So, Frys Electronics seems to have bought the ancient "Cyberian Outpost" web store.
Including the spam list.
In April 2000, six and a half years ago, I ordered a part from them. So far as I can tell, from my records, it was backordered and never even got delivered. (At least, I show a return two months later.)
Today, I got spam from them. Now, you might argue that somehow it's not spam for a company I haven't done business with in over six years to send mail to an address that specifically asked not to receive mailings. They disagree:
Received: from CYBHQSPAM02 (cybhqspam02.web.frsj.outpost.com [10.249.6.150] (may be forged))
by mail105.outpost.com (8.13.7/8.13.7) with SMTP id kAPNGoNA024755
for ; Sat, 25 Nov 2006 18:17:14 -050
Yes, that's right, the machine sending this junk is named "CYBHQSPAM02". It's the second of a batch of spam sources. The 10.x address may seem "forged", but in fact, it's just an address on their internal network; this machine delivered the spam run to one of their real outgoing servers.
So, yeah, it's spam.
To add insult to injury, here's the entire text of the spam:
Thanksgiving Sale!
See, someone particularly offensively stupid decided that, rather than sending only a pure-HTML message, there should be some kind of plain-text version of the message. Since my mail client doesn't do HTML by default (cuts down on... you guessed it, spam), that means I just see the plain text. Rather than enclosing the actual text, or some portion thereof, or even a pointer to their site, or something like that, they just included the text "Thanksgiving Sale!". No explanation, no contact information.
The HTML version has opt-out instructions, of course, as most spam does; they contradict the instructions given on the company's website.
Pathetic. But hey, at least now I will never again complain that there's no Frys near my house. Spamming idiots.
I have had one of those experiences which is really interesting to have. Once.
I stood in line to get a toy that was in short supply. That's the Nintendo Wii. You've probably seen news stories about how incredible the demand for the Playstation 3 is. Actually, there's no way to know; while there are certainly people bidding huge amounts (many thousands of dollars) on eBay, there aren't nearly as many actual confirmed sales... And most of the people waiting in long lines were just waiting to get systems so they could sell them. The amazing same-day sellout in Japan was 80,000 units. In the US, the total was closer to 400,000.
By contrast, the Wii shipped huge numbers. The Wal*Mart where one guy stood in line from Tuesday evening until Friday had two PS3 units; they had 20 Wiis. Both sold out. The Target I waited at had 39 Wiis; they sold out. In fact, the very orderly line was 39 people long over an hour before the store opened. Other stores had people camped out too.
The experience itself was interesting. People waiting in line for a video game system are, it turns out, mostly gamer geeks. There were a number of people there with blankets, food, and other amenities, and a few chairs. (One chair had about 1/16" of frost on it at the end of the night; people tended to stand around to keep warm.) We brought extra hot coffee for the other folks. It was fun.
The system itself is just about exactly what I expected; it's not nearly as "powerful" as the PS3 or the Xbox 360, but then, who cares? It's fun. While the Wii's graphics are noticeably less detailed, they are not noticably less vibrant, and good graphical design goes a long way. Attacking the Wii's raw horsepower is like criticizing anime for not being photorealistic; that's not the point.
The innovative controls work, and they work fairly well. I have one game where I tend to have trouble with the controls if I'm too close to the TV; unfortunately, the place I normally play video games is a bit cramped. Moving to another location in the house made the controls flawless.
There's a lot of similarity in the Wii/PS3 battle to the competition between the Nintendo DS and the PSP. The PSP is way more powerful, and plays movies in a proprietary format, but is doing nothing else that you couldn't do two years ago. It's faster, but not different. The DS has an innovative control system that makes some games possible that simply couldn't be played on previous systems... And so does the Wii.
The price difference is shocking. A Wii with three extra controllers and a game or some such costs about as much as a PS3 with nothing. People have complained that the cost of Wii controllers ($60 for a complete Remote + nunchuck combo) is atrocious... But I noticed that Sony's wireless PS3 controllers are $50, and the cable to charge them is $15.
The Wii uses standard SD cards to store save game data and downloaded console games. That's a feature, although you don't need one right away; it comes with plenty of internal memory. It also comes with wifi network support, and yes, it works fine on a WEP network which doesn't broadcast its SSID. (If you don't know what that means, find someone who does to secure your network a little.)
