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Should we have a policy not to provide koan answers?
Just from this answer - is it a good idea to provide koan answers or not? Or should we provide them with a health warning? Do koans even really have answers? I'm not a Zen practitioner so a don't personally have an issue with these questions but should we just be closing them down since we don't want to spoil them in some sense?

From a purely academic point of view (not mine!), koans are an interesting subject; just google around and you'll find plenty examples of people explaining various koans. When I was in university I remember attending a guest lecture on this very topic; whether "mu" really did just mean "no" (spoiler: it did).
Again, on this site, we have to be able to take off our Buddhist hats and put on our Internet beanies; the information is out there, it is up to us to provide the best version of it. If that equates to an explanation that Zen koans are not meant to be examined, then so be it, but I strongly disagree that a question should be closed simply because that is the correct answer; it is only an invalid question from a sectarian point of view, not from an objective, academic point of view.
It would be similar to asking "What did the Buddha say about the beginning of samsara?" The fact that the answer is "he didn't" doesn't invalidate the question.

I agree with the answer of yuttadhammo. Answers to koans are already available on the internet, why don't we try to give the best possible explanation.
I would like to add that it is possible to give an answer to a koan, but make it invisible for people who don't want to see it. This can be done with the special 'spoiler quote' >!
It will make the quoted text invisible unless you hover on it with your mouse pointer.
I'd suggest we use this when providing koan answers and answer explanations, for example:

Spoiler alert! Koan answer below is visible if you hover on it with your mouse!

 This is the spoiler text.

Excellent idea. I think that might address everyone's issues. I had no idea you could do that

you should leave the answer is implicit as possible. That is, no alert.

This seems to be a heated debate as if there is a right way to deal with koans and a wrong way. Reading Dogen's book of koans, there are often multiple avenues in different directions. It is never one answer, it is usually a question by Dogen!
The koan does not have an answer that will give you the aha, otherwise it would not be a koan. The aha must come from practice within.
The koan is a tool to practice. If we think we can get the answers to the koan "test" or spoil someone's experience, are we not overestimating our own self importance?
Please let us not take stands "over my corpse" or with over confidence in any one position. How can we say we are compassionate when we dig in our heels demanding the rightness of one way or another? If we take a position against one another, all is lost.

Is it a good idea to provide koan answers or not?

Voting will decide.

Or should we provide them with a health warning?

Nah. No more than any other advice on the internet.

Do koans even really have answers?

I'm pretty sure the point is to keep thinking and looking for the answer but to never find it.  The role of the teacher is not to ever tell you, "You figured it out!" Their role is to eternally say, "Nope, you still haven't figured it out". (This may be a DT Suzukism, now that I'm reading some of the literature about Chan, the Koans seem to be puzzles with a solution, "Who am I?" would be fundamental question and that has a Buddhist answer that isn't "Dunno" and isn't "Well logical thought and reasoning is so useless!")
This also happens to square with that Stephen Batchelor seems to have gotten out  of his time doing Zen, working on the koan "What is this?"

I'm not a Zen practitioner so a don't personally have an issue with these questions but should we just be closing them down since we don't want to spoil them in some sense?

I do get the impression that in Zen people care about "quality control"-- that teaching come from someone with suitable lineage and transmission. But I don't see so much about secrecy, or hints of danger, like you see in Vajrayana, where learning something without abhisekha and without being reading for it is reputed to be dangerous.  I would say in the Zen world, teaching from somewhat without lineage and transmission are somehow less authentic and useful.

Koan commentaries have a long tradition, they have existed for many hundreds of years and haven't been seen as something that has negative impact on the practice . I don't see any reason to close such questions.

On a practical level, I think it makes sense to treat them as puzzles or spoilers (though they are not essentially these things). How do other SE sites deal with such issues?
It would also be advisable to reinforce what is lost to those new to the study.

Ha, for a second there I thought you meant koan-like answers!
"Are all Buddhists vegetarian?"
"...Are all vegetables Buddhist?"
To answer your question, though I have little experience with the use of koans in my practice, I believe we shouldn't, and should warn them off looking for explanations in other parts of the internet: is not the whole point of koans that they can't be answered? I'd imagine that providing some sort of analysis is just going to strongly bias people's meditations on them, and possibly discourage certain people from using them in the first place, thinking that they already "understand" them.
Perhaps if the asker clearly states that they desire an academic understanding in this area, but for regular practitioners looking to progress in their practice, I cannot see the benefit.

Buddha-Nature smells of oil.

No koan answers, please! No analysis of Zen poetry or jokes. It defeats the purpose and robs the students of their own independent realization.

So should they be closed? and if we disallow can we document that in FAQ. Assuming this develops into the majority or accepted opinion

Just like on English SE you can ask for an explanation of an English joke that might not be understandable to a non-native speaker, here it should be possible to ask for an explanation of a Buddhist joke or a koan that might not be understandable to a non-Buddhist.

No. If you want explanations, go to Theravada, go to Vajrayana, but explaining Zen is only over my corpse :)

@crab bucket, yes that would be ideal imo

Again we come back to the same issue as this post, and the consensus seems to be that this is a Buddhism site, not a Buddhist site; we have to stick to the principle of providing information about Buddhism, rather than worrying about spoiling things for Buddhists.

@AndreiVolkov from a meta perspective, I don't see how these questions could deserve to be closed; we can't pander to the views of practitioners about proper questions, unless I'm missing something...

@yuttadhammo I believe that the purpose of 'meta' is to let each site's "community" decide for/among themselves what questions shall be on- and off-topic. So, if "the community" here wants koan-answers to be off-topic, I suspect they're allowed to make that decision, that StackExchange wouldn't object to that decision, and that moderators could enforce it (e.g. by closing such questions).

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Moderator close votes
This question has just been put on hold - i disagree but that's not the question really. I notice that Hrafn put the question on hold with just one vote. I assume that is a moderator superpower. Can the moderators also cast regular close votes as well? Or do their close votes always put a question completely on hold?
I guess what I'm also asking is that if moderators can cast regular votes then I would personally prefer them to do that in most cases - reserving the superpower closing for just really off topic/spam posts - which we have seen. If they can only use a superpower close vote then again I think I would prefer them to wait till at least there seems to be a consensus around a question being closed.
I hope this does come across as a moan. It isn't mean to be - i just wanted to ask the question. I genuinely appreciate the time and care that all 3 moderators all putting into the job. That is appreciated way more than the occasional niggle

See the Help Center article on moderators for a full rundown on what mods can and can't do.

FYI normal voting for moderators has been proposed about 4 years ago on Meta StackExchange.
Even though the majority of users back then were in favor, the proposal was declined (see this answer for the reason behind this)

No, when a moderator votes to close a question it does so immediately, without waiting for other votes. Moderators on some sites have asked for the ability to choose (for circumstances where they aren't sure and want to let the site users decide, but this isn't currently a feature of SE.

source: Stack Exchange

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

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Creating subject specific chat rooms
I would like to make more use of chat so I'm thinking creating subject specific chat rooms might help. Apparently anyone can do it and they magically will pin themselves to the side bar of the main and meta sites.
So I've taken to plunge and created one that we can use to discuss Dharma books that we are reading. I've an idea that if it's a specific subject then people are more likely to chat. I would love to know what the regular contributors are reading or anyone really.
I've a though that we could gradually create rooms on a number of different topics (the sanghas we practice with, meditation etc...) . Maybe we could every few months post on meta to say that we will try to contribute to a certain subject. There are a range of subjects that I would like to chat about but don't fit into the Q and A structure.
Perhaps I'm over egging the site and I should just leave as is. Anyway feel free to ignore or downvote as you feel. Just a thought and all that

I've just noticed the the main chatroom 'Buddhism' got frozen due to inactivity...

@Rabbit Oh no. Can it be unfrozen?

'Frozen rooms do not allow any new messages to be sent, and are not shown in the default room list to prevent cluttering the rooms interface.' Well, with current rate of participation, all the rooms will be frozen soon.

@Rabbit I think I'm going to make the effort with the Dharma books one even if I'm talking to myself. Sign of madness maybe

Never fear: moderators can un-freeze (melt?) rooms. Just drop a link on meta.

interesting idea; an additional cht room to help topics be more convenient to follow;  Buddhism1 is recent & in part ~for that (c.11/2020). thank you  :)

I think your idea is a good one, I'm just not so sure about your timing. At the moment the number of people here is still rather small. We currently have 46 avid user and 196 visitors per day. Compare this to a site like Christianity SE for example that has 328 avid users and over 3800 visits per day (which by the way only has one active chatroom). Furthermore it often takes people a while to 'discover' meta and the chatrooms. You are right that new chatrooms are automatically pinned to the sidebar, but I think this is only on meta, and not on the main site. Also, you need at least 20 reputation to participate in chat. All this means that even if we get new people, it may take a while before they will visit chat.
I think the most important thing is to first attract new users to this site. Most new users find us via Google searches so the best way to grow is to ask good, practical and interesting questions and provide high-quality answers.
This being said, I think it's fine to start new chatrooms. I'd start with just one if I were you and see how it goes. Perhaps it will work well with a small number of users and then you can create more chatrooms. But if it doesn't draw much interest right now, don't get discouraged. This site is still very young and needs time to grow.

