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Thank you for the encouragement. I'm sorry for taking up everyone's time. I'll try to deal with the system.

After a recent answer of mine was deleted, I went back and found several other past answers of mine have been deleted.

I have been an active member on this site and have put a great deal of thought and effort into many of these answers, many of which were also upvoted.

I am struggling to understand the motivation for my past work to have been deleted by the moderator (it seems that a single moderator is deleting my work).

I am sure the moderator and users who flagged me can provide adequate justification. I can't help feeling, however, that I am being singled out because my answers usually reflect Orthodox Christian teaching or understanding, whereas the vast majority of users here and four of the five moderators seem to have Protestant backgrounds.

In any case, please delete my account as soon as possible.

Thank you

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  • 2
    I've enjoyed a number of your posts and, as a protestant, can say I never even identified you as any particular denomination. I sympathize with your frustration (I've been the minority in other situations) and hope it can be resolved without such drastic action. That said, you should really just make a meta about the deleted answer so it can be dealt with, for everyone's benefit. Can you link to the question? Account deletion is done through a different method, however. I suggest just taking a break and come back when some particular question or answer really interests you.
    – Joshua
    Aug 24, 2016 at 17:48
  • Hi, Joshua - I had posted something and I think you commented on it after commenting here. Maybe some kind of intellectual martyrdom is called for here. The moderators have absolutely draconian privileges here. I am trying not to think that there are users trolling for answers they don't like and flagging them to get them removed.
    – user22553
    Aug 24, 2016 at 18:37
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    I, too, would be sorry to see you go. Of the three major branches of Christianity, I know the least about Orthodox Christianity, and also, from what I know so far, find that it conflicts with my own theology the least of those three major branches. So I am always happy to see questions about Orthodox theology and practice, and good, solid answers to those questions. Unfortunately, it is also the least well-represented here of the major branches, and there simply aren't as many questions or answers as there are for Catholicism and Protestantism.
    – Lee Woofenden
    Aug 24, 2016 at 18:59
  • Incidentally, there are even fewer questions about my own denomination: Swedenborgian. So I have even fewer opportunities to answer questions. I'm sort of annoyed that I missed the last one! But happy that someone else stepped in and gave a good answer. :-)
    – Lee Woofenden
    Aug 24, 2016 at 19:14
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    I'm glad to see your update! If you'd like to interact more informally with many of our regular users, feel free to join our chat room. Meta is the "official" place for support and discussion, but you can also get direction and discuss things in chat.
    – Nathaniel is protesting
    Aug 24, 2016 at 19:26
  • Without your input, my understanding of our cousins in faith, as it were, is less. With it, greater. Please stick around.
    – KorvinStarmast
    Sep 15, 2016 at 22:39

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I'm really sorry you feel this way, and I hope you'll reconsider. I have personally greatly benefited from many of your answers, and I'm sure many others have as well.

The difficulty many of us face on this site is that certain questions preclude us from answering with what we think is the "correct" answer. I would like to answer every question from a Calvinist perspective. Lee would like to answer every question from a Swedenborgian perspective. Geremia would like to answer every question from a Catholic perspective. BYE would like to answer every question from a baptist/evangelical perspective.

Many of us, regardless of our theological persuasions, have had our carefully written answers deleted because we attempted to answer based on our convictions rather than with what the question asked. The reason you don't see these answers is because you don't yet have enough reputation to see deleted posts, but I can assure you that they are there, and many of them are written by Protestants.

This site has long been deficient in Orthodox users, so I sincerely hope you decide to stay and refocus your efforts on answering questions according to the scope requested in the question (if Orthodox, then Orthodox; if Protestant, then Protestant; if "overview," then "overview), and skipping over those you don't feel qualified to answer within the requested scope. You can even share your knowledge by asking and answering your own questions, as I often do.

But if you still want to leave us, here are the instructions. You'll have to scroll to the very bottom and use the "contact" link.

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  • In my opinion, this site is much too tightly moderated, especially given the diversity of opinions you correctly cite. 20% of the last 50 questions here have been shut down. By comparison, stackoverflow - which has 12 million active questions compared to the Christianity's 8,000 - has not shut down a single one of their last 50 questions. Despite having 1,500 times more active questions, stackoverflow only has 4 times the number of moderators that Christianity does, despite sharing the same Theory of Moderation (blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/05/a-theory-of-moderation)
    – user22553
    Aug 24, 2016 at 18:52
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    @Dialogist However, StackOverflow is a programming site, whereas this is a site related to religious belief. Nobody's going to hell because they programmed something wrongly or shoddily. But many religious people believe you and I will go to hell if we believe the wrong thing. And that leads to endless flame wars. That's why this site has had to adopt a tight moderation policy, and insist that questions be objectively answerable within the scope of a particular denomination or group of denominations, rather than leaving it open to anyone's view on any question.
    – Lee Woofenden
    Aug 24, 2016 at 18:56
  • @Lee Woofenden - Are you essentially saying that moderation has to be tight here because people could end up going to hell otherwise? I'm not trying to be facetious, but that's the argument that seems to fall into place from your comment.
    – user22553
    Aug 24, 2016 at 19:00
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    @Dialogist Not that people will go to hell if the moderation isn't tight, but rather that people will have flame wars about who's going to hell if the moderation isn't tight.
    – Lee Woofenden
    Aug 24, 2016 at 19:09
  • ----- I understand
    – user22553
    Aug 24, 2016 at 19:10
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    @Dialogist Compared to most religion-related sites that allow general user input, this site is remarkably free of flame wars. And that's one of the reasons I continue to use it. Though the site policies can be annoying when you're itching to answer a question that isn't asking for your particular perspective, I appreciate those policies precisely because they require people to provide solid information on the questions asked, from the perspective asked for, which avoids all the bickering and open warfare that plagues so many sites that provide forums on religious topics.
    – Lee Woofenden
    Aug 24, 2016 at 19:18
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    Lee Woofenden hit it on the head in the comments here. If you go to the original Area51 proposal for this site, there was a concern at the beginning whether it was even possible to have a site about Christianity that could fit the StackExchange model for objectively answerable questions and avoiding endless debate. The fact that we even graduated much less avoided that issue pretty much completely is impressive, and is due to tight moderation, not just from the moderators but from the community as a whole.
    – David Stratton
    Aug 24, 2016 at 20:40
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    @Dialogist If you are going to compare SO with CSE, then you need to use like numbers. Yes, 20% of the last 50 questions on CSE were closed, but you can't only look at the last 50 questions on SO, as there have been approximately 89,000 more questions asked in the same time period. Also, see SO's never shrinking close review queue, with over 9,000 questions waiting to be reviewed for close votes. Essentially, they aren't comparable sites.
    – user3961
    Aug 25, 2016 at 6:21
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    @LeeWoofenden Well, maybe some coders should go to hell for their coding practices ...
    – user3961
    Aug 25, 2016 at 6:24
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    @fredsbend Heh. I was wondering when someone would say that!
    – Lee Woofenden
    Aug 25, 2016 at 19:47
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I'm not sure, but I would bet any answers of yours that were deleted because they did not match the frame of the question. Answers must match the frame of the question. This means, for example, that if you answer a question coming from some kind of Protestant angle with an Orthodox perspective, it will be deleted, no matter how interesting, correct, well written, or provocative it might be. The quality of such an answer is irrelevant. It is effectively not an answer to the question because it does not match the question's frame.

One thing I can guarantee you: Our mods here are extremely fair. They are not picking on you.

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