Make the Forums Great Again

[Grunt]

Personally, I think the mods do a very good job here.

[NeedleinA]

12 hours ago, NeedleinA said:

Is this really a "disagreement/taking a stand" issue OR does this just boil down to a "I don't like the way you talked to me" issue?

2 hours ago, Fether said:

Maybe we can soften our tone on how we admonish one another and maybe we can realize that we are responsible for the tone in which we read another’s comment.

So are we saying we are allowed to disagree, take a stand but just make sure we use a nice tone while doing so?
Seems fair to me.

Back to politics I go!😆

Edited November 27, 2020 by NeedleinA

[Suzie]

1. Curious, approximately how long ago was "back then"? Inquiring to see if the concerns that triggered recent events around here are unique to nowadays or if they are simply issues that  rear their head in periodic waves do to the nature of being a discussion board?

NeedleInA, I'm too old to remember that but let me say the issues in the political discussion board aren't new.

[Fether]

16 minutes ago, NeedleinA said:

So are we saying we are allowed to disagree, take a stand but just make sure we use a nice tone while doing so?
Seems fair to me.

Back to politics I go!😆

Well... I think what I’m saying is that what brings people to forums is also what drives people away.

[mordorbund]

Are people really posting fewer jokes about @pams age or does she just forget most of them now?

[askandanswer]

I think that a lot of the problems here come from various participants trying to persuade others of the rightness of their own views while trying to convince others of the wrongness of the others' views. I don't come here to debate, I come here to ask questions and get answers. The answers may or may not be right, but they generally inform my thinking about a particular question I have in mind, and for that I'm thankful. If you look back through the history of my posts, you will rarely see me attempting to argue a particular point or trying to persuade or dissuade someone. That is not why I am here. I'm here to gather thoughts, information, ideas and perspectives.  I feel no need to bring others around to my view point or encouraging them to change their mind, I'm happy for people to have their own opinions rather than having mine. It's my own little philosophy that there are very, very few things that can be known for certain, and the only things that can be known for certain are those things that are revealed by the Spirit. Such truths are generally not found through hammering things out in arguements on a discussion board. It seems to me that there are very few matters that are discussed here in absolute terms, and that most of the matters discussed are where to draw the line between two opposing positions, rather than whether or not one or both of those positions should exist at all. When trying to draw the line between two positions, I think that one person's opinion is as good as anyone else's, and if someone ends up in an incorrect position, that is between them and God. I'm also of the view that when you get right down to it, many people's opinions are derived from their feelings rather than the facts. It seems to be an emotional, subjective decision on how much weight to put on particular fact, and which facts to rely on and which to discard, and emotions are not readily amenable or responsive to logical discussion. 

[askandanswer]

On 11/26/2020 at 3:15 PM, Carborendum said:

 

 

Edited November 27, 2020 by askandanswer

[askandanswer]

On 11/25/2020 at 3:51 PM, pam said:

What can we do to make it better?  How can we draw more people into the forums that will participate in a civil manner?   How can we make it fun again?

 

On 11/25/2020 at 8:55 PM, askandanswer said:

More posts from me - obviously  

 

On 11/26/2020 at 3:31 AM, pam said:

Do we want to lose more people?     

 

On 11/26/2020 at 4:24 AM, askandanswer said:

Only the ones from Texas

 

On 11/26/2020 at 9:22 AM, pam said:

Wow @Carborendum how does that make you feel?  

 

On 11/26/2020 at 3:15 PM, Carborendum said:

I guess I'm going to leave over it. 

Mission accomplished 😈

[pam]

On 11/27/2020 at 3:31 PM, mordorbund said:

Are people really posting fewer jokes about @pams age or does she just forget most of them now?

I wanted to keep people.  Not ban more people.  Next on the list......

[prisonchaplain]

On ‎11‎/‎27‎/‎2020 at 2:44 PM, askandanswer said:

I think that a lot of the problems here come from various participants trying to persuade others of the rightness of their own views while trying to convince others of the wrongness of the others' views.

See, now I tried really hard to do that.  How did it go? @Traveler ended up offering me a job as a seminary teacher in Utah.

[Grunt]

1 hour ago, prisonchaplain said:

See, now I tried really hard to do that.  How did it go? @Traveler ended up offering me a job as a seminary teacher in Utah.

New England is much nicer.  We have an opening.

 

[Still_Small_Voice]

On 11/25/2020 at 8:13 AM, NeedleinA said:

This issue is definitely not unique to Thirdhour. Forums in general are experiencing this dwindling regardless of how well they are run. Other social media platforms are simply gobbling up users. Mega tech giants with huge budgets are aggressively competing for the same user's attention. Unfortunately, the forums of yesteryear may never return despite anyone's best efforts. 
Sidenote: I would suspect that if we did a survey we would find that most users here today are age 40+. This tends to be the demographic of most forum formatted sites.

 

I think this is the main reason these forums are dwindling.  Personally, I hate Facebook and Twitter and I refuse to join or become a part of the big conglomerate that wishes to push their own political agenda and sells your personal information to advertisers.  There is another forum I am a member of but it mainly deals with firearms.

I should invite my brother to join these forums.

[Still_Small_Voice]

Here is also another idea.  In my other forum there is over 235,000 looks at on a subject called:  What are you doing today?  Many people just post a small activity or something that happened to them that day.  I think it is a great part of the other forum I am on.