Perhaps someone should revive a general chatroom (e.g. the now-frozen 'main' chatroom).
I had a question about the site, didn't find that question answered on meta, and then didn't find any 'general' chatroom either, in which to ask about it.

I've created a new room called Buddhism Chat. I'll try to post a bit to stop this one getting frozen. Cheers

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Are questions with lots of parts on topic?
This question about the environment was posted recently. While no-one can doubt OP enthusiasm I personally don't like questions with loads of little parts that require separate answers. Is that just me? I notice this got upvoted
The reason I don't like them is

I think questions should be tightly focused so that it is obvious what is being asked. Ultimately we what people and search engine to find our content. With a sprawling question that is less likely.
If someone has got 3 questions why not make it a bit easier for people who would like to answer and ask them as three separate questions. Why oblige someone to answer everything you've ever wanted to know about Buddhism in one post? Give them a break.
If some one only knows the answer to some parts and another poster knows some other parts of the question- who get's the accepted answer (I know we are not great at awarding the accepted answer)?

In fairness - at least the above question was around a theme. I'm sure I've seem far looser agglomerations of queries before.
With these questions I would like to

Politely ask OP to split them up
Wait a bit
Ask again and inquire if they need any editing assistance
Cast close votes and ultimately put them on hold as been too broad

Is that a reasonable approach. Unreasonable? Grumpy? Hysterical?

@Lanka, no worries about the up vote; I offset it with a down vote. Regarding editing the question on behalf of the OP, we've talked about that in meta in a few spots because some new participants really seem to resent having a major edit of their work and we need to be careful not to change their meaning. Might be safest to give them a chance to make their own needed revise. Kind of you to offer though! =)

I think there's a lot of overlap. It's poorly written, I think, with no explanation. Better would be a couple of more general questions around stewardship and the environment. Most of the questions could be combined, I think.

When you closed it you asked that it be pared down to a single question instead of asking for it to be split into multiple questions. IMO that seemed like a clever response, given that they were too similar to split. May I ask, what do you think of the new question which replaced it: was that more answerable?

A couple of us did politely suggest to the OP this morning that this question be split up. There are some good questions there but answering it as it stands will be an undertaking along the lines of writing an entire term paper. It's unlikely there will be much of a response due to all of the information being requested.
I think your suggestions 1 - 4 are very reasonable.

Do you think that there are (that someone else could and/or you could answer with) separate substantial answers for each of those 10 questions?

@ChrisW, no many of the questions are similar.

This question about the environment was posted recently

Re. this specific question (i.e. Buddhism's views on environmental stewardship questions), your own question on that subject (i.e. Are ecological concerns supported explicitly in Buddhism?) suggests that very broadly the answer is that Buddhism doesn't have very much of a view on that subject. Some Buddhists do, but Buddhism as a whole doesn't ... not explicitly anyway (though someone could try make an argument based on general principles of non-violence, poisons, benevolence, kamma, etc.).
Do you think that each of the 10 sub-questions could stand on its own, and attract useful separate specific answers?

The reason I don't like them is

My opinion (vote) is to suggest that it's OK.

Partly because my own questions have many sub-questions:

Is rebirth a delusional belief? was popular (upvoted) but contains 10 question marks. Its accepted answer (from Thiago) has 7 parts to address 7 quotes from the question.
Yet I don't think the question would have been better as 10 separate questions.
My next-most-popular question is How to explain what Buddhism is? which has 5 subquestions.
The next-most-popular after that is What are examples of identity-view? with 10 subquestions (and a corresponding 8 subparts to Thiago's answer).

A reason for asking so many questions-in-one migt be to say that "an answer to any or all of these questions would be helpful and on-topic".
The response to this meta-topic, Whether and how to moderate low-quality questions? seemed to be that criticizing (or, worse, closing) question is unpopular. In the proposed answer I suggested only 3 such reasons (i.e. "off-topic", "polling", and "exact duplicate"). Plus there's this which suggests a fourth reason (i.e. "flaming"). But we don't even close a question if it's unclear!
They're all on a related topic. If you think that having so many questions makes the question "too broad" then that's not a reason to close either: the proposal for "broad" questions is to write "shallow" replies. Perhaps a one-sentence answer in reply to each of the 10 question, or a one-paragraph answer in reply to half of the 10 questions, is what the OP needs at this stage. Maybe they don't know the first thing about the subject, and so ask a broad question about it. They can "drill down" (i.e. ask a subsequent, narrower question) after someone has answered their first question[s].

Why oblige someone to answer everything you've ever wanted to know about Buddhism in one post? Give them a break.

Your answer could start with, "You asked many question so I'm just going to say the first thing about each one. Please post a new question about a single, specific topic if there's something of this that you want to know more about."
Maybe an answer could identify which of the subquestions are answerable and which aren't, with a hint of how you might answer them.
Asking question is hard when you don't know what you're asking about.

In fairness - at least the above question was around a theme.

Yes. If they weren't I'd be inclined to be more brutal:

Put it on hold (with an explanatory note) until the OP edits and reposts as several/separate questions (or just one question)
Edit the question to delete the 'extra' questions, leaving only one 'main' question, with a note to the OP that you expect one question per topic and that they could please post any extra questions in new topics.

Whether questions are sufficiently thematic is subjective. I recently made this edit to a question to clarify its theme and justify its have 4 sub-questions.

With these questions I would like to (1. through 4.) Is that a reasonable approach. Unreasonable? Grumpy? Hysterical?

I don't know, I have no answer for that for the moment (I can neither confirm nor deny it).
On the subject of closing in general, though:

If you're not a moderator and think that a question should be closed, then:

Vote to close
Leave a constructive comment saying why ("constructive" meaning "helpfully explaining how to fix it")

If other people agree they'll vote to close too.
If you are a moderator and you're sure a question should be closed, then close it (and leave a comment). Moderators have a SVT ("single vote to close").
Note that yuttadhammo♦ very rarely uses his unilateral vote to close: and when he does it's usually on questions which break the "no polling for multiple opinions" rule (which is relatively objective to determine), rather than any more subjective quality rule.
If you are a moderator and you're not sure a question should be closed, then hold back. Delay. See whether other users vote to close and/or comment. See whether the questions attracts good or bad answers. Talk with other moderators. Maybe put it on hold (with a comment) until it's discussed on meta (and invite the user to open a topic on meta to discuss how to fix the problem you identified in a comment, or open the meta-topic yourself).
A moderator who unilaterally votes to close a question, when other users disagree with that decision, may find themselves have to justify/explain their action to members of the community who don't agree.


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How can we encourage more good quality questions?
Just moving on from Chris's question - how can we encourage more good quality questions?
Right now the site is running at about 3 questions a day. To be honest that is a lot more than I thought we would be getting. I'm really proud that the Buddhism SE community has come up with more than 1.3K questions in less than a year - most of which are thoughtful and engaging and have brought about some great answers.
However could we do more? Is there any part of Buddhist practice and thought that is unrepresented in our questions? Could established users ask more questions? Could we have themed weeks? Could we have a focused discussion in chat and see if any questions come out of that? Is there any way to bring the site to the attention to populations of users who might be bubbling up with great questions?
Or is 3 questions a day OK for us? I don't think there is any danger of the site been closed down because of it. Conversely I doubt there is any great danger of us graduating from beta at that rate either.
Any thoughts anyone?

Glad to see this question here. :)
Our stats on Area 51 are good with the exception of questions received.

Needs Work – 10 questions per day on average is a healthy beta, 5 questions or fewer per day needs some work. A healthy site generates lots of good content to make sure users keep coming back.

With us at 3 questions per day, it makes it hard for newer users to establish rep. It's been discussed previously how we're sort of a low voting site. And trying to get votes by answering old questions is very difficult. A new user has a better chance of getting an up vote or two for a good answer to a fresh question. Plus, as noted above, it encourages all users to keep coming back.
I think it's a great idea to ask established users to ask more questions if they are willing. Drawing from my personal experience as a supervisor at work, it's always good to periodically do the thing you want other people to do to (a) demonstrate how it's done and (b) remember how really hard it is to do that thing so you'll be a little more sympathetic when others struggle to do it well! :p
For sure there is no need to seed the site with questions the OP doesn't care about. But with a little bit of thought, I generally find there is something I'd like to know a little more about, perhaps from a different tradition that I know little about. That gives someone else a chance to show their expertise and hopefully earn rep and the respect of the community.  This is what I was doing with this question,
[Why is Budai often associated with the future Buddha Maitreya? although it might have been too tough of a question as even Wikipedia didn't have much. But who knows...maybe we have a Budai expert on staff somewhere just waiting to shine. And I really would like to know. :)
As far as promoting the site, I know SE questions are sometimes shared on Facebook. Would it be improper to share them specifically to a Buddhist group page on Facebook or Google+?
Also, remembering to vote is really key in demonstrating what IS a good question or answer and sometimes voting is so low; everything just blends together. Plus it doesn't help when people don't get positive feedback for their good efforts or the tangible reward of earning rep and privileges. Is there anything like a banner than can be added to the site to remind people to vote? It always surprises me when I see people posting in comments about what a good answer something is but there are no votes cast on it. Likewise with accepting answers sometimes.

