Pirate wrote:I said however things will get better when people start to get things to say and that every board has peaks and troughs. It is normal and nothing to worry about. Just give it time and things will pick up.
I've never seen the Celestial forum 'peak or trough'. It was always stayed at pretty much the same basic level of disinterest as far as I can tell.
Pirate wrote:Ren, you are driving me mad.
I'm sorry about that Pirate, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable in my conversation...
Well SAY that then!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
...is this aimed at me?! I'm saying moderate the Celestial forum fully. In my mind, being limited to splitting and moving isn't 'full' moderation.
But I think I'm gonna give up on this... I've had my say. I can't see what I'm saying that's so 'out there', but I appear to be driving people batty!
..so I'm gonna stop now... :/
I think stronger moderation in Celestial is a very good idea..and not the splitting or moving as a way to moderate. For some of us, that just ends the discussion. Especially keeping things on topic. Often when I am reading I give up after a while because people have so gone off on tangents or little side conservations, it just doesn't seem worth it to even try to participate.
Some Schmo wrote:For those who do have this problem, I have a question: when you go to a dinner buffet, do you eat everything in sight?
No, but I also don't want to start eating something only to find that it's been spoiled.
As I said in Don's thread, I am dismayed when an otherwise interesting discussion here in the Terrestrial forum gets totally derailed and destroyed by petty personal attacks and baiting. When that happens, the thread rarely, if ever, recovers. And it's a damn shame.
Touche, SKippy!
My feelings exactly. Oftentimes I will see a topic that looks interesting but then as I read it, I see that the discussion has turned vulgar or the insults are flying and I just click off. I'm essentially a regular lurker here because I read but I very often have second thoughts about participating, even when I have something to offer, because I'd rather not participate in a thread that has degenerated.
Alter Idem wrote: touché, SKippy! My feelings exactly. Oftentimes I will see a topic that looks interesting but then as I read it, I see that the discussion has turned vulgar or the insults are flying and I just click off. I'm essentially a regular lurker here because I read but I very often have second thoughts about participating, even when I have something to offer, because I'd rather not participate in a thread that has degenerated.
I am guilty of that also. I will read three pages of great posts, start to formulate my response, but then by the time I have waded through another couple of pages of trash, I have lost my will to keep posting. Usually, once a thread takes a detour it never comes back.
I like GIMR volunteering. I wish that Harmony (or possibly Gaz) would volunteer as well. I have been a moderator at Beliefnet for a number of years. What helped me was the beforehand training in how to be a moderator and having a fairly clear cut Rules of Conduct on which to base any decisions. Their philosophy of being non-censorious and yet adamant about posters not being abusive of one another, as well as my own self-imposted civility rule has made moderating chores and decison making easy.
Request for change you ask? Let's keep naughty language out of the Off Topic forum and put it instead in the Telestial forum where it can thrive. That and possibly puttting coasters underneath Boaz and Mercury.
I had no idea an "ignore" function could be so controversial!
A threaded view would probably achieve the same purpose, which would be to avoid certain posters with whom you know, from history, you will only have a pointless tit for tat, insult-fest. The problem with the current format is that every reply shows up and if you're skimming through quickly, you've read the asinine poster that set you off before you could stop your eyes.
Yes, it would be nice if we always had enough will power to still ignore the asinine post, but the history of all internet boards everywhere tends to demonstrate that, in general, we don't. So either we can close our eyes real tight, click our heels three times and tell everyone to exercise will power and then wonder why things haven't changed, or we can try to change SOMETHING that maybe, just maybe, will improve matters just a tad - if the consensus is that matters need to change in the first place.
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
At first glance, it seems like a great idea, since (on paper) when people start seeing that they're being ignored, they'll be motivated to clean up their act.
At second glance, however, how would a person who is ignoring him or her ever discover that the original offender had, indeed, cleaned up his or her act?
Thus, an "ignore" button would preclude the possibility of "repentance" on the part of the original offender. In that way, there would be no motivation for the original poster to clean up his or her act, and we'd end up with a departed poster as opposed to a rehabilitated one.
Is that what we want?
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
Dr. Shades wrote:Wow, lots of thought-provoking stuff in here.
Here are my thoughts about an "ignore" feature:
At first glance, it seems like a great idea, since (on paper) when people start seeing that they're being ignored, they'll be motivated to clean up their act.
At second glance, however, how would a person who is ignoring him or her ever discover that the original offender had, indeed, cleaned up his or her act?
Thus, an "ignore" button would preclude the possibility of "repentance" on the part of the original offender. In that way, there would be no motivation for the original poster to clean up his or her act, and we'd end up with a departed poster as opposed to a rehabilitated one.
Is that what we want?
Of course the snarky answer is "Depends." In practice though, I'd expect that most of us have a poster or two that we routinely ignore. It's just as easy to gloss over those posts, if that's the only option. I'm ambivalent on the ignore button concept - while I'd REALLY like to not have to even see some posts, it doesn't kill me to not read them. In reality, I don't think the people that would tend to be on an "ignore" list really give a rat's arse about whether they are being ignored by a particular poster, and there probably would be no actual motivation for them to "clean up their act."
I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe / But at least I'm enjoying the ride.
-Grateful Dead (lyrics by John Perry Barlow)
The one thing I dislike is that the signatures on short posts are not positioned at the bottom of the box but rather just a line or two below the comment.
And as a bonus, it would be nice if the signatures were a smaller font size or at the very least a different font. The more easily they can be distinguished from the posts, the better. It is a small thing but I mention it for simplicity's sake. The less cluttered a forum the easier it is to read. My favourite forums were the swirve.com forums for the earth2025 and utopia games.