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I've already written here that I'm concerned this Beta will fail.

Richard's answer led me to this question: How can we get more visitors? And then, the comments on that question led me to a new thought: How can we keep people who come to the site?

Yes, I realise those are two separate questions. For the time being I think it is more useful to keep them together, but I can split them if required.

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    Related: What are the odds that this site will be canonized if this goes on...?
    – Peter Turner Mod
    Dec 23, 2011 at 17:13
  • I hope this never happens! However, if it should happen, I'll print all the questions and their answers so I can read them. :-) There are so many fundamental and important questions collected here! I often debate these questions with friends. But since those discussions are usually limited by time - arguments never get as refined and reviewed as here.
    – user1121
    Dec 29, 2011 at 15:57
  • @Matt: if the site fails you will be able to get a data dump, see example at Atheism.
    – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE
    Dec 31, 2011 at 13:12
  • @Atheism I do not see any way to look and questions that were discussed.
    – user1121
    Dec 31, 2011 at 13:20
  • @Matt: on that link is a downloadable file containing all questions and answers.
    – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE
    Dec 31, 2011 at 13:42
  • @Atheism Ups =) Now, I've found it! Still, I cannot make much use of this. It's not easy to read posts and find related comments. There is no html file that I could view in the browser.
    – user1121
    Dec 31, 2011 at 14:01
  • @Matt: sorry, I don't know any more! Try asking a question on meta.
    – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE
    Dec 31, 2011 at 14:37

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The scope of this site has been limited by picky little SE specific rules to the point where it's not clear what purpose it serves. The attempt to create well-curated content has become predominant in the ideology to where it supersedes the point of a Stack Exchange, which is for people with real actionable problems or questions to come to a community of experts and get solutions/answers.

The fact is, most modern Christians value Christian living above doctrine. The number of people that really care or find binding what e.g. the Methodists specifically say about something is very low. It's an interesting data point, but not what Christian belief is about.

The mods need to ask themselves, instead of coming up with all kinds of failure scenarios about bad content, about the users. What are legitimate questions or problems that Christians conversant with their faith would want to ask and answer? Why can't those questions be served using the standard SE rules found on SO/SF/SU plus SE-wide guidance like "Good Subjective, Bad Subjective?"

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  • Good point. We had a lot of moderator closing over at sci-fi at the start. We discussed it on meta and it improved a lot. (It was mainly one moderator.) IMO, we still might be closing too much, but it is pretty well balanced now.
    – Reinstate Monica - Goodbye SE
    Dec 24, 2011 at 4:54
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    The scope of this site hasn't been limited out of "pickiness" but out of a desire to prevent the site from turning into a voting war between doctrines. Without some clear objective (or 'good subjective') guidelines for posts, that's the only other option. If some other objective guidelines can be formed that would allow more freedom for Christian Living types of questions, I'll be the first one to rally behind them. However, after long discussions with many people, including our mods, I'm not sure that's realistic. And I'm left wondering if this site will (and perhaps even ought to) fail.
    – Flimzy
    Dec 25, 2011 at 10:10
  • Unfortunately from my experience, when it comes to faith there are few if any factual and historical answers to questions. When the answer is based on "faith" then there is not a question that can be asked and answered in a stackexchange type site. Mainly because of reputation. If someone doesn't like answer even if it answers the question they will mod it down - as my Christian brother above, Flimzy likes to do to me :) Eventually the site will turn off people who have questions and have answers that are not mainstream - IMHO.
    – user1054
    Dec 26, 2011 at 1:59
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    Y'all need to look at some of the other "non-factual" sites (most of them). It still can be a fit for SE. Take parenting.se from which Good Subjective, Bad Subjective comes. blog.stackoverflow.com/2010/09/good-subjective-bad-subjective now go read it. Every new SE convinces themselves they are a special little snowflake requiring different rules, or "not fitting the formula" - and they are always wrong.
    – mxyzplk
    Dec 26, 2011 at 5:41

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