So to summarize: * vote more often * ask some more questions (perhaps about other traditions) * mention on social media * and don't forget to vote!

A few other topics tagged [meta-tag:site-promotion] begin to discuss social media. My opinion is that anything which smells like spam is counter-productive. But a natural recommendation over an existing line of communication is OK. For example it's OK to post a recommendation on your own Facebook page if you want to. Maybe OK to post to a Buddhist group page, if other people in the group post things like that (i.e. if it's not breaking group rules) and maybe also you need to be already a member of the group yourself.

Like the cluetrain says, "Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice."

I like that. Thanks Chris. :-)

We do have a Facebook page already, in case it wasn't well known...

Could established users ask more questions?
Please note this answer:

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.

Established users may ask questions, but I think they should be questions which you, personally, sincerely want an answer to.
Could we have themed weeks? Could we have a focused discussion in chat and see if any questions come out of that?
That's presumably for established users (since only an established user would know that there is a theme/week).
Here's an idea - we could do some kind of book study group:

Collectively pick/choose a good book, preferably one that's available free-of-cost online
Agree for 'everyone' who wants to participate to read one chapter per week: e.g. "This week, to start with, everyone read Chapter 1", or "... read the first 30 pages", or, something like that.
If there are things in that week's section that you don't understand then ask a question about it.

Benefits:

People collaborate (perhaps in a Chat room) to choose a suitable book
People read the book
You'll understand the book because, if there's anything you didn't understand you can ask a question about and people will explain it
People are reading from the same book so we know a bit about where each question is coming from, how much detail to or prior knowledge to assume, etc.

A book club is an exceptionally good idea. I would be totally on for that

I haven't seen a book study group on SE; but a long while ago a group of people on a newsgroup organized a study (one chapter per week) of a computer programming language book, which I found helpful.

We could use our facebook page to advertise and organize a book club...

I made the mistake of asking a seeded question (I was interested in the answer but that's not why I asked the question) but I soon deleted it for the reasons above and partly because I became more deeply suspicious of artificial and concerted good. I would happily participate in more thoughtful projects, if able.


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Happy Birthday to us
We started private beta on 17th June 2014 so Buddhism Stack Exchange (Beta) is now over one year old. The first question to pop onto our newly born site was Is there an equivalent of heaven and hell in Buddhism? posted at 19.22. I was two days late to the party and my first post was on 29th June at 8.25. It was immediately voted down (twice!!!) and I complained about it on my first meta post on the same day.
Downvotes aside, I can't help feeling proud of what we have done. I really believe we have made the internet a slightly better place and added quality questions and answers about the topic we all love - Buddhism. I just wanted to take the opportunity to celebrate Buddhism SE and all who post on here. I wanted to open a thread to see if anyone wants to celebrate a particular aspect, beloved question or personal happening on the site over the last year.
But generally thanks to everyone who has posted here. I've really enjoyed reading all the stuff and I think it's had a positive effect on my Buddhist practice.

You disapprove of down-voting? Can that feature be disabled for this SE site? At Pets.SE down-votes hardly exist, I suspect people don't want to hurt feelings :-)

@sss4r Well I think I disapprove of me being downvoted at that point!!! To be fair I don't like excessive downvoting. One downvote of a question if poor is enough to push it to the bottom of a set of answers. Why do more unless it's truly terrible and then it could be a signal for possible deletion. We can't turn downvoting off as that is the SE engine that we work within. To be honest I wouldn't want to - it's needed and I think our site uses it well now. I just don't like to see people pile on and give massive amounts of downvotes. We want to encourage participation not drive people away IMO

I agree completely. I have to wonder if Facebook is right about not having an unlike button. I don't know how long that will last, given the demand. I think the idea is that the good will rise; what doesn't is naturally down. I think a couple things contribute to down-voting. When a Q or A is already down-voted, I think a person is much more likely to register a down-vote if that is his or her assessment already. And I know badges are supposed to accrue organically, but SE encourages it in its docs (bronze is "easy", silver requires a "strategy") and there's even a dedicated "critical" badge.

Aww...happy first birthday to Buddhism.SE! I've really enjoyed participating here this past year. I've gotten great answers to questions I've asked and had the benefit of learning from others' questions and answers too. My first question was about Children Monks and it felt great to finally have that mystery solved. :)
The information, links to valuable resources, and recommendations have definitely helped to guide my study. Equally or more important has been the feeling of being supported in learning by a caring community and also the pleasure of being able to pass along (hopefully) useful information to others from time to time. A special thank you to our moderators; without you this site would not be the quality resource it is.
Sadhu. _//\_

Sadhu Robin. I think one of our strong points is that we have a core of maybe 6 - 12 users )maybe more!?!) that care about the site and put in the extra effort contribute to meta, review, edit and all that stuff and that really brings the site to life. And new committed users and coming through all the time. So thank you to you and all the people who hang around on the meta site and really try to point us all the the right direction

I haven't been active much, mostly because I just found out of this subpage of stackexchange a couple of days ago. And even though I'm not, currently, practitioning Buddhism, I must say that seeing the questions and answers makes me more relaxed - or zen (although I'm 'afraid' of using that term).
I hope this page will grow, with helpful questions, answers and participants, for I think we need to be more calm, reflective, and responsible for our actions - be it with Buddhism in mind or simply because it's morally the best think to do.
Congratulations with one year being Beta, I'd love it to see it leave the Beta phase and go straight to the real release.

Thank you and welcome to Buddhism SE. I'm really pleased that you find the site useful. Any suggestions about what we do or how we do it are much appreciated. Ask any on meta if you have any questions and i hope you continue to find it useful. Metta


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Do we want to keep open interview style questions?
We received a question with 8 subjective sub-questions included. It reads more like an interview than a standard SE question. But perhaps some people would like to write answers about their experience and perceptions of Buddhism.
A suggestion was made to turn these type of questions (I believe meaning questions that don't really have a best answer but which someone might like to answer anyway.) into community wiki rather than close them.
We've said in several threads that due to a relative shortage of questions submitted, we'll try to keep virtually everything open.
What seems best for interview style questions? Keep open as a regular question? As a community wiki? Close? Something else? Thanks for any feedback. :)

I'm a fan of one (or a few tightly coupled) points per question. If it were up to me I would politely asked the OP to focus the question to one or two key points and possibly ask the other points in different questions. If there is no response I would ask again and failing that I would want to close these shopping list questions. I personally would just comment that i think it should be closed and hope others would vote - as the mods have a single vote to close which would be too heavy handed.
As an aside I rather think that these questions seems like homework. I think that puts another slant on as it doesn't seem the right thing to do just to do other people's homework for them - although I do want to help. I guess that's another topic really.
All just my opinion of course.

So there is such a thing as "too broad" after all: e.g. when an OP asks several not-closely-related questions?

So you thought this question's main problem was being too broad or too defocused (rather too opinion-based or too interview-style)?

I thought Chris did a good job of answering the subjective questions objectively. But not everyone would be so careful. Asking for opinions can be asking for trouble as there is no requirement that an opinion be based on fact. So we could end up with opinion pieces which would be of limited value to anyone, especially if they actually were being asked for homework or research assignments.
I know we committed to trying to answer as many questions as possible, both to be helpful and because we sometimes have too few questions. But I think something that purely asks for opinions should maybe be outside of the category of things we consider.
I've always been reminded than when you set a precedent by doing something for one, you should be ready to continue to do that same thing for others. And it would be potentially easy for others to just start asking what everyone believed about this or that to generate activity. I don't think that is the direction we intended to go in.
I think closing the question was the right thing to do. If the OP is interested in understanding how the site works and how his questions will better fit the format, we've provided good guides and our community tends to be helpful in those matters. :)

It reads more like an interview than a standard SE question. But perhaps some people would like to write answers about their experience and perceptions of Buddhism.

The fact that the question was full of "you" makes it sound like an interview-style question. Here is a copy of the original questions:

Do you believe that Buddhism has shaped society today. If so how?
How has Buddhism influenced your life?
Where in Buddhism does it say that you have to live your life in peace?
Do you believe that a pursuit of peace is necessary in today's society?
As a Buddhist, how does a pursuit of peace begin? (How do you pursue it, what does a "pursuit" of peace entail and when does your pursuit end?)
Do you believe that all people should follow a life of peace?
As a Buddhist, do you think that Buddhism has the idea of changing the world?
If Buddhism values finding peace within yourself, how is each person finding peace among themselves going to help change the world? Thank you.

These could easily be edited to ask the same question but without sounding so like an interview:

Has Buddhism shaped society today (and if so how)?
How has Buddhism influenced your life?
Where in Buddhism does it say that you have to live your life in peace?
Is it Buddhist doctrine that a pursuit of peace is necessary, in today's society?
How do Buddhists begin to pursue of peace, what does a "pursuit" of peace entail, and when does the pursuit end?
Is it Buddhist doctrine that all people should follow a life of peace?
Does Buddhism have the idea of changing the world?
If Buddhism values finding peace within yourself, how is each person finding peace among themselves going to help change the world? Thank you.

