Here's how I see it:

Their forum, their rules...

I'll abide so long as those rules are agreeable to my authority palette (a very picky palette, admittantly) and I'll just stop posting if they aren't. I won't waste my time protesting the rules on someone else's forum. It's their own business how they want to run it, if I don't want to fit that framework, I'll exit, stage middle.

It's not being afraid of making mistakes and screwing up TImber....!!!

My issue is that I have been here four years or so. For the first 3.6 religion was healthily and happily discussed along with any and every other topic. I invested time and energy in the people I cam to know and befriend on the forum as a result of the honest and indepth matters discussed.

The creation of a C/E forum changed that. Forums do change I am well aware of that, but I signed on to a very different place, and care about it. The forum is the sum of it's members.

The interest, the sole thing that drives people back to a froum, is what the members write and contribute. You can say all you want "it's his cafe", but it's OUR party. Everyone. We are the creators of the entertainment. We are the communicators who share parts of ourselves for others learning, enjoyment, or frustration. Think about it. If you log in and no one has written anything new, you log off. I've been to "dead forums" with all the graphics, rules, bells and whistles. Without material that members write, there is nothing there.


Taking ownership of ones environment also creates responsibility and self-modifies behaviour. It's easy to shit on the floor of a public toilet. You wouldn't do that in your own living room though. Nor would you do it in a space you care about seeing grow and be healthy.

That's not true Yorick (I mean the part about the C.E. forum). I've been here more than three years and I remember religion being "banned" several times. And not only in the last year. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[ 08-31-2004, 06:02 AM: Message edited by: Spelca ]

We Ironworkians are not worse at discussing religion and philosophy than anybody else on the net. Considering what you can see at other forums on religion, even when we're at our worst, we're relatively civilized compared to others. :D

At the end of the day, discussions on religion will always arouse emotions amongst it's participants and heated discussion will follow. I've been a member here for less than two years so I don't remember the happy days when we could have these kind of discussions without causing a ban, but I do believe that those days are gone and probably wont be coming back.

As I see it, IW as a family forum has perhaps a bit too restrictive rules of behaviour to successfully discuss religion. I don't find it realistic to believe that if the ban is lifted, everyone automatically behave ever after. After a few weeks we'll be at the level that caused the ban to begin with. Either you keep the ban, or you lift it and simply accept ( within reason, of course ;) ) that we'll be at each others throats from time to time.

[ 08-31-2004, 07:56 AM: Message edited by: Stratos ]

<font color=plum>I've been here almost 3 years also. To the best of my knowledge, religion has only been banned one other time during that period.

I also agree with <font color=yellow>Yorick</font> that the attitudes of "self-moderation" have become much less evident since the creation of the Current Events forum. All the "fond memories" we have of these discussions being conducted with respect and restraint occurred when the only place to discuss such issues was in General Discussion.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all lilac and roses. Tempers got heated then too, but unlike now, a warning (or maybe two) was all it took for order to be restored. Now, as often as not, members actually snipe back at the Moderators when they do step in. Again, this goes back to the central theme of the attitude displayed by the posters here (myself included). Too often, the goal becomes to "win" the debate rather than to share and increase knowledge and understanding.

It's time we ALL do a major "Reality Check" and start treating each other like members of one big family rather than members of a family we're feudin' with.</font>

I disagree. I've seen things become just as heated in General Discussions, and I don't think it's the existance of the Current Events forum that causes the recent frequency with which things get out of hand. I cannot say with any certainty what could be causing the problem then, but I have to say there are a few people posting here whom I remember to have been debating in a much more palatable way in the past. Add to that the fact that in the "old days", and I'm talking at least two years ago now, many of the members who now post in CE weren't yet members or WERE members but only posted in the gaming forums. So there's simply a wider scope of opinions from a bigger group of people. Saying that the situation has become worse since the creation of CE is fine, but don't turn around cause and effect. I don't think the creation sparked off the increase in heated posts; if anything it's the other way around.

Oh and Cerek on a totally unrelated and nitpicking note, why do you still call yourself Cerek the Calmth? If I ever called you that, which I doubt, then surely I misspelled and meant to say Cerek the Calm.
This is like saying "Cerek the Mercy" or "Cerek the Justice" in stead of "Cerek The Merciful" or "Cerek the Just". [img]smile.gif[/img]

I tried getting that moratorium lifted with a mellow post on my Atheistic views.

I liked that post...

Nobody fought, nobody got hurt, and the mods didn't have to send the bulls into the China shop.

