English speakers call this concept?", but there may be others that would be better.
Also - once this site's pro tempore moderators are selected, I think it will be important for them to do a fair bit of work creating alternate-language tag synonyms for tags in order to increase tag findability. So if we decide that "dharma" should be the tag, we should also add, at minimum, the Pali "dhamma" as a synonym, and possibly also the Chinese and Japanese equivalents if those are used frequently. (On a larger site, we could do this democratically by voting on tag synonyms, but no new site reaches the point where that becomes feasible for some months.)

Isn't there a tag synonym function on StackExchange? I think I've seen one on StackOverflow. That would solve the issue, I think. http://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/suggest-tag-synonyms

@Calle Yes, tag synonyms are an option, and one we will want to use extensively (indeed, I noted that we will want to create alternate-language synonyms for many of our tags). Nonetheless, however, we must pick a single one out of all the synonyms for a given tag that will serve as the "master synonym". The master synonym is the one that will be displayed everywhere, so it is still important that we have a procedure for selecting the correct master synonym.

I noticed your edit of my question, which is fine, but I haven't accepted the edit yet, since I think that there should be room for all languages (i.e. using synonyms) - people search on different terms, and the tags should preferably match those.

@Calle Yes, of course, I agree that we should (indeed, must) use synonyms in the long run, but until our pro tempore moderators are appointed (in about two weeks), we will be effectively unable to implement tag synonyms. Until that time, I think it is best to avoid fragmenting tags for a given concept across multiple spellings/languages.

Providing a suggestion here, as a possible solution, instead of commenting further on the question.
I suggest that since the Buddhism StackExchange relies heavily on searches, it would benefit from using the language most searched for, as the primary language. Other languages would be set up as synonyms.
Searching Google Trends for common Sanskrit and Pali terms, (Dharma/Dhamma, Karma/Kamma) reveals that Sanskrit is in favor of being the selected language, out of the older languages.
The question is whether English should be a candidate for a primary tag language - and the suggestion here is no, since translations are often ambiguous in meaning and many words do not exist in English.
Another point to make is to allow for all languages in tags - so whoever asks the question can use the language most relevant to the question. For example, my question directly relating to Theravada, would be most relevant with Pali tags, since the question refers directly to that tradition and language.
EDIT:
From the Meta help at SE:

How should we tag questions about {subject}?
Tagging questions is an ad hoc way of organizing content. It is mostly improvised by users
  asking the questions… but only to a point. Tag auto-completion and
  community editing will influence the proper use of tags for a very
  long time.
The type of things you should look out for: how to handle acronyms
  common to your subject, brand versus product-specific tags, common
  terminology, and the use of semantic tags to categorize specific types
  of questions unique to your community. Every site will have their own
  unique set of tag-related issues.
The best way to identify tagging problems is to watch new posts
closely, and try to build tag wiki excerpts that explain what the tags
  are for. When tags become ambiguous, too specific (or not specific
  enough), or just somehow off, raise those issues in meta, and quickly.
  Proper tagging is very much a lead-by-example activity. The sooner you
  get the “community standards” for tagging ironed out, the less chance
  you’ll have to face the drudgery of cleaning them up later.

Some tags that aren't about specific, technical Buddhist concepts should be in English, like [tag:history] and [tag:doctrine] and [tag:gender].

@senshin yes, so perhaps "technical" terms should be primarliy Sanskrit and generic ones in English. Pali tags should be allowed (in my humble opinion) since they are relevant to many, but can be synonyms.

I'm not disagreeing that we should have alternate-language versions as synonyms - doing so costs nothing (besides a little bit of moderator time) and has its benefits, so it is definitely worth doing. I updated the last paragraph of the question to make this clear.

I am too in support of Sanskrit.


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Can we have unicode tags here?
By default, tags can only consist of the following characters: [a-z 0-9 + # - .]. However, the correct transliteration of many Buddhist terms drawn from other languages requires the use of characters with diacritics. As such, it would be beneficial for this site to have unicode tags enabled. Can we get that?

Here is a list of tags that need unicode in order to be spelled correctly:

pratityasamutpada - should be "pratītyasamutpāda" (macrons on ī and ā)
samsara - should be "saṃsāra" (underdot on ṃ, macron on ā), though this term is well-integrated into English as "samsara" (no diacritics), and could probably do without the diacritics.
bon should be "bön".

(Please feel free to update this post with additional examples.)

One issue to check before renaming might be searchability/usablilty. We would want "saṃsāra" to show up when searching for "samsara".

As @bytebuster points out in his answer, if we don't approach this correctly, this could lead to an unmanageable explosion of synonyms, once you account for differing transliteration/transcription systems. So, here is my proposed strategy for handling unicode tags.

Figure out what word(s) we should use for the name of a tag about a given concept. See also: What language should our tags be in?
Determine whether the tag name counts as "English" or not.

English words like "enlightenment" count as English, obviously.
Loanwords like "karma" that have been in English for long enough count as English. (This is a grey area, but I think we will be able to intuit the right approach in most cases.)
Other things, like "pratityasamutpada", count as non-English.

If the tag is English, we're done.
If the tag is non-English:

Identify the transcription that is most commonly used in English-language scholarly works.
If that transcription lacks diacritics, set that as the tag, and we're done.
If that transcription contains diacritics, set that as the tag, and use the most common diacritic-free equivalent as a synonym pointing to it, so people can type it.

If (and only if) we start seeing other transcriptions being used as tags, also add those as synonyms.

This seems laborious, I realize, but really shouldn't require very much work on the part of our moderators once they get used to a process like this.
The major point here is that, as @bytebuster points out, there is no value in anticipating all the possible transcriptions that could possibly be used. We should only add additional transcriptions beyond the one or two prescribed by the above procedure in the event that we are getting lots of questions using a different transcription.

SE engine already has Unicode in tags. Some sites, like Russian.SE widely use them and even keep Unicode versions as main ones.
Yet another consideration. samsara is a transliteration (to Latin script), whist saṃsāra is a (phonetic) transcription.
People occasionally use various transcribed and transliterated forms of foreign terms, so it seems to be inevitable keeping all versions: samsara, sansara, saṃsāra, sangsara, and samsaara.
Also, nirvāṇa, nibbana, nippana, nibbaana, and nippaana. I have also seen niivarana, but it does not seem to be correct.
Literally, every term would have kind of five synonyms (plus numerous misspellings).
The bad thing about phonetic Unicode symbols is that they can't be typed on a keyboard, unlike Russian tags for Russian.SE site.
My suggestion is to keep only one transcribed form and one transliterated form.

I would suggest using anglicized versions like samsara, nirvana; I'd also suggest using English in cases where the Pali/Sanskrit cognate is not widely used/known.

This gets even more complex is the matter of different groups using different transliterations, e.g., nibbana vs. nirvana (mentioned in the post), which makes it difficult to standardize when both terms exist in different languages. Tag aliases can help somewhat (this is how we have been handling it on MartialArts.SE).

@DavidH.Clements Is "nibbana" vs. "nirvana" a transliteration issue? I thought that "nibbana" was Pali and "nirvana" was Sanskrit.

