Remove EvidenceVsFaith

[Eilonnwy]

EvF, you do have a tendency to have disjointed thoughts in one post. It's easy to tell because you seem to start a new paragraph every time a new thought occurs. A simple solution is to make sure you proofread. Consolidate your posts if you find yourself repeating yourself. I can understand repeating yourself to make sure you are understood, but it can come off as if your dumbing it down. Whenever I am making a well thought out response to an argument, I'm always reading over my posts and changing what I say to make the thought itself solid and strong. I'll often see I'm repeating something so I'll delete it and then go back to the point I repeated and try to expand on it. Learning correct grammar and sentence structure is no easy task and everyone struggles with it. I have proofread posts 10 times and a week later I'll check it again and see mistakes. But practice makes perfect.

That said, moving from EvF I want to address something else.

Convenient how you all ignore the fact that Bef came here at Adrian's urging, and refused to listen to a word of criticism, even if it was harsh and poorly stated until I came in here and said something. I can understand wanting to defend a friend, but this thread was nothing but a disaster on both ends. Defending a friend is admirable, but you can't let it blind you from valid criticism.

You all need to stop doing this, here and elsewhere. In other posts by spammers or people trying to witness, you all come in like a swarm and insult the person. Does the person deserve it? Maybe. But to a first time poster coming for honest conversation it's probably enough to turn them away.

While I agree that Bef's criticisms should have been dealt with more privately and he himself was insulting and tactless, I think it's highlighted a problem on these forums. People won't want to come here when they see people fluff posting or when everyone just swarms in for the kill if someone takes a misstep.

At the Anime Boston Forums that I moderate, we lock posts that don't belong. This prevents 10 people from then coming in and starting a flame war in a thread. We also make sure to say why we are locking the thread and inform the poster in a non-insulting but helpful way on what they did wrong. We also encourage our members to report a thread that has gone on too long without moderator action. (We have dozens of forums and subforums, especially if you're staff)

Furthermore, we often remove spam or inappropriate posts by putting it in a graveyard. The Graveyard forum itself is locked and viewable only to moderators. This way it's out of site from regular forum members but moderators can refer to the posts if needed. I don't know if you guys have anything like this, but it seems to me you don't.

In my opinion, we have increased moderators here but I don't believed we've increased the quality of topics, and wasn't that the intent? I can't tell you how many times I come, see a topic of interest and it's just spam or drive by preaching, which yeah it sucks. But the 20 posts insulting the guy made it look like it was a topic worth reading when I first clicked on the thread. Lock them, or move them to a graveyard. Do something. There are plenty of moderators here, but seemingly no moderation.