I don't know if it worked, but yeah, this isn't the only time that the staff had their hands full in religious discussions.

Personally, I'd just edit or dump offending posts and right quick...

That does indeed work for many forums but the problem here would be that we only have a couple of people moderating a large number of forums, and they also have lives offline. ;) I wouldn't dare ask of them that they are around 24/7, reading all our threads, wrestling through longwinded posts and sifting out anything that anyone might find offensive (which is, after all, a matter of interpretation) - especially when it's not necessary. I don't mind the ban on religious discussion for several reasons:
-it has become painfully obvious that most people cannot discuss the matter in any civilised and calm manner.
-the alternative would put too much strain on the mods who are, you must remember, volunteering their free time to keep the forum clean.
-there are countless other places where we can join religious debates.

As far as I'm concerned, we can either keep obsessing about the fact that we are forbidden to discuss a certain topic and make ourselves and the rest of the forum miserable, or we can just accept that this is the way it is. If you still consider the forum a fun place, then enjoy it, if the ban takes all the fun out for you then leave. If you feel the need to chat with people about religion, do it with your friends, your family, anyone who is willing to listen. Chat about it on MSN with other Ironworkers who feel like you do, find other forums to cater to your needs in addition to IWs.

[ 08-31-2004, 09:22 AM: Message edited by: Melusine ]

I'll put my 2c in. I hear what Yorick's saying, but I've always taken the perspective that while this is Ziroc's house, this YOUR forum. When I say YOU I mean all of you. You create the threads, you engage in the dialogue. Z owns it, we moderate it, but you USE it. You are expected to do it within the framework of the rules and regs, but within that scope you're as free to talk about whatever you like. I call this "liberating rigour".

This is why I'm so hard on you guys when you break down into flaming and inability to accept other points of view, even going down to debating definitions of things and getting bogged down and eventually into flames due to an inability to agree or even move forward due to a difference in opinion on definitions. It's because I think very highly of you guys and expect you to be able to do this, as in my opinion our rules of conduct are not hard to follow at all, but for whatever reason you can't (or won't) - and it annoys me (and Mouse, and the others) when we have to go and sort things out that you should be able to do for yourselves. I'm probably not a good choice for a mod for this particular forum as I don't generally like to overmoderate and tell people what to do or tell people to break things up - I expect them to know how to do that for themselves.

I have CONSTANTLY asked people to take responsibility and ownership for this forum, the way it is managed, and for the behaviour in here (for example here and here and here), rather than just leaving it up to the mods to settle things. Some people took offence to my words at the time (understandable and fair enough) and I hope no offence is taken to my reposting my comments, but overall I've been very pleased with the spirit in which the comments were taken and how things have improved considerably since then from just about everyone (special kudos to Timber, whose behaviour has been first class since his return [img]graemlins/thumbsup.gif[/img] ). But we're not quite at the stage where we'll be confident in letting you guys discuss a topic as emotive as religion, since it's obviously something many people have very strong feelings about, on both sides of the fence, and as such are much less likely to be able to use their tact and judgment to "walk away" when things are getting heated, in fact they dig in more stubbornly until a moderator arrives and locks the thread or issues a warning (thus providing them with a face-saving exit). That's what it's looked like to me. People may disagree with me, and that's cool, but I'm not prepared to debate it. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I have high hopes that we can debate religion again, but before we do that we will need a step change in behaviour, and the concept of ownership, and learn how to better read the tone of threads to know when they are starting to go sour, and learn to lay off or find some common ground - on other words to EFFECTIVELY MANAGE the thread and its longevity, rather than just endlessly push our barrows on it at any cost. Here's a suggestion - rather than looking at other people, have a look inside, at yourself, to see if there's anything YOU can do to make this forum run more smoothly. Try and see yourself through other people's eyes.

And remember what OUR stake in things here is - We don't want this forum to turn into a flamepit, because it will disappear if that happens. This does NOT mean that we want everyone to agree with each other, or that we want there to be no passion or discord of any kind - far from it. We don't mind a bit of healthy debate, passion and emotional energy, but we want people to be able to walk away from it with no hard feelings, whatever the outcome, and no genuine anger and frustration. We all come here to relax, not to stress ourselves out even more. So if you notice that you or someone else is getting the shits, then here's a tip - ease off. In other words, we want a positive attitude here, not a negative one.

Let's see how well you all do at self-restraint and self-control on existing topics first, then we'll review things at the end of the year.

Anyway, that's my 2c. [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 08-31-2004, 09:37 AM: Message edited by: Memnoch ]