text:
Should this "polling" question be closed?
This topic on the main site, Studying and practicing Buddhism, which asks ...

What is the most important thing, truth, lesson, you have learned so far?
  And what would be the thing you most desire to learn?

... is a "polling question" as described in the Moderation policies for Questions ...

"Polling questions" which only ask "What's your experience?"
For example, this
  question was closed by
  yuttadhammo and it's a type of question which he regularly closes. The
  question asked this, after describing an experience,

Has anyone ever experienced anyone like this off or even on (!) the mat? It was most striking...

I gave the following comment as an explanation for closing this
  question:

I think a problem with a question that is phrased like, "Has anyone ever experienced anyone like this?" is that it could attract an
    unlimited number of people each answering "Yes, me!". Each new answer
    would be a bit new (different from previous answers) and as valid as
    any previous answer. There's no obvious way to select any best answer
    to that question, no way for any answer to finish answering or to
    provide a complete answer to the question. And it doesn't seem to
    describe any practical problem you have, so there's no way for anyone
    to help to answer/fix that problem.
Crab bucket's question is modified
    (a sufficiently different, on-topic version of the same question):
    it's different/better because in particular it identifies a problem to
    be solved, and it asks for advice (on how to deal with this problem).

The site's format and strategy is not designed for long discussions.
  Its strategy is to serve for Q+A (answering questions) now, and for
  previously answered questions to remain in a clean format which works
  well for reference (so that future readers who find the topic using a
  search engine can read simple Q+A).
If people wanted long unfocused discussions, an option would be to
  use of a 'Chat' room.

Is it nevertheless a good question?
Is it likely to help readers? Likely to harm the site?
Should we close the question, keep it open, wait to see whether the question is up- or down-voted, allow it (exceptionally) once?
I'm not sure what the historical reason is for closing "polling" questions on Stack Exchange, beyond a general feeling that "this isn't the kind of personal question that we ask here." Maybe it comes from the Help's What types of questions should I avoid asking? which includes,

To prevent your question from being flagged and possibly removed, avoid asking subjective questions where …

every answer is equally valid: “What’s your favorite ______?”

Agreeing with Lanka here. It looked to me as overly broad, personal-opinion-based polling question that would lead to discussions in comments and in general would look more like a forum thread than a question with answers.
in general, we are already way more liberal than many other SE sites, we are very permissive about vague questions, reference-less answers, discussion in comments etc.
There is a reason why being liberal is appropriate in our case, but we can't stretch our policies indefinitely, and I think this case is where I'd draw the line.

Do you happen to know of any other sites (non-SE forums) where this kind of question would be allowed?

I'm inclined to permit it, if only because people tend not to use this site's main chat room -- and so, telling people to "use chat instead" isn't necessarily helpful or possible.
But now Lanka created a chat room for that question (which may or may not be deleted automatically after a while, depending on how many people use it) so I hope that's an adequate alternative.


text:
What about self-answering questions?
This is a poll, so please answer clearly and/or upvote an existing answer:

Do you have any additional arguments, whether in favour or against?
Should we keep the current policy, of telling people we'd prefer they don't post questions in order to self-answer them?
Should we keep the current "tacit" policy, of tolerating some self-answered questions (for example if they're upvoted), as well as of allowing or accepting a moderator's deleting such a topic if the moderator wants to?
Should we change (or simply undo, vote against), the current site-specific policy, and instead welcome (in general) the self-answering of topics?
Do we need to reconsider any other policy, related to "what is a 'high quality' question?", and, "Is a 'low quality' question ever closed and if so by whom?"

Introduction
Bhante Kumāra posted (and answered) this topic and that led to this chat.
In that chat I tried to explain this policy -- May I share my research, by posting questions on this site and self-answering them?
Ven. Kumāra (and Ruslan) would like to revisit and perhaps reverse that decision.

Reasons for disapproving of self-answered questions
Some of the reasons I gave in chat were that self-answered topics can  be a vehicle for low-quality or disruptive content, for example:

Someone can use it to an argument across multiple topics, for example:

Question: Is such-and-such true? User X said "such-and-such", in topic Y. Are they right?

Answer: No! User X is wrong, and such-and-such is false! etc.

Someone can post questions which seem intended to prove that their knowledge is superior:

"Asks a question"
(Waits for other people to answer...)
(Posts an answer): "Thanks for trying, everyone, but here's the correct answer which I was expecting: etc."

Someone can flood the site with several questions and answers per day.

It can be used for posting dubious content -- conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, maybe spam-like topics.

It seemed to me that the community had voted against it -- including in this topic which has answers like:

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.

... and,

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.

... as well as in this topic where even MathewMartin's answer, which appears to say "yes", also says,

Yeah, posting a rhetorical question & answering it is bad business (for this site, fine for a blog/discussion forum tho)

So it was a clear majority of the users who voted -- 9 users to 3 or something like that -- including all three of the moderators.

Contrary to SE norms, on this site we have little or no quality control on questions -- Moderation policies for Questions -- and if a question is closed it's closed by moderators not by users. Because "self-answered" question can be unwelcome -- low-quality and/or disruptive, we discourage them in general to avoid having arguments about why their question was OK but yours is unwelcome.

In practice moderators aren't strict in enforcing the rule.
If a user does it occasionally/rarely, if the question and answer are welcome (up-voted), if it doesn't seem "disruptive", then (so far as I remember) moderators don't delete it, instead it's "tolerated".
The existence of the rule lets us (moderators) delete things if we don't like it:

Usually the community has asked moderators not to judge the "quality" of a post (but this rule allows us to)
On this site it tends to be only moderators -- not users -- who will close a question (it takes 5 high-reputation users to vote to close, or only one moderator's vote)

In my personal experience or memory of other SE sites, self-answered questions are permitted but not very important. They're rare on any main site, and are mostly used for faq topics on Meta.
The most useful, most-upvoted topics on Stack Overflow seem to be all people answering other people's questions, not their own.

Reasons for approving of self-answered questions
Ven. Kumāra's argument for permitting them includes:

They're usually allowed on other SE sites -- Can I answer my own question?

Yes! Stack Exchange has always explicitly encouraged users to answer their own questions.

Furthermore (quoting from chat):

And I'm also saying trust SE's design to make Buddhism.SE work, because it has proven to work elsewhere. There's no reason it wouldn't work here. And there's no proof that it's not working.

I'm believe when people use is like their onw blog, they question will get much downvoted and the person will eventually leave. This is not just a theory. We already have proof of this.

(Therefore allowing self-answers isn't harmful -- instead simply downvoting is enough to solve the problem and/or make people leave.)

Besides, if we want to attract more experts, then openly allow self-answering, because that's an important factor in attracting them. By disallowing it as a policy, or even just to discourage it almost as a rule, the moderators have undermined a major reason why SE is successful elsewhere.
Experts who want to share find this an attractive place. We should encourage the useful ones, and shoo away the useless one, instead of shooing away all of them.

I suspect that users in favour of this change, and/or who may want to post self-answered questions, include Ven. Kumāra (who's proposing this change), Ruslan, perhaps other (current or former) users including Theravada and Lowbrow, and perhaps Samana Johann.

Generally, what I like to do is to post a question sincerely i.e. where I do not know the answer to the question.
Then I choose the best answer to the question, and this must come from others.
However, I may later post an answer based on useful information that I discovered AFTER posting the question, in which case, I will never accept my own answer.
The reason for this is that I think this is very useful information that should not go unposted, and would add value to the question.
My example for this is Was the Abhidhamma taught by the Buddha?.

Yes that's currently/already welcome -- that was the reason why, and the (only) extent to which, MatthewMartin's answer voted "yes".

I'm strongly opposed to giving green light to quasi-questions posted with the sole intent to share an opinion, an unsolicited teaching, rambling, philosophical musings etc.
If someone can enumerate and define scenarios when self-answering is not utilized in order to take advantage of Buddhism SE platform to push unsolicited info at the audience, and develop some sort of guidelines for telling them apart, we may be able to find a better compromise than today's black-n-white policy.

I believe when people use it like their own blog, their question will get downvoted and the person will eventually leave.

Regarding the above, my experience from being on this site since 2014 is exactly the opposite. Instead of getting downvoted out of sight, low-quality content -- including the preaching/rambling-style questions and answers -- attract other similar low-quality questions, answers, and comments, which creates a self-supporting cyclical tendency that eventually crowds out good quality content, discouraging serious users and pushing them to leave.

Ven. Kumāra's example of a self-answered question was not down-voted, seemed to be orthodox, well-explained, a conventional format (a sutta which previous users have seen occasion to post more than once). Self-answered questions are by definition "unsolicited", aren't they. Apart from "unsolicited" are there another criteria to distinguish low-quality posts? For example whether they're "Disruptive behavior" (i.e. "other users tend to react poorly, etc.")?

To me, Kumara Bhikkhu's post was off-putting exactly because of its unsolicited nature. Imagine if I started posting unsolicited Mahayana teachings copy/pasting verbatim quotes from Chogyam Trungpa's lectures - wouldn't that be off-putting to many users? My guess is that some users would quietly leave and some would start posting their own content in response to mine and the whole thing would snowball.

The only exception I would make is when the OP posts a sincere question, is not satisfied with any answer, then subsequently does his/her own research and posts a satisfactory answer. Even in this category moderators would have to remain vigilant to censor unsolicited advice disguised as "better answer".