Yup, that's it exactly, I wasn't clear ^_^

@senshin This is called consonant assimilation that occurred during the evolution of Pali.


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Should we have a tag for sceptical questions?
As per google's dictionary:

Skeptic: 1) a person inclined to question or doubt all accepted opinions. 2) a person who doubts the truth of Christianity and other religions; an atheist or agnostic

...

Skepticism or scepticism (see spelling differences) is generally any questioning attitude towards unempirical knowledge or opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or doubt regarding claims that are taken for granted elsewhere.

...

Skepticism is the process of applying reason and critical thinking to determine validity. It's the process of finding a supported conclusion, not the justification of a preconceived conclusion.

So I think if someone "doubts the truth of [Buddhism]" and "has questioning attitude towards ... opinions/beliefs stated as facts, or ... claims that are taken for granted" and would like to "apply reason and critical thinking to determine validity" -- and asks questions with this objective in mind then perhaps we should make it explicit.
I see two benefits:

Makes it easy for the newcomer skeptics to find preexisting sceptical questions.
Helps the answerers and the audience decide whether they are interested in the question without having to open it. This includes using the favorite tag / ignored tag feature to highlight or gray out certain questions.

I believe this is the intended usage of tags and will make this site easier to use and navigate.

Assuming you'd like to vote in favour of this policy, would you post an answer with a list of several existing questions, to which you'd want to apply this tag? Try to list some questions which would definitely (in your opinion) benefit from and/or deserve this tag, and maybe some edge cases (questions which barely deserve it, and some questions which for some reason don't deserve it). Part of the reason for doing that (identifying examples) is that if the policy were implemented then that list of examples could be used for explaining how and when to use (and when not to use) that new tag.

I find it difficult to understand where you'd draw the line for a 'skeptics' tag. For example if someone asked, "what's the purpose of chanting" or "what's the benefit of dana" then would that be "doubting the truth"? Apart from 'personal practice' and 'reference request', what types of question wouldn't be "having a questioning attitude", or would they all be?

+1 for this from em. I know that meta tags controversial but we are seeing questions that have a skeptical edge to them and I think been able to raise a question in that spirit would be helpful

@ChrisW, I will try to find examples, need focused time for that, not between other things.

Thanks. It seems it could be a popular proposal but maybe let's measure it twice before cutting once.

@ChrisW - May I suggest opening up some questions that have been closed because of their eyebrow-raising content, tagging them as skeptical, and answering them as case studies?

@ChrisW - May I also suggest the tag "Critical Reasoning" as an alternative to "Skeptical"?

@KrishnarajRao I personally think skeptic is good because it links into the Skeptics SE site that our users may be familiar with

@CrabBucket - The reason I suggest "Critical Reasoning" is that Skeptic is a label that some people attach to others. If you have a Skeptic tag, then maybe you should consider having a tag for a diametrically opposed quality, such as "Fundamentalist" or maybe even "Superstitious"?

@KrishnarajRao I be honest a fundamentalist tag would be enormously controversial. But I would encourage you to post the critical reasoning tag suggestion as an answer and it would allow people to vote on it if they think it's a good idea. You could also post the fundamentalist tag idea if you wanted but I think you would get a very negative reaction for that. I'll leave that one up to you

I would just like to reaffirm that I think that this is a good idea. I think that these questions would be good candidates for the skeptic tag
Can the elements of Buddhist Cosmology be confirmed?
Do modern-day Buddhists take "Mara The Evil One" literally?
Did Gautama Buddha exist?
Is rebirth a delusional belief?
Does Human Evolution Disprove a Kamma Based Rebirth?
This proposal seesm to have good support. I would go ahead and begin tagging if it were me

@Lanka I would just go ahead. We can debate further as needed. Cheers

@Lanka I was waiting for Andrei's input.

@ChrisW apologies - we can always change things around. Nothing is set in stone

@ChrisW my proposal was an attempt to dissipate the negative energy by channeling in into a slightly more constructive discussion: instead of being upset about the skeptical questions we could talk about tagging them. The tagging itself was secondary to the purpose. After thinking this over for several days I decided that bringing up the old skeptical questions either here in an answer, or by retagging - can have a negative side-effect. I still think we can tag them going forward.

I'm not saying "no definitely not" but there was no community support for defining a 'beginner' tag, which might have served a similar purpose.

1) "Skeptic" seems like labeling the person rather than the question -- rather similar to having a "beginner" flag. It may be worth avoiding.
2) Instead, consider introducing a "Critical Reasoning" of "Scientific Questioning" flag. Or maybe, "Secular Buddhism"?
3) Simultaneously, consider having flags to indicate a complete and unquestioned belief in the scriptures. How about "Faithful Disciple" or "Literal Faith"? This might discourage skeptical or non-scriptural answers (or non-literal interpretations of the scriptures) from being attempted to questions thus flagged.
4) With such flagging, one may possibly reduce incidents of skeptical or critical questioning offending faithful/literal followers of the faith. It would be like saying, "Viewer discretion is advised. You have been warned. Proceed with caution." If, after reading this flag, someone feels offended by the question, it means that he/she has actually gone out of his way to read the question in order to feel offended.
5) Vice-versa, it may reduce the incidence of the faithful/literal followers feeling that they are being trolled by persons with a skeptical outlook. Because anybody who deliberately goes to questions marked "Literal Faith" and leaves skeptical answers or questions could be marked as a troll.
6) Questions that have neither flag would allow interactions between skeptical persons as well as literal followers.
Fair enough?

Fundamentalist is derogatory & jargon from outside the system. Besides, if you are in Vajrayana, it can be very faith based & devotional, but the source of authority is a current living teacher.

What comes to mind for phrases already in the literature-- secular Buddhism, academic Budddhism, critical Buddhism. Academic Buddhist writers strive to not show if they believe or not, critical Buddhists are keen to question what really is Buddhism.  Skepticism, Atheism, Agnosticism, imho, are really about tearing down the structures of religion and not replacing it with anything.

@MatthewMartin - "Skepticism, Atheism, Agnosticism, imho, are really about tearing down the structures of religion and not replacing it with anything."  Buddha was a skeptic, not a follower of religion. IMO, over time, all belief systems including religions tend to accumulate structures that have little function or value. Unless critiqued, such structures cover the body of the religion (I'm not talking about Buddhism or any religion in particular), like a bunch of warts. IMO, skeptics play a role by subjecting religions and other belief-systems to the harsh light of reason.

I highly recommend checking out the http://speculativenonbuddhism.com/ "Non-Buddhist" project. It is very much along that line and it, as a blog, created spectacular flamewars in comments. It was fun to watch while it was running, but it is too tiresome for me to participate in & it isn't something that SE moderators wants to encourage.

@MatthewMartin - Checked out. It doesn't connect with me at all. Leaves me cold.


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Are questions on personal challenges and difficulties with meditation on-topic?
For our purposes let's assume someone is attempting to meditate using a Buddhist-style of meditation or meditate within a Buddhist framework.
Are attempts to determine ways of improving the meditation experience, attempts to diagnose those problems, etc on-topic for the purposes of this site?

