Newcomers: Be patient. You will get there if you follow our direction. Keep trying

Question

To the newcomers:

I am thrilled that you have come to this site. I am excited that you want to spend time contributing to this site, and even more so that you want to learn more about Christianity. The users like you make the content on this site and they are what make it fun.

However, you may be tempted to jump into the deep end of site policy and moderator actions before you actually know how to swim. I certainly did when I first started on the site and made a terrible a-- of myself. I hope that you can avoid that embarrassment and take my advice here in this post.

Before you go any further on this site and even in this post please read these meta posts:

• What Christianity.StackExchange is (and more importantly, what it isn't)
• How we are different than other sites

There are about four stages of frustration on this site that I hope you can avoid completely.

1. You think you have made a really good post, but the community does not and you cannot understand why.

2. You see questions that are good, but they get put on hold and closed and you do not necessarily agree with the reasons.

3. You are butting heads with the mods and they never admit they are wrong or listen to your suggestions for site policy.

4. You think the mods and everyone else who tries to help you is a jerk and think they are making the site worse.

These four steps are a progression that I have noticed in new users that eventually leads to the user never coming back or deleting their account. Some users have skipped one or two of them and others have hit every single one before being suspended or never coming back.

My hope is that you avoid all of these completely and become a regular, happy, and productive user of the site.

Stage One

Your chief complaint will likely come from the frustration of making a bang up answer or question that is good (and we agree), but it gets downvotes and little to no upvotes. The posts also likely receive criticism from mods and high rep users, but you are having trouble understanding what the issues actually are.

That's okay. Almost all of us made posts like that when we started out. And occasionally still do. Just take the bumps, try your best to see what the issues are, then try again. Don't worry too much about the actual post in question unless it is really important to you. Let it be what it is, then wait for another question to answer or make another question that interests you.

Here are some meta posts that might help you if you are in this stage:

• What makes a good focused question?
• What is a well-sourced, dispassionate answer?
• Types of questions that are within community guidelines
• Guidelines for writing effective answers
• Good Subjective, Bad Subjective

Stage Two

Your next complaint will likely be that questions are good (and, again, we agree), but they get put "on hold". If you currently do not understand the reason, for now, just trust the mods and the community members that are listed with the reason. I know it is frustrating, but believe me, as someone who has been there too, you will be much happier using the site if you just take the lumps, trust that the mods and users are trying to help you, and then try again with what you learned.

Here are some meta posts that might help you if you are in this stage:

• Brothers, we are not Christians‼
• Refute this vs Why do they believe this?
• Are truth questions inherently off-topic, or just a bad question smell?
• Pastoral Advice Questions
• Tips for editing a question to make it suitable for re-opening

Stage Three

Your next most likely complaint is probably that the mods do not admit that they are wrong. Well, that's because they are probably right. All our mods have been around for years. They know what they are doing, and I have seen all of them spend pages and pages in chat and comments trying to help users just like you with exactly the same issues that you have. Remember that nothing is new under the sun and your concerns about this site are very likely no exception.

Here are some meta posts that might help you if you are in this stage:

• You're reading it right now.
• Let's thank our pro tempore moderators!

Stage Four

Finally, if you have not taken the above suggestions, you probably think that the mods are jerks and everyone else who is trying to help you is too. You have probably even accused them of not acting like a Christian should, or at least thought it. They are the reason the site is not fun for you and if they would just listen to you the site would be better. You couldn't be further from the truth. These guys keep this site moving, alive and well oiled. For those of us who have been around long enough to see them in action many times, we give them the utmost respect.

But let's just say this is where you are right now. That is fine. Unfortunately, what has led you to this stage has probably made you extremely defensive and combative and maybe even rude. We are still patient and hope that you can come through (maybe you have noticed that mods have not suspended you yet, but rather are still spending a lot of time on you).

You are probably a well intentioned person and have only acted according to what you think is right. We do not blame you for that. But now, more than ever before, you need to seriously and deeply evaluate what you are thinking about this site and the people you have interacted with on it. They are well intentioned too. Their primary concern is the quality of this site. Their next concern is the user that contributes to that quality.

That is you! You are the user they care about because you make the site what it is. If you do not understand their reasoning for what is "quality" and what is not, then just trust them for now and heed their advice. If you feel like they do not listen to what you are saying it is because they have already heard it before and thought about it long before you were even a username on this site. You will understand soon enough. They are the master black belts and you are the new arrival and have barely dirtied your snow white belt. In time you will wear a black belt too, but for now, listen to your masters (mods and high rep users who are trying to help you) and heed their instructions.

Users in this stage are why the following meta posts were made:

• Brothers, we are not Christians‼
• Another reason this is not a Christian site
• Christianity.SE vs. Survivor
• Guidelines toward a polite, academic tone

Answer 1

New users: Do NOT use the old, highly-rated questions from highly-rated users or mods as a template for your own.