Right. Another scenario/use-case I imagined was, someone might post a summary here each time they posted a new Dhamma talk on YouTube or a blog -- in theory the number of posts could explode. And I know you're sensitive about one user's not pushing other topics off the front/active page of questions, "flooding" the site (though other sites have to learn to deal with many questions per day). But if it's so that self-answered == unsolicited == off-putting, there's not much wiggle-room, not much room for discussion or compromise. Would rate-limiting help, e.g. a guideline of 2 per week per user?

Maybe I should ask on meta.se how do other sites welcome self-answered questions without their being treating as spam (i.e. "unsolicited" albeit not commercial). On a big site like SO I guess it's taken for granted that nobody will read everything that's posted, and if you don't like an on-topic post (self-answered or otherwise) then downvote it or just shouldn't read it -- and there's some ability to ignore tags -- and that might work, or be the best they can do, for huge sites.

Sure, you can ask around. I'm thinking, maybe a combo of rate-limiting and reputation-thresholding? Unfair but reasonable in a way... [FromScore, ToScore, UnsolicitedPostsWeeklyAllowance]

So you're not against rate-limiting. I wonder whether Ven. Kumāra would accept it as reasonable safety valve, or whether it's just another unwanted rule. I wonder what else we could do; if this were Discourse (which it isn't) they could be posted as a new Category; but SE only supports two categories, i.e. main and Meta.

... the whole thing would snowball And not sure whether snowballing would be a bug or a feature, I guess it depends on what you want of a site and the quality of the snow. Increased volume would mean more to moderate, other sites expect the users (not the moderators) to moderate content -- to vote-to-close and so on -- which I'd say they haven't been doing here.

Come to think of it, your last comment has some logic to it.

Aggressive Staggering by Reputation would prevent the worst part of the problem IMO. Like, until you have a ~1000 points (maybe even 5000) your Unsolicited Allowance should be zero.

Historically the two users of this site who posted the most numerous rhetorical or pedagogical questions, which weren't entirely "well-received", and which we've tried to stop because they seemed to be flooding the site and poorly-asked, and/or argumentative+disruptive, were both high-reputation "trusted" users (over 4,000) -- so I'm not sure that (reputation) is a very useful correlation. Conversely some of the most expert (and reputable) people in the world are not the most avid users of this site, and I'm not sure we ought to discriminate against them on that basis.

What might you think of this as a policy: "if users don't want to vote-to-close, then why should we (moderators) try to do it?"? Maybe we should stick to moderating users instead of content, including moderating users for reasons like, "consistently low quality questions over time We've noticed that you've asked many questions, a large number of which were not well received by other members of our community. Specifically, many of your questions were downvoted and closed etc."

That would imply that we moderators should refrain from voting-to-close if there's any doubt (though we can down-vote and comment).

To me the fact that the two worst offenders were in 4000s just means we need to set the barrier even higher, maybe to 10k. The world-class experts on Buddhism with no reputation on this site would need to prove their expertise and commitment to this community and fitness to share in this democratic format where they are not the central figure on stage - before they can post unsolicited advice.

I don't think moderating users is a good idea, too ad-hominem and too much generalization for my taste. Moderating content seems more objective and easier to substantiate: "this phrase is not acceptable" vs "you've been a bad boy lately" .  Also, I don't think we can solely rely on community self-moderating here - not active enough.

too ad-hominem and too much generalization for my taste That's why our job is to do it "as little as possible" IMO -- but when there's "a dark storm cloud of moderator flags that seems to follow this user around wherever they go etc." then that's our job. Moderating a user is not very nice, and I see the appeal of (I tended to prefer) a systematic/formal rule which tries to ensure that users can only act cooperatively, and avoid opportunities for inter-user friction, but (perhaps the cost of that rule is too high, preventing additional helpful self-answered content and happy users).

Oh yes of course -- if we "moderate a user" then we talk about content: what they posted (if it was rude) and/or how it was received (downvoted and closed by other users). I meant that the user community should be the arbiters of what content is welcome, and to that extent we shouldn't try to moderate content.

To me the fact that the two worst offenders were in 4000s just means we need to set the barrier even higher, maybe to 10k. One I'm thinking of was 30k, isn't that so? An infeasibly high bar -- which goes to show that a user's being an avid/prolific user of the site, and knowledgeable, doesn't necessarily imply their questions or their "unsolicited advice" are necessarily well-received (welcomed) -- so instead (if we allow it all) we might need to allow it on a case by case basis, perhaps depending on the community's reaction to it (instead of e.g. a reputation-based privilege).

If you wanted to make it privilege-based I might suggest that 500 or 750 would be a threshold -- that's the level at which people are deemed to know the community well enough to vote-to-close.

Alright, your arguments against the reputation-boundary are sound. And yet I'm not convinced we should greenlight a random newbie getting on the proverbial soap box just because they are a Bhikkhu channeling EBT or a Vajrayogini spontaneously speaking rhyming Dharma poems, or anything else. How are we to decide who is allowed to get on the box and who's not? I suppose the main issue here is community self-moderation or rather the lack thereof, right?

The answers to this -- How do sites moderate self-answered questions? --  might be kind of conclusive/instructive, what do you think? In summary IMO that's saying, 1) We should allow it in principle 2) It probably won't be too bad in fact 3) Ensure the OP posts good questions (which other people might want to answer or see answered) not just self-answers, if not then users (not necessarily moderators) can vote-to-close the question. 4) Users (subject matter experts) can downvote and vote-to-delete bad answers too.

If a user is disruptive -- hostile, flooding the site, often posting unwelcome questions -- then we should have a word. 6) In our case (small site) if users can't or won't collectively muster the necessary quorum of 5 votes-to-close or v-to-delete, IMO we moderators could amplify them (by casting a super-vote after just a few people vote) -- but that's not a decision we need to make preemptively (by banning self-answering), nor is deciding whether any given content is good a decision we should make alone (though I think we should intervene if a post seemed hostile or anything like that).

So I propose we reverse our policy at least experimentally; and ask interested users to use their voting privileges (up and down, close, and delete) on the main site.

Do any of those people moderate religious Q&A sites? Anyway, I'm OK with trying it out.

OTOH I was wrong to say "I recommend" -- it's "they recommend" -- I am still reluctant, for reasons I already wrote, and your reasons, and Yuttadhammo's i.e. *"seeded questions are irksome" and Shog9's. Unrul3r's self-answer showed more research effort than Ven. Kumara's because it aggregates material from several references (not copying and giving some IMO obvious comments on one sutta).

If I say "I'm reluctant" that means I find it hard to imagine this feature being used well. OTOH the fact that I don't imagine I'm able to post good self-answered topics myself doesn't mean that other people -- people who are relatively more expert -- might not, so maybe I shouldn't put a blanket ban on it preemptively (not that I do, instead I might I warn new people against it as you did, but then tolerate it unless it seems disruptive).

No I don't think "any of those people moderate religious Q&A sites". We could ask those sites too -- via their Metas or chat -- or ask their mods on Temperance. Do want to do that?

It's encouraged on Christianity: here and here, which encourage the practice.

as long if something doesn't have awful content, or is egregiously self aggrandaising or pejorative to others or to Buddhism etc(noticed a recent edit that had alleviated something along those lines), then if it's simply somewhat off or too biased or assertive, then maybe just make a mild comment or two to the question, but nothing drastic or notnice, & readers can see that as they consider the question!

Anyway, I'm OK with trying it out I hope this is alright then (albeit wordy again) -- Proposal: Self-answering questions is welcome

Proposal looks good I cast my vote

I think there is 3 situation:

One does not know the answer and later after finding something useful hence adds a late answer which is acceptable.
One has an answer in mind. Unless one is a pure novice one will have some answer, in many cases it is the level of confidence and depths in the knowledge is what changes. In this case, the answer should be posted with the question so others do not was time digging up the same information or trying to answer at the same depth. Also, others can share answers where their angle differs from the given answer. This can also be verifying if one's position is right or if one has missed any angle. Not being able to share what one has got would mean one gets answers on what one already knows or may not be at the depth one is seeking and wasting everyone's time. E.g. one has a Sutrantha answer but not the full Abhidhamma angle not sharing this means someone may also give a Sutrantha answer wasting his and your time. Providing and answer reduces the burden on others to the amount of facts they have to research to complete or different angle to the question.
Questions to test others might not resonate well with uses and these are the ones which need to be discouraged.

Right. So your #1 agrees with ruben2020's answer. Your #2 agrees with existing policy i.e. ask a detailed  sincere question about what you don't know, show your research about what you know already in the question (but don't self answer). And #3 agrees with existing policy i.e. especially don't self-answer in order to test people and to claim that your own answer is superior.

In #2 I mean answer your own question immediately (do self answer immediately or without delay) when you ask the question if you have an answer so others can give something 1) different 2) additional and not wast time answering what you know. Your answer is just another answer which can get votes by its merit.

#3 is not giving an answer immediately and when someone gives an answer saying "this is a wrong answer and this is the answer I have been expecting".

Oh -- when you said "the answer should be posted with the question" I thought you means "as part of the question" -- a bit like in this question where I posted some references and partial answers as part of the question. The way I read your #2 example, your actual question is really/only about the Abhidhamma, and that is the question which only other people can answer.