Since meditation is such an important part of (most) Buddhist practice, it would strike me as very strange for questions about it be considered off topic. However, if that decision was made, I'd suggest changing the group name from "Buddhism" to "Buddhology" or "Buddhist Studies".

The problem is that answers would be subjective, and thus choosing a best answer would be as well. Something like "What does Buddhism (or [type] Buddhism) say about [meditation experience]?" instead of "What do I do when [meditation experience] occurs?" might work.

Well, in this context, I don't think picking an accepted answer would have to be subjective - whichever answer helped OP solve his/her challenge is the one that OP should mark as accepted. This is much like how it works at e.g. [workplace.se] or [academia.se] - answers on those sites are in many cases subjective, but are backed up by personal experience. I imagine we could get a similar thing working here for questions about meditation.

Okay, sounds good :) certainly those type of questions would be ones I'd answer... just thought it would be strange to have a bunch of teachers offering different advice from different traditions.

My own answer on this one is that I firmly believe that such questions should be on-topic for the purpose of this site. If we look, for example, at the question from MartialArts.SE of How can I keep my back straight in my horse stance? we see a question about a personal challenge with a particular aspect that can benefit from experience.
In Buddhism in particular many challenges also have years of history and doctrinal support (as @senshin says), so I think allowing the questions in general is a good policy.

In my "home-" stackexchange concerning math we have the practice to tag questions, which allow/provoke/require lists of answers/of various proposals as "community-wiki" -
(and at the same moment as this comes to my mind I think, that questions like "I've come to this and that problem in my approach to meditation: what shall I do?" should very likely receive many and/or even lists of answers... )

so "community wiki" tagging might be a solution here.

Just because a question may attract multiple answers does not mean it is necessarily a "list question". It is important to distinguish between (1) questions that may get multiple answers because there are multiple ways of solving the problem in the question and (2) questions like "what is your favorite X". It is only the (2) questions that get tagged as [big-list] and community wiki'd at [math.se]. I think that the kind of meditation questions we are talking about here, on the other hand, are of type (1).


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Tagging questions on precepts
I've seen a lot of posts getting tagged five-precepts when they are asking specifically about one of the precepts. That's fine, but do we want to standardize on some format for which specific precept is being asked about?  It seems like it would be desirable for someone to, for example, look at all questions around the first precept.
There are three ways I can see to do this.
The first is to tag it based on the number of the precept, e.g., first-precept.
The second is to tag it based on the aspect of the first precept that is being asked about, e.g., vegetarianism.
The third is to tag it based on what the precept actually covers, e.g., killing or precept-killing.
These are not by any means mutually exclusive, but I figured we should start the conversation since we are getting a lot of questions early on that delve into specific aspects of a single precept.

Precepts 6 and up vary from tradition to tradition.

If we need tags for the individual precepts, they should definitely be first-precept, second-precept, etc. This appears to be the most canonical and least ambiguous way of referring to them.
Optionally, we could also add synonyms, e.g. precept-killing points to first-precept, but I don't think we should add them unless there is a demonstrated need for them - YAGNI and all that.


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Encouraging People to Accept Answers
We are now in the public beta, which means it is a good time to start trying to get people to accept answers–especially after they have been around for a few days.
What are some ways we can help encourage the practice of accepting answers?

I'd recommend restricting that to questions with a clearly good answers. Some question have only one answer.

I totally agree with this. We should move towards accepting of answers now. I appreciate that sometimes it feels as if the 'perfect' answer is still out there but if the question is a week or two old the question might have gone cold and it might be time to round it out with an accepted answer. Stack Overflow used to flag up on people's profile how many answers that they accepted. I kind of liked that though I know it was felt to be counterproductive so was dropped.
Also your preferred answer might not be the top scoring one and that is really worth knowing.In this spirit I have accepted my first answer. Felt good!!

In the comments, remind people of the benefits of marking an answer:

The community can shift their focus to other questions
Future readers get one more clue about what the best answer is (answer acceptance usually matches the highest vote, sometimes not)
It makes the community look good, although hopefully not artificially so.


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Questions asking for an answer to a controversy
In this question:
Is Jhana Required For Awakening?
the asker specifically states that they know it is a controversial topic (an understatement in this instance!). I assume we're going to get many such questions for the various traditions. I'm pretty sure we don't want to hash out controversies on this site; see the first answer to the above question for an example of an argument from one side - I could easily post an answer from the other side that would attempt to refute this answer.
What should our policy be on this sort of question? What if the asker doesn't realize how controversial the question is? I assume questions like this one:
Why are Jhanas controversial?
are less problematic; should we allow the controversial questions or advise that they be changed to those, like this second one, that ask for an outline of the controversy?

To ban question on question & answer site (because it have more than one answer) is a bit weird solution, which I also disagree, because there is many ways around of it.
Instead of changing question to be about controversy it is also possible to just outline controversy in the answer.
Or, answer could state that it presents just one point of view. Or, it maybe be enough if a commentary to such answer could state that it's just one point of view, without beginning dispute about it. One commentary to state that there exists another point of view is not yet dispute and should be allowed.
What is actually bad in 'controversy' is disrespect to other tradition. It is not "controversial" when answers present some "non-controversial" subject from different points of view (w/o even acknowledge of existence of other points of view). It's only become offensive when there is 'only this is true' attitude (idealism) and derogation of other views (cynicism). So I believe what is actually need to be changed is just removal of disrespectful statements. Only disrespect need to be removed, and not different views.
Like someone say, "mahayana developed pseudo-sutras" - there "pseudo" is disrespectful and biased.
Or, "abuse by generations of abhidharmists" - it may have take-it-easy attitude and be funny to the author, but this is disrespect to the abhidharmic tradition.
It's may be normal in dispute if opponents pinch each other a bit, but in answer, which is not supposed to start a debate, such pinching is not needed.
So, in summary, instead of deleting questions, or asking to rephrase, or to make obligatory survey in the answer, I propose to delete derogatory statements only and allow single commentary to state existence of other point of view, and leave everything else as it is.

I agree! Different viewpoints should be able to exist side by side, without being disrepectful to each other. Also long arguments between different views should be stopped.

Constructive arguments should be allowed.

Valid concern. An example I found disturbing is (Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy?). I like your idea of transforming questions of controversy into questions about controversy.

I'm not sure, this isn't a situation I've seen often on Stackoverflow or the StackExchange sites I visit.
However, on the Buddhist sites I visit, I've seen:

A complete ban on talking about Dorje Shugden (because the Dalai Lama and NKT are fighting about it)
All the vegetarian questions get herded into a single thread. This sort of applies to stack exchange, although I'd hate to see technical questions, like "how do Chinese Buddhists fast" closed because it's about vegetarianism and there is already a vegetarian question (where we are seeing all the same arguements pro and con regurgitated from probably the same epic battles on other forums)
Ditto for SGI Criticism-- these get herded into a single thread.  I'm not even sure if a naively worded SGI question like, "Isn't SGI a cult? (or Isn't NKT a cult?" probably should be closed for question quality reasons. I suppose if they were worded like, "What sociologists have classified SGI or NKT as a cult?" That would have an answer, while the former is just an invitation to Buddha-fight-club.