I wanted to answer, because I thought they were questions about Buddhism (not questions about me).
They seemed like they might have been homework questions, however that (learning) seems to me quite a good thing and an opportunity to suggest interesting or authentic information about Buddhism, to people who might be interested in learning more about it.
Assuming they were homework I guessed I couldn't ask the OP to explain or clarify the question (perhaps I should have done that: "why are you asking and what you do you mean by "peace", and when you say "society" is that referring to any specific country?", and voted to put the question on hold as "unclear" until the OP answered).
Some of the questions were (too) vague or too broad, e.g. "Has Buddhism shaped society today?", but we already have a meta-policy to try to answer those questions anyway.
There was one of the questions I refused to answer (i.e. "How has Buddhism influenced your life?") but I thought I could at least begin to answer others. There's more than one way to answer many of the questions (e.g. depending on how you define "society" and "peace"), however I thought that answering each question somehow was better (more helpful) than not answering at all; and although my answers were very short I included hyperlinks so that the OP could research further the concepts or terminology I mentioned.

A suggestion was made to turn these type of questions (I believe meaning questions that don't really have a best answer but which someone might like to answer anyway.) into community wiki

CW should be used sparingly if at all: its purpose isn't to excuse bad questions; its purpose (in my opinion) is to enable the collaborative creation and editing of a useful resource with a specific theme.
I think the following are examples of bad questions which shouldn't be CW (shouldn't be asked at all).

Too personal –

How has Buddhism changed your life?
Which country do you live in?
Have you ever met someone who dislikes Buddhism?

IMO they shouldn't be CW because I don't foresee answers being a useful collection of data. I doubt whether answers would be interesting to future readers.
Too broad – I also don't like the following (because they're too broad):

What books about Buddhism have you read?
What books about Buddhism have been published?
What films depicting any aspect of Buddhist culture or society have been released?

I suspect that Google (or sites like Amazon or IMDB) might do a better job of answering this type of question.
Better – the following could IMO be examples of potentially useful CW resources:

What 50 or 100 words (e.g. dukkha) represent the most important concepts?
What is your most favourite book, what do you think is the best book, about (some subject, e.g. meditation)?
Please name all the various styles or types of Buddhist meditation practice, with a one- or two-paragraph description or summary of each one.
Please suggest various Buddhist-themed activities for pre-school children.

The "interview-style questions about peace" would not make a good CW subject in my opinion (partly because it's not one subject).


text:
Should we consider also Yoga philosophy here?
My personal opinion is yes.
Yoga philosophy and buddhism are based on common roots and many concepts are very similar or exactly the same.
For example:

Noble Eightfold Path are very similar to Yamas in Yoga
Concept of Reincarnation
Karma
Meditation approach as technique to reach enlightenment
Meditation positions: actually the lotus posture, usually used in Buddish for meditation, is a yoga asana
Yantra
Mudras

In general all philosophy born in the area between India/Nepal/Bhutan share the common base culture and so it is difficult to separate one from another.
For example, is this question in line with the scope:

Relationship between Buddhism, Hinduism and Yoga?

Note that the Hinduism.SE site should be launching later today. Some questions about yoga may also end up being on topic there.

I think Yoga can be considered in the middle of Hinduism and Buddhism and in someway Buddhism is a form of Yoga

Being based on common roots wouldn't be enough, IMO. You'd have to discuss yoga in a Buddhist context, i.e. Buddhist Yoga to allow it on this site; otherwise, where would we draw the line?

Is I think you are right because both are such huge argument but in the same time,IMO, it is good approach, not to be to strict in categorize things ... everything is linked at the end.

I would argue that yoga philosophy (and yoga more generally) in a Buddhist context is more than acceptable, but not yoga that is divorced from a Buddhist context. Those might be excellent questions, but they won't have much to do with the core of the site.

I think that "Buddhist context" makes all the difference. How many people who currently practice yoga also believe in not self, impermanence of all things, etc? The context has a huge effect on how you look at the world

Yoga teach not attachment

I think Yoga (as Patanjali tradition) should not be discussed on Buddhist themed site. Only with exception of comparative buddhology. Then it should be welcome. Like if someone can explain difference of concept of karma between Buddhism and Yoga (or any other school).


text:
Why can we see deleted answers?
I've wondered why it is that we can see deleted answers on this site? According to this post,

"Once a post has been deleted, it will disappear for all users except developers, moderators, and users with over 10,000 reputation. Deleted answers are also visible to the original author."

So I'm not sure if it's site specific or perhaps because we're still in beta or for some other reason that deleted answers can be seen by someone like myself who has far less than 10K rep. I'm pretty sure brand new users can see them too.
I have a few reasons for asking. One is that on looking back on some older questions there are many deleted answers and it sort of looks messy and disorganized to newcomers to the site. But also some answers are inappropriate and the intent was really to get rid of them. So if they still appear (highlighted in pink no less to make them even more visible), it actually draws attention to that which we didn't want seen in the first place. Lastly, if a person truly makes a big blunder in an answer and wishes to not have their error on display forever, they can't really do anything beyond delete it; which again, highlights it in pink for everyone to notice even more, which could be embarrassing.
Does anyone know if it's site specific or if something can (or should) be done to make deleted posts invisible to users outside of those special categories listed above?

I think its because we are in beta and the rep boundaries are lower. Users of 2K rep or more can see deleted posts so for your average user the site looks clean. Its only us at the giddy heights of 2K plus that can see the doubt and confusion of the deleted answers.
If we were to ever make it out of beta then the deleted answers viewing would require 10K rep.

Good to know, thanks Crab Bucket! :)

Yes, as Crab Bucket answers, reputation threshold are lower while a site is in beta.
This help page describes all reputation-based privileges.
Your OP quoting a StackOverflow help page. As a non-beta site StackOverflow 's reputation-based thresholds are higher, e.g. this page defines "access to moderator tools" at 10,000 instead of at 2,000.
Whichever it is, this help page describes the "Viewing deleted posts" privilege. It exists so that you can help detect answers being maliciously or wrongfully deleted when they shouldn't be.
Any newcomers to the site won't see deleted pages.

That makes sense Chris. Thanks! :)


text:
What to do with answers from a religious point of view other than Buddhism?
When an answer (or question) seems to be from another religious tradition https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/221 should they be flagged or left to be voted on by the community? Thanks.

I've flagged it as "other" and expressed that it was more like proselytizing Hinduism. I guess until Hinduism gets out of beta, our Hindu friends have nowhere to go :)

If that answer had been a question, it would have been closed as off topic.
Hare Krishna and Buddhism, by my quick google check, are unrelated except that they both started in India.


text:
Can we ban "comparative-religion" questions?
I was watching this issue for a while before deciding to take a side... Comparative religion type questions are questions that involve comparison of Buddhism with Christianity, or Hinduism or Yoga or even Science, directly or indirectly. These types of questions tend to attract answers from people that are knowledgeable in one field but not necessarily in the other. This leads to incorrect assessments, which in turn leads to arguments. These arguments attract views and clicks, resulting in such question bubbling up to the top. The question then appears on Hot Network Questions list, getting even more views. As a result, other, more interesting and useful questions do not get attention they deserve. Should we ban "comparative-religion" questions or is there any value in keeping them that outweighs the harm they do?
P.S. I do believe that comparative religion itself can be a very fruitful field of study, it is just that I don't think it is a good S.E. topic.

'other, more interesting and useful questions' - I get why you think other questions might be more useful, but the fact that certain questions appear on the hot list clearly indicates how interesting they are.

'interesting' doesn't mean either deep or popular. It means 'arousing curiosity or interest; holding or catching the attention', a quality of questions that I would argue will help this site grow (provided the questions are also useful). Don't you think the dictionary definition of interesting applies to the questions that make it on the hot list?

I do, in fact that's my exact concern. Because many people seem to find superficial controversies so interesting, they get attracted to them like flies to dung, while truly interesting questions get < 100 views each. Hence my proposal: why don't we ban superficial controversies? I guess it's not really just or indeed about comparative-religion. The Woman Buddha question is another example of these. But these are harder to identify. That's why I thought about comparative-religion first.

I hear you, but who decides what people should be interested in?

FYI there's a strong correlation between number of views and number of answers: questions with > 200 views have 4 or 5 answers or more ("having many answers" is one definition of "interesting").

Actually I was pleased by Bakmoon's comment after the Woman Buddha question, and maybe I learned something too (I know very little about the evolution of Buddhism), so even though it doesn't seem to be a practical question, about "practice", I confess I kind of liked that dung at the time. But let's be positive: instead of saying what questions aren't interesting, what are interesting question? Can you say what questions people should ask?

@yuttadhammo, I agree that these questions are objectively more "interesting" and we can't dictate what people should like, but why not use the on/off-topic leverage to keep the dung bar somewhat high? ChrisW, I would be glad to see more questions about basic principles and how they play out in practice.