I think Nintendo has a winner here. Rather than creating artificial scarcity to generate buzz, Nintendo is trying very hard to guarantee that anyone who wants one of their boxes gets one. I loved this quote:
"Somebody told me there were nearly 3,000 people in line," said Nintendo of America head Reginald Fils-Aime at the New York launch. "Well, let me tell you, we've got 4,000 units in the store."
I think the real victims here are the developers of the PS3 launch titles. They've spent an immense amount of money developing games which are being sold to an incredibly small audience. The "attach rate" for the PS3 -- the rate at which customers who buy a PS3 buy games -- is under 1, meaning that many customers aren't even buying one game, and there just aren't that many customers out there. Sony's sluggish manufacturing and distribution means that, by the time there's more systems, the launch titles will be competing with a lot of titles whose developers had additional months to work on polishing their work.
Anyway, now I've done it; I've waited outside in a Minnesota November for a couple of hours, watching things freeze, waiting for a shiny toy. I think it says a lot about Nintendo's accomplishment here that the system everyone has been saying was technically unimpressive turns out to be the one that was worth it.
Ahh, Bradfordgate. The high point was when one of the ChristianForums staff confessed to killing and eating another (then-former) staffer.
You doubt this? So you well might; the thread in question was deleted by some of the other staff.
Let's roll the clock back. Bradford was one of the most active posters at ChristianForums, and a veritable dynamo of moderation. Not everyone always agreed with his decisions, but a lot of moderation is just a matter of having the time and typing speed to do the work, and no one had any complaints about the time he put in. I do have one nice and clear example of Bradford handing out a totally bogus warning -- but I also have nice documentation that he was ordered to give that warning by a senior staff member. (Using proxies to hand out warnings helps staff pretend they're not stalking someone.)
Anyway, one day, Bradford went rather suddenly from a well-respected and active staff member to a banned ex-user. This might be some cause for comment, but luckily, CF staff were able to assure everyone that he was simply too busy to participate for a while, and had requested that his account be banned so he wouldn't be tempted. We were firmly assured of this.
There's just one problem. It wasn't true. You may be expecting that I will go on to assert that the staff were lying in their public posts. I won't. To the best of my knowledge, the staff making that assertion in public genuinely believed it. Why? Because it was what they were told.
The real story is allegations that Bradford was a sexual predator. I have heard about three sides of the story, and I currently think that he was not. I think he may have flirted a bit with people, and he certainly dated at least one, but I don't think there's a sufficient basis to support the allegation. But, as with another similar case, apparently no one really asked him. He was removed and banned. Was he, maybe, asked about the allegations? Well. No.
Of course, not all the allegations were even discussed openly at the top levels; some of these things were PMs from one person to another making various claims. Bradford was alleged to have had sex with people that, so far as anyone can tell, he's never even met. There was "evidence". For instance, one time, he met another user in an airport while travelling. The assertion was made that he changed around a business trip to meet someone. Because, obviously, there is no other way to run into someone in O'Hare International.
Of course, the official story was put out that he was just too busy. I think most of the staff repeating this to the regular members genuinely believed it. Not everyone did, though, and hilarity ensued when a user asked the site's AI 'bot staffer ("ChrisBot") where Bradford was; the bot claimed to have eaten Bradford. (Barbeque, no less.) The thread was, alas, deleted by staff.
Anyway, here's what happened next: A while later, Bradford tried to get back on staff, and succeeded. A number of staff spoke in his defense, including one of the people who was originally claimed to be a source for the evidence that he was a dangerous sexual predator. He was brought back on staff, after a number of staff who had not been told exactly what the story was said they'd trust the staff who did know to decide.
When the story came out there was a lot of staff drama, and Bradford left again -- this time, Erwin just fired him. This time, the conviction thread (from Zion -- remember the oddly blasphemous forum names?) was moved out into the general staff room so they could all read it. Not that Bradford was given a chance to defend himself.
To the best of my knowledge, to this day, none of those people have gotten around to asking him his side of the story, and I don't think he was ever told exactly what the accusations were, except through the usual array of leaks and rumors. Yes, there are leaks even at the very highest levels of the forums; in the defense of whoever leaked that, I can see believing that a man who's been accused of having sex with people and being a sexual predator might legitimately be seen as having some right to know what's been said about him.
The big difference between this case and the other case that immediately comes to mind where someone was kicked off CF staff over allegations of improper sexual behavior is that, rather than telling all staff of the allegations, as though they were proven fact, senior staff covered them up and lied about what happened. I think this may actually be better, but I'm not sure.