What might be a better thing to do is to kill comment threads when they turn into massive forum-like discussions.

The same herding technique has been used for the Jhana debate: http://www.dhammawheel.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=4597


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Next Steps for Social Networking
Now that we have a Facebook page, a Google Plus page, and a Twitter account, we should probably figure out the proper steps to take in regards to administering these resources. Specifically:

Is it okay for us to maintain such resources? I'm just asking in case I may have missed some SE rule against creating our own "official" SE pages on other sites.
Assuming it is okay, who should be the administrators? I assume the best would be to make the current moderators admins, and just switch when they change. Any thoughts on this?
Can anyone offer to create a PD image to use as the profile pic and cover banner for the accounts?

I'm thinking we can post updates like a blog on our pages; I'm not sure if we get an SE blog when we go official (I don't think so), so it will give us a chance to provide updates to the community as appropriate (like reaching our 90 day landmark and almost meeting the criteria!)

You must not create an "official" SE page: see this answer for detail.
Social Networking owned by the site might not be useful: see also this comment for detail.
"Social" networking might be better done by people, using their existing social networks: you (each person) mention this site on your own blog, your own Facebook or Twitter account, to your own friends and 'followers'.

Thanks; somehow I missed that answer.


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Newcomers Treating Site Like A Forum
ever since following this site on Facebook, I've started to see some very low quality questions.
edit: not just "Newcomers Treating Site Like A Forum" but a few related issues too.
Did the influx of low quality questions start recently, or did I just start to see them thanks to Facebook?

It might be more constructive to ask about what to say to (i.e. how to welcome) newcomers.

Which questions, for example?

for example, http://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/3821/what-are-the-differences-between-hinduism-and-buddhism the answer by Oswulf is very subjective. Should we give constructive feedback or just close the question, since it's a duplicate?

I'm not sure what we can do about unsourced answers like that... I guess downvote or comment on them. The problem begins when opinion-based answers start getting upvoted and we never get at the "right" answer. I think constructively critical comments help prevent that.

could we perhaps attract religious scholars? some very impressive stuff is on Wikipedia, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Vedic_religion but I don't think I could do the material justice.

Yes, but I don't think FB is related.
People are asking broad, open ended questions, often with 6 or 7 broad open ended questions.  And then long back and forth discussions get going in the comments.
Another sign of problems is the question never really has one answer that is accepted and the top voted answer doesn't seem to be a "clincher" like I see in the programming sites.
If we had more questions, we could raise the quality by killing off the worst questions, but with only a handuful of questions a-day, we are killing of only the worst of the worst questions and making do with what we have left.
If we get more volume, the built in systems in SE will kick in and the front page will start to show the high quality questions and the low quality ones will sink out of sight.


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Data Site Issue: Is this a Bug or Hack?
When I logged in some one else (jon.doe15661) seems to be using my picture and login in the data site. Is this a bug or some one hacked my account?

@ChrisW Moved the issue here.

@abbyhairboat any idea what is going one here?

Did you log out and re-logged in with the jon.doe account with your password? What do you exactly mean with your login?

No. I when to the site. I was not logged in. So I clicked login followed by clicking the SE login logo then entered by usual email and password. I clicked on my profite to see what tabs / tables / information it might have and then I got this.

Do you know the alias 'jon.doe'? If yes, it is most likely a bug, if you don't than I would not take any risk and change your password immediately. This could also be a merge problem (if you have used the merge tool in the past).

Integration between SEDE and other sites is imperfect.
The "someone else" is probably you?
Perhaps when you logged in it was able to get your existing avatar but not your existing user name (and you can fix it by defining/setting your user name within the SEDE profile).
I see (by zooming into the screenshot you posted) that you're using a openid.stackexchange.com open ID.

I always use login with SE. The 1st logo on the login page.

Why am I jon.doe when logging into Data Explorer?

Almost everyone is jon.doeXXXXX when they first log in to Data SE.
In your screenshot, look in the topbar: you are logged in as jon.doe15661. It's not that some Jon Doe is using your picture; it's that you have been assigned a name at random because of the weird way Data SE picks up user info.
Feel free to edit your display name with the edit link you see on that page.


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How to get more experts on the site
Certain Buddhism related topics maybe connected to other areas of expertise. We need to have a way to attract people who have a good knowledge in Buddhism and also other areas. Any thoughts in getting domain experts knowledgeable in Buddhism on the site?

Some of them are on the DharmaWheel/DhammaWheel forums. I would guess that experts that already blog, participate in forums, mailing lists etc are the most likely target candidates.

Perhaps you can post to let them know about this site also.


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What is the FAQ for this site and most important of the Meta Discussions regarding defining this site for Relevant New Users
What is the FAQ for this site and most important of the Meta discussions regarding defining this site relevant for new users?

Also maybe a moderator can add faq tag to the relevant questions. This tag can only be added by moderators.

I re-wrote this meta-topic: see List of proposed FAQs

Currently the topics which I considered to be candidates for the FAQ tag are the topics which are tagged proposed-faq -- especially:

I am a new user here at Buddhism.SE. What should I know before I post?
Moderation policies for Questions


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What are the Moderation Policies for Answers?
The policy of each SE site is defined by its community, for each specific site like Buddhism.SE. So in the context of this site what are the Moderation Policies for Answers? Should we just have the same policy as the main StackOverflow (SO) site? What are relevant posts on this in SO? If we are to deviate from SO policy what would they be?

I think this should be ultimately linked to or covered in the welcome message.

I'd like to reserve use of the [meta-tag:proposed-faq] tag for actual proposals (not just questions without answers), which might become a [meta-tag:faq]. See e.g. this meta-answer fr my understanding of how this works. I'm going to edit the Meta tags soon and I think you'll find we already have several 'accepted' policies about answers, which I will label proposed-faq.


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What are the Moderation Policies for Comments and Chat?
The policy of each SE site is defined by its community, this is to solicit the opinion of Buddhism.SE on the use of chat and comments. So in the context of this site what are the Moderation Policies for Comments and Chat? Should we just have the same policy as the main StackOverflow (SO) site? What are relevant posts on this in SO? If we are to deviate from SO policy what would they be?

I think this should be ultimately linked to or covered in the welcome message.

I posted a new proposed-faq for comments -- Commenting with minimal argument -- would you like to review that, and say whether that's agreeable?

I don't see the need to be different to any other site

The policy of each SE site is defined by its community

Some policies are pre-defined by SE, and some defined by the community.
SE defines how to use the site:

Use it for Q+A (not discussion)
Don't misuse it, be nice, etc.
Use Meta to discuss the site itself

The community defines what this community wants to use this site for:

What's on-topic?

SE has policies about how to use comments (e.g. "not for extended discussion"), so when a comment isn't about the question or the answer then I tend to move the comment[s] to chat (because it has become an "extended discussion").
Generally a "chat room owner" can choose how to use a chat room.

