(May 9, 2018 at 3:03 am)Mathilda Wrote:(May 8, 2018 at 4:41 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote: It was just a hypothetical. You wouldn't complain about being excluded from a thread in the debate forum, if it were another topic such as the Five Ways.
I assumed that I had accidentally posted in such a thread after clicking on New Posts.
There is a big difference between the christian-only thread and a boxing ring thread with only two members. There is a proper debate going on with the latter. Despite what you call it, the former is not a debate, it's an echo chamber. This is bad for the forum in the same way that it would be bad if there weren't any theists here. This is why I would have wanted non-christian theists allowed to post there as well.
If it had been a thread such a muslims vs christians say then I would have enjoyed reading it and would have been happy to have been excluded. But it's not. All it is is a way for a subset of theists to strategise on how they are going to further their agenda. Unfortunately it seems to have taken over the entire forum with all the extra threads it has generated and the forum is a much more boring place because of it and I am thinking that I need to start exploring other forums to get my fix. It is poor practice to deliberately limit the potential interest of a thread. This is vastly different to limiting who can post in a thread.
That is a fair critique. I adopted a contrary position to a couple of the others just to prevent it from being a group hug. And for that Ive been tarred and feathered.
I proposed it as as an experimental alternative to a "civility" thread. I opposed a civility thread in part because despite all the grief I get (and give back) i firmly support the free expression of ideas, including insults. I said there is a perfectly good underutilized debate are for focused moderated discussions.
Im glad for the experiment but agree that it might not be worth repeating. Nevertheless i do believe it has generated at lot of interesting conversations. AF was getting kind of stale. If nothing else this livened it up some.