Would you like to demand that questions be practical and not merely doctrinal? That demand might be supported by the "based on actual problems that you face" requirement. For example, the Skeptics site has put effort into requiring/defining that questions must be about 'notable claims', and that questions must be "notable" in order to be considered on-topic. If you ask a question about a claim which they don't think is notable enough, they might challenge you to demonstrate it's notable. Similarly here your ...

... challenge might be, "how is that a practical question?" I don't know whether "practical" is the wording around which you might like to set the bar. IMO you can set the on/off-topic bar wherever you like. It would be normal to explore/explain/define on meta where that bar is, and you'd be looking for some majority of the 'community' to agree that that is what they want to site to be about.

@ChrisW, I don't mind doctrinal questions as long as they are not too speculative or nitpicking.

Sites can also define their own, custom Off-topic Close reasons. For example, the Skeptics site has two: This question doesn't identify a specific notable claim. Please add a reference to and quote from the published text which contains the specific claim you want to question. and Questions about unresolved current events and issues currently under investigation by a court of law, government, or other similar investigative body are off-topic because there is insufficient data for a meaningful answer. For more information, see Handling current news questions.

IOW in theory you could (try to) define "Speculative nitpicking" as a close reason.

As funny as that sounds, it's not a bad idea :) Although I don't think we as community is yet at the point when we can easily agree on what "speculative" means, but at least we are having these conversations, so there is hope one day we will start making calls.

I think I might be a prime offender here. I've posted 6 of these and I wrote the tag wiki. I think I might have even created the tag originally so I really ought to post. So in no particular order here are some general points and feelings about the issue.

I'm not a huge fan of the notion of banning a set of questions unless they really are off topic. We can downvote or vote to close if we really don't like them. The system is designed with this in mind so the community can express their opinion on a case by case basis.
Reviewing the tag they are of a variable quality like all the tags. The one on faith resulted in one of he best answers I've read here - from OP (Thanks Andrei)! Others have been closed or downvoted a bit which is as it should be.
Even poorer question can result in great answers. The Buddhist Bible one hasn't been one of my best admittedly and it go a few downvotes and some complaints about it in chat. But it generated some really great answers.
These questions can attract more heated debate - i think that's clear. But I think this is a call to be more sensitive and accepting of other peoples religious views (i was tempted to post on meta about that exact subject). People are very willing to moderate their opinions when challenged - the faith question again was great for challenging peoples notions and people edited their answers in response thus improving them.
The question do take someone with a foot in both camps to answer. But since many of us were brought up in non-Buddhist religious contexts or live in non-Buddhist societies - that is exactly a lot of us. I don't see this as a massive problem.
I would argue that we have a supply problem with questions. If we are determined to go down the route of banning sets of questions that I would really want us to dream up ways to encourage good questions. Otherwise we risk choking the site off i would argue. That's not a reason to keep rubbish questions but if we are hitting the questions with a stick I would want to see a carrot for getting more of the right kind of questions in.
On the supply problem again - I would really encourage people to post questions that they are interested in. If these questions are generating too much heat then one way to approach this would be to post more great questions on topics that you would really like to hear people's views. To me that would be a more positive approach then any kind of ban.

Anyway I like these questions and I think they produce good answers but I can see for others they might be an edge case. I don't want to upset but I have about another 2 or 3 of these questions that I would like to ask. I might take mercy on the site and delay them - i don't want to dominate the site with a minority interest.

The Buddhist Bible question has at once one of my top upvoted and top downvoted answers (17-2 ATM)

Sometimes such questions are good and useful
Sometimes such questions are useful (so a blanket ban might go too far).
A "comparison" question might be useful, for understanding (specifically) Buddhism; for example:

What are the differences/similarities in the concept of faith as used in Buddhism and Christianity? may help someone learn what role (if any) "faith" has in Buddhism, if they previously only know the word "faith" in English.
Why isn't there a Buddhist Bible? may help someone understand why there isn't (and/or whether there is) a relatively short canonical set of Buddhist scripture.

OTOH (looking at other christianity-tagged topics) I see less purpose in Is Jesus considered to be a buddha? You could consider closing that, on the basis that it breaks this rule:

You should only ask practical, answerable questions based on actual problems that you face. Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page.

We are already able to close bad questions
We can close questions which are:

Too subjective
Off-topic (if they're more about another religion than about Buddhism)
Duplicate

I see that people have already, rightly, closed some questions for these reasons.
Sometimes you might want to close a question temporarily, demand that it be improved (or edit it yourself) before allowing it.
Moderators can moderate answers too
Moderators can "protect" questions.
The main objection in the OP seems to be that this type of question tends to attracts bad answers, which leads to arguments. So perhaps you could achieve your objective by extra-strict policing of the answers:

Deleting answers which you consider off-topic: e.g. if you allowed some-or-other question because it's 75% about Buddhism and 25% about Christianity, feel free to delete any answer that's 25% about Buddhism and 75% about Christianity.
Extra-strict editing of answers by all moderators, to ensure answers are not controversial  (including removing any parts of an answer that are "a bit tongue in cheek").

Deleting answers, and non-trivial editing of answers can really only/mostly be done by moderators.
Also note that just as a moderator can close a question until the author has improved the question, moderators can also delete (i.e. hide) any really problematic answer until the author has improved the answer (the author can still view and edit their answer while it's deleted, and then flag it for reopening).
And moderators can moderate comments
On some sites, moderators are strict about whether comments are on-topic.

Comments are only meant to be for suggesting improvements to (or criticizing) an answer
Other comments are off-topic:
comments aren't intended for dialog, and
off-topic comments are deleted
Existing comments can be sent/converted to a chat room

+1 for the tongue in cheek part ;)

Hey, what's wrong with a little cheek?

@yuttadhammo There's nothing much wrong, that I know of, assuming it's neither ignorant nor wicked. :-) Andrei seemed concerned (i.e. he posted the OP above), rightly or wrongly, I'm not sure why: maybe something you can discuss, either on meta or in the moderator chat room. I wanted to say here that if the problem with this class of topic is "bad answers", then making sure that the answers are good (whatever 'good' means) might be better than banning the whole class of question.

Roger dodger...

@yuttadhammo One problem with this particular piece of little cheek is that it's slightly off-topic. It adds to the answer, but if you wanted only the most straight-laced answer, being on-topic is something else to watch for. A "defence of Buddha vs Jesus smackdown" wasn't IMO the purpose of this comparative religion question about the existence of a bible. Assuming you want to say it, it might be better to move that portion of your answer into the Is Jesus considered to be a buddha? topic instead.

See, I don't get that... the question was about the existence of a concise bible.  And a big reason for why the bible is so short is that there are only so many ways you can say "believe in God and He will move mountains for you" before you just give up and call it a day. The teachings of Jesus, while at times admirable, aren't anywhere near the level of depth or breadth of those of the Buddha; hence a difference in length. I continue to defend the smackdown.

Thinking about it, the real problem with the paragraph in question was that it was opinion-based - it isn't an accepted fact that the Buddha was enlightened and Jesus wasn't. I've replaced the offending paragraph with something more appropriate.

@yuttadhammo Cool (I already upvoted your answer so I can't upvote it again). Apart from the number of teaching years another difference is the number, quality, etc., of the disciples and biographers. And (I'm not sure why: possibly the risk of persecution by Jews as a false prophet) Jesus doesn't seem to me to speak openly/freely. Re. your new version I don't know about the "objective truth of requiring less teaching"; you could alternatively put it the other way round, and say that a religion with less scripture requires more faith (but I'm not complaining about what you've written now).

Thanks :) True, but quality of disciples would be opinion-based... yeah, I'll try to finesse the "objective truth" thing, but there is some point to be made about the correlation between emphasis on wisdom/understanding and length of teachings, I think.

According to this answer, a topic makes the 'Hot Questions' list when:

It's recent (QAgeInHours is small)
It's an upvoted question with many answers (AnswerCount and QScore are large)
Answers are upvoted (AnswerScore is large)

Therefore this theory from the OP is wrong:

These arguments attract views and clicks, resulting in such question bubbling up to the top. The question then appears on Hot Network Questions list, getting even more views.

It's not "controversial" topics with clicks and views which make the Hot Network Questions list: instead it's the highly-upvoted questions, with many answers and/or highly-upvoted answers.
These (highly-upvoted) are perhaps not the type of question which you'd want to ban.
However, this answer suggests that you might choose to be extra-careful (or extra-strict) with answers to any questions which make the Hot List, because they advertise the tone/content of the site.

Looking at the formula, AnswerScore (per age) seems the most important factor... Weird, I thought I saw a different correlation: the stupider the question, the more views it attracts - but somehow that's not in the formula... :D


text:
2020: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the past 12 months.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we welcome 2021, and in keeping with tradition, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Buddhism over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community¹

Users suspended²
2
7

Users destroyed³
5
0

Users deleted
6
0

Users contacted
4
3

Tasks reviewed⁴: Suggested Edit queue
61
142

Tasks reviewed⁴: Reopen Vote queue
1
19

Tasks reviewed⁴: Low Quality Posts queue
26
53

Tasks reviewed⁴: Late Answer queue
10
99

Tasks reviewed⁴: First Post queue
41
321

Tasks reviewed⁴: Close Votes queue
4
54

Questions reopened
20
0

Questions protected
21
4

Questions migrated
4
0

Questions flagged⁵
1
72

Questions closed
87
3

Question flags handled⁵
60
13

Posts unlocked
2
0

Posts undeleted
21
80

Posts locked
4
8

Posts deleted⁶
209
341

Posts bumped
0
255

Comments undeleted
34
1

Comments flagged
0
144

Comments deleted⁷
1,171
806

Comment flags handled
113
31

Answers flagged
8
232

Answer flags handled
224
16

All comments on a post moved to chat
43
0

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Buddhism without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes).
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2019: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

A big thank you to Shog9 for writing the queries and script to facilitate fetching and posting this data to all the sites in the network, and to Brian for the subsequent work making the whole thing more user friendly.
Wishing everyone a happy 2021!