We've no special policy about this site's main chat room is used, and until now it hasn't been used much at all.
Some other sites insist that chat in their chat room should be on-topic (e.g. about Buddhism or whatever the site topic is)
Some other other sites use their chat room for friendly chat about anything -- e.g. the topic, the site, new posts on the site, each other, jokes, the weather, and so on.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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What are relevant Posts from other SE sites or SO or other resource which we can use as a resource to improve this site
There would be a wealth of information in other sites in the network which might be of interest to users of Bu.SE wirht regard to:

policies
resources / tips to improve the content
ways to improve visits
food for thought

What might the resources that are available on other sites which we can use to improve to site, or be resources to help users improve their contribution?


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Should we Have New Tags for Question on The Path and The Fruit, Stages of Sainthood, and Fruit of Attainment?
I think we need tags for discussions about the Path and The Fruit and the stages of Sainthood and Fruit of Attainment. There is a tag for stream entry but not for the others.

Can you give examples? Once-returner and so on?

Magga, Phala, Magga-Phala, Non-Returner, Samapatti, etc.

Sounds good, go forth and ask questions and tag them as such!

Created the following for tag proposals so we can vote on good ones: http://meta.buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/285/new-tag-proposal

Tags don't have an independent existence. Questions have tags. If you see a question which would benefit from the addition of one of those tags, then add it. You don't create the tags first.

I think the general principle of tagging is that people should just tag questions as makes sense to them. We can always retag if it doesn't make sense and I believe tags can always be removed entirely if some really bizzare ones crop up. I think the tags we have got at the moment all seem perfectly fair really. The good ones float to the top anyway.
I would just go forth and tag.

I has the problem of finding tags for questions relating to above topic. They not be that frequent but be beneficial if we have some tags.

@SumindaSirinathSalpitikorala you can just create them yourself. Just type the new tag into the tag box when creating your question and it will be created. You have the power!!

I am a bit reluctant. Best discuss what is the best rendering / version of it before doing it.

Best is to have some consensus what they should be. Any suggestions?

@SumindaSirinathSalpitikorala sorry I'm not the expert here. I was hoping you were ;-)

Created the following for tag proposals so we can vote on good ones: http://meta.buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/285/new-tag-proposal


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List of Buddhist Forums
I think we need to mention the site in different forums. Any suggestion on particular forums and who would volunteer to do it?

This was already done earlier on, but it wouldn't hurt to do it again now that we're more mature as a site.

Considering the Buddhist population who might have access to the web the participation is too low. We need to get more people aware.

Considering the Buddhist population who might have access to the web the participation is too low. We need to get more people aware.

I fear that it might perhaps not be useful to 'spam' non-Buddhist forums with unsolicited mentions of this site.
I suspect that Google ranks this site quite highly for relevant searches. For example, on my machine, https://www.google.com/search?q=buddhist+monk+physical+exercise returns Physical Exercise as a Monk? on its first page of search results.
Therefore I think it's possible that the best way to help is to put useful content on the site, which people will find if and when they look for it.
It would also be useful to consider what promotional methods are recommended by StackExchange, which has experience from several sites. See for example Announcer, Booster, and Publicist Badges: it suggests that you 'share' the links to the topics which you like, using your own Twitter, Google+ and/or Facebook account.


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How do you create Community Wiki Questions?
When postings answers there is a check box for community Wiki answers. If you are posting a question how can this be made Community Wiki question as such checkbox does not appear?

The current list
The following search finds all our current CW topics: "wiki:1 is:question"
(see also, How do I search?).

Moderators
Making a question CW is something which moderators (but, now, only moderators) can do (moderators see the CW checkbox available when they edit a topic).
(Until 2010 users could mark their own questions as CW -- see here -- but they changed that, e.g. because it caused arguments, like "your question is slightly off-topic, so, you must mark it as CW").

Examples on other sites
CW is and should be used rarely. It's mostly intended for collaborative topics, where there's not one best answer -- for example,

Dictionary of regional vocabulary differences (US vs UK)
This is one answer edited 10 times over more than 2 years

Terminology index - a list of bike part names and cycling concepts
This is many, separate answers; with an alphabetically-sorted list of links to each answer edited into the topic's "question".

Or for example there's,

The Definitive C++ Book Guide and List
This is so popular that it's CW and locked, edited nearly 100 times, and can now only be changed by their moderators (and, I guess but don't know, might have caused some disagreement if everyone tried to add their favourite book or the latest book to the list).

CW on this site
This site has a few CW topics. They are listed here:

Current list of all CW topics

Another example of something like CW is our,

Useful resources (which were created collaboratively)

CW is a bit useless if it's not a collaborative effort. If there's a CW topic you'd like to create, perhaps post it here on meta first as a proposal.
Note that this site isn't really meant to be a wiki ... not trying to compete with Wikipedia.
Another time when CW might be useful is when nearly-the-same question is being asked by different people again and again -- because they're nearly the same they ought to be in one place, because they're not quite the same the answer might need to be more detailed/inclusive/edited to account for the various difference.

OK. Great. Can you make this a CW if appropriate according to the above posts: What are good Buddhist Blogs / articles sites / resource sites out there?

Done. Sorry for the lengthy reply, I hadn't understood why you were asking.

Good for future reference.


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Strategy to Improve Awareness of Site and Attract More users
We need to try to increase awareness of this site and attract more users.
What are the strategies we can follow?

First of all, it's just a matter of time. All beta sites start slow and in time people will find this site and the community will grow. Most people find this site via Google so if you want to do something the best is to:

Create good and practical question with terms that interested people would use in searches. (BTW, the most valued questions often are those that people can related to and wanted to ask for themselves)
Answer those questions with high-quality answers.

Besides that you can promote the best questions we've got so far by posting them on relevant other sites.

Don't forget to share your questions and answers on Facebook; that's the best way to attract people, and get medals to boot - you get the "Announcer" badge if 25 people click on a link you shared.

Only if you share the link you get from clicking the "share" link below a post will you get points for the badge. It's the one that's got your unique identifier.


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How to Deal with Factually Wrong Answers
Reading through some answers seam to be factually wrong. I am not sure if it is a standpoint in another school hence there is a dilemma on how to deal with them. People who as the question and would be readers may end up confused or misguided.

Unless there is an obvious factual mistake (e.g. someone says s\he quotes Majjhima Nikaya while obviously quoting Milinda Panha) I would not rush with comments. We don't want to discourage new users by long flamewars in the comments. Certainly, if you asked for clarification once and the author responded, but you are still not satisfied, I would strongly recommend to restrain your horses. Instead, post your own answer with whatever facts you consider valid. If you absolutely must argue, please kindly proceed to chat, and there discuss your point to your heart's content.
Also, remember the following:

...
  -- 'As for Kashyapa... You see, Asvajit' -- sighed Gotama, 'some people believe that the purpose of philosophical debate is to outargue the opponent and prove one's superior understanding.'
  -- 'But this is so, Master Gotama, the one who wins the dispute, he must be the wiser, right?'
  -- 'One who is really wise, Asvajit, debates not to win.'
  -- 'What point is to argue then?!'-- As far as common sense Kaundinya had no equal.
  -- 'It is quite pointful still. The point is, for the two sides, through combining two different understandings of the same problem, to free themselves from mistaken fixations, each side from their own.'
  ...