Re: #2 - If you post as part of the questions the voting mechanism cannot work for one's partial answer. One's own answer serves as and references on which others can give something additional or another angle. Say my answer is the Sutta angle some sone else can give another answer with the Abhidhamma angle. If my answer is based on say X, Y sutta someone else can give another saying Z Sutta also mentions this.

So you're in favour of posting self-answered questions so that your answers can be up- or down-voted.

Answers are sorted by votes. So what should be at the top is what is the best. So if the subsequent answers are mediocre one's answer should be at the top. If other answers are better they should Bubble to the top. For this to work properly though we need a reasonably knowledgeable community.
What if you have a good question with bad assumptions about what the answer is. If it is the body of the question others cannot signal this by voting other answer over this.

Thats an excellent point: some answers may actually be incorrect(based on well known concepts such as The Four Noble Truths) yet presented flamboyantly etc readers may infer that it is correct cf a plainer answer(or perhaps boringly written) which might go unnoticed or even misunderstood yet is fairly accurate! Also, the further a question or answer is from central concepts, the more expertise and insight may be needed to discern its accuracy! good stuff is assumed to rise up, but may not. Or a question may seem abrasively worded, but more because of an Askers language ability!

And if very good & insightful answer was misunderstood & received downvotes , the Answerer might delete it because they wouldnt want people to be mislead and infer that is wasn't correct! Whether a question was selfanswered wouldn't affect that! so maybe it's good to try consider questions & answers individually rather than to try aggregate them into groups to either be unallowed or allowed. If some selfanswered questions seemed getting out of hand, maybe just ask them to ease up. And if selfanswered questions are open to information, they could be helpful.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Proposal: Self-answering questions is welcome
Previously we discouraged self-answered questions (SAQs), but let's welcome them now
This proposal is based on, my trying to summarise, these meta-topics:

What about self-answering questions? (on Buddhism.Meta.SE)
How do sites moderate self-answered questions? (on Meta.SE)

For a while we have discouraged self-answered questions (SAQs) -- the consensus from May I share my research, by posting questions on this site and self-answering them? seemed to be "no".
The exception to that "no" -- i.e. when SAQs were (and still are) welcome -- was in this kind of circumstance:

Generally, what I like to do is to post a question sincerely i.e. where I do not know the answer to the question.
Then I choose the best answer to the question, and this must come from
others.
However, I may later post an answer based on useful information that I
discovered AFTER posting the question, in which case, I will never
accept my own answer.
The reason for this is that I think this is very useful information
that should not go unposted, and would add value to the question.
My example for this is Was the Abhidhamma taught by the Buddha?.

But SAQs are allowed and welcome and seen as beneficial on other SE sites.

Can I answer my own question?
Yes! Stack Exchange has always explicitly encouraged users to answer their own questions. If you have a question that you already know the answer to, and you would like to document that knowledge in public so that others (including yourself) can find it later, it's perfectly okay to ask and answer your own question on a Stack Exchange site.

Characteristics of a good, well-written SAQ

The answer may be encyclopedic

Don't just answer the immediate question, but fix it two (or even three) ways. Give the reader everything they might need to answer related questions themselves.

An answer which copy-and-pastes (or references) any single sutta isn't necessarily useful -- one of SE's community moderators (Shog9) implied as much, as quoted here.
One way to add value is to comment on what you quote (and/or to reference your comments!).
Another way is to compile several resources.
For example the community upvoted this as being a good SAQ -- Which early canonical references help one find a skillful teacher?
Some sites take this a step further, and write "canonical answers". We haven't explicitly tried that yet on this site, but imagine there were some frequently-asked question which a lot of new users ask. Instead of re-answering each time, the community or one user might try to craft what SE calls a 'canonical' topic so that subsequent simuilar questions can be closed as duplicate.

The question should be well-written and interesting
Avoid posting a one-line question, which is just a place-holder into which to insert your answer. Everyone recommends writing a good question, for example:

Make sure you spend almost as much effort on the question as you did on the answer. Much like on Stackoverflow we want people who ask questions to tell us what they've tried attempting to work out their problem. Tell us what you thought about, where you looked before you found the answer etc. If you can't write more than a sentence or two about the problem, seriously consider whether you're the right person to be asking this question.

Encourage other answers
If someone self-answers a question and then implies that any and all other answers are worse, that might seem conceited and disruptive (see below).
Part of the point of writing a good question in the first place is so that other people will be interested, and perhaps inclined to answer it too.
One user recommends:

I sincerely encourage additional feedback and competing answers. As a matter of habit, I prefer not to accept my own answers and am eager to reward competing ones.

Poorly-written SAQs and how to handle them

Disruptive
Sometimes a few SAQs on this site have seemed intended to perpetuate an argument from one topic to another -- for example someone disagrees with what someone else has written in a topic, and posts a new SAQ in a thinly-veiled criticism of the other user's view.
SE defines "disruptive behaviour" like this:

Other users tend to react poorly to this user’s contributions, posting negative responses in kind and generally causing a commotion.
There is a broad sense of community resentment over this user’s behavior, and they are frequently cited in discussion about the community.
There is a dark storm cloud of moderator flags that seems to follow this user around wherever they go.
The moderators get email complaints about this user’s behavior.
This user makes overtly snide, rude, or hostile comments to their fellow users.

We (community and moderators) should flag and handle this in the usual way. But the mere fact that a topic is a SAQ shouldn't be considered disruptive.

Not a good question
Questions should normally be well-written -- a question you might like to answer yourself, and/or a question you might like to see someone else answer.
If it isn't then the community can downvote the question and/or vote-to-close it.

Not a good answer
The usual suggestions apply, e.g. down-vote, comment constructively (to suggest any improvements), and/or write a better answer.
As long as the question is good, the fact that the answer isn't great is less important (because, someone else might write a better answer).

Conceited
Perhaps I'm wrong but my impression is that one of the problem with SAQs is they might be seen as conceited ("I know this and you don't, and you ought to know so I'm going to tell you").
Some of the most popular FAQs on this site warn against your "preaching", or "assuming a teacher's mantle".
Perhaps the advice (quoted above), about writing a good question and encouraging other answers, will help to avoid that -- because then you depict yourself as respectful of others (which is the main thing) -- and also as a fellow-student or a researcher, not a teacher, which might be easier for others to accept.

Self-promotion
How to not be a spammer includes, "Always solve the asker's problem" and other advice. But if no-one else asked, then your answer may seem "unsolicited" -- which is part of the definition of "spam".
If you think it's relevant to reference your own blog or YouTube video, it may be better to do that in reply to someone else's question not your own.
In theory this too might depend on the quality of the post -- if it's good then it's welcome -- but perhaps even if the OP were a famous author, a respected subject matter expert and a good writer, their posting "Question + Short Answer + Reference to a publication of mine" would seem a bit spammy.
So SAQs should be self-contained (not just a summary of what you've written elsewhere). Or they might be encyclopedic, with many references of which your own publication would be only one among several.

Flooding the site
Try not to post too often. It annoys some people if many of the most recent topics are all by the same author.

New directions for the community (regular users and moderators)

Cleanup of poor questions
Users who earn a reputation of 125 or 500 can vote down or vote to close a topic.
There are various standard close reasons:

And of course you can up-vote good questions. The standard reason for an upvote is,

This question shows research effort; it is clear and useful

In the past this site has been unusually tolerant of low-quality questions. Users rarely ever close questions (only moderators do sometimes). One of the site-specific FAQs -- Moderation policies for Questions -- says explicitly that various types of low-quality question are permitted (in order to be welcoming to new users).
I suggest that this permissive attitude needn't be extended to SAQs by established users, who ought to know how to write a good question.

Cleanup of poor answers
Users can vote down poor answers. Users with a reputation of 4,000 can also vote to delete downvoted answers ...

You may vote to delete answers in the following cases:

The answer is extremely low quality: There is little to no scope for improvement
The answer doesn't attempt to answer the question; it may be a comment or a separate question altogether.

... although you probably shouldn't -- deleting is for non-answers, not for bad answers.
The best response to a bad SAQ might be:

Downvote and flag it if it's disruptive
Vote to close it if it's a bad question
Post a better answer if it's a good question

Don't focus on the identity of the author
The Code of Conduct includes this advice:

Focus on the content, not the person.

Similarly for SAQs, one of the most upvoted comments (on the Meta of another site) was this:

Just stop making judgement based on who is posting a question and who is answering it. The value of a question/answer pair doesn't really depend on who is the poster.

Users should do more and moderators less
An experienced moderator of another site offered me this advice:

I think you are being way too cautious here. There's no reason to try to anticipate and prevent every problem that can possibly occur on a site. There are an infinite number of potential problems, but a very finite set of problems that ever actually occur. If you keep trying, you are going to drive yourself crazy and not get very much done!
It looks like you may have partially realized this already from one of your comments:

Part of my problem might be that I've trying to protect the community (from disruptive behavior) and the site (from unasked-for answers), by preemptively discouraging people's self-answering

Self-answering can be a very useful tool and there are good reasons why they are not only allowed, but encouraged across the network. Disallowing them out of fear that they will be abused (especially in the face of evidence from other site that show it hasn't been an issue) is just shooting yourself in the foot for no good reason.
What I would recommend is to keep thinking about this stuff and all the advice given in the answers here, but meanwhile allow self-answered questions on the site. Then, deal with problems as they come up. That way you are solving real issues on your site and not potential imaginary problems. Your site won't crash and burn the first time it encounters a small bump. In fact, that's how communities grow and learn how to manage themselves: by encountering and overcoming issues.