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


text:
2022: a year in moderation

As we say goodbye to the old year and welcome the new one, we have a tradition of sharing moderation stats for the preceding calendar year.
As most of you here are aware, sites on the Stack Exchange network are moderated somewhat differently to other sites on the web:

We designed the Stack Exchange network engine to be mostly self-regulating, in that we amortize the overall moderation cost of the system across thousands of teeny-tiny slices of effort contributed by regular, everyday users.
-- A Theory of Moderation

That doesn't eliminate the need for having moderators altogether, but it does mean that the bulk of moderation work is carried out by regular folks. Every bit of time and effort y'all contribute to the site gives you access to more privileges you can use to help in this effort, all of which produce a cumulative effect that makes a big difference.
So as we say goodbye to 2022 (and where did January go, right?) and dive head first into 2023, let us look back at what we accomplished as a community... by looking at some exciting stats. Below is a breakdown of moderation actions performed on Buddhism over the past 12 months:

Action
Moderators
Community¹

All comments on a post moved to chat
2
0

Answer flags handled
94
10

Answers flagged
5
99

Comment flags handled
49
3

Comments deleted⁷
334
276

Comments flagged
2
50

Comments undeleted
20
0

Posts bumped
0
170

Posts deleted⁶
84
146

Posts locked
1
7

Posts undeleted
8
19

Posts unlocked
1
0

Question flags handled⁵
31
9

Questions closed
50
0

Questions flagged⁵
5
35

Questions migrated
1
0

Questions protected
5
2

Questions reopened
9
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Close votes" queue
10
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: "First answers" queue
162
17

Tasks reviewed⁴: "First questions" queue
27
1

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Late answers" queue
62
0

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Low quality posts" queue
23
4

Tasks reviewed⁴: "Suggested edits" queue
61
14

Users contacted
3
0

Users destroyed³
1
0

Users suspended²
2
20

Footnotes
¹ "Community" here refers both to the membership of Buddhism without diamonds next to their names, and to the automated systems otherwise known as user #-1.
² The system will suspend users under three circumstances: when a user is recreated after being previously suspended, when a user is recreated after being destroyed for spam or abuse, and when a network-wide suspension is in effect on an account.
³ A "destroyed" user is deleted along with all that they had posted: questions, answers, comments. Generally used as an expedient way of getting rid of spam.
⁴ This counts every review that was submitted (not skipped) - so the 2 suggested edits reviews needed to approve an edit would count as 2, the goal being to indicate the frequency of moderation actions. This also applies to flags, etc.
⁵ Includes close flags (but not close or reopen votes). Community can handle these flags by at least one person voting to close a question that has a close flag.
⁶ This ignores numerous deletions that happen automatically in response to some other action.
⁷ This includes comments deleted by their own authors (which also account for some number of handled comment flags).
Further reading:

Wanna see how these numbers have changed over time? We posted a similar report here last year: 2021: a year in moderation

You can also check out this report on other sites

Or peruse detailed information on the number of questions closed and reopened across all sites

Wishing everyone a happy 2023! ^_^


text:
Balanced Participation by Multiple Traditions
As things are going there is no balanced participation by all traditions within Theravada. Can we start a campaign to attract more balanced participation from as many traditions as possible.
Also some traditions may not be very popular in the west. In this case we have to look at accommodating English related issues by extending support.
Theravada
Well represented are:

Mahasi - Ven. Yuttadhammo et. al.

Needs improvement:

Goenka - I am largely influenced but not 100% and sometimes mixed views so I cannot hold myself as representing this view purely. But needs more participation. Especially by people who adhere more rigorously to this tradition and have more in depth knowledge.
Ven. Mun branch of Thai Forest traditions - Samadi, but still need more representation by the different branches of the Thai Forest tradition.
Pa Auk - nobody here with a depth knowledge of this practice.
Mogok Sawadaw - one of the few Buddhist masters who emphasised the DO. Nobody here has an in-depth knowledge of this tradition.
Western Buddhist Order - Crab Bucket, see some new participants coming in.
Secular Buddhists - ???

Mahayana
Vajrayana
Other / Secular Buddhists / Mixed
Also we have to see how to encourage participation from others schools like lineages within the Mahayana community. Perhaps some one can also share this information.
Also the bias in participation and representation has a snow balling effect. It is difficult to get participants come in from different lineages as much of the content does not cater for them.
NB: this is by no means a proposal to reduce participation from one particular lineage, but instead a means to increase participation from all schools, traditions and lineages.

Ironically though the Theravada tag is our second most popular. I was concerned that other schools outside of this are very under represented such as chinese buddhism, pure land etc.. I don't have the depth of experience to sub divide Theravada itself so I'm going to take your word for it that within Theravada there are aspects of it that are under represented. I agree with you that our participation is skewed. Is this just a result of our small user base? It's an interesting question worth discussing

There are lineages within schools. All above are Theravada lineages. But within lineages there are vast doctrinal differences. Some to the extent they can be considers different Schools altogether through all have the Theravade Tripitaka / Commentaries (some lineages to not accept all view in commentaries) as the basis. Also interpretations of critical words can be very diverse also.

I am not an expert in Mahayana so perhaps someone can add major lineages / sub schools to the above please.

Maybe there are at least three questions here, i.e.: "Do we want balanced participation?", "Do we know how to get a more balanced participation?", and "Can we extend support to accommodate English related issues?" I guess my answers to the first two of those questions would be "Yes, because participation is good" however "No, I don't know how to start a campaign". Re the third, I'm sorry but I don't yet understand what you're suggesting, in practice, when you say "extend support to accommodate"? What kind of support can you suggest we extend and how should we go about extending it?

In the latter if we get some one who's English is not that good try helping them out. Especially if they represent a tradition not already represented.

Having more participation would be great. Maybe simple things like welcoming people to the site; being helpful to them, and voting up useful posts (we tend to be very miserly with our voting overall) would  encourage newcomers to stick around and contribute more. And with more participation overall you're likely to get the variety of viewpoints from different traditions you're looking for.

There is also this feature, "Know someone who can answer? Share a link to this question via email, Google+, Twitter, or Facebook" which could be very useful if you know a particular expert for a particular question (i.e. email it to them).

@Robin111 +1 for the 1st comment. 2nd comment - it is hard when there is no much content from the particular stand point.

Just a suggestion to think of people you know and if there is someone who is knowledgeable in an under represented tradition, maybe invite them to participate. If they are not interested in participating on a regular basis, perhaps they'd be willing to answer a particular question that was directed to them by email from time to time. Just a thought. :)

But if you are saying that the problem is that we have no questions from tradition X, well, trying to artificially balance something is probably not very realistic.

I mean not creating Question. Some one or set off users dedicated at answering any questions. For this to happen we have to see how to attract new users. Creating artificial question I believe is seeding?

In recent weeks I've been posting our Welcome whenever I spot a brand new user. There are usually between 1 - 3 brand new users each day which seems good (30-90 per month?). We have two choices for under represented traditions though. Patience or a directed campaign. But we seem short of solid ideas on how to direct a campaign to invite users from particular under represented traditions.  So maybe patience? :)

The other thing that occurred to me is that perhaps in certain traditions, such as where a direct teacher to student transmission takes place, perhaps there is simple less interest in asking questions or offering answers about Buddhism. That is what I meant about trying to "artificially" balance the representation of different traditions on the site possibly being unrealistic. Time will tell though.

In the interest of being welcoming of all traditions, I think zen style responses may need a bit of consideration. Early on it was pretty much agreed that short, mysterious koan style responses might not represent expert answers or at least might not be helpful to the general audience. Discussed here
But if we delete out zen style responses (as below) we're not really welcoming a particular style of Buddhism. So I'm wondering if this is something to revisit now that the site has had time to mature and we find ourselves somewhat imbalanced with regard to traditions. (Crab Bucket, I'm not trying to be critical of deleting the answer. I think it's just something to consider in light of this issue we are discussing here in this thread.)
Is it wrong to buy a Buddha statue in Thailand from a Buddhist point of view?
"Yes it's wrong. Throw away your statues and burn your dharma books."
shareeditflag
deleted by Crab Bucket♦ 33 mins ago
answered 1 hour ago
todji
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Sorry this doesn't look like a serious answer so I'm deleting –  Crab Bucket♦ 33 mins ago

Ah was that a zen type comment - i didn't realise. I'll undelete and open for discussion

I believe it to be, yes. Thanks @Crab Bucket!

