Rule Change (New Staff Power)

[Rhondazvous]

At the end of the day everyone has the right to free speech, noone has the right not to be offended. This applies to everyone.
I find the idea of a negative influence extremely subjective. You could successfully argue the case that someone is a negative influence regardless of who they are.
Besides, a negative influence is only a negative influence if you allow it to influence you. If every single person on the forum allows that then yes, a person has negatively influenced the forum but who is ultimately to blame? The block button exists for a reason, its not like it couldn't of been used at any point.

Another concern I have... Wasn't the point of this forum, to some extent, to counter negative influence? I mean if we're talking about some derailing troll then fine but if its some illogical, raving loon... isn't that kind of part of the target audience? People who are so entrenched in what they believe they think in circles? Isn't that kind of what we're struggling against ingeneral? I mean yes, it would be a better world if every religious person was thoroughly grounded but we know thats not the case plus they're not the problem. The people willing to listen to reason are not the ones in dire need of pacifying and countering.
I suppose what I'm saying is; the loonies need representation too. If you only learn to form a constructive dialogue with a reasonable theist up for an open discussion using logic you're not learning to form a constructive dialogue with the majority of theists. Infact you're not learning to form a constructive dialogue with most people, period. We're not learning to break those obsessive patterns of thought that lead people to become fanatical. Unless the objective of this place is to just stew in our own moral outrage I think thats abit of a problem.

I’ve only been at AF for 9 months, but I was not given the impression that our target audience is illogical loons.

You are correct in that it is ultimately the users’ responsibility not to pour energy into negative discussions. If we abdicate that responsibility to the staff, we lose a lot of what we came here to find.

Still, I think they should have some kind of safe guard. All it takes is one member to give energy to someone who wants to do damage without breaking a specific rule, and as I said before the notations the system adds whenever some you’ve blocked leaves a post are unsightly and disruptive in themselves.