Rahmaa

That is a spiffy song! Now I've just got to find it somewhere to listen to.

TheBear

No problem. :thumbs:

dogma

LOL.....if thats a punch then brotha you best get to jumpin if you wanna get froggy with me.....anywho....dude why not comeback to CF as a new member? if you want to keep takin cheap half ass swings at me fine..but I told you twice I like you and want to keep it that way...look here cowboy, we can be cool or we can be CF each other your choice..dig?

dogma

me once......

WE need maud!!!!

seebs

Not very many. (Of course, something like 40,000 of those users are accounts created by a porn-spam bot, and probably another 40,000+ are inactive.)

But not everyone who has problems there finds their way here. I know another dozen or more people who got driven off, kicked out, or otherwise harassed into submission but haven't bothered to show up here, or possibly even heard of this thread. This is just a very small sample.

I mean that a fairly broad spectrum of people have been systematically abused and harassed. I mean there is a moderator on staff, right now, today, who has said outright that he would actively pursue getting a user banned even if he had to make stuff up to do so. I mean that users cannot reliably predict whether a given post will be found in violation of the rules, because staff politics frequently trump other policies.

I mean that, in many cases, CF is excluding the very people it should be trying hardest to reach out to.

Let me borrow a story from someone I respect very much, who talked once about something like this.

Matthew 18:12-13

[12] How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that which is gone astray?
[13] And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety and nine which went not astray.

As Christians, we are called first and foremost to the lost, the outcasts, the second-raters, the people who aren't good enough for anyone else. The gays, the Christadelphians and preterists and open theists, the people who didn't come to the church through the front door because they were turned away; they are the ones we are to serve.

To unite Christians as one body, we must change that, and the way to change it is to do as Christ commanded us, and as any good shepherd would, and celebrate the sheep that was lost. The sheep that did not stray are safe enough and well enough; they will be fine.

It is failing in that the Gospel is more openly mocked and derided on CF than it is on IIDB. I can preach the Gospel here to people who refer to God as an "invisible magic monkey" and advocate the outlawing of Christianity, and the response I get is more welcoming than the response I get from the Republican forum at CF.

It is failing in that on CF, it took several people putting in hours a day to make it possible for newbies to come into the Marriage Ministry forum and get support, rather than being turned into punching bags for legalists looking for someone they could bully.

It is failing in that people questioning their faith are attacked, harassed, insulted, and driven away, rather than given honest answers they could live with.

It is failing in that moderators have openly gloated about finally managing to ban a user they had personal disagreements with.

It is failing in that a thread advocating the notion that love should be unconditional was deleted from the apologetics forum because the staff felt it wasn't related to apologetics.

It is failing in that it promotes whited sepulchres as the epitome of the Christian faith. On CF, an unrepentant killer can denounce pokemon for being demonic, but a Christian whose church welcomes non-Christians may be denied access to the Christians-only forums.

It is failing in that there is little accountability, and no way for users to understand the rules.

This doesn't just affect the people most of CF would be happy to get rid of, the troublemakers and gays and pacifists. The sorts of users CF seems to be targeted at, the innocent ones who have never spent much time worrying about what a text critic does, but are happy because Jesus loves them, can also run afoul of the politics.

It's not just that sethsmommy got banned and never found out why. It's that her friends got official warnings for references to anything involving her, direct or indirect, if the mods could tell it had a connection. Someone who mods at her forum got a warning for the statement "I moderate at another forum."

That's a failure.

It's failing in that many of the people in this thread don't seek reconciliation anymore because they've tried and tried and tried, and been rebuffed and ignored often enough that they can legitimately say there's no realistic expectation of a positive outcome.

It's failing in that the appeals system is governed by politics and plea-bargaining, and the need to post sops to the egos of the mods appealed, rather than by the actual rules. It was a big deal when a spite warning got overturned, even though every staff member I talked to agreed it was unambiguous that it was a spite warning with no basis in the rules, but for the senior staff to overrule that mod that particular week was politically challenging.

Right now, in GA, someone can post a thread about how he thinks the best reason to convert to Christianity is the option of judging people and sending them to Hell if you think they're bad, but a post suggesting that not all Christians believe that can get moved or trashed.

Are all Christians being united as one body? Does the need for an entire team of staff devoted to Catholic/Protestant relations suggest that it's going well? Does a member of that very team posting derisive and insulting remarks about the Catholics testify to the confidence we could have in that team's effectiveness?

The good news is, while it is hardly a complete success, CF is still doing more than any other site, and could do more still if people were willing to fight for it.

TasManOfGod

By the way your going I might be getting back to CF as you are leaving
(Well that is if I wanted to go there)

seebs

CF membership:

There are 3,874 pages at 20 users per page in the member list. That's 77,480 or fewer.

CF doesn't let you sort by last posting date. Pages 2033-3874 consist entirely of users with no posts.

Users with one post: 12 users on page 1525, 13 users on page 2032, and the users inbetween... That's 506 pages of users with one post each, or 10,120 more, for a total of 10,145 users with only one post.

Users with two posts: 8 on page 1525, 16 on page 1305. That leaves 219 pages at 20 each, or 4,404 total users with two posts.

So. 1,304 pages, plus four more users, is 26,084 users with three or more posts.

The entire rest of the alleged 120,000 users, put together, have made fewer posts than I have. Just me. Not counting anyone else. And that's including a couple of medium-length posting vacations I've taken.

We could also look at users with exactly 1000 blessings, who presumably haven't been active since the Great Blessings Crash. Unfortunately, you can't sort the list by blessings anymore, so I can't get you that statistic.

It seems implausible to imagine that all the users with 3 or more posts are actually active.

At that point, we're talking well over 1-2% of users being screwed over in some way by the site. We're up into the same ballpark as that hundredth sheep.

shannonkish

Wow.

Infalliable... use the ignore feature with Tas, like I have... it makes the forums so much more peaceful... and I don't have to listen to every other post being abou tattoos.

Others,

The list has been updated again. I have one request.. since I am a counselor and therefore am with clients all day, it is hard to come back to the thread and read (word of word) 10 pages and try to find the posts that list a new member or change. Please PM me any additions or changes that need to be made.

Lanakila, it was an honest mistake that you were left off. I sincerely apologize for missing you. You are there now. In bright red letters. With a star by your name.

invisible trousers

new rule: no more talking about tattoos

please? i think the majority of us don't give a shit about them. and personally i think the whole discussion is cluttering up this otherwise useful thread.

shannonkish

Dang it! Why does IIDB not have a rep button? SphericalTime... I though you were on that... you are slacking friend!