Unrestricted Participation and Worthwhile Discussion

[_Yoda]

I view posters on a board as individuals, not categories.

Another sig-worthy comment from the Jersey Girl! :)

You are on a roll, my friend!

[_Jersey Girl]

I view posters on a board as individuals, not categories.

Another sig-worthy comment from the Jersey Girl! :)

You are on a roll, my friend!

Oh, you like that? People are people, Liz. I'm more interested in people's ideas than I am what they "belong to". I'm interested in testing out my own ideas as well. All Mormon's aren't all anything. All Ev's aren't all anything. All atheists aren't all anything. We're all just people knocking ideas around and sometimes we knock eachother around. What of it?

In all things, you get "Jersey Girl the uncut version". Like it or not!

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Kevin writes:

Polygamy Porter hardly represents your average critic so it isn't like there is an entire corwd of people just like him. Not here anyway. He annoys the hell out of people on both sides of the fence and the only other person who comes close to him is mercury. It is unfair to suggest that the majority of us who left ZLMB, people like myself, Beastie, Shades, californiakid, Don Bradley, Tarski, EAllusion, left because we wanted an audience for pissing off Mormons, as if that is our whole purpose.

No, and in fact, that group wasn't the group that was being offensive the active LDS members. For the most part those listed above were (and are) quite capable of having good dialogue. Beastie and I have hundreds of pages of material in the ZLMB archives addressed to each other - and it is entirely civil discourse. But, there was an influx of people near the end of the peak activities on ZLMB who were not engaging in discourse, and whose intentions were very counterproductive to the continued existence of that community. And when the LDS left, most of those posters followed them to FAIR (and were banned). That of course proved to create problems with FAIR as it has struggled ever since to find a reasonable balance.

Yes, some do. As some LDS relish being abrasive at MADB while hiding behind their vanguard of LDS moderators.

But the one doesn't justify the other. Nor, if you want to have a thriving community, should it be tolerated on the basis that it isn't allowed elsewhere. In other words, in this thread with its topic, this is a significant issue. Does this community want to allow bad behavior that in its own way impacts the make-up of this community? FAIR doesn't do a good job of reigning in the rabid pro-LDS for the most part either. Is it a flaw that forces a community to choose sides at its core and thus always will be a biased place? I thought ZLMB did a really terrific job for the longest time ...

I am not buying into the common myth that people at MADB don't post here because we're too abrasive for them. David Bokovoy is a perfect example. He's managed to make friends and have cordial dialogue here, to the chagrin of many of his MADB supporters no doubt. The fact that he is here disrupts their excuse for staying over there.

Let's say that I am such an example - meaning that its not a myth. I post here from time to time (rarely I note) but its more in response to someone making a comment about me than to participate in actual discussions (which I have also done once or twice). But as you know, I can be a regular contributor if I find that the community has interesting things to talk about. Putting people on ignore does little to change the environment - it doesn't help create or shape the community.

Well, that would go against the philosophy here about free speech, which I don't entirely agree with, but again, it is better than the alternative at MADB.

The notion of "free speech" is regularly misused - and perhaps so in this context. But if this is what you want to base the entire philosophy of a forum on, then you will do exactly what Don Bradley suggested in his opening post. You will create an environment with no sense of community and in which the ratio of information to noise leans heavily in the direction of the noise. I don't think it is better than the alternative at MADB (which is why I only rarely post there any more either). Both philosophies create environments in which the community does not feel open or inclusive.

I can't think of anyone that thin-skinned. Bokovoy certainly isn't, and neither are you. Why get offended by an avatar with a V and L when you see V's and L's everywhere? I never understood how temple symbols could be so ubiquitous in every day life. You'd think they'd be something nobody could accidentally draw or figure out on their own, something akin to Chinese calligraphy.

The point you are missing isn't so much about the question of whether it is offensive or ought to be understood as offensive, it's that it is intended to be offensive. That person wants to be offensive. And frankly, that's going to drive a wedge into any sense of community you hope to form here. It creates an us versus them environment. And whether the moderators like it or not, it creates the perception (and perception isn't necessarily based on reality) that the moderators support that kind of antagonism and baiting. Is that any different on an outcome based evaluation than the situation at MADB? I propose that it isn't so far apart as you are suggesting.

[_Jersey Girl]

Benjamin McGuire

But, there was an influx of people near the end of the peak activities on ZLMB who were not engaging in discourse, and whose intentions were very counterproductive to the continued existence of that community. And when the LDS left, most of those posters followed them to FAIR (and were banned). That of course proved to create problems with FAIR as it has struggled ever since to find a reasonable balance.

Ben, would you mind naming a few names in that regard? I was there and wasn't aware that this was going on.

[_Mister Scratch]

Kevin writes:

Polygamy Porter hardly represents your average critic so it isn't like there is an entire corwd of people just like him. Not here anyway. He annoys the hell out of people on both sides of the fence and the only other person who comes close to him is mercury. It is unfair to suggest that the majority of us who left ZLMB, people like myself, Beastie, Shades, californiakid, Don Bradley, Tarski, EAllusion, left because we wanted an audience for pissing off Mormons, as if that is our whole purpose.

No, and in fact, that group wasn't the group that was being offensive the active LDS members. For the most part those listed above were (and are) quite capable of having good dialogue. Beastie and I have hundreds of pages of material in the ZLMB archives addressed to each other - and it is entirely civil discourse. But, there was an influx of people near the end of the peak activities on ZLMB who were not engaging in discourse, and whose intentions were very counterproductive to the continued existence of that community.

Actually, Ben, it was in fact the behavior of the TBMs which led to the demise of Z. To be more specific, it was the misbehavior of juliann & co., and the fact that they got caught, which led to their flight. I fully documented all of this in an old thread entitled, "The Origin of FAIR/MAD." I highly recommend you look it up.