Any argument in comments or chat does not take you any where. The problem remains unsolved as the person reading will not get the best / right information. We need to have something to achieve this.

I will gladly consider your constructive ideas on the topic :)

One possibility is to request a reference/citation. It's one thing to post one's personal opinion (that's allowed on this site, is it?). But it's another thing to misquote (misrepresent) someone else. A possibility would be to post a comment, "Are you sure: where does it (the literature of your school) say that? What does it say exactly? Could you please provide a reference and a quote?" At the very least, such a comment would be a signal to any future reader that that point is unreferenced and surprising, perhaps debatable or contentious.

I would put a comment in asking for clarification. Maybe it is a different school that has that interpretation. If no satisfactory answer came back then I would downvote. I personally would always leave a comment about why you have downvoted but that is just me.
Of course if it is abusive or inflammatory in any way then I would flag for moderator attention.


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Responding to questions from emotionally distressed people
Such questions have already been asked; also topics raised here might relate to such areas.
We have to be tactful in answering questions we might think are coming from a distressed person or might be of a topic relating to distress.
So they must be handled with care. Blunt but true answers might trigger undesired outcomes. So we have to have some discussion on best practices and the psychology  of how to answer these questions.

We have already discussed this sort of thing here. The idea is to flag them for admin to deal with. We're not a support group.

Thoughtful and compassionate answer. Be well.


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Display votes on the question
It would be good to be able to see which question you have voted and not vote  and how many answers you have voted and not vote by glancing over the questions list of question on the front page. There is not visual or other indication of this at the moment.

Sounds like a feature request to the Stack Exchange development team.

Yes. This way you can know questions you have vote and out of the answers how may you have voted on.

Yes, this isn't the right place to post these suggestions. You should try http://meta.stackexchange.com/

Echoing Andrei and yuttadhammo - feel free to expand on this request with examples or mockups and post it on meta.stackexchange.com. The community there will vet it and help you flesh it out. It's the best place for it to get seen by enough people to give it momentum to get built.

Further to the comments above, I suggest you look at https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/status-completed?sort=newest to see what requests StackExchange have been "completing" recently.
That will illustrate by example what kind of detail they like to see in a request.
Note that most of what has been completed (or accepted for development) recently has been 'bug' not 'feature-request' items.
There have been nearly 18,000 feature requests: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/feature-request

18k backlog means this might get lost in all the requests.

Imagine what the UI would be like if there were all implemented! Can you rephrase your 'feature-request' as a 'bug' instead, as something which diminishes the user experience? Perhaps they would be more likely to fix a bug.

Yes it's a bug. You have to open each question to know what questions and answers you have not voted for.


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Suggestion for the coming "close storm"
I can see on the user list we are about to get enough people with 500 rep that questions will start closing.
I lived through the "Science Fiction" stack exchange beta. Things I remember:

one day, all of a sudden, there were a lot of closes, like more than half of all questions. (I think this is because everyone hits 500 rep at the same time and there were a lot of competing ideas of what the site should look like)
people got really nasty, with helpful feed back like "You're a faggot for asking this question" (no kidding!)
it really weighed on the morale of the site and I pretty much stopped participating

Maybe we can do better?  Maybe by being nice as we close, suggesting ways that the asker could re-ask without risking close, or suggesting where on the internet they could find a better answer?
Any other suggestions for smoothing out the coming close storm?

Isn't there a reopen function? Maybe that will help.

From my experience on stackoverflow, re-opens were exceedingly rare. The changing in wording to "on hold" and the new work flow for reopening may have improved things though. I haven't asked a question that got closed in a long time. After a while you get a feel for what questions are just asking to get closed.

@MatthewMartin Since there is now a reopen queue (and questions get auto-shunted into the queue if they are edited), reopening is fairly easy to achieve on small sites like this one.

On small sites with active pro tem or elected moderators reopening/unholding tends to be a relatively straightforward process and you'll see questions cycle out with some frequency. "On hold" isn't a criticism, it's just a tool for helping craft great questions.

In addition to the "close storm" it appears to be "getting windy" in terms of low quality questions (predominantly Christian, as far as I've seen) like this one http://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/1864/man-god-son-angel-turned-devil - it's a fine balance to keep a good quality SE that people find useful.

re: closed q w/title "man-god-son-angel-turned-devil" -- hmm, that sounded pretty off topic.

I'm not sure how many of us are visiting meta, but some way to get people to comment if they are either downvoting or closevoting would be a great help.
We should probably encourage an order of operations to be followed, something like:
1st: Suggest ways the question can be improved by using comments
2nd: Edit the question yourself to increase clarity and focus
3rd: Suggest that the question may be downvoted or closed in its current form using comments
4th: Downvote or vote to close, making sure to leave a comment explaining why.
5th: Flag in cases of abuse, etc., again leaving a reason.

It is difficult to predict the future and this is where moderators will have to act.
The site is only as good as its users and all we, as regular users, can do is encourage good behavior.
In general, part of what makes this site work is that there has to be a consensus of five close votes to close a question.
There is no mechanism to force a user to comment on down or close votes and likewise there is no reason to take down or close votes personally.
If a user shows bad behavior, I would hope the moderators can engage the user(s) in a productive discussion. With a little, or sometimes more, effort most disputes can be resolved.
On the other hand, sometimes the moderators need to close or ban accounts for trolling, and it can be a bit of work if someone is persistent.
With the language you mentioned in your post, at a minimum, I would hope users can flag inappropriate comments and mods can delete them. Persistent bad behavior would require more effort.


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AD and BC or CE and BCE?
Which year convention should a Buddhist website use?
Or should we use the Buddhist calendar? As far as I can tell, the Buddhist calendar, is actually the Thai Calendar, which is just a Gregorian calendar with a 500 or so year shift.

Probably, Buddhist website should use that year convention that everybody can understand.

No one but a devout Christian should be using AD and BC anymore. The Gregorian calendar is standard in Thailand and Sri Lanka, but the Buddhist calendar follows the moons. So, in Thailand, today is waning day seven of the eight month of the year.
As for year, the (Theravada) Buddhist calendar starts after the Buddha's parinibbana, so depending on which calculation you go by, we're at approximately year 2557 B.E. (Buddhist Era).
Because the calculation varies from country to country, my inclination is to use C.E. and B.C.E., in spite of their obvious ties to Christianity.


text:
What the possible way to give an alternative answer when there is a difference of opinion with an existing answer?
What is the possible was to be diplomatic and pragmatic when providing answers when there is a different view, different opinions or even contradict existing answers. Also in cases when you believe they are factually wrong. There are many schools a lineages which sometimes say different things. The Buddha also taught the same thing in different ways. Some options may be out of place but at least the poster thinks otherwise. Also is to OK to make reference to existing answers when adding your answer when you want to highlight different views and perhaps errors, though I think this might become problematic.

A general way to avoid being rude when you're talking with someone is to prefer to use an I-message.
For example if they say something which you don't agree with, then avoid saying,

'You' are wrong, what you said is contradicted by the fact that the Buddha said so-and-so

Instead prefer to talk about 'I' instead of 'You', for example,

'I' don't understand that answer, because my understanding is that the Buddha said so-and-so.