There's a lot of talk about confidentiality and secrecy, not to mention privacy.
These are three closely related concepts. All three are involved, somewhat, in any discussion of the stuff that gets kept secret about ChristianForums.
Staff often defend the policy of absolute confidentiality of staff forums on the grounds of the privacy of individual members. If Bob gets a warning, it's private, and other people don't have a right to know that Bob got a warning. Okay, fair enough. If staff check Bob's IP to find out whether he's a reincarnation of previously banned user Robert, well, his IP address could be used by a stalker to track him down. Private, right?
Now, that's privacy. There's also confidentiality, which is the way in which people feel safe discussing some things only when promised that they will not be publically taken to account, or reported to anyone. Confidentiality has a long history in Christian thought; for instance, the seal of the confessional, which many governments recognize simply because they got sick of locking priests away for refusing to violate it. Most CF staff discussions look at leaks of top-secret information in terms of confidentiality. To leak something from staff violates confidentiality. (There's some interesting cases; for instance, if I am on staff, may I post material that I wrote myself for staff forums?)
Finally, there's secrecy. Secrecy is the general case of keeping information restricted. It doesn't necessarily imply any kind of reason or justification. There may not be one. CF staff stuff is full of secrets, kept not only from non-staff, but also from junior staff, or from senior staff, or from non-Catholics, or from non-Protestants.
A lot of concern has been raised because flesh99 recently reposted an entire thread of staff discussion. That's seen by many as a breach of confidentiality. Of course, technically, he's not the one who broke confidentiality; the original leak (well, leaks) did. Some people complain about betrayal, and no small number of people have told me that this hurts innocents.
I'm trying to understand that, but it ain't happening yet.
What innocents? How are they hurt?
Let's take these questions separately. What innocents? Given that the people on staff whose abuses and lies are made visible when things like this get exposed are still "getting away with it", in that they still have their staff powers, and they have not been required to admit that certain claims were false, it seems to me that, at a bare minimum, everyone there is at least complicit in wrongdoing. About the only people who could claim otherwise would be the ones who have resigned in disgust.
Staff often assert that there is no way for us outsiders to know that nothing has been done. True. Much hand-wringing could be happening.
Until the public lies are followed up by public retractions and public apologies, whatever's been done has amounted to a whole lot of nothing. The users who were lied to have not yet been told the truth.
Now, how are they hurt? Several staff members have asserted repeatedly that staff should not be saying anything that would embarass them. Duh. According to most Christian beliefs, every last bit of this will come out in the end. There will be no anonymity, there will be no secrets. These actions will be on the record in a fairly absolute sense. So, what of it?
If the secret records being revealed were the IP addresses or real names of individuals, they might have a claim to being "hurt". So far, in fact, many staff have specifically affirmed that they are okay with being quoted. Others have said they aren't, citing to "confidentiality". Only, that's a mechanism; it's not a reason. The confidentiality agreement is not a moral goal in and of itself; it's a means to a moral goal. Most people would admit that there exist at least theoretical circumstances where they would break a previously-given promise based on new information making it clear to them that the promise would be deeply harmful.
In fact, something I find quite interesting is the degree of overlap between people that I know have leaked stuff -- and in some cases, directly lied about having done so -- and people that are now complaining vehemently that someone else has leaked. There are some people that I don't think have ever leaked. In some cases, I think their reasons for doing so are basically sound. In others, I think it's more a powerful social norm, which is actually contrary to sound doctrine on the matter:
The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Chapter 18, Verses 15-17
Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.
The problem here is that people view the confidentiality agreement as trumping this. We are not just talking about random watercooler chatter; we are talking about clear and compelling evidence of consistent patterns of malfeasance on the part of some fairly senior staff over a period of years. Many people have talked to these people individually; many have come to them with witnesses. Nothing has changed.
So now what? Now we tell the truth, and if that means an agreement is broken, that was a definite flaw in the agreement; a Christian site's policies should not be mandating behavior contrary to Scripture.
What's interesting is that CF has long had firm and entrenched hostility to groups that require any kind of confidentiality. For a month or two, CF had a policy that no one who was a freemason could be on staff, and many CF staffers have said that no freemason could ever be a real Christian. Why? Because there's third-party rumors that say that masons are very occult, and because they are required to keep their practices secret.
