The question referred to is here: To which beginning is the word 'beginning' (arche) referring in the Gospel of John, outside of the prologue?
It has a history of edits, answers, dissents, agreements, and most of all change of both direction and clarity. Currently, it is a viable question and I posted an answer on it.
Steve Taylor's answer address some of the original concerns.
It is not uncommon for Questions which hinge on doctrinal viewpoints to stir disagreement among the community.
That is exactly what happened.
Closing a question is not permanent, and is usually an opportunity for improvement
That is also exactly what happened, leading to the question being re-opened.
Reaching out
The OP of this meta question is not off base in having concern. Some foreseeable disagreements slowly built and I was the only moderator addressing things on one particular day. From the OP's perspective, it may seem that the concerns were biased. So, it is understandable.
Moreover, it can be difficult to reach out to other moderators. SE's current software might be able to make some feature suggestions here. I may even bring it up, though I suspect it may already be under discussion by staff. Anyhow, this makes the OP's question on this Meta all the more understandable. It is an attempt to reach out, regardless of manners. Personally, I always appreciate people who seek to reach out for communication, even when it may come across as rude to some people. The action to reach out is more important, with any matter in life, IMHO.
We do have The Library chat room, available to all Hermeneutics users who can chat. Moderators could be tagged in that room. But, few know about this chat room. Perhaps a link in the help "?" menu would be useful for this. However, I understand that the SE chat system is already in need of fundamental overhaul. So, a feature to make site-wide -and-with-moderator chat more accessible may already be in the works.
What happend
Here are the factors I took into consideration, and always take into consideration, with questions:
- We don't want questions that are so vague that we can't tell whether they have been answered. We don't want round table, "What does everyone think about this passage" questions.
- We don't want "homework" questions for Biblical languages, as the Tour clearly states. We don't want questions like "Can someone do a word search and find the results for me?" That's a can of worms.
- We don't want questions that are all of the following: (some are fine, but not all)
- Vague
- About Bible passages that are highly controversial in headed disputes about theology
- Where comments and answers begin to address or complain about systematic theological opinions
- Where the OP provides an answer to the question
- Where many comments dissent answers that either disagree or seem favorable to the OP's position
- And, where elements of theology and especially "theological censorship" comes up in the comments (which is known to happen more than rarely)
- We don't want questions that seek non-objective hermeneutics, which seek to inject meaning based on linguistic fallacies, and/or do not have the goal of uncovering and respecting the author's original intent.
All of these four concerns were present here at one point or another, always involving multiple users. I'm not stating which users because it is in the clarity of the question that we find a helpful path forward.
Especially whenever number 3 happens, it starts looking to me like it is a systematic theology question masquerading as a hermeneutical question. That's when my "close" finger gets itchy.
But, when all of the above flags popped up, and there were already two close votes with a third being contemplated in the comments by a user who posted an answer, I decided to close the question as it had devolved into a "do my homework" question without having done much research to speak of.
...It was salvageable as a "homework" question, but only if some homework appeared in the question itself. After it would eventually be re-opened, I edited the question to provide this.
Homework questions are fine as long as some of the homework is already done within the question itself. Even the upvote button itself has a tooltip that reads "This question shows research effort..." This is a long-standing rule on sites throughout the Stack Exchange network—that questions should demonstrate a degree of research on the part of the OP.
A few hours after I closed the question, the earth continued rotating, and the alarm clocks went off in other hemispheres; the other moderators woke up in the morning and saw a closed question with my inquiry. We quickly discussed the matter.
Having a question closed certainly causes everyone to take a second look. Good thing too!
The interesting thing for me was that the moderator, who re-opened the question and added the word-study tag, I thought would oppose the word study. But, because it would involve very few words, that moderator was interested. I am always excited about "Biblical theology studies of words". So, I was delighted and answered the question.
...And, that's the story how I came to answer a word study question for the Gospel of John.
My Takeaway
I have no hard feelings at all toward any users who posted on this question anywhere, including the OP. And, I am thrilled with how the other moderators made this question work and the action they took.
Vague questions about theologically volatile Bible verses are dangerous for this very reason. This is why I go on about my "cloaked theology" concern—which I respectfully acknowledge is an unpopular term among some users I greatly respect. I don't like theological land-mines waiting for us to step on, even when they are presented as: "What does this verse mean? I'm just curious, after all." No, I've seen this movie too many times.
So, to the community I humbly request: Please understand why I may get jumpy about vague questions on hot Bible passages. If you ask a question about a hot Bible passage, make sure it is very clear what you are looking for in an answer so that discussion doesn't devolve as it so often can. If I start nosing around, I'm just trying to avoid another "Questionpocalypse" and "Answermageddon".
