227. Continued... continued... feedback on new forum

If it's a question of my right to be here and you don't want to grant it, then just say so.

What you people are doing is trying to appear fair while being discriminatory. Stop! Just do what you want to do. Otherwise you look like a bunch of disingenuous dicks who won't admit that you want to wall off your belief system.


Then have the balls to enforce your beliefs about me by simply disallowing me from posting in Skeptiko.

~~ Paul
Paul,

The point is, nobody really wants to ban you from either forum, but I think Alex put it well with this example:
Most of us realize that you can't join in on a conversation/thread about the differences in OBEs reporting in the early 1900s versus present day with a comment about how OBEs have not been proven to your satisfaction. This is just kinda jerky... then again, we've all done it in one way or another so we gotta have some patience.

You can spoil conversations by constantly forcing them back to the "is any of this real" question. I mean you can see how silly this is by putting it in another context. Suppose you joined a seminar (or a forum) discussing the properties of (say) mini black holes. People would get quickly sick of you if you kept sidetracking the discussion into the question of whether these things exist! Some discussions are meant to be under a set of assumptions, and it is taken as obvious that you don't violate that concept.

David
 
Too many subforums Alex! Much better to keep it to two. Notice on the other sites the subforums had way less traffic. Much more convenient to scan the active threads when they are all in one place (or at least just two places).
 
Too many subforums Alex! Much better to keep it to two. Notice on the other sites the subforums had way less traffic. Much more convenient to scan the active threads when they are all in one place (or at least just two places).

Completely agree. I don't like this layout at all. I'd stick to two (+ a Guidelines/intros). My 2 cents.

EDIT: I see they're well thought-out, though, and they make sense. However, speaking for myself, I know I won't feel motivated to keep checking through the different ones to see what's up. There was already that problem at the old skeptiko forum.

Feel free to ignore! :D

And... Alex: can you bring back the color smiley faces? We're also missing a few essential ones, like the stick-out tongue!
 
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Completely agree. I don't like this layout at all. I'd stick to two (+ a Guidelines/intros). My 2 cents.

Feel free to ignore! :D

And... Alex: can you bring back the color smiley faces? We're also missing a few essential ones, like the stick-out tongue!
noted. we'll see how it goes. Andy and I (maybe others) will move threads to fill out.

really... more smileys?!
 
noted. we'll see how it goes. Andy and I (maybe others) will move threads to fill out.

really... more smileys?!

Really! And I didn't like the colored ones at first, but I've changed my mind. This is just me.

Regarding the subforums, I was considering editing my post again, because now I'm not sure. They are well thought-out - it's just the hassle of having to check everyone out. Although, who knows, maybe I'll end up just checking a few regularly anyway, so maybe you should ignore my advice, or rate me as: ambivalent and confused [I would need a "confused" smiley here].

EDIT: Silly idea maybe: have a vote for the smileys on a different thread - colored or white, more or less.
 
You should be able to hit "New Posts" and see all the new posts across the whole site.
 
Thanks for that, Chuck. I hadn't seen this before. I was going by "recent activity" instead of "new posts".
 
I like the idea of "Featured Posts". But the featured post can't really stimulate discussion because replies are not enabled. And there is no way to tell what thread the featured post came from, so you can't even backtrack into that thread and respond.

Oh. I see now the name of the post in the Featured Post area is the same name as the originating thread. Hmm.
 
thx for everyone's feedback re new direction for the forum. lotta good input. here's where I think we're headed.

So, if you want to join forums designated as "more moderated" you gotta get past the mind=brain thing (again we got 50-100 shows on this topic). If you can't get past it, then move over to the "less moderated" forums. If you're in the wrong place, we'll let you know :)

I think this is a good solution. After I originally posted my idea for a "believers only" forum, I could see from the responses that everyone on both sides really values the debates. This new structure honors both sides, with a place for the debates and a place for those who share a common starting point. I like it!
 
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Really! And I didn't like the colored ones at first, but I've changed my mind. This is just me.

Regarding the subforums, I was considering editing my post again, because now I'm not sure. They are well thought-out - it's just the hassle of having to check everyone out. Although, who knows, maybe I'll end up just checking a few regularly anyway, so maybe you should ignore my advice, or rate me as: ambivalent and confused [I would need a "confused" smiley here].

EDIT: Silly idea maybe: have a vote for the smileys on a different thread - colored or white, more or less.
I've found the "New Posts" link (under Forums) to be very helpful.
 
I like the idea of "Featured Posts". But the featured post can't really stimulate discussion because replies are not enabled. And there is no way to tell what thread the featured post came from, so you can't even backtrack into that thread and respond.

Oh. I see now the name of the post in the Featured Post area is the same name as the originating thread. Hmm.
yea, if you click the little up arrow next to the name you jump to the original post (I find this little arrow very useful BTW).

the Featured Posts thing isn't totally fleshed out, but I'd like to see it work.
 
I think this is a good solution. After I originally posted my idea for a "believers only" forum, I could see from the responses that everyone on both sides really values the debates. This new structure honors both sides, with a place for the debates and a place for those who share a common starting point. I like it!
great Robert... and thx for sparking the original idea. the future success of the forum depends on all shaping it into someplace that works for us... and draws us into meaningful conversation. let me know if you (or anyone else) has suggestions on how we can make this happen.
 
really... more smileys?!

Yeah, more smileys. They are perfect to indicate in what way a post should be read. There are so many times people seem to misjudge or misunderstand some peoples posts, and think they are rude, dismissive, or mean etc. Emoticons saves the day.
 
pls suggest some better ones (easy to find with google images).

Actually, I realised that it's not so much because they are white, as that their outlines are faint. Anyway, it's a complete rabbit warren once you start looking for icons on the Web: license agreements, different sizes and formats, etc. I see that there are lots of emoticons available for Xenforo (see here: http://xenforo.com/community/resources/xenforo-extended-smilies.906/), some of which may have been available when you first started the new forum. They look OK to me, certainly better than the ones we have now. I think one or two people might have reacted to them because they weren't like on the old forum, but in time we may have got used to them.
 
Posts from BvS are not showing up from me under the New Posts tab - anyone else finding that?

Do you mean general posts from BvS, are not showing up in "New Posts"? Or posts made by your login aren't showing up in "New Posts"?
 
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