Even if they seem very interesting, politely worded, drew expert Q&A answers, and generated no rancor. The standards for a good question have changed so as to make many (hundreds?) of them fitting for "Reasons to Close". There is a very good reason for neither deleting the "newly bad" questions nor realizing the new guidelines are overly harsh and don't really address the issues that caused prior rancor.

Answer 2

I've noticed that most users who are received very negatively or in a mixed manner by the community leave as quickly as they came, although some don't:

50 Users Who May Need Some Feedback for Improvement

Most users will find that they are positively received by the community, despite some hiccups inherent to the learning curve:

Overall Community Impression of a User

Answer 3

fredsbend, it looks like you put a lot of effort into that content and it comes across as genuine, thanks for that.

What I might venture to add -- with a significant measure of deference to the community, bearing in mind that I've yet to make substantial contributions to the site -- is the following:

1. At least until the second coming, there will always remain theological dissension on the nature of the human heart, whether people are "basically good" or otherwise, Total Depravity vs. Semi-Pelagianism, etc., etc.;

2. For a variety of reasons, life tend to run much more smoothly when we practice patience and forgiveness, and hesitate to attribute malicious intent;

3. However, it is also important to bear in mind that there are some people who, for whatever reason, happen to be at a place in life where they just want to inflict damage, and aren't interested in listening to anyone. Many of us have likely, at some point, watched an online community -- from old WWIV BBS's to modern internet message boards -- get torn apart by a relatively small, but vocal group of immature users with a severe empathy deficiency.

I wouldn't presume to offer any prescriptions about any course of action to implement, and I may well have inadvertently and unknowingly stepped on some toes myself. And maybe the community here has some ability to reform wayward users that I know nothing about.

Still, it seems worth pointing out that there may be a certain line that denotes a requisite level of intellectual maturity.

Here's hoping that any users that may find themselves on the wrong side of that line are able to reform their approach sooner rather than later, and make a positive contribution. Thanks.

Answer 4

The very fact that this post had to be made and is still being hyperlinked to demonstrates that there is still a problem with the way this site is conducted, and everyone who downvotes or deletes this answer is a part of the problem.

Rather than helping new users to construct productive posts, you shut it all down and require them to adhere to a very strict, unnatural, unintuitive set of standards that defeat the very purpose of having a site like this. Anything that you wish to be successful must be simple and intuitive from the start. What this site does is comparable to:

• writing up a 15 page report of rules, expectations, and wants and handing it to someone after your first date
• requiring someone to read the entire game manual and walkthrough before playing a video game
• requiring someone to read the entire Bible before going to church
• requiring a person to be perfect before they receive the Holy Spirit

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Don't close posts that don't adhere to a strict set of rules; revise them so that their question will be answered and they can learn more naturally how to make proper posts.

Don't treat newcomers like they're automatically wrong and they have to join your cult to use this site; consider that maybe they are actually right about some things, even though you've made do for "years".

Don't tell people on a Christianity website that the goal is not to learn, study, or discover the Truth. That's stupid. That's like telling an employee that the goal of them working there is not to make money or feed their family. Of course that's the goal! Some have said, "we don't study the Truth, we study the Christian study of the Truth". Why would anybody want to study the Christian study of the Truth and not care to know what the Truth itself is? Better yet, why do you think new users are asking Truth questions? We're all here to learn what the Truth is, no matter how you skew it.

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Lastly, it's a heck of a lot easier to answer questions in a particular manner than to force those questions to be asked in a particular manner. For instance, if someone were to ask, "Who is Jesus?" you wouldn't have to close their post. Everyone who had a different understanding of who Jesus is could respond and specify what denomination or beliefs or scripture they're adhering to in their own answer. Perhaps the asker was looking for a broad set of answers; why would you take issue with that? Let users of this site make use of it however they please, so long as it's appropriate.

I already know what your response to this will be: something like, "but that will resolve into a lot of arguing and trouble because of disagreements". Okay, then edit their question! Make it ask, "Who is Jesus, according to the Bible?" Alternatively, edit the answers! Make them say, "Denomination X says that ..." Perhaps a feature could be utilized where a question is placed on hold (made private) until the asker can revise it. But just because there are disagreements and arguments does not mean the question is bad or inappropriate!

Yes, I'm calling for Christianity SE to change its ways and traditions. I very much like the thought of having a vibrant, tolerant, yet open-minded community where anyone of any background can ask virtually any appropriate question regarding Christianity and get any appropriate answer in return, not just that which adheres to "acadamia"; where ideas, arguments, and responses can be voted according to their reliability, trustworthiness, sensibility, wisdom, and truth value, not whether or not they adhere to a strict set of rules; where anyone who thinks they have a valuable and noteworthy contribution to the pool of answers can give it without having it be hijacked or compromised; and where we can acknowledge that we're all here to learn about the Truth after all, regardless of what it is, where it comes from, how offensive it may be to our nature, or how difficult or complex it is to end up with.