In a mature non-Beta site, it's the community (not the moderators) who are responsible for quality-control -- voting and voting-to-close -- and flagging if necessary, leaving moderators to do as little as possible:

A lot of the moderation work is mundane: deleting obvious spam, closing blatantly off-topic questions, and culling some of the worst-rated posts on the site. The ideal moderator does as little as possible, but those little actions may be powerful, visible, and highly concentrated.

Whether moderators should even help to cull (delete) downvoted answers varies from site to site:

I think you were saying that users should downvote but not delete bad answers (e.g. wrong answers), is that right? That deleting is only for non-answers, e.g. comments and nonsense etc.? The kind of nonsense you might not even need to be a Subject Matter Expert SME to detect?

That's one of the things that varies site by site. Non-answers and nonsense should be deleted everywhere, but some specific sites may have a policy to delete e.g. unsupported answers, even though they're only bad but still answers.

Usually I delete what's disruptive, maybe hostile towards other sects or views or users -- or an answer that seems unrelated to Buddhism, or unrelated to the OP's question.
Moderators should beware of voting to close. However little they do, it can seem unpopular! So regular users should do it, take that responsibility, when they think it's appropriate.
If there aren't enough (i.e. 5) active users on this site, perhaps a moderator might augment their first few votes to tip the scale, but be reluctant to act first/alone -- but this is a different topics, unrelated to SAQs.

When the voting for this topic reached 6-0 then I thought it was clear that I could accept an answer. But the voting on this topic is currently 2-2.

Some people downvoted as well -- both of the scores below are "plus two minus one" so they look like "just one" (you ought to be able to see that, How do I view vote counts?) -- I'm ignoring the downvotes, because not everyone downvotes, in order that everyone has one vote (i.e. an upvote). I don't know about a deadline. I expect I'll keep this topic "featured" for at least another week; I don't know what more I can/should do to notify the community, that there're some questions being discussed and voted on, on Meta.

Process is just that moderators need to decide how they'll moderate, preferably with the community's support or at least their understanding. And similarly the community might gather information and post their own input about proposed and actual policies, and then act or not on specific topics. Even a popular vote is not always necessarily binding on moderators (who may e.g. decide that what's popular would harm the site), but so far I have tried to assess a consensus from the voting.

@Erik The current de facto policy IMO is that SAQs are not recommended, and may be deleted. In theory, they may be deleted "just because" -- in practice they should be deleted especially if they're "disruptive", bossy, "extremist", spammy, frequent, or anything like that -- and otherwise, in practice, if a self-answer seems harmless (or even welcome, upvoted) then I may tolerate it (or "turn a blind eye").

No
We should continue to warn that self-answered questions are generally not very welcome on this site, and may be deleted.
Except in this kind of situation -- then it's fine.

Yes
Self-answered questions are welcome on this site, if they're high-quality!
Let's at least try them for a while and see, and address any problems as and if they arise.

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


text:
How and when to flag an answer?
You can "flag" an answer for moderator intervention. What are the flags, and which flag should I use?

The available/predefined reasons for flagging are:

spam
See also How to not be a spammer

rude or abusive
People are usually polite and moderate, friendly, on this site.
But a post may be considered "rude or abusive" if it explicitly criticises and names another user, or a different school of Buddhism or even a teacher or public figure. Generally the questions on this site don't ask you to criticise others -- so, you can answer without doing that.

not an answer
This is for text which don't even try to answer to question, for example ...

I've had this problem too. Does anyone else have an answer?

... or ...

I don't understand this question!

very low quality
This is for answers like ...

lol, yes of course!

... or ...

Of course you should, why wouldn't you?

See also this meta-answer about what type of answer is conventional on this site.

Note:

wrong answers
Flagging is probably not applicable to answers which you consider wrong or untrue -- i.e. which are answers, but which you disagree with or consider "not useful".
Instead you may vote down this kind of answer (instead of flagging it).
When you flag an answer you are asking a moderator to delete it (or perhaps to edit it if it's rude or abusive). But moderators aren't supposed to delete an answer for being wrong or untrue, so just downvote this kind of answer instead of flagging.
I think that means it's normal on SE for a few "wrong" answers to be left on the site -- but they should be downvoted.

irrelevant or off-topic answers
Sometimes an answer fails to address the topic of the question. If so I think that might be flagged as "not an answer".
This is also true if a question uses a tag like theravada to ask a question specific to that school, and an answer is based on doctrine of a different school.

non-Buddhist answers
This is the Buddhism.SE site so answers should be based on Buddhist doctrine and/or practice.
Answers based on other religions would be off-topic on this site, and should be deleted.
This is also true of a few answers which are based on "science" -- e.g. physics etc. -- not that Buddhism is anti-scientific, but people are asking questions about Buddhism not about science.

If an answer is based on Christian doctrine, for example quotes the Christian bible, then I think it's probably off-topic as an answer on this site. That's probably also true if it claims to be based on someone's speculating about quantum mechanics or astrophysics. Occasionally too someone asks a school-specific question, in which case answers based on a different school of Buddhism are off-topic.

It doesn't happen often. I see you too are a veteran of the "infinity" topic about six months ago. Your answer (like a few others, including mine) was deleted. Yours was talking about "conservation laws" and "comparing infinities".

@MAGA2020 Reviewing Andrei's moderation history it seems to me that he's deleted three questions and zero answers in the last six months -- and so, at a minimum it seems that whatever you're talking about hasn't been a frequent problem. If you disagree with any specific moderator decision you can always post that as a topic for discussion on Meta (use e.g. specific-question or specific-answer tag). I can't guarantee in advance that I'll agree with you but let's see. IMO the moderation on this site is already very light/permissive.

You're referring to this answer (which I read as an example of Quantum mysticism).

... and as long as they respect the Q&A format -- keep their answers "on-topic" -- avoid "extended discussion" (except in chat or on Meta) ...

I don't think I'm anti-science FWIW -- I studied almost nothing but Physics and Maths at school, and little except quantum mechanics and astrophysics at university. I don't think this is the right site to discuss QM -- making vague assertions using the vocabulary of QM is off-topic IMO -- especially when the OP's question is asking about the doctrine of a specific school.

And if anyone posts nonsense about Buddhism then that isn't great either but at least that's on-topic here -- so that post's quality can in theory, according to SE's model be evaluated by the subject matter experts in the user community -- and therefore can be downvoted instead of flagged.


text:
Is there a good way to criticise contemporary teachers?
What's a good way -- is there a good way -- to criticise living teachers, translators, essayists, authors?

Users -- it's policy that users shouldn't and needn't criticise the views of other users of this site -- or minimise any criticism, perhaps post only a polite and prescriptive comment or question (see Commenting with minimal argument)
Schools -- Similarly it's site policy that users shouldn't criticise the views of other schools of Buddhism -- the site exists to let you ask questions, and to answer with your own views, not to criticise the schools of other users

Instead of criticising others ("they're wrong") it's enough to explain what you think is right.
What about teachers though?
I tend to be suspicious of posts which criticise teachers like Buddhaghosa or Nagarjuna -- or the Abhidhamma --  because I think that would be in effect criticising a whole school of Buddhism.
But what about criticising a modern author? I'm thinking of this answer for example:

Bhikkhu Thanissaro book on "not-self strategy" is wrong and has been debunked many times. It is best ignored. This will result in not troubling Buddhists by asking confused questions about it. Bhikkhu Thanissaro's heretical book on "not-self strategy" is a misunderstanding of the sutta SN 44.10

My questions are,

No user flagged this as hostile, is it basically alright?
Is criticism unavoidable and healthy? Or should a moderator edit (remove) it -- an "if you can't say something nice, don't say it" policy?
If criticism is allowed, does it matter how it's said?
For example if I were to criticise like that I might prefer to phrase it as, "I disagree with X because" -- instead of, "X is bunk and heretical and has been debunked many times" -- does that kind of tone matter? Should we insist that such criticism be delivered as an "I-message"?
Or would that be an example of tone policing, interfering with users' "right to self-expression", and a bit pointless -- more trouble than it's worth?
How much should I try to protect the view of modern authors from criticism, as I might if they too were users of this site?


text:
Is "What does this dream or meditation experience mean?" a good question?
Am I right in thinking that a question of the form "I had this dream, what does it mean?" (like this one) can't be answered well and should be closed, e.g. for the "primarily opinion-based" reason?

Related, sometimes people also ask, "I had this experience when meditating", followed by "what does it mean?" and/or "does this mean that I reached the such-and-such stage of meditation?"
Am I right in thinking that (unlike a question about a dream) this kind of question (about a meditation experience) generally shouldn't be closed, and is answerable?
Often, though, if I recall correctly, the only answer posted to this type of question is, "Don't worry about an experience like that, just note it and let it go" (and/or possibly "Don't worry about naming stages").
Occasionally an answer is more substantial, like "no: if you experience X then that's not stage Y".

I'm not sure what the +1 vote means. I'm going to guess it means "I agree with this suggestion" and not just "This is a good question" (see Voting is different on meta).

The only questions worth answering are ones that request clarity on points of Dhamma, so as to clear-up confusion around the doctrine. Questions, the answers of which lead on to Awakening, that develop 'Right View' around the Four Noble Truths.


text:
Should this question be rewritten?
According to comments, this question isn't getting the kind of answer that the OP wants.
How about I rewrite it as follows, e.g. is this still the question which the OP wanted to ask, and clearer?