[_Jersey Girl]

Kevin writes:

Polygamy Porter hardly represents your average critic so it isn't like there is an entire corwd of people just like him. Not here anyway. He annoys the hell out of people on both sides of the fence and the only other person who comes close to him is mercury. It is unfair to suggest that the majority of us who left ZLMB, people like myself, Beastie, Shades, californiakid, Don Bradley, Tarski, EAllusion, left because we wanted an audience for pissing off Mormons, as if that is our whole purpose.

No, and in fact, that group wasn't the group that was being offensive the active LDS members. For the most part those listed above were (and are) quite capable of having good dialogue. Beastie and I have hundreds of pages of material in the ZLMB archives addressed to each other - and it is entirely civil discourse. But, there was an influx of people near the end of the peak activities on ZLMB who were not engaging in discourse, and whose intentions were very counterproductive to the continued existence of that community.

Actually, Ben, it was in fact the behavior of the TBMs which led to the demise of Z. To be more specific, it was the misbehavior of juliann & co., and the fact that they got caught, which led to their flight. I fully documented all of this in an old thread entitled, "The Origin of FAIR/MAD." I highly recommend you look it up.

This is why I'd like Ben to name a few names. I had no awareness of what Ben refers to and to be perfectly honest, I had no awareness of the situation that you documented in the post you mention to Ben. I suppose it could be due to the fact that I didn't have a good read on the ZLMB community as a whole.

[_Benjamin McGuire]

Mister Scratch writes:

Actually, Ben, it was in fact the behavior of the TBMs which led to the demise of Z. To be more specific, it was the misbehavior of juliann & co., and the fact that they got caught, which led to their flight. I fully documented all of this in an old thread entitled, "The Origin of FAIR/MAD." I highly recommend you look it up.

Yes, I read it. I remember reading it back when it was going on. I disagree with you though. There were a series of changes that occured, one of which was an influx of aetheist posters (beastie and I discussed that a while back someplace). There were some people who I just got tired of reading (Rollo Tomasi was one of them - at one point he was responsible for almost a quarter of the threads on ZLMB - none of them were positive in any way, and all of them were noise as far as I was concerned). And so on. So perhaps Juliann and Co. left for other reasons. I left because the forums had reached a point where for me, the noise level far outweighed whatever value and enjoyment I was getting from the forums. Perhaps another part of this issue is that my level of posting had dropped off significantly long before that last major exodus.

As far as the origin of FAIR/MAD, as I was around before it existed, and knew personally those who caused it to come into existence, I think I have a pretty good idea of why it was started and what role it was intended to play. I started participating in LDS internet groups back in 1989 (its been almost 20 years now). So many of the members of this community (which still is not so terribly large) I have known for a very long time.

All of this still doesn't address my real intent here. Internet forums aren't merely soapboxes for people to stand on. They represent communities. And the community which doesn't try to define itself (as a community) loses that ability to do so. Creating rules doesn't really help with this, unless it becomes a community driven action. FAIR dropped its forums for several reasons, but one of them was that its attempt to manage the content was doomed to failure - and I think part of this was that while they had an agenda for their forums, they really didn't try to define it in terms of community. Noise comes in from both sides. They may well have defined their idea of success in terms of outcomes, but this didn't define the community. There are a lot of people who participate there, but who, given an alternative (like a ZLMB at one stage in its evolution) would probably move again. ZLMB in its heyday was marked by a certain camraderie among its long term residents that eventually was drowned out to the point that people started to leave. That was my experience. And here, you may all suggest that this is an open forum for everyone to speak their minds, with no censorship, but I suggest that in this ideal you have no community and no way at the moment to recover that sense. And while you may opt for "free speech", here that includes hate speech, and bigotry and all sorts of other things that common sense ought to tell us is counterproductive.

Perhaps this is what you want see right Scratch? Your Ying to MADBs Yang? But I suggest that the end result doesn't achieve anything significantly different than what is achieved there. The outcomes are not so different.

[_Mister Scratch]

Mister Scratch writes:

Actually, Ben, it was in fact the behavior of the TBMs which led to the demise of Z. To be more specific, it was the misbehavior of juliann & co., and the fact that they got caught, which led to their flight. I fully documented all of this in an old thread entitled, "The Origin of FAIR/MAD." I highly recommend you look it up.

Yes, I read it. I remember reading it back when it was going on. I disagree with you though. There were a series of changes that occured, one of which was an influx of aetheist posters (beastie and I discussed that a while back someplace).

I'm not sure I'm following you here, Ben. Are you saying that LDS such as juliann and DCP fled the Z board because they disliked the aetheist posters? I have to say, that seems like an awfully strange claim.

There were some people who I just got tired of reading (Rollo Tomasi was one of them - at one point he was responsible for almost a quarter of the threads on ZLMB - none of them were positive in any way, and all of them were noise as far as I was concerned). And so on. So perhaps Juliann and Co. left for other reasons.

So, you actually do not have any real counter-theory to combat my thoroughly documented one? (You aren't exactly helped by the fact that juliann herself said that it was "open season on LDS." Meaning, I guess, that TBMs were held accountable for their wrongdoings, such as smears against Tom Murphy.)

[_Jersey Girl]

I only remember two atheist posters on Z. Gadianton and EAllusion. Were there more that I'm unaware of?

Editing: Shades? beastie?

Who else?

[_moksha]

When in "Moderator Mode," are you willing to suspend any and all individuality, independent thinking, and creativity, become an EXACT CLONE of me, and moderate precisely how *I* would moderate, and NOT how *you* would moderate?[/color]

So when Shades gets gas the clone mods would have to pass it?