I've posted a question on meta about this specific question and these style of answers generally http://meta.buddhism.stackexchange.com/q/1561/157 so we can discuss again. Thanks for pointing this out!

Welcome versus not welcome
We must make it clear, if it's not clear, that multiple traditions are welcome.
Any complaint, that someone else comes from a specific or a different tradition, is therefore harmful.
Thank you, to everyone who already helps to answer questions on this site.

Can control versus cannot control
There are things we can control, and things we cannot control.

We cannot make other people visit the site, nor make them stay to answer questions
We can try to make the site as good as possible, so that people might want to come and read it, come and ask questions of their own, come and help to answer questions.

Good answers from multiple traditions versus balanced participation
Having "multiple traditions" is good; and I am glad the site has several various people from different traditions already.
Asking that participation be strictly balanced probably isn't possible though, I guess.
What we can do, maybe, is think about how to present the best answers that we're able to. Maybe we should start another topic on meta about the quality of answers: what are the attributes of a good answer, what are attributes of a bad answer, how to react to good and bad answers, how to make any bad answers better, etc.
I hope that if the site contains nothing but good answers, if its community can produce only helpful answers, then this will be a very helpful site (it will help a lot of people) and a popular site (a lot of people will want to use it), including people from all traditions.
We already have some variety (if not balance) of tradition. For example I think we have already had some very good answers (haven't we?) to some Mahayana and Vajrayana questions.
Anyway, that's the only suggestion I have, for attracting new users: make everyone welcome, insist that no tradition is unwelcome, and see whether we can improve the site by improving the quality of answers.

Find where the questioner's arrow is and try to help them with it
If you don't mind me misquoting the Parable of the Arrow: if you do have an arrow stuck in you and need help taking it out, if you will ask on this site then you must not be too choosy about where another person trained, about who trained him, what caste he was, what village he was born in, etc.
Of course if a question does get an answer then it's reasonable to ask about the answer's provenance, if you want to: e.g. "Thank you for your answer, which tradition or reference is that from?"
If you are answering a question then the skill is to adapt, select, and include what you know, and learn more, to match the question: to personalize or customize the answer to match the OP's question.

You asked, "Can we start a campaign to attract?"
Actually, apart from each of us thinking of how to improve our own answers, I can think of a few more ways in which the site might be improved:

More 'community' involvement (more discussions on meta, people getting to know each other and to work together)
Clearer policies (if the community defines guidelines about what's good and bad content, people can learn from those guidelines, and the guidelines help to improve the content)
Slightly more moderation (i.e. moderators doing a bit more cleanup, users posting comments to each other, to ask for minor improvements or clarifications to any bits of an answer that aren't clear)
Slightly more structure (for example Crab Bucket is working now, to retag all the questions about meditation; having well-understood and consistent tags is a way to help unify the content of the site; it's also eventually possible for the 'community' (i.e. you) to develop policies for how to handle specific types of tag; for example some guidelines about "what's a good answer?" might vary or be specific depending on the type of tag: one obvious example is that any reference-request answer, at least, should include a reference!

Just to echo Chris. I think for most of us we are limited in our internet or real world presence i.e. we probably can't drive significant amount of users to the site - or we feel a bit embarrassed about doing it and probably don't want to put ourselves out there. But we can and should focus on the quality of the site where we do have direct control and focus on welcoming and guiding users that do land on our pages. I actually think we are a welcoming community so I think we are doing good stuff here.

Also thinking about ways to improve quality on the site will keep people here and ultimately drive people here or at least keep them here. Maybe individuals can do small things - I am (probably) going to write an article for my local Buddhist group newsletter at some point but that is just going to end up with more western Triratna people here so wouldn't really broaden things

@Lanka Other sites can choose their own advertisements, see e.g. Community Promotion Ads on Physics.SE, but only when that site has graduated. Theoretically the community of a graduated site could choose to advertise Buddhism.SE on their own site, but I don't see why they should. A way in which Buddhism.SE is advertised on other sites is that some popular topics semi-randomly appear on the Hot Network Questions list, displayed at the bottom of the right-side column on each page of every site.

As I write this, the topic From a Buddhist point of view, what are the benefits of supernormal powers? is currently on that list. That question was asked 9 hours ago and has has 220 views. The previous questions asked 14, 15, 16 hours ago have had 60, 75, 16 views.

Because 220 views is higher than 60 views I'm guessing that the fact that it's on the "Hot Network Questions" list is the reason why that question has had 150 more views than the earlier questions: i.e. 150 people on other SE sites saw it listed, and came to read it.

@Lanka Looking at the beta statistics the site is doing well in many ways. The statistics would prefer more questions per day. If there were more questions/day I don't know whether the site would answer them all well? I can't predict how much more calendar time until the site graduates; different sites take different amounts of time. A benefit of coming out of beta would be a better site design / colour layout. I don't know whether/why the "Beta-state" might not-attract people.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.


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The Book of the Month is: "Good Question Good Answer"
Someone suggested that one good way to use this site can be to study books together, and post any questions from those books that we may have.
Bhante Yuttadhammo suggested here that, this month, we could read Good Question Good Answer:

Out of the suggestions, I'd like to recommend we start with Good Questions, Good Answers, even though it didn't get the most votes; it is freely available online, it is not directly related to any one Buddhist tradition, and because of the format, it fits well with the Q&A framework. Some of the other suggested books, while interesting, are either directed to a specific school of Buddhism or are not free online.

See also Choosing a book for book of the month club?

I really benefited from reading "Good Questions, Good Answers". There was a surprising amount of information in that little book that was new to me. I didn't end up having any questions to post to our site about it; but it was definitely time well spent to add to basic knowledge of Buddhism.


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A chat session about the direction of Buddhism SE
We are changing a lot as a site and I think it's fair to say that a number of users have concerns. Just in the way of a concrete suggestion - what about a chat room and a scheduled time span (perhaps over a weekend) where we can get together as a community and voice these concerns and perhaps focus our efforts in making this site a broad welcoming community (assuming that's what we want to be).
Anyone interested?

I think there is a reasonable consensus that an ongoing chat session about the site is a good idea. Here's what the live issues are for me but obviously all issues are up for discussion

Is our question policy too permissive. Should we be closing more questions down as opinion based, too broad etc...
Are comments being (mis)used as debates
Are we becoming less respectful of other's views. Is that an issue?

Anyway hope to see you in chat

That sounds like a very good idea: and I look forward to re-reading it, reading what you say.
In fact, I am scheduled to be travelling: out of town this weekend, hours in a car, Saturday till Tuesday. I will only able to check in occasionally, if at all — but please, don't wait for me: start without me.
A well as "a scheduled time span" it's also possible to have a conversation which lasts a week, or which lasts indefinitely; people check-in occasionally when they have time (e.g. in the evening, once or twice a day, once or twice a week, whatever you can manage, or just keep a browser tab open during the day-time) read what's been said, reply, say a bit more, etc.

+1 for a conversation which lasts indefinitely :))

Well I'm there now.

I'll try to be there semi-permanently.

I'll try and join in as often as I can as well. +1 for a good idea.

I'm going to take this as a yes. Thanks all. I'm going to edit this question and put a featured tag on. I think just a chat starting now and progressing over the next few weeks it the best option.


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Proposal for retagging meditation questions
By far our most popular tag is meditation with over double the number of questions than the second most popular tag. It seems a shame to me that such a rich topic is lumped under one tag. I'd like to suggest a bit of light retagging to introduce some sub categories. Suggested categories could be
meditation-breath
meditation-metta
meditation-insight
meditation-visualisation
And so on
I would like to keep meditation as the broad category and add the others in as subcategories. I like the idea of the tags been in the format meditation-xxxxxx because people will type in meditation as a tag and see the other categories and it may encourage then to refine their tagging.
Is this a good idea? Does anyone have any other categories? I'm happy to gradually work through and retag and write the tag wikis
EDIT
So after discussion the proposal is

Create a set of tags as subcategories for meditation in the format meditation-xxxx
meditation stays but becomes a tag for questions about meditation that are general or difficult to categorise
Retag existing questions so that have meditation or meditation-xxx but not both
Existing tags such are zazen become meditation-zazen and synonyms are used to repoint and/or questions are retagged

Defining subcategories sounds clever. Have you seen that done on any other sites?

@ChrisW its just based on how stack overflow does software versions. So TFS is a tag ( team foundation server) but there are also tags for tfs-2012 tfs-2008 and so on.

That seems like a good idea. Would you be retagging items currently tagged as "anapanasati", "samatha", "metta bhavana" , etc?

Also, even if you use Meditation as the 2nd word in a tag, it will still appear in a search. But the way you have it above looks good too.

@Robin111 I'd retag anapanasati and "samatha or maybe put then as synonyms if that seems appropriate. There;s others such as zazen and posture that I would also put in as synonyms  too so we'd have zazen pointing to meditation-zazen if that makes sense

This seems well thought out. :-)

Only 15 [tag:meditation] topics left. Have you finished now (do you want to keep these as-is), or nearly finished (15 more to edit)?