How is nibbana complete, and unconditioned?

Two questions:

How can nibbana (i.e. an Arhat's attainment of nibbana) be complete or final?
I ask because e.g. the psychology of (therapy for) addictions warns that relapses are possible.
I think that psychology, and the experience of addicts and addiction counsellors, warns that relapses are possible and remain possible. So, once a person is ever addicted to something (e.g. obviously substance abuse, but I presume anything else too -- e.g. anger, sensuality, or so on), then common experience shows that if one abstains from something and then re-engages in it, it is as fast back to the former level as it once was.
This is why relapse prevention in therapy is so important -- i.e. because old styles of thinking and behaving are never completely erased, but are just lying dormant: they are inactive at the moment BUT NOT ERASED, i.e. the "roots" remain.
How can nibbana even be described as "unconditioned"? Given that the brain, people's behaviour, and experience and habits and so on, is all conditioned, how can nibbana not be?
Is there a sutta which (explicitly) explains why nibbana is considered unconditioned? Is it existent as well as unconditioned?
I especially want a reference to a sutta, if you can, not only an unreferenced answer.
Also is there anything in the sutta pitaka that would help me understand whether nibbana is conditioned by the brain of the practitioner -- or if not, then why not? Or, even if not the "brain", then by the practitioner's "condition" in general (e.g. their surroundings, environment)?

Tags: [pali-canon] [reference-request] [ nirvana]

Wasn't a similar question posed in the Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way on Nirvana, Chapter 25 - On Nirvana?

@user29568 I haven't read it but, from what I read people say about it, I think probably yes it is. The OP tagged their question pali-canon so I don't know whether they're interested in Nagarjuna, or...? I hope this question doesn't dissolve into people arguing about whether nibbana exists -- and maybe it's important to tag it properly (e.g. to determine which school's doctrine is being asked for) -- and I should probably remove Is it existent as well as unconditioned? from my suggested version of the question.

The tag is confusing since the question asks for broader answer because of the reference to "psychology" and "religion." As for arguments of existence, it depends if everyone agrees that Nibbana exists. A question by itself doesn't have to dissolve into an argument, it is how people react to the question. So, your suggested version is okay. Perhaps the OP might be more interested in the difference in definition of mind/brain in Buddhism and Psychology- they probably approach it differently- which is why they seem to conflict.


text:
Site-specific post notice -- "this answer is unrelated to buddhism"
The software would support our having a "site-specific post notice".
A "post-notice" is something which looks like this:

The current posts which have a notice, on the main site, are listed here.
A post-notice is a notice a moderator can add to a post.
It's possible to define a site-specific post-notice -- see What about site-specific post notices?
What I propose
I suggest we ask for a notice with the following wording:

"Show how this answer explains specifically Buddhist teaching or practice".

Why I think we need it
Our policy for questions is very permissive.
In particular we allow or welcome questions about practice or daily life, even which aren't obviously related to Buddhism:

So a question might appear to be non-Buddhist.
But we want to require that its answers should be based on Buddhism -- the reason why the OP posted on this site was to get an answer based on Buddhism and not only general advice.

An answer "based on" Buddhism might mean either of two things:

The folks at Moms4mom owned up to the subjective issue and came up with a set of principles to create useful subjective discussions on parenting: the Back It Up! Principle. Back It Up! means that your answers must be based on either:

Something that happened to you personally
Something you can back up with a reference

They talk about how “opinion, by itself, is noise.” They’re not saying that subjective opinions are to be avoided; they’re attempting to mold and shape their inherently subjective Q&A into something constructive, informative and helpful.

There is already a predefined post-notice for references ...

Needs citation
  This post contains content that needs citations from reputable sources.

... however the policy of this site is that references are not required ...

What about providing sources?
References (e.g. hyperlinks or citations) to sources are welcome and helpful. They're not required though, i.e. you are allowed to answer questions without giving references.
Good answers may be based on references or on experience; answers based on experience may be unreferenced.
Some people sometimes post a comment under an answer to ask for a reference, only if they disagree with or have doubts about an answer (asking for a reference can be a polite way to disagree with an answer).

... so I'm disinclined to use that post-notice. The reason why references aren't required is that readers might know and recognise the references already -- and we do not want to make answering "feel more like a chore, like editing Wikipedia or something" by requiring references.
There is also already a predefined post-notice for adding details ...

Needs detailed answers
  This question needs detailed answers, including citations and an explanation of why an answer is correct.

... but that contradicts this policy ...

When my answer is short, shall I post it as a comment instead?
Please post your answer as an answer, and not as a comment, even if your answer is short.

... so I don't always want to use that notice, either.

So I think we want a post-notice for answers, which might (or might not) be based on life experience or common sense, but which is not evidently based on Buddhism somehow -- an answer which might be posted by someone who has never tried to learn or practice "Buddhism".
This requiring a relation to Buddhism is inline with some previous policy:

Should content the from a Buddhist POV or Perspective or presented in relation to Buddhism

See also for example Lanka's comment there ...

I think the answer is great and should remain on the site. Although a buddhist approach should be added as well.

... i.e. if an answer isn't evidently based on Buddhism, but could be, perhaps that basis deserves to be clarified or added.
When we'd use it
We probably wouldn't use it on the answers of the regular or high-reputation users -- not because they're regular but because their answers are already generally welcome.
I expect the notice would be useful sometimes for users who are new to the site, and don't know its norms, and maybe don't know that the site is for focused Q&A site and is not a "forum" or for sort of general chat -- even if it's interesting and helpful but not especially related to Buddhism.
I propose that moderators can probably recognise posts which are or aren't obviously related to Buddhism somehow (and it's easy to correct if a notice were ever posted in error).
Discussion?
Before I ask SE to create this notice:

Do agree that the notice might be useful?
Do you agree with my proposed wording of the notice?

The proposed wording, in detail
There was a New Post Notices rollout on Stack Overflow and I'm a bit confused about the wording of notices now.
It seems as if there is ...

A title (which only moderators can see)
A formal description (which only moderators can see)
Some friendly advice (which is posted publicly in the notice on the page)

... for example ...

Title: "Needs citation"
Formal description: "This post contains content that needs citations from reputable sources."
Friendly advice: "Add citations from reputable sources by editing the post. Posts with unsourced content may be edited or deleted."

If that's so I suggest something like the following for the new notice -- the wording is based on, taken from, one of the "off-topic" close reasons for questions.

Title: "Unrelated to Buddhism"
Formal description: "It's not obvious how this post relates to Buddhist teaching or practice."
Friendly advice: "Show how this answer explains specifically Buddhist teaching or practice. To be on-topic on this site an answer must be evidently related to Buddhism."

A "post notice" might be used for some answers (not for your questions). Answers that are unrelated to Buddhism seem to happen rarely enough now that this new post notice isn't worth asking for.

I agree and support all of the above, with one additional tweak to the wording. For nitpickers such as myself out there, a statement about an answer may not be true about all parts of an answer. Meaning, if some parts of an answer are related to B and some are not I foresee someone arguing back that the notice is not accurate. So perhaps we can qualify it a bit by saying "All or major (or 'important') parts of the answer".

Is that more restrictive, less permissive, that my proposal? IMO per my proposal an answer would be OK if any of it were related to B -- per your proposal, most parts of it should be, so a two-part answer like, "doctrine says A and my experience is B", becomes debatable: i.e. is your experience on-topic? Also if the post applies to the whole answer and the answer doesn't comply then the remedy is obvious (i.e. delete the answer). Per your proposal a remedy might be more intrusive, i.e. to delete merely-personal bits from an answer: which may be seen as a "hostile edit". Or did I misunderstand?

Or perhaps you want to say that "doctrine says A and my experience is B" might be OK, however "doctrine says A and my opinion is B" might be subject to challenge like, "what's your opinion based on?" I don't know, I thought the principal use case was for new users whose answers might be entirely off-topic -- your proposal might be meant to target answers which are mostly or even slightly off-topic, is that so (and what you want to do)?

I was thinking about DD's answer (about conditional love?) that had some Buddhist references but which also made some very specific assertions that weren't traceable to any teaching I know of. So I thought of also tagging such answers that had some important key assertions made that were not obviously or even probably Buddhist. I'm fine with keeping your wording though, even if it is useful for a smaller subset of answers.

Yes I was too, thinking about that as a case -- i.e. this answer with these comments. I think a post-notice is a blunt instrument used to complain about the whole of an answer without specifying bits of it. To question or seek clarification about a specific sentence in an answer, or even to say that some bit of it reads like an unreferenced opinion, maybe a specifically-written comment is still the appropriate way to do that.

Maybe you want to discuss that policy (commenting) too; and/or consider a (new) policy of extending moderators' scrutiny to whether each sentence in an answer is true or verifiable -- which I might try to do sometimes a user, but as a moderator I think I currently only try to ensure that no sentence reads as immoderately hostile.

Assuming I am still allowed to comment like that, I don't know what value a post-notice would add? Unless it were, also, a change in site policy TBD. I guess what I do see a post-notice being useful for, is when there's an answer which doesn't seem to say anything about Buddhism -- then I could just post a notice instead of complaining personally in a comment, and possibly delete the whole answer immediately.

Okay, so are you saying, this is only for completely non-Buddhist answers, which we currently delete and now would keep, tagged with this notice?

