User Suggestions for Future of Atheist Forums

[Catholic_Lady]

Also, a poop emoji.

[Mystic]

Just make an option to put "WARNING: CIVIL RULES IN PLACE" as an option for a thread starter.

It can't be that hard to program I think, I might be wrong.

[ignoramus]

Make the whole forum a "civil" forum and just leave one section where we can speak our mind freely for all I care.

[GrandizerII]

Identical to how it is now, except whenever someone wishes to have a civil discussion about something void of insults, they can check an option to label their new thread as such (it could be an icon or something next to the thread title). On the same page you're typing your response, a note should appear at the top to remind people that civility is to be expected with this thread. This should deter most people from posting something insulting. Posts that are insulting should just be ignored, and if these posts are repeated, a moderator could jump in to give the repeated offender a warning.

Pros and cons:

Pros (imo):
Avoids cliquey impressions.
Avoids extra work by the staff to approve members and strictly moderate posts
Productive discussions will not be centralized in one specific section.
Everyone interested and uninterested are more likely to step in and participate.
Might encourage collective and long term civility in this forum.
People are not felt like they are forced to obey civility rules, and so will probably be more inclined to be civil when asked.

Cons:
Not enough people willing to play along
Hard to ignore uncivil posts and trolling
Might not be easy to enact
People might miss the good old days of free reign insult-laden posting in any thread they wish.



As to what is civil or not ... in general no insults, no disrupting discussions in an unpleasant way, no trolling

If people want a bit more than that, they can specify in their OP what kind of discussion they're aiming for, I suppose.

That's my suggestion. Whatever you guys decide to do, I'll agree to regardless. Best of luck with this, Tibs and co.

[Angrboda]

It was suggested that people making threads in the Civil Discussion forum label their threads to reflect where the discussion was occurring. The Civil Discussion forum is gone, but people who are interested in such could start their threads by conspicuously labeling them, "Civil thread: ..." or something, and see if people are willing voluntarily to respect that and adjust their behavior accordingly or not participate. It probably wouldn't eliminate the crap that the civil debaters have problems with, but it would probably reduce the volume dramatically. If someone were purposely disrupting such a thread, that might be handled as an aspect of trolling.

Maybe we could get Maxwell's civil demon to grace the forum, and then nobody would have to do anything.

[SteelCurtain]

Administrator Notice

A second reminder because the first was on page 1:
This thread is for suggestions only. Please keep comments and asides in the Peanut Gallery Thread.

Unproductive comments will be unapproved. Severely unproductive comments might be met with a day off.

[AFTT47]

I have been active in atheist discussions online since the days of usenet. In that era, I quickly took a liking to alt.atheismmoderated over alt.atheism.

I favor the format of most of a forum being limited to civil and serious discussion with one or more "wild west" sub-fora options available. That serves everyone's needs. I can't see why anyone would object to such a format.

In the earlier days of the web - before the scourge of social media - there were many atheist forums with differing personalities. Tragically, independent forums like this are becoming more and more rare now. It seems to me that one of the survivors like this one should try to accommodate as wide a swath of personalities as possible. That means varying the rules across different sub-fora.

Participate in the sub-fora which suits you.

[KevinM1]

In the order of "I think this is the best solution for long term forum health/survivability":

1. What Shell suggested in the hijacked "Newly Departed" thread - that forum rules be tightened across the board, and R'lyeh be the free-for-all (for lack of a better term) zone.  Some members will hate it, of course, but it's a solution that's proven to work.

2. The suggestion Grandizer made to have something that automatically denotes a thread as operating under the aegis of whatever extra civility rules may be in place (some flair or something) when created, and will automatically notify staff of the thread's creation so everyone on the back end knows what's going on.

3. Neo's suggestion of broadening the scope of the debate area.  Formal debates don't really happen, but given there's already an area denoted for serious conversation, why not use it?  It's not that different than the other short lived section, however, which is why it's the lowest on my list.  And threads being invite-only may be a PITA for whichever staff member(s) is/are responsible for handling/approving/tracking the invites.

Regarding specific rule changes, I think language that simply tells people to go away ("Fuck off and die (in a fire)/leave/play in traffic/etc.") is antithetical to the board's purpose.  Passions run deep given the non-off-topic and/or slice-of-life subject matter featured on this forum, so it's natural for people to get pissed, but attempting to chase anyone off simply because you disagree with them isn't really any different than what so many of us blame theists for.  And, really, there's ways of letting someone know exactly how reprehensible and vile you think their positions (or, them, personally) are without resorting to acting like some petulant child not getting their way in Fortnite.  There's also the ignore button.

Speaking of ignore, is there any way to tweak it so it doesn't show an ignored member's post in a quote by someone that's not ignored?  Or would that be too much of a deep dive/code hack with low ROI on the time spent on it?

[tackattack]

That gave me an easy idea. When you quote someone, it automatically adds hide tags. I remember doing that sooo much back in the day.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Anyone on ignore by more than x% (a high number like 30%) of members gets automatically banned.