Consumer survey: Atheistforums.org beats Brand X atheist forum

[Rev. Rye]

I've had problems with another atheist forum in the past; This has been my third major religion and politics forum, and it appears like I've lasted here longer than I've lasted on either of the others.

Forum 1: Newspeak Dictionary. Obstensively a George Orwell forum, I thrived for a little over two years until one of the mods went apeshit and started flaming every single other regular. Eventually, everyone involved (flamer and flamee) got banned. The admin couldn't be arsed to stop him, so I moved to Forum 2.

Forum 2: CT Valley Atheists. Things worked out well for about 18 months before people started jumping ship. There was no mod going apeshit this time. The problem came on two fronts; one front, one which was so bad that people seriously considered shutting the forum down: spammers posting hardcore porn faster than the admins could remove it. The other front ensured that debate would stagnate because there were some theists (including one Catholic and one whose beliefs I could best describe as Demopheles) who... let's put it this way: could very well have failed the Turing Test. What I mean is that after reading a couple of his replies you were left believing you were actually arguing with a poorly designed computer program that takes keywords from what you posted and fashions pre-generated responses that have little to nothing to do with what you actually said to him.

Hey, at least on this forum, the theists are capable of argument. And besides, I think that the "Speak softly and carry a big stick" approach that Adrian uses with the banhammer works pretty well for forums.