Well yes, that at least I propose (as a new tool) without any associated real change to existing policy -- because "completely non-Buddhist answers" are already off-topic, and we should be better at deleting them. The other case, I don't know -- I think it's sensible and desirable that people should comment (politely) as a user, if they think they see a mistake, or a phrase that isn't clear, a missing reference maybe, etc. -- I just don't know about doing that as a moderator. My first-ever manager advised me, kindly, "It's not enough to be right", once when I was right but not collaborative.

I'm more timid than you are? The ethos till now has been that it's not a moderator's job to detect a wrong answer. I don't mind detecting hostile answers -- I think that is my role -- ditto off-topic posts. Something that's entirely off-topic is kind of obviously our job to handle. Moderators demanding that every phrase be verifiable, though -- would be a change in policy. Maybe some sites/communities are strict/rigorous like that, this one hasn't been. I am willing to discuss a change in policy, try to define it, take votes: to try to identify what any problem is and how we may handle that.

Another possibility might be a "benevolent dictator" model, to make moderators slightly more autocratic. We could ask SE to hold moderator elections (though this may not be an opportune time for that, I suspect they're busy with other sites, if you know). Or just an informal community vote, like, "do you want the current moderators to simply post this new kind of notice in such and such a circumstance when they see fit to?"

completely non-Buddhist answers, which we currently delete and now would keep, tagged with this notice? I'm saying I'm too tolerant sometimes of completely non-Buddhist answers -- afraid to delete them because they aren't bad and we allow answers based on experience so I'm not sure that what they posted is against the rules and non-Buddhist. And that having a post-notice and clarity about when to use it would make me use it more reliably -- to post a notice against the answer and probably to delete it immediately (it could be undeleted later if the author fixes it but they might not),

The seemingly-partially-incorrect answers is a different issue -- maybe one which you want to address also with a new policy -- or maybe one which we (users, the whole community) already handle fairly reliably just by posting a comment, even if a moderator doesn't also post a notice.

So sigh... too suggested alternate wording here -- "This answer in it's part or entirety looks unsubstantiated." What I don't understand is that, that wording would apply to the (IMO perfectly good) answers which you post, without references. Sometimes (rarely) someone asks you to reference what you posted, and you don't. More generally I suspect every user probably posts some sentences that are unreferenced.

So I think you're suggesting a counsel of perfection as a way to maybe force improvement of some doctrine/explanation (in a post) that you find unsubstantiated.  I think it would be difficult to apply the letter of the law impartially. Instead it would require good judgement (of what doctrine in a post is dubious) to apply the spirit ... and I don't know that everybody would trust my judgement as to what's dubious in a post.

The kind of thing you're thinking reminds me of "locking" a post for a content dispute -- "Content dispute:
Lock this post if there are disputes about its content that need to be resolved." -- which is used when several people edit a post and can't agree on how or whether to edit it. That would be great too, but slightly different -- to use that you'd have to edit the post yourself, to improve it. The "dispute" then would happen only if you and an author couldn't agree on an edit.

I'm definitely not in support of changing the policy to demand every idea to be referenced or quoted.


text:
My profile picture seems to have vanished?
My profile picture (or whatever the kids are calling it today) is gone and I don't have another one to upload. Is there a stored copy somewhere? That took me a long time to make.

I found copies of your previous profile pictures here:

https://i.sstatic.net/JZEl9.jpg
https://www.gravatar.com/avatar/4de3df4fa010cd20c1c226fda92b3b83?s=512&d=identicon&r=PG

But please don't use, on this site, the one that's a modified version of an image of Hitler (see also As a moderator, how do I handle a potentially inappropriate profile picture?).

Thank you for finding it but that isn't Hitler, it's Angulimala. You can tell by the "Metta smile" and the title "Metta for Bullies" that it isn't the Hitler like you are thinking. The point is to remind people that we are Hitler and Hitler can change into Angulimala.  I love that picture because it's a teaching in itself. It makes me feel that if this horrible guy can do it, then so can everyone. You would have known this is someone would have asked.  I'm a little offended that you think so little of me that I would put a picture up for the purpose of offending people.

I've little or no insight into why you posted it (and I don't assume that you did it "for the purpose of offending people"); but if (or because) other people react to it, it's easier (less work) for me and for other moderators if don't use it.

Really you don't? Then I should appoligize, sorry :) This comment is reasonable enough I suppose, maybe I am the one who is  assuming things, huh? I know you are well intentioned.

Please, the next time you have no insight maybe you could ask me? ...anyway I just told you and then you say you have no insight? I'm kinda surprised by that. What am I missing here? :)

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


text:
How do I edit my profile?
I have looked allover but I must have missed how to edit my name.  I think I used my Google account to sign into area 51Buddhism if that helps.

I started with an unregistered account called Samadhi, couldn't log in and I register another account with the same name Samadhi. It is possible to merge the two account into one seeing that I've accumulated some points in my first account.
thanks
Samadhi

Hi Samadhi, welcome to the site. I see you have three accounts (i.e. your answers here, here, and here). Apparently there's some software which should run automatically, and detect and merge the accounts; but I don't know how regularly that software is run. I asked one of the SE staff and they suggested that you request a merge using the Help Center > Contact form, with topic "I need to merge user profiles".

Your profile is displayed at https://buddhism.meta.stackexchange.com/users/151/user535875 (for meta) and/or at https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/users/151/user535875 (on the main site).
The two should be linked, editing one should edit the other; but you cannot edit your meta profile, therefore edit your profile on the main site.
On the 2nd line of the (main site) profile page, to the right of your name, immediately under the line which says "Questions" and "Tags" and "Users", there are links which say "edit" and "privileges" and "preferences".
That "edit" link is what you want to click.
That will probably take you to this URL which will let you edit your profile: https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/users/edit/151

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


text:
Why censor when we can filter to our liking?
Why not let the user decide if they want a question or answer that the admins censor to be seen  or not with content filtering? As it is it is just certain people who apparently decide for everyone. Why can't the admins decide the default and then the user can decide if they want to change the default for themselves?
Wouldn't this be good for admins too? Less complaints, less perceived oppression?

Is this the same as asking for an un-moderated site, i.e., are you asking moderators to permit anything and delete nothing?

Also if you want to discuss football, or politicians, or whatever, could you use a Chat room -- is that too much to ask?

This (what you're suggesting) would be a new feature of the web site (i.e. it's a feature which doesn't presently exist).
You can make new feature-requests by posting on https://meta.stackexchange.com/ -- when you post there, tag it feature-request.
Beware that there are 21,000 topics tagged 'feature-request', so ... I personally assume that new feature requests are usually unpopular and are rarely if ever chosen to be implemented (and so, generally, probably not worth the time or effort it takes to post a request for one).
Sorry if that's disappointing.

You don't have to, but if you want to suggest it then you want to. My own past experience is that it's fruitless to make feature-requests in general, and my guess is that this one wouldn't be implemented, but that needn't stop you from trying if you want to. I think you're essentially asking to be able to view (and maybe edit or add to) deleted content (i.e. content which moderators and/or other users have decided to close and/or delete).

Thank you Chris :) Ok, right but  do you know if it would    be that difficult to make a change like that? Already we can filter tags but that Isn't really the same thing.

Are you asking whether it's difficult for Stack Exchange to make a change like that? Yes and no. "No" because if they're able to make this site in the first place they obviously have the expertise to change it. "Yes" because they'd have to define the new feature, persuade people (Stack Exchange employees, users, and moderators) that it's a good idea, implement the change (perhaps on several platforms, i.e. on the server, in web browsers, and in their mobile applications) and test it. I think you're asking to let users choose to view closed/deleted topics, and add to them?

But closed/deleted topics include several categories: off-topic, but also spam, pornography, political rants, meta-questions about the site, intra-user hostility, etc. So I guess you only want to be able to work with "off-topic" content, and are OK with Stack Exchange wanting to delete spam etc.? But there are many other existing places for off-topic content (e.g. other Stack Exchange sites, or e.g. Chat). As I said my guess is that people (other users) won't want/vote to see this implemented, and even if they do then Stack Exchange won't do it.


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Questions with easy online answers
As the Buddhism site is still  in Private beta, Is it acceptable to ask a question which the answer can be found on the internet easily (to build up the base), or is it discouraged?
As an example, answer to the question,
According to Buddhism, where are the heaven and hell located?

can be found on the internet by a Googling heaven in buddhism.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sagga/loka.html
http://www.londonbuddhistvihara.org/qa/qa_hhe.htm#qa_hhe3

Do you have some specific questions in mind? There's nothing a priori wrong with asking a question whose answer is easily available on the internet, but some questions of that sort are bad for other reasons. For example, a question like "Who was the Buddha?" would not be great because there isn't anything that we could say here that wouldn't be better answered by Wikipedia or any introductory text on Buddhism. On the other hand, a question like "What is jhana?" will also be answered in many places on the internet, but there is a lot more room for getting various perspectives there.

@senshin Updated the question with example question...

As long as the question is not too broad but focused and fits into the Q&A style of this site,  I don't see a good reason to exclude them. In worst case, we would attract new users to this site when they find a response to that question in google.
Otherwise we would get into trouble if we want to exclude "too easy" or "easy to google" questions - this always depends on the user. Some may not be good with Google (they exist). There are not stupid questions, just stupid answers.
That said: if they fit, I would like to see them.


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I am a new user here at Buddhism.SE. What should I know before I post?
We've put together some useful information for getting started below.