Obviously, it is problematic for the staff of a Christian site to join any group which demands of its members a prior commitment to keep everything they learn during their tenure secret, even after they leave, and never to disclose it even if they learn of practices they consider gravely immoral. Inexplicably, many CF staff feel that precisely such a commitment not only can, but must, be expected of fellow staff, and that failure to keep to such a commitment, even after discovering systematic and premeditated abuse, is a horrible thing.
Interesting to note how many of the most vocal opponents of such disclosures are precisely some of the people whose actions look worst when disclosed.
One of the quirks of CF is that, for as long as I can find records of, official policy has always been that moderators are strongly encouraged to have a separate account, not identified as theirs, which they use to debate.
The idea is this: If a moderator debates with you, then you know that moderator's views, and might think the moderator is biased if that moderator ever deletes a post contrary to those views.
Since the Bible encourages people to abstain from the appearance of evil, obviously, the solution is to have moderators make all their substantive posts using an anonymous sock puppet account which is not identified with them openly, so no one can say what their biases are.
This works as well as you'd expect; moderators still moderate with biases, but it can be hard to guess which ones. Because moderators are very strongly encouraged to present themselves as impartial, they cannot admit their biases enough to take any steps to counter them. Furthermore, the sock accounts create an even bigger problem, in that they can break rules and nothing happens to the moderator. In some cases, the sock account becomes known to other staff, and begins to enjoy the privileged position moderators have, where their posts are not really subject to the rules. In other ways, it may go unknown, in which case, if the heat builds up, the moderator just stops using it and starts a new one.
In short, in their hurry to abstain from the appearance of evil, the staff have forgotten to find any way to prevent its substance.
In its essence, this policy is founded on dishonesty. The purpose of the rule is to cause people to falsely believe that the person with whom they are debating is not a moderator. Some staff claim that it makes no difference; if it makes no difference, what's the point? The point is to mislead users into thinking the staff are impartial when they aren't.
There's an underlying tendency for many people to be unwilling to admit that they do have biases. On other forums, staff are often encouraged to participate actively. Their biases become known to the community, but so do their efforts to take those biases into account and compensate for them. Furthermore, with the information on the table, users don't have false expectations or beliefs.
This policy has been there forever, and while it is not strictly required, the pressure on staff to participate is often strong.
With a standing policy that staff should deceive users, it's hardly surprising that there are problems.
It's funny, but in a way, the origin story of CF is secret.
Here's the deal. ChristianForums merged with another forum, called King's Tavern, in February 2002. For a while, Erwin and Josephus were labeled "co-founders" of CF. I was there, and I remember.
Something happened, and I frankly don't know what. They've both told me. Both of them have told me their recollections of the story. Josephus told me how the forums were very different in size; maybe 3,500 users on KT, and 300 or so on CF. Erwin told me they were about the same, maybe 1,000 each.
Thanks to some brilliant detective work -- done by the CF user Auntie -- I now have actual numbers. As of February 7th, 2002, KT had 1,280 members and CF had 620.
So, here's my thinking. All of us know, sort of, that our memories are a little unreliable. We tend to approximate things. Round things up or down a bit. We remember the most persuasive arguments, but not always the ones we didn't think were plausible.
I've just said that Josephus and Erwin both told me numbers, and that the numbers they told me were false. I say now that I do not believe that either of them was lying. I believe that, with the natural flow of human interaction, people tend to drift apart sometimes, and when they have been on each others' nerves, the natural reliability problems of human memory become worse, rather than better.
The story of what happened is a secret, in some ways. Very few people know it, even the ones that were there; it's quite easy to forget. There are many stories that go around about why Josephus disappeared. He's not just no longer active at ChristianForums; his account has been banned. Not just banned, so that he can't post, either. He's "e-banned", the special "emergency" ban normally reserved for trolls and spammers, and as a result, his posts are invisible to normal users -- even the post where he documented the population figures of his forum.
As a result, there's a number of rumors. Some people think Josephus was banned for trying to sell CF merchandise without Erwin's permission (as Erwin's the site owner), but so far as I can tell, nothing of the sort ever happened.
I don't know whether any of this will ever get fixed. But I was there, and I remember back when "Questions about Christianity" forum (now renamed again to "Questions by Non-Christians") was still called the "Ask Josephus!" forum. And Josephus was the co-founder of ChristianForums.