In this case (i.e. in answer to this meta-question) I suggest you concentrate more on what you are trying to say, and concentrate less on the fact that you're disagreeing with another answer.
When you write your own answer it's better if you're extra careful to say where your answer is coming from, to reference and quote it accurately.
For example an answer like the following has (or is) a reference and quotes,

The Manual of Abibhidhamma distinguishes Phassa and Phassahara. On page 103,

Phassa — Derived from √ phas, to contact.
    For any sense-impression to occur, three things are
    essential—namely, consciousness, respective sense, and
    the object. For instance, one sees an object with the consciousness
    through the eye as its instrument.
    When an object presents itself to the consciousness
    through one of the six senses there arises the mental
    state—contact. “It should not be understood that mere collision
    is contact”37 (Na saïgatimatto eva Phasso).
    Like a pillar which acts as a strong support to the rest
    of the structure, even so is contact to the coexistent mental
    concomitants.
    “Contact means ‘it touches’ (phusatã’ti). It has touching
    (phusana) as its salient characteristic (lakkhana),
    impact (saïghaññana) as its function (rasa), coinciding (of
    the physical basis, object and consciousness) as its manifestation
    (sannipàta paccupaññhàna), and the object which
    has entered the avenue (of awareness) as proximate cause
    (padaññhàna).”
    Contact is mentioned first because it precedes all
    other mental states. “Touching by contact, consciousness
    experiences by feeling, perceives by perception, wills by
    volition—(Phassena phusitvà, vedanàya vediyati, sa¤¤àya
    sa¤jànàti, cetanàya ceteti).” According to PañiccaSamuppàda,
    too, Contact conditions Feeling. But strictly
    speaking, there is no reason for the sequence because all
    these mental states are coexistent. The Atthasàlinã states—
    “For of states, arisen in one conscious moment, it is not
    valid to say that ‘this’ arises first, ‘that’ afterwards. The reason
    is not because contact is a strong support. Contact is
    just mentioned first in the order of teaching, but it was also
    permissible to bring it in thus:— There are feeling and contact,
    perception and contact, volition and contact: there are
    consciousness and contact, feeling, perception, volition, initial
    application of mind. In the order of teaching, however,
    contact is mentioned first. Nor is the sequence of words
    among the remaining states of any special significance.”
    “Contact is given priority of place, as standing for the
    inception of the thought, and as the sine qua non of all the
    allied states, conditioning them much as the roof-tree of a
    storeyed house supports all the other combinations of
    material.”
    (Mrs. Rhys Davids — Buddhist Psychology, p. 6.)

And on page 378,

âhàra, in this connection, is used in the sense of sustenance.
    Edible food (kabalãkàràhàra) sustains the
    material body. Phassàhàra or contact or sense-impact
    sustains the five kinds of feeling. By manosaücetanàhàra
    are meant the different kinds of volition
    present in the 29 types of moral and immoral
    mundane consciousness. They sustain or produce
    rebirth in the three spheres. Vi¤¤ànàhàra signifies
    the rebirth-consciousness that sustains the mental
    states and material phenomena (nàma-råpa) which
    arise simultaneously. There are such 19 types of
    rebirth-consciousness. In the case of mindless
    spheres they sustain only råpa; in the case of formless
    spheres they sustain only nàma. In the existences
    where the five Aggregates are present they sustain
    both mind and matter.

If you wanted to disagree with someone else's answer, which said that Passa should be avoided, your posting an answer like the above is almost sufficient: it doesn't contradict the other answer; but it instead it says what you want to say; and because there's an extensive quote the answer is both clear (well written, and already reviewed/edited) and authoritative (or at least, it's clear who the author is).

Another technique is to carefully limit your answer. You could start it with something like,

According to the Theravada, ...

Or,

According to S.N. Goenka, ...

When you start your answer like that, then you're not claiming that all Buddhists (all schools of Buddhism) would explain Dhamma in that way (so it's a kind of 'disclaimer)', but it also makes your claim stronger (e.g. you might not know what the Chan doctrine is and you don't want to argue with someone who's explaining Chan doctrine, but you do know what S.N. Goenka said so you're authoritative, sure of what you say, i.e. "thus have I heard", when you answer on that topic).

Also is to OK to make reference to existing answers when adding your answer when you want to highlight different views and perhaps errors, though I could imagine circumstance where it might become problematic.

I think you're right, that it is tempting to highlight the difference but that it could be problematic.
I can think of three things that would help to prevent it being a problem:

The good-will of the other person -- if they're not likely to take offence, then any disagreement about the answers is less likely to escalate into conflict between the people; conversely if you think that the other user is likely to see your answer as some kind of attack, and to react with some kind of argument, then maybe the less said (about a direct and overt comparison between answers) the better, and just let readers see for themselves that there's more than one answer, and concentrate on making your own answer as good and clear as possible without criticizing (without even mentioning) another answer; alternatively if the other user doesn't have a reputation (in your mind) for being angry, then it's easier to say that their answer is wrong say that you don't understand their answer because it seems to be contradicted by something you quoted.
The reason for the apparent difference is clear -- if it's obvious that the two answers are from two different schools then any difference between the answers doesn't have to be a difference between the two users posting, e.g. both posters can be more-or-less "right" and neither especially "wrong", if their answers are talking about two different things/doctrines
Your attitude -- if you're angry and thinking, "that worthless, annoying, and presumptuous person is making mistakes again and being wrong in their answer, I'd better post another answer to correct them" then maybe the 'contrary' answer is enough and it's not helpful to highlight that it disagrees with another answers; conversely if you're thinking, "isn't it marvellous how true Dhamma is (or must be) expressed in so many different and even seemingly contradictory ways", and if you're saying, "look, his answer is pointing out the elephant's ears and here, this answer describes the elephant's legs", then that seems to me more helpful and less problematic.

that idea I-message is a very good advice, Thank you for posting it chris!


text:
Stack Overflow Gives Back 2015
What charities will we support? I guess this is perhaps in the hands of the moderators but perhaps some voting guide the decision maybe good idea.
Link: http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2015/12/stack-overflow-gives-back-2015/?cb=1

The decisions were made, and the money has been given: the blog entry is announcing the results.
In early December, an email from StackExchange asked each moderator to choose,  from a short-list.

Perhaps we can consider: https://buddhistglobalrelief.org/?


text:
Is iconography on topic?
Questions like,

Why does the Buddha look feminine (It's the long lashes, one of the 32 marks)
Why does the Buddha have long ears (I think we're going to get 32 of these questions, maybe there should be a canonical one and the others closed as duplicates)
Name this Buddha (I think we've already got 3+ Hotei questions)

I'm personally hoping that iconography questions are on topic, but that the Hotei and 32 mark questions get closed as duplicates after a suitable canonical answer is posted.
Were iconography to be off topic altogether, than some altar maintenance/puja questions and diety visualization questions could get bumped off topic.  While the 32 mark and "name-this-fat-guy" questions seem to be from people with a superficial interest in the topic, "How to do I visualize Fudo Myo (ie. what does he or his statues look like)" is a matter of soteriological importance.

