ZLMB -- Shadow or Reality?

[_Aristotle Smith]

All,

From what I have gathered, it seems like ZLMB was the pinnacle of Mormon related discussion fora. There appears to have been moderate and fair moderation with participants from both sides of the aisle. It's only shortcoming appears to be that it's dead and gone, with no hope of resurrection. Several boards seem to have tried to resurrect the interaction of ZLMB, usually with a slight tweak, but none have ever managed to pull it off.

Questions:

1) Is the above summary a reality?

2) Was ZLMB just a shadow of the above description, but people just remember it being better than it was?

3) If yes to #1, what could be done to bring something like it back to life?

[_Fence Sitter]

AS,

While I am not familiar with ZLMB other than what I have heard, I have been online in forums and other venues for about 16 years. One thing I have noticed over this period of time is a clear change in the way people treat each other online. There is an attitude now, for many, that online behavior should not be held to the same standards that we would in our every day lives. If what you describe in ZLMB was true I very much doubt it would be possible to recreate it in a public forum anymore. Perhaps if all participants were required to use their real identity you might raise the level of respect somewhat.

[_MsJack]

My own recollection: yes, ZLMB was one hell of a good forum. It was moderated by a panel that included devout Mormons, never-Mormons, and ex-Mormons, which gave the moderation team a healthy mixture of perspectives. The mods tried very hard to lay down rules which ensured that everyone had a voice and issues were discussed rather than people. They made a sincere effort to avoid the flame wars and personal attacks that you see here, but it also did not capriciously ban people left and right like you see at Juliban's forum.

It had its flaws. I was an "undercover moderator" there, and in retrospect, I don't think undercover moderation is a good practice for any forum. The moderators should be known to the community so that their actions as individual moderators can be questioned and judged as needed.

I also think that the public "complaint forum" (or whatever it was called) was a very bad idea. Posts should be reported to the mods in private and the issues weighed and dealt with in private. There was no need for the circus of posters publicly dinging other posters.

3) If yes to #1, what could be done to bring something like it back to life?

Any forum such as ZLMB is going to have numbered days for two reasons:

(1) Mormonism is a comparatively small religious movement. Those who have things to say in criticism of it far, far outnumber those who have things to say that are positive or in defense of it. Any forum with "open enrollment" (so to speak) is going to eventually have an abnormally high critic-to-defender ratio, no matter how fair the moderation is. Few people enjoy participating on forums where theirs is the minority voice, where any post where they say something positive about their religion is answered by a dozen negative posts. Even if all of those negative posts are perfectly clinical and polite, it can still be overwhelming. The natural outcome for forums like these is that participation from believing Mormons declines. The conversations become one-sided and, without counterpoints, the critics get bored and leave, too.

(2) It's not just a numbers thing. Not only are Mormons smaller in numbers, but the critical voices often have the better arguments. Mormons tend to be stuck holding the bag on defending positions that are blatantly, obviously inferior or self-contradictory to just about everyone else. It doesn't matter how well a Mormon argues that position; it will always be the losing argument. And let's face it, no one likes to lose all or most of the time.

Those weren't the only reasons ZLMB failed, but they were certainly factors.

Someone could start another forum like ZLMB. If s/he got enough capable, substantive posters to agree to participate in the beginning, it might even have a few "glory years" like ZLMB did.

But I think, ultimately, any forum like ZLMB will go the way of ZLMB, for the reasons I outlined above.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

It had its flaws. I was an "undercover moderator" there,

Jesus Christ... It all makes sense now...

No Respect,

Mr. Cameron NC for Me

[_Phaedrus Ut]

The thing that made ZLMB really good was the quality of the participants and essentially the signal to noise ratio. DCP was there and he even posted under a couple sock puppet accounts. Brent Metcalf and Dan Vogel participated on a relatively regular basis and I remember people like David Wright joining in the discussions.

I think what made ZLMB unique was the it was the infancy of online forums and many of the hot topic issues of Mormonism were being fleshed out and discussed in near real time by participants from all over the world for the very first time.

Phaedrus

[_MsJack]

No Respect

Just so we're clear: the feeling is mutual.

[_sock puppet]

It had its flaws. I was an "undercover moderator" there,

Jesus Christ... It all makes sense now...