@ChrisW I'm nearly finished. I'm thinking of leaving them as is and then it's just thetag wikis to write. If it categories them an further the tags become silly. I had a meditation-history tag which I've taken off again as it added nothing IMHO

@ChrisW actually I've changed my mind. I've retagged everything so there is nothing left under meditation. I think it works. Just the tag wikis to go

its just based on how stack overflow does software versions. So TFS is a tag ( team foundation server) but there are also tags for tfs-2012 tfs-2008 and so on

I think that's a good idea, and is perhaps how tags are meant to be used.
On Stack Overflow, for example, if I enter [tfs*] in the search box, then that automatically expands to [tfs] or [tfs2010] or [tfs2012] or [tfsbuild] or [tfs2013] or [tfs2008] or [tfs-sdk] or [tfs-workitem] or [tfs-power-tools] or [tfs-migration] or [tfs-process-template] or [tfs-web-access] or [tfsintegrationplatform] or [tfs-alerts] or [tfs2005] or [tfs-reports] or [tfs-express] or [tfs11] or [tfs-security] or [tfs-to-tfs-migration-tool].
And, the 'interesting' and 'ignored' tags support wildcards (as of 2009).
We could use two tags for each question e.g. meditation plus meditation-insight, however I might disagree and suggest it's better (for tidiness sake) to minimize the number of non-specific meditation questions, and edit the tag to replace it with a more specific suffixed tag if possible.
Have you looked through the meditation questions: can you think of an appropriate suffix for every one of them?
Does it make sense to say that any meditation, and any question about meditation, is necessarily of a specific type and therefore has an appropriate suffix?
Note that there is a generic or non-specific tfs tag as well as the more specific ones.
Also, when tagging a question typing in prac will bring up personal-practice as a suggested tag. IMO meditation-metta is a better tag than metta-meditation because the former supports wildcards and makes the subcategorization obvious.

1st point. My instinct is for meditation-xxxx rather then xxx-meditation as it does make it obvious that there are sub categories - Robin prefers the other way which I understand. 2nd point. I thought all meditation questions would have the top level meditation tag but I don't feel strongly about it. 3rd point I haven't been through the questions - just looked at a few. I hoped that ideas for additional meditation tags might come out of this question or we would gradually add more as the need became obvious.

"Does it make sense to say that any meditation, and any question about meditation, is necessarily of a specific type and therefore has an appropriate suffix?"  - No; surely some questions will be generic and surely some questions will come from beginners who aren't familiar with the specific types at all. (Also, I have no preference. I was just tossing out an idea as a potential compromise. I do think it's good to order the Meditation posts in some way. What's manageable with 1,400 questions will be less so at 14,000 questions so getting a system sooner than later would be proactive.)

@CrabBucket Given Robin's latest comment my vote is for: create new tags with a suffix for popular/common types of meditation topic; rename some existing tags to use the new suffixed tags; keep unsuffixed meditation only for otherwise-unclassified topics (so a topic might be tagged with meditation or with meditation-metta but not both).

@ChrisW sound reasonable. I've edited question with that in mind

@Robin111 I've amended the proposal - does that seem fair?

Why not just use multiple tags, like meditation metta? It seems awkward to me to put the type after the subject in the tag.
I would think that we should just do a tag edit to specify type if they were missing.

My thinking around this is that tags in this way will come up when anyone types in meditation hence it will be obvious to question posters that there is a lot of different aspects to meditation and will encourage them to tag as such and may improve question quality. Also it will be obvious to beginner users that these terms are related to meditation - vipassana, zazen etc.. are technical terms (IMHO) so why not give new users extra help in understanding these terms. But this is just an idea to I'm happy not to do it. Just seeing what people think

If it sounds better to say "metta-meditation","vipassana-meditation" all tags that have the word meditation in them (even if it's not first) will still come up when someone types in meditation to tag. Perhaps less awkward but still useful to newer folks who are unfamiliar with the many specific types of meditation?

@CrabBucket What if someone just wants a list of all meditation posts? Why isn't that a valid category on its own? Is it really too broad?

I believe these were suggested as subcategories to the main category of "Meditation". Might be especially useful as time goes on and the number of meditation posts become unwieldy without breaking them out somewhat.

@yuttadhammo robin's right. We would keep meditation so we could get the full list and use sub categories to break them down further

Then why add meditation- to the front? It seems unnecessary.

@Robin111 very happy with that vipassana-meditation, zazen-meditation looks better. We could have meditation-posture still as that reads better

@yuttadhammo so that when people type meditation in when tagging question they see the sub categories automatically

It seems overkill to me...

I someone wanted a list of all meditation posts then they could search for [meditation*]. Having the suffixes means that when people browse the list of tags (or begin to add a meditation tag to their new topic) then they can see that there several types of meditation tag.


text:
Where have our moderators gone?
As of 25th Jan 2015 at 18.55 GMT

Andrei last seen 48 minutes ago
Hrafn last seen Jan 5 at 17:08
yuttadhammo last seen Dec 20 '14 at 15:09

2 out of 3 moderators are missing in action. I can kind of understand this - there might be some long retreats going on, family issues, anything really.
Is this a problem? Does it matter? Does Andrei mind being the only moderator?

Sorry, I've been away in Asia... back now :)

We can help, by checking the review queue etc.
I personally miss them more for their answers (but I'm also grateful that they answered so many questions so well, in the past).
Maybe there's not too very much moderation to do, at the moment?
I haven't flagged anything in days.
If you do ever have some urgent need for a moderator, I suspect you can get one (get a moderator's attention in a hurry) by flagging a message in the chat room. SFAIK a flag on a chat message will be seen by (many) site-wide moderators instead of only by (the few) Buddhism-specific moderators.
Alternatively there's the Help Center > Contact page.

That's good advice thanks. I didn't know about the site wide chat flags. I guess the disappearance of high rep users is perhaps more the point but that will always occur with all sites. I have to say that the volume of questions is going up now so the absence of moderators might become more of an issue as we go on. See how we go

Even when the mods are quiet, Community Managers do regular sweeps of site metas to make sure nothing is on fire, so you can usually get ahold of one of us here, too.


text:
Why is the @ symbol being deleted in comments?
When I try to start a comment with @ and then someone's name, the whole string -- the symbol plus the name -- is being deleted. Is that a bug, or am I doing something wrong?

meta.stackexchange.com might get you an answer faster (since that is a question about how the Q&A site engine works)

Testing: If you look at this comment, @Tommy, you’ll see that your name is not automatically removed.

@TriG, it only happens if the @ plus name is at the start. If you are not seeing your own name preceded by the @ sign in this comment, then you're seeing the problem.

Darn -- it worked that time! Sigh. I'll ask on meta.SE as MatthewMartin suggested.

@Tommy. Of course it worked that time, because I didn't write the post to which these comments are attached. You did. Which is why your name will probably be stripped from the beginning of this comment. This is all explained in my answer below.

@TriG notice my name was not stripped, and nor was yours from the one below (despite the fact that in that case you were the post author)

Yeah. At this point I'm confused too. I know there's an existing discussion of this on Meta SE, but I can't find it.

I just had a look, and there are umpteen related discussions. No way I'm venturing in there -- I'd get my newbie head ripped off :-) I think I'll just follow your approach and work the name into the middle of the comment.

When you comment, the owner of the post (question or answer) on which you are commenting is automatically notified. Therefore, mentioning their name is redundant. It doesn’t do any harm, but it isn’t necessary either.
Someone thought it would be a good idea to automatically remove such redundant names. I don’t know who thought this or why: it’s one of many incomprehensible decisions taken by the SO overlords, and is certainly more confusing than helpful. However, that’s the way it is.
I think they’re removed only when they occur at the very beginning of a comment. If you work them into a sentence, as I often do, they remain in place.
They also remain in place when the person has made comments themselves.

One problem that sometimes arises is that the comment text doesn't change if the user changes their username. So removing the hard link in favor of the existing soft link is actually more permanent.

@TriG Hmm, so now I'm in debug mode. As you can see in my above test to you, I failed to reproduce the problem. I wonder if it's because I immediately followed your name with a comma. In this comment, I've left out that comma. So, lets see if this comment begins with your @ name.

Ah bollox. Forget it. I'll take it to meta.SE if I see it again.


text:
When my answer is short, shall I post it as a comment instead?
I just have a short answer, to a question. Shall I post it as a comment then instead, because it's short?

No, ideally try instead to post an answer as an answer, not as a comment.
Comments are not made for answers: comment are mostly for asking for clarifications or for suggesting improvements to the question.
Several of the answers to Should we allow/encourage short answers? say we may accept short answers, provided that they're "clear" and "do actually answer the question" and are not "mysterious".
Advantages of posting as an answer:

Some people only read answers not comments
Comments are (theoretically) more ephemeral and more likely to be deleted than answers
Answers can be upvoted and downvoted
Answers can be questioned (using comments), and improved/expanded (using edits)
An answer can be "accepted" (if your answer is correct but only posted as a comment, then the OP will be unable to mark your answer as the 'accepted' answer even if it's the best answer)

Also if someone has already answered in a comment, others may be disinclined to post the same thing as an answer, hence the question doesn't ever get an answer...