Long ears isn't even one if the 32 characteristics, iirc.

Yup, I checked, you're right.

Iconography should be on topic and one of the reasons would be the importance of iconography in Vajrayana tradition where meditating on Yidams (or one would say visualising Buddha forms) is a core practice. There are countless of Buddha forms and their colours, attributes and ornaments are not coincidental or artist's form of expression but they all have a deeper and systematic meaning. Same for Mandalas, Refuge Trees or altar arrangements. The questions like 'Why one form of Chenrezig has 4 arms while the other one has 1000?'  would be perfectly valid with (hopefully) detailed answers explaining the meaning of postures, attributes, etc.
As for the 'long-ears' questions - well, I would say that there is a finite number of such questions so sooner or later they will just stop cropping up. We as a community can upvote other, better questions, so the long-ears won't catch a lot of attention in the long run.

+1 I agree. I've commented that the "long ears" question could perhaps have been better by making it one about iconography (as opposed to anatomy), but I personally learned a lot about Buddhism from hearing experts at museums where Buddhist art was on display. Art carries meaning just as written commentaries do, so I think it would be a shame to exclude it.

I would rephrase the "Why" questions though to "What is the significance of X" (long ears, green skin color etc.)
In general our "What is X", "Why is X", "How does X work" questions gotta get more specific. I'm working on a list of question types and how each should be phrased. Might be too ambitious a project but we shall see.


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Sectarian shout downs should be dealt with
(Finally came up with a better title.)
So if one asks a question about, say, mudras and the answer is "That's superstition, you should read the earlist pali texts"
Or if I ask a question about, say, mindfulness in noisy environment and the comment is "Meditational practices aren't effect, you need to chant Myo-ho-renge-kyo" or "Mindfulness is a ineffective materialist muddle you need to find a suitable lama and start ngondro"
Or if I ask a question about, If you see Amitabha and his Pure Land just before you die and the answer is "Only Christ and God can save your soul from Damnation" or alternatively "The Amitabha doesn't exist, he's a story to distract the working class from their current plight"
Do you see the pattern here?  Do we want to leave open answers and comments that do nothing to answer the question, but instead are a sectarian attack on the beliefs implicit in the question?
I know from my experience on other Buddhist forums on the internet that these sort of discussions go nowhere good-- at best it becomes a battle between warring straw men, each side ascribing inaccurrate ideas to the other because neither side really is very familiar with the other's school of thought.
I would suggest that these sort of comments and answers be dealt with aggressively. Or just quietly removed.
For the programmers here, this is the equivalent of asking how to sort a list of words in C# and being told that computers are stupid and you should use pencil and paper, or a recommendation to just stop using C# and switch to Cobol (yet never mentioning how to sort a list of words)
UPDATE: Regardless to how you feel about sectarianism, it shouldn't be controversial that low quality answers like I've described don't answer the question.  Worse, this is on a site that discourages discussion for discussion's sake. We aren't asking a question so that we can learn to harmonize with people who disagree with the very premises of our question. On a Stack Exchange site we ask a question for a factual answer. If the question doesn't have an answer (or is a thinly veiled attempt to provoke the other sect), then it's a bad question.

Is there a specific example of this we can review?

Here is the link- http://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/1541/why-is-kwan-yin-riding-a-sea-turtle

This is not meant to be sectarian or condemn this. I was encouraging you to practice meditation hence gainging self realisation in the process. The Buddha also used this technique as well as some contemporary meditation masters also.

What if it's you who giving strictly sectarian point of view (w/o qualifying that)? Not necessarily comment to refer some else point of view is more sectarian than yours. So I think small comment should be left intact, if it's informative of other point of view. If you are offended by supposedly sectarian comment, look, maybe people are offended by your actually sectarian statement. To avoid that it may be useful to clarify that your answer is sectarian and not general.

Agreed. I think if a poster only wants the response pertaining to a perticulaly tradition only, then should give an indication as to what tradition the question relates to. (E.g. What do Zen Buddhists think about...) Certain aspects having a significance in one tradition may have no relavence in another. So if someone responds this point of view then it might look inappropriate in the light of another tradition.

There is a subtle line between what the stance on certain questions taken by a certain tradition and school of thought and protest. So care must be taken by both moderates and community members that expressing an line of thought from another tradition is not interpreted as a protest or inappropriate.

This looks like a stronger form of what I was referring to here. So it'll be no surprise that I'm pretty much in agreement with @MatthewMartin on the subject.
If this were a software discussion, I'd propose that these kinds of answers are an anti-pattern (a la http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CopyAndPasteProgramming). So perhaps we could give them a name and (gently) rebuke people offering them by referring, in a comment, to that. Something like "Please Answer With Information Not Personal Advice" (PAWINPA)

Yeah, one issue may be a subcase of the other. (How do I do prostrations? Well, let me give you some advice, don't do prostrations and instead do what I do, visualizations and a paleo diet) On the otherhand, many question are advice questions, (Can I get advice on how to count prostrations?) which seem legit, but still shouldn't be answered with "Well, that is just asian cultural baggage, you should just forget all about that superstitious prostration stuff --and do mindfulness like I do!"

Excellent topic. An answer to this question would, seriously, lead the planet into a non-sectarian religious view so, at the least, I would be amazed if we pulled it off. Still, worthwhile to start the effort. I personally see the various aspects of all religions as (analogy alert!), say, facets of diamond. The documentary film, "Spiritual Revolution", is a nice dialogue between meditators of many religions all of whom who realize that they are all essentially saying the same thing, just with different dialects, so to speak. We don't all have to speak the same language, but we do need to realize we are all saying the same thing. Having that spirit in this forum is no small thing.
I like the idea that has instituted Moderators. Flags for negative sectarian bias or inappropriate answers could be useful to weed out those sorts of trolls. Answers based on Personal Experience are not necessarily a bad thing, when context and tolerance are included. (A YMMV response is implied.) Still, there is a reason not everyone follows one teacher; we all have our own needs. Heck, even the Buddha couldn't get everyone living in his day liberated right then. Good discussion..er.. Q&A!

Do we want to leave open answers and comments that do nothing to answer the question...

We're currently quite liberal, actually: if an answer does something to answer the question then it's likely to be allowed (but if it's only a slight answer then it's unlikely to be up-voted).

...but instead are a sectarian attack on the beliefs implicit in the question?

Well if it's nothing but a sectarian attack there's a good excuse to delete it: you can flag it as 'not an answer' and a moderator should delete it.
(Apart from being deleted by the moderator after you flag it, answers can also be deleted by the community (using the review tools), if/after the answer has been downvoted to a negative score).
If it's an answer and a sectarian attack there are two options:

Edit it to remove the attack
Flag it is as inappropriate for moderator attention

If you want a sect-specific answer I suggest you also tag it as such: for example if the question ask about Pure Land and if it's tagged with the pure-land tag, then an answer which isn't from a Pure Land perspective is more obviously off-topic / not an answer / flagged and deleted.