Welcome to Buddhism.SE!
We're glad you are here. Please take the time to read this post through. Whether you're here seeking answers to questions on Buddhism or to share your knowledge by answering others' questions, just a few minutes spent reading the information below can help make your stay beneficial to all.
Buddhism.SE is different from discussion forums
Instead of long discussions about specific topics, we're all about answering your question in a direct manner. When someone asks a question here, the idea is that they are looking for a "best answer". So speculative questions like "What would happen if..." or survey questions like "Does anyone else experience [X] during meditation?" are not well suited to this site.
Buddhism.SE is different from other SE sites too
The community defined some site-specific policies, which contradict those of other Stack Exchange sites -- see Moderation policies for Questions and FAQ index (summary of site policies) for details.

Asking a question
Good questions are not overly broad nor overly opinion-seeking and should (of course) be on topic! Once your question is posted, you may receive comments asking for more information or suggesting ways in which your question could be improved.
Make the question clear
We really suggest your post should have an interrogation (a question mark), preferably with the title also being phrased as an interrogation and a summary of the question. Questions that lack an explicit inquiry might be put on hold as it can be hard to know what the author is asking -- e.g. if the question is just a complaint or praise about Buddhism, or just a set of opinions.
Edited questions
You might find someone does some minor editing of your question for you. This is just the community's way to help your question fit the usual format, giving it the best chance to stay open and get answers that are useful to you. It is also a way of making sure that it is useful to anyone else who may come to this site looking for the same information. If ever your work is edited in such a way that has substantially changed your meaning, there is a rollback feature that you can use to undo the edit.
To quote from this post, What is the etiquette for modifying posts?,

"You edit to make things better, clearer, more effective -- never to change meaning."

See also what the Help says about editing: Why can people edit my posts? How does editing work?.
Off-topic questions
This site tries to welcome most questions about Buddhism, but there are a few types of question which are may be closed -- for details please see the Moderation policies for Questions.
If a question is put "On Hold" or "Closed"
If a question needs substantial improvements, it's generally put "On Hold" for up to seven days to give the original poster a chance to make changes. If seven days go by and there is no improvement to the question, it's automatically converted to "Closed". However even a closed question can be edited for clarity and submitted to be reopened. This can be done by the original poster or even by a member of the community provided they don't change the question's meaning.
If a question is a duplicate
Sometimes, you might post a question that has been asked before. It's normal for other users to comment on it pointing out that it may be a duplicate of a previous question along with a link to it. If your question is identified as a duplicate, don't be alarmed: you haven't broken any etiquette. We expect that it is normal for duplicate posts to appear and long time users might find themselves posting duplicate questions as well.
Naturally, we think it's important that you get good answers for your questions, but we also care about making it easy for people to search for answers to old questions. Showing duplicates on search results can be unhelpful as the answers get scattered across the duplicates.
To counter this, if your question is marked as duplicate, the community may close it once it's agreed (usually, through discussions in the comments) that, indeed, it is a duplicate and unfruitful to have it in two different places. By doing so, not only we can help you by pointing you to answers to your inquiry (in the pre-existing question), but we also help future users to better find the information they are looking for (by keeping the site clean from unnecessary duplicates).

Answers
Reading answers
This site is open for anyone to post their answers, and the quality of answers will vary.

Different people have different ideas
There's more than one school or tradition of Buddhism
There might be several ways to understand the question

I usually find it helpful to read several answers to my questions -- to see it from more than one side.
Sometimes users may disagree with someone else's answer. Moderators will usually not delete an answer just because they think it's wrong, or imperfect! Instead the moderators try to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to answer, without their views being "attacked" by other users.
So it is your job -- the reader's -- to read each answer and to "see for yourself" which answers appear to be true and useful.
It might be worth mentioning The Four Great References as a way to assess what people say. The more you learn, practice, and study, the better you'll be able to see how good each answer is (or isn't).
Posting an answer
Once you've spotted a question you feel confident answering, go for it! The most useful answers provide depth and detail and references to check for further information when possible. Generally, one line answers aren't very useful and tend to be automatically flagged as Low Quality, although there are exceptions to this. Most important is that your answer actually does answer the question; better is if it does so in a thorough, professional manner backed by reliable sources and citations.
Voting & Choosing an Accepted Answer
An important aspect of the site is voting. Voting up an answer that's useful to you or a question that's well asked is far better than leaving a "thank you" comment. In fact "thank you" comments are discouraged on this site as they take up room and don't add much of value. Your up vote is your thank you! You can also vote down questions and answers you find not useful or incorrect. When you receive a great answer that clears everything up for you, be sure to select it as your "Accepted" answer.

Additional help
If you have additional questions on how the site works, here is a Tour link
 and here is a Help Center link
The Help Center also lists Useful Resources
  For questions or concerns pertaining specifically to Buddhism.SE, please feel free to start a new thread here on Meta to get some help.
Thanks for joining us. :)

@Lanka, thanks, it was a collaborative effort. Nice to see it being posted to newcomers to help them understand how the site and community works. :)

As an aside, do answers need to be vested in Buddhist scripture? It was suggested to me to post my comment as an answer and I would, but since I have no knowledge of Buddhism and am not looking to be one, I had thought it slightly inappropriate. Just that the question had piqued my interest.

@TeacherKSHuang Buddhist scripture or doctrine, or personal experience ... but if an answer is not related to Buddhism, then perhaps it shouldn't be posted on this site.


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Essay requests and sermon invitations disguised as questions
I think the questions that sort of expect answerers to write an essay or give a sermon on a given topic without containing a clearcut question might not be ok for this site. What do you think?
Example 1: Can someone provide explanation on dependent origination
Example 2: What happens to one in a locked in syndrome?

Sounds right. Can you give an example?

Added the most recent examples. But I remember seeing others in the past.

We have Moderation policies for Questions (FAQ), which allow those types of question:

"Too broad": we are allowed to ask a broad question, even a question which could theoretically take a whole book to answer. The site allows (welcomes) beginner questions. You can't expect hugely long answers though, so if a question is very "broad" then an answer might be quite 'shallow': a superficial summary of the topic, and/or a reference to further reading on the topic.

"Not containing a clearcut question" is also supposed to be acceptable, per the current FAQ:

"Unclear what you're asking": if possible we prefer to avoid closing 'unclear' questions, because... [etc.]

That policy is quite old and up-voted; it would be difficult to get a lot of support, from users in the Community, for changing it (though you're welcome to try).
Some users seem to dislike our closing any question ... changing the policy and/or closing questions might be considered objectionable ... maybe it's better to ignore (rather than close, and rather than discuss trying to define new policy for) these questions?

I think we can (currently) be expected to accept (not close) these questions, and I suppose we handle them as follows:

Post comments asking for clarification, for example, "Do you mean X? Do you want an answer of type Y? Isn't this question difficult to answer because of reason Z?"
Treat them as a reference-request question; for example you might not want to write an essay on dependent origination; but authors already have written on that subject, maybe the OP's question could be answered with a link to one of those essays (if you know any existing text[s] that may answer the OP's question)
Leave it unanswered; or post just a sketch of an answer, "a superficial summary of the topic", or find out what the main/single point of the question is and just address that.

You're right that "Too broad" and "Unclear" (etc.) are among the reasons for closing a question, on other Stack Exchange sites; on this site though we decided to accept a diversity of questions.


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Wikipedia as a source
Should the use of Wikipedia articles as source material be discouraged?
I do not take it that such articles are appropriate sources and my opinion is that citing them is a bad practice. Thoughts?

You might like to post an answer to this question, to explain why you take it that it's bad practice.

Only my opinion stated here of course, not an absolute position:
As already stated,

Any encyclopedia is a starting point for research, not an ending
  point. Wikipedia despite it's obvious susceptibility to mistakes is increasingly considered good enough evidence by
  many journalists, policy makers and researchers. Though not suitable
  as a primary source when writing a research paper, several research
  papers increasingly lean on Wikipedia as a tertiary source.

I can't say I prefer Wikipedia to an original source, or the other way round either. I tend to use whatever's apt for my answers.
When an answer draws from several sources and develops an overarching position, linking to Wikipedia makes more sense to me than citing 20 different extracts. This has the benefit of appealing to most readers who value brevity while still remaining a valid source of more information for readers who would like to dig deeper. I suspect the small portion of Wikipedia that deals with Buddhism is far less likely to fall prey to vandalism than the rest of Wikipedia, and the submissions are usually of a far higher quality.
Voltaire, Confucius, Aristotle and several other classical philosophers have uttered a variation on the phrase "perfect is the enemy of good". The Buddha is also very pragmatic like this, I am reminded of the second arrow sutta where he recommends treating the arrow wound than searching to find the shooter.
Better to have more answers that can be superseded by better answers in the future, than no answers at all while waiting for the perfect answer.

What are the alternatives to Wikipedia? Certainly peer reviewed journals are no guarantee of quality if one reads what is being written about them by people who ought to know better than anyone.
“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.” Dr. Richard Horton, Editor-in-chief, Lancet
“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of the New England Journal of Medicine” Dr. Marcia Angell, a physician and longtime Editor in Chief of the New England Journal of Medicine
"It can be proven that most claimed research findings are false" (source) (Dr. John Ioannidis, Professor, Stanford School of Medicine)
"Too many of the findings that fill the academic ether are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis" How science goes wrong | The Economist
"...we have little evidence on the effectiveness of peer review, but we have considerable evidence on its defects..."Peer review: a flawed process at the heart of science...

