Toto

I have seen the Amazon system. When a post is marked "unworthy" I always check it out, and it is sometimes useful.

We have opened the forum to anyone, including those who don't agree with the basis for this board. It wouldn't take much for a Christian apologist to recruit his friends or set up anonymized sock puppets, and game the system to hide posts that challenge his beliefs.

Sheshbazzar

And monologues.

spin

The problem I see is that one comes in "off the street" and either doesn't know how to act or brings habits that are not conducive to more useful exchange of ideas. If there is an example, as in the idea I've tried to float for a subforum which would have as a prerequisite the adherence to scholarly guidelines, one learns what is necessary to post in the subforum. Anyone can post, as long as they adhere to the guidelines. This leaves the main forum a freer environment to play in. It would be interesting to see if there were a change in behavior.

One doesn't expect the blinkered anti-christian contrarianism to change, or the you're not listening to my gong so I'll bang it louder approach, or the Jewish anti-christian position, or the 2 + 2 = brown style posts, or the high school historiographers, but perhaps the rest might want to play in a safer playground.

stephan huller

It might sound funny to some but the problem here at the forum comes down to dealing with intimacy. Intimacy is based on trust. If people weren't trying to prove that they were right about things they can't possibly be right about - no one knows the big answers here - we might be able to make progress at understanding more and more. Yet it is quite easy to dispatch with the wrong answers. So it might seem at times like I or someone else is being 'too aggressive' or mean spirited but it isn't productive to start off by ignoring Philo's Jewishness or Constantine as 'inventing' Christianity. If we could just kill those opinions or - as spin notes - intellectual graffiti, we could start putting the together the small pieces that we do know to be true (i.e. what it is to be a Jew in Alexandria, what it is to be a Christian in Edessa in the fourth century etc.) so as to have a broader knowledge base. It is truly one of the most amazing things that the internet has allowed us to do.

outhouse

We tried this in another forum.


It was boring fast and failed. I was to small a crowd, and you knew exactly what opposition would post, and why.

Sabine Grant

We are going to fix it...and you guys will be given an opportunity to help us fix it. We are setting up a Working Group. We will need 4 to 5 BCH residents volunteers. We will have our own temp private Forum, compliments of our System Admin and FRDB Co Owner, RayJ.

Details will be provided later in a BCH sticky. I will link to it in this thread.

stephan huller

that sounds great

Sabine Grant

We are ready to launch our Working Group :

http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=322310

thief of fire

Just what is "the debate" that you refer to?

Toto

I'm just using that in a generic sense for any point of contention.