No Respect,

Mr. Cameron NC for Me

Cameron,

I seem to recall that you have no respect for:

DCP
liz
Jersey Girl
MsJack.

Who else should be added to the list?

[_Blixa]

My own recollection: yes, ZLMB was one hell of a good forum. It was moderated by a panel that included devout Mormons, never-Mormons, and ex-Mormons, which gave the moderation team a healthy mixture of perspectives. The mods tried very hard to lay down rules which ensured that everyone had a voice and issues were discussed rather than people. They made a sincere effort to avoid the flame wars and personal attacks that you see here, but it also did not capriciously ban people left and right like you see at Juliban's forum.

It had its flaws. I was an "undercover moderator" there, and in retrospect, I don't think undercover moderation is a good practice for any forum. The moderators should be known to the community so that their actions as individual moderators can be questioned and judged as needed.

I also think that the public "complaint forum" (or whatever it was called) was a very bad idea. Posts should be reported to the mods in private and the issues weighed and dealt with in private. There was no need for the circus of posters publicly dinging other posters.

3) If yes to #1, what could be done to bring something like it back to life?

Any forum such as ZLMB is going to have numbered days for two reasons:

(1) Mormonism is a comparatively small religious movement. Those who have things to say in criticism of it far, far outnumber those who have things to say that are positive or in defense of it. Any forum with "open enrollment" (so to speak) is going to eventually have an abnormally high critic-to-defender ratio, no matter how fair the moderation is. Few people enjoy participating on forums where theirs is the minority voice, where any post where they say something positive about their religion is answered by a dozen negative posts. Even if all of those negative posts are perfectly clinical and polite, it can still be overwhelming. The natural outcome for forums like these is that participation from believing Mormons declines. The conversations become one-sided and, without counterpoints, the critics get bored and leave, too.

(2) It's not just a numbers thing. Not only are Mormons smaller in numbers, but the critical voices often have the better arguments. Mormons tend to be stuck holding the bag on defending positions that are blatantly, obviously inferior or self-contradictory to just about everyone else. It doesn't matter how well a Mormon argues that position; it will always be the losing argument. And let's face it, no one likes to lose all or most of the time.

Those weren't the only reasons ZLMB failed, but they were certainly factors.

Someone could start another forum like ZLMB. If s/he got enough capable, substantive posters to agree to participate in the beginning, it might even have a few "glory years" like ZLMB did.

But I think, ultimately, any forum like ZLMB will go the way of ZLMB, for the reasons I outlined above.

Thanks for your perspective, Jack.

I'll always be sorry I only found ZLMB in its last days and only contributed 2 or 3 posts (even if they lived on in the mind of EAllusion, which is an astonishing compliment).

I'd like a place to talk Mormon history. That's because, selfishly, it's my primary area of interest. However, I find that reading about Mormon theology, Christian theology, Hebrew theology, religious philosophy, anecdotal accounts of Mormon culture past and present and discussion of living as a believer (Mormon and beyond) does augment my understanding of history. So, I would like a space not limited by my own preconceptions or interests. I want the "useful random" that is a byproduct of the internet.

What I don't want is moralistic trolling, the crap detritus of neu-atheism, mopologetic data-warriors, hubristic ignorance (it's not adorable), ahistorical political rants and pervs.

Is that such a tall order?

For this forum, the answer is probably yes. In the absence of something better, I stay here because I can fashion something more or less workable with judicious use of the ignore feature.

[_sock puppet]

What I don't want is moralistic trolling, the crap detritus of neu-atheism, mopologetic data-warriors, hubristic ignorance (it's not adorable), ahistorical political rants and pervs.

Help me a bit, Blixa, and remind me which of these categories I am in? Maybe 'crap detritus of neu-atheism'?

[_Lucretia MacEvil]

ZLMB was good. It wasn't all nicey-nice, either. It was busy and fast-moving.

This forum could be just as good, if it isn't already. Of course, I have suggestions:

1. Some of our ruder and cruder posters could tone it down a tad. Actually, I may be seeing some progress in that direction already :)

2. Blixa could post on history topics and the rest of us would discuss. The usual suspects wouldn't come in and ruin it for the rest of us.

3. Stem won't start any more polls about himself.

Thank you.