I personally have no problem with wiki links. I think that Wikipedia is pretty authorative. There is some research that says that it has about as many factual errors as the Encyclopedia Britannica. It's a hugely visible site and its vigorously community edited. I would be much less happy with an answer that relies on a quote from an obscure blog somewhere. That could be just a really outlying opinion from someone with a very particular perspective.
My only issue is when a question can be answered with one wiki link which really gives OP everything they need. But then that's a problem in the question rather than the answer.
As ever, just my opinion

I suggest these guidelines:

Wikipedia is often not the best reference; I think I cite Wikipedia frequently but not usually (i.e. more often than not, my answers instead cite a different reference).
An answer should never be only a reference to Wikipedia, and nothing else.

I'm looking at my answer to this question as an example of how I have used Wikipedia.

If you reference Wikipedia (or indeed any other reference) then prefer to also quote a bit from the reference. People shouldn't need to read the reference in order to understand your answer (the reference should be a supplement to your answer). So, for example:

I wanted to mention the "Parable of the burning house" in my answer
I wasn't sure whether the OP would know the parable I was mentioning, so I wanted to include a link to further information
Wikipedia is convenient because it tells the parable and embeds it in an article which introduces upaya (skillful means).

If you reference Wikipedia (or any other reference) then explain why that reference is an answer to the OP's question (because the link between the reference and the question might not be obvious).
I often use Wikipedia whenever I want to define some vocabulary I use in my answer. For example I wanted to use the term "lie-to-children"; that's not a standard term so I included a hyperlink to explain it. If I Google for that phrase I find Wikipedia at the top of the search results, so embedding the link in my answer is a convenience to the reader.
Read the article you're referencing. Don't reference it if you don't agree with it, i.e. if it's not what you want to say.
My third reference to Wikipedia in that answer ("Some lineages also apparently have secrets...") was because that (alleged) fact is relevant to the answer, however Wikipedia is the only place where I've read that (and so Wikipedia is the only reference I have for that sentence). It's not a very good reference, but I hoped it's good enough to include as the third reference/article in an answer.

I know that Wikipedia has some problems (e.g. that it be edited at any time). Perhaps you wouldn't want to reference it in an scholarly answer (I'm not able to write scholarly answers and don't try to answer questions which seem to me to require a scholarly answer).
In summary I like to reference Wikipedia sometimes.

Before citing any source as authoritative, one really ought to evaluate it to establish that it is authoritative. In fact this seldom happens, especially amongst non-scholars because people are often lazy about facts and unqualified to do the assessment anyway.
Wikipedia is a very mixed resource still. They have attempted to improve the rigour, but many of the Buddhism articles are still sectarian and parochial, if not actually misleading. Unfortunate many Wiki authors (and I am one) do not vet their own sources before citing them. So the problem is compounded.

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman.
  What is Science? The Physics Teacher. Vol. 7, issue 6 (1969).

Even experts make mistakes or get things wrong. We should be cautious about whose opinion we take on face value.
I sometimes cite Wiki articles in writing for my blog when I want to offer readers a quick and dirty introduction to a concept I think might be new to them. I generally have a read of it first and have a sense of how accurate it is. I would never cite Wikipedia in writing for publication.
For a website like this I would only cite a Wikipedia article I knew to be particular good and/or authoritative. I think we have to assume that those seeking answers can use Google and easily find Wikipedia. I would prefer to offer something a little more substantial (unless of course I wrote the Wikipedia article or had been heavily involved in editing it).
The Process of Peer Review
There seems to be some confusion about the process of peer review, including amongst journal editors, so I'm adding a note to address this. I have had eight articles peer reviewed and published, and have been reviewer on three articles by others. It works slightly differently in different disciplines - the process in science and medicine is different than that for Buddhist studies (which is most relevant here). Broadly speaking, peer review tries to ensure that the methods used in a research project were sound and that the logic of the conclusions is clear and clearly related to the data presented.
What peer review cannot do is ensure that an article is "correct". Research is dependent on many factors which may introduce errors. A researcher endeavours to eliminate error through rigorous experimental design. A peer review may weed out obviously flawed methods, but it cannot account for more subtle flaws because these only become evident in attempts to repeat the experiment. A reviewer is not in a position to repeat the experiment - they can only read the article and point out logical flaws in the writing. It is up to the scientific community to try to repeat the experiment and report their findings. Results that can be repeated gain credibility. Theories which accurately predict results may survive and prosper; methods which produce new kinds of information may spread. This process typically takes decades to show results! Sometimes meta studies which give an overview of research in a field over a period of time can give a better idea than any single article reporting on experimental research.
A reviewer of a Buddhist Studies article may critique translations, ask for clarification of certain points, and point out sources of information the author has missed. And most importantly they look for flaws in the logic of argument, for passages of writing that are unclear, and for assertions that are not substantiated. They will also try to assess whether the article makes a substantial contribution to the field.
Peer review helps to ensure high standards in the procedures followed by scholars. They cannot guarantee the "truth" of articles. And of course peer review is reliant on people who operate at less than 100% efficiency. Lay people often make the mistake of thinking that peer review guarantees the quality of the conclusions. To some extent science journalists have promoted a false view of research by highlighting odd reports that have yet to be replicated. That is an abuse of the scientific process.
Every source must be evaluated before being cited as an authority, including all peer reviewed research. If one is not in a position to evaluate the claims, then one ought not to cite it. It's a matter of knowing one's limitations and the limitations of other people.
My most recent article was turned down flat by the first journal I submitted it to. Simply not good enough. I submitted exactly the same manuscript to another journal and got lucky with the reviewer who recognised the importance of my work and took the time to show me how to get the article to the standard required by academia. I rewrote and it was published. In this article I identified a long standing grammatical error in the standard Sanskrit edition of the Heart Sutra, which is widely considered the most popular Mahāyāna text. Edward Conze, editor of the Sanskrit text, is generally held in high esteem and is often cited as an authority not only as a translator of these texts, but also as an editor of Sanskrit texts. And he made a simple and very obvious grammatical error that went unnoticed for almost 60 years. An error that substantially affected how the text could be understood and translated. So that all translations from Sanskrit of the Heart Sutra in the last 60 years (at least) are in fact faulty.
There is no such thing as an impeccable source in Buddhism. Everything must be checked. Everything.
Those who are pessimistic about science ought to read: Science isn't Broken.


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Accepting an answer
During private beta, is it preferable for a person posting a question to delay on "accepting" an answer in order to encourage additional responses possibly from other schools, viewpoints, etc. that could end up being valuable to others? Or is it better to promptly "accept" when a clear and useful answer is received? I'm not sure of the balance of possibly getting additional content vs. possibly discouraging those putting lots of efforts into answering and not getting feedback on their answers. Thanks for the guidance.

My guiding principle during private beta is this: if you receive an answer to your question, and think that it is basically impossible that anybody could provide a better answer, go ahead and accept it. On the other hand, if you think that it's still possible that you could get a better answer later (from another viewpoint or drawing on a different source or something), do not accept an answer yet.
For example, yuttadhammo's answer to Where is the Buddha originally quoted as saying "On heaven and earth, I alone am honored"? contains exactly the information I was looking for, and I cannot really conceive of a better answer to this question. Thus, I accepted his answer. My other questions have also received good answers, but I think that it is possible that someone could post an even better answer to them, so I have not accepted answers on those questions yet.
As time goes on and we move through the public beta, I will probably be somewhat quicker to accept answers, though even then, I will only do so if I am fully satisfied with one of the answers I have received.
This is just my opinion, of course, and everybody is free to follow their own principles in accepting answers.

...possibly discouraging those putting lots of efforts into answering and not getting feedback on their answers.

We certainly want to make sure we're encouraging people who are producing good answers. Luckily, there's a way to do that - use your votes! You get 30-40 votes a day, and it's not like holding onto them is going to make you any richer. You may as well spend your upvotes on interesting questions and (especially) well-written answers.


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Scripture references - from memory or "search engine"?
Essentially, when responding to a question with reference to the scriptures, I tend to base it on memory, then use Google to find a reference source. However, in the interest of providing as reliable sources as possible, I wonder if there are "search engine(s)" or other sources that people generally search, to refer to in answers.
Main sources used by answers on the site seems to be:

Access to Insight
Wikipedia

What do you use as a reference source? Your own memory, from having studied the scripture, or do you look it up in a search engine?
(Wasn't sure if this was a question for the main site, regarding what sources are online, and another for this Meta, regarding accuracy of sources/quotes, please suggest revisions for clarification)
(On a side note, I am working with a monastery to build a cross-reference database for teachings - multimedia files - and am looking for reliable sources with taxonomies and synonyms that can be referenced from there as well)

You should talk to Alex Genaud (You're not him, are you?)

@tuttadhammo Thank you - no I am not. I contacted you via Linkedin regarding Alex. I appreciate the suggestion. /\

In the answers I give, I rely on memory first and then complement it with bookmarked pages & Google searches. I also make use of Yuttadhammo's excellent Digital Pali Reader.
Since you didn't mention, SuttaCentral is a growing comprehensive resource for references and might help you with your cross-reference database. Good luck!

I to go off memory and that usually allows me to find what I'm looking for on accesstoinsight, which has always been my go to. Sometimes though I have to go to google if I know what I'm looking for but might not be phrasing it right.