User Suggestions for Future of Atheist Forums

[tackattack]

I had a thought this morning. Since places like this do attract some of the best and worst internet types I believe some amount of accountability would help.
I propose that we have a wall of shame for any permanent banned troll. Specifically the type that show up and it's obvious trolling doxxing or flaming in their first post. It should post their registered email and have IP potentially? There is an IP banned list, I'm just thinking it should be public for accountability. This is not the same list of people who converse get heated and blow up or head off the deep end. I'm talking full out flaming trolls.

[Shell B]

Moderator Notice
From this point forward, anyone who doesn’t post a suggestion and is responding to other suggestions will be banned from this thread.

[tackattack]

I'll withdrawal that last one for a new suggestions. Security being my angle:
Newly registered members can't see any User profiles pages or PM other members for their first week.

Otherwise, some neo-Nazi douche could register, gathering emails of those that don't care to hide their email, post a flaming intro and pm every person on the user list. Then after he's banned email incessantly every member that had an email option. Moderator can clean up his content here but, not what information a real troll can gather. Didn't we do away with the map for a similar reason or is it still around?

[Angrboda]

I personally would like to put a plug in for not changing the enforcement of the rules. I think they and their enforcement have been largely unproblematic. People who want to see a change in enforcement are, I think, seeing that change as an expedient to achieving their real goal, which is a different forum culture and member behavior. I'm happy with current forum culture as it is, so I don't see that as the desirable goal. What may be a desirable goal may be to provide additional tools so that additional cultures and behaviors can occur alongside the current culture and behaviors, as they see fit. Civil threads is such a tool. I would, however, suggest a change that applies to staff behavior though and that is that the prime directive and the trolling and flaming rules be made more consistent with each other, preferably away from the current expression of the prime directive and towards the substance of those other two rules. I would even be happy to see the prime directive totally scrapped. It isn't functioning now, and changing enforcement of that immediately encounters the inconsistency in the rules, as well as the vagueness of the prime directive itself, leading to less consistency and fairness in enforcement of the rules. Replace it with a values statement, or a mission statement--essentially making it voluntary, like my suggestion for civil threads, unlike something mandatory which needs to be enforced. It's been my understanding that this is the way it has been treated in practice anyway, in spite of it actually being a rule which, taken at face value, should be enforced equally as aggressively as any other rule, without deference to one rule rather than another. For whatever reason, the prime directive has been a paper tiger, and I think it needs to be replaced at minimum, and harmonized with the other rules so that staff don't feel conflicted about basing a ruling on it, as it appears they do now.

[Dom]

Frankly, I don't see what all the hubbub is about. Maybe I missed the point.

What matters is what you all have in common. All of you are here, so there is something. Just do that.

[outtathereligioncloset]

Without wading through five pages, I ask----do we or do we not have a kind of safe space category, where only supportive, positive responses are allowed? I thought we did.

Other than that, I think free speech should rule in general.

[Shell B]

Moderator Notice
Thanks for your suggestions! We are going to close this thread now and move forward with discussions.

[Tiberius]

Administrator Notice
In case people think we’ve forgotten, we’ve sorted through the suggestions and narrowed down the ones the majority of us support and think could be implemented. The next stage will be agreeing to specifics.