Having come accrss the really strange usual to kill and destroy questions and answers, if they carry a notion not coming from a self-declared Buddhist.
I'm not sure where you came across that -- I don't think I'd word it that way.
For a start, people who ask questions aren't required to be Buddhist. There are meta-answers ...
That said, the question should be about Buddhism -- e.g. a question about Christianity would be deemed "off-topic" and closed.
Similarly, answers on this site should be "about Buddhism":
- Answers which are explicitly from the perspective of another religion-- e.g. which quote "non-Buddhist" scripture or doctrine -- are likely considered off-topic
- Answers aren't required to cite references -- though that may be preferable -- even where there isn't an explicit quote, a reader who knows some of the scriptures can usually see (and therefore approve) how an answer paraphrases Buddhist scripture even without referencing it
Answer which are only based on personal experience, and which don't appear to be explicitly related to Buddhism somehow, may be challenged by other users -- in which case a user might be asked to clarify how their answer related to Buddhist doctrine -- for example:
In practice, few (i.e. only a small percentage of) posts are closed or deleted for not being Buddhist -- if in doubt I think we usually decide to be permissive rather than exclusive.
If I recall correctly, if (very rarely) a post is deleted for being non-Buddhist, it tends to be "Hindu" (rather than "Christian" or "Islamic" for example). The most recent example was this answer (4 days ago). The previous one was this question (a month previously). An answer which talks about the Self, and maybe Brahman and so on, would tend to be viewed with some suspicion.
I hope that users' (the community's) sorting answers into "Buddhist" and "not Buddhist" might be helpful.
One place where being a "self-declared Buddhist" was in the site's definition of what content is on-topic.
It was decided that this site should accommodate all schools of Buddhism -- and that arguments like ...
- Zen isn't really Buddhism ... shouldn't be on-topic on this site
- Vajrayana isn't really Buddhism ...
- Theravada isn't really Buddhism ...
... aren't what we want. So I think the policy is that any school which is "self-declared" Buddhist -- and so for example Shin Buddhism is on-topic; so is Sokka Gakkai; and, Secular Buddhism. If a question or answer is specific to a particular school then it's often better if that's stated explicitly (in the answer or using a question's "tag").
Using that definition, I don't remember many difficult "edge cases" where it's difficult to decide whether a topic is or isn't Buddhist.
As a "privileged" user (i.e. with a reputation above 2000) you can see all deleted posts -- so you can help to review whether any deleted posts were deleted in accordance with site policy.
Viewing deleted posts
You now have privileged access to posts that have been removed, either by their authors, by users with access to moderator tools, by moderators, or by the system.
Use this privilege wisely:
- Make sure what is being deleted should have been deleted, and bring unnecessary or harmful deletions to the attention of the community and/or moderator team.
- Watch for signs of abuse being obscured by deletion.
- Don't abuse this privilege to stir up trouble when someone has wisely decided to remove a problematic post.
You also have a new search operator available to find your own deleted posts: deleted:1.
As I'm a moderator this search shows me every post that's been deleted.