The thing that I find most frustrating about this is that Josephus and Erwin both had, at the start of this, a shared vision of a Christian site which would be inclusive rather than exclusive, a site that would accommodate all the Christians, not just some of them. I obviously feel that CF has fallen short of that goal (and much moreso recently than it did in the past), but I think both Erwin and Josephus had that vision, and I believe both of them still do.
Obviously, they're not getting along as well as they might. I hope they work things out, though, because that kind of thing tends to build resentments. I think it is quite clear (and I doubt anyone would deny it) that, since the merger, Erwin has done an immense amount of work, and contributed a fair amount of money, to build ChristianForums up. I don't think that calling Josephus a "co-founder" diminishes this in any way. I don't think that denying Josephus credit for his contributions to the community is a good thing.
Furthermore, the secrecy has led to speculation, gossip, and rumor, as various theories are advanced to try to justify the inexplicable disappearance of someone that many members remember as a contributor to a growing and vibrant community.
So here's my contribution, to start the ball rolling: Neither of you is entirely correct on the details you remember, about who did what. Don't let the details get in the way of a vision worth pursuing. Unban Josephus. He's not "trolling" when he claims, quite honestly, to have been a co-founder of the site. That's what it was presented as when it happened.
Reconciliation and redemption are core themes of the Christian message. They should be core themes of a Christian messageboard.
One of the interesting things that ChristianForums had was a dedicated subforum for Catholics. Some forums exclude Catholics, claiming they are not Christians at all. CF actively included them. The subforum was called "One Bread, One Body", and is one of the higher-traffic areas of CF, simply because there are so very many Catholics.
In the olden days, OBOB was a comparative haven. There were Catholic-bashers who would show up with whatever they were into that week; Pope Joan, or something. But, for the most part, the forum was fairly mellow. Most Catholics are pretty calm about ecumenical stuff. They've had a thousand years to get used to "other Christian groups". Furthermore, they don't have to work very hard to explain why it is that, if what they believe is the real Christian faith, no one had heard of it until 1845.
OBOB had one of the first purely social threads, a chatter thread named "Reilly's Pub" started by one of the members. This thread later made CF history, as it became the first "open" thread in the Christians-Only forums, where members otherwise considered non-Christian were allowed to post.
There was a sort of a side thread that got started once after a particularly rough day of defending the faith. One of the members started a thread entitled "The Walk-in Freezer in Reilly's Pub". This thread was used for cooling off -- specifically, for venting frustrations and trying to cool down. Members came to this thread to complain about problems communicating in other threads. Oddly, despite the obvious potential for trouble, this stayed very productive. I remember once coming there to gripe about a particularly frustrating discussion only to find the person I was frustrated by griping about my side of the debate. We offered each other virtual Dove bars.
Those days are gone.
OBOB has become a fairly vicious forum to try to post in. It's not just gradually stricter treatment of the non-Catholics, though. It's the sniping at non-Catholics, and worse, the deeply vicious infighting among Catholics.
To understand how this comes about, you have to know a bit about Catholic teaching. Many Protestant groups teach that the Bible has authority, and nothing else does; this leaves them with fierce feuding over who gets to decide what the Bible says. The Catholics have a clear answer to that; the Church decides what the Bible says. Some Catholics are inclined to believe that there's been some drift or correction over time; others are firmly committed to the notion that everything the Church says is infallible and unchanging.
However, this creates an interesting problem. Catholic teaching is that Catholics have a moral duty to "submit" to the authority of the Church. If the Church says that it is a sin to skip Mass on Sunday to see a football game, then it is indeed a sin. More importantly, if you know this and do so anyway, you are committing a second sin -- you are not in submission to the Church.
Most Catholics have at least some trouble with some Church teachings, or questions about them, or just plain don't understand them. OBOB is currently somewhat dominated by a group of people who are very sure that they understand these teachings.
What this means is that all the normal behavioral rules of civil society, or of a Christian message board, can be subverted by the claim that anyone arguing with them is arguing with the Church teaching, therefore not in submission to the Holy See... and therefore not really Catholic. Since only Catholics are allowed to "debate" in the forum, of course, such posts are therefore rules violations.
To say that this is enforced selectively is to understate the case gravely. One announcement thread put it like this:
But those who consistently undermine the Church's teaching for the sake of argument--especially the teachings of the Church on human sexuality, such as contraception, gay marriage, abortion, etc.--do a great diservice to OBOB and its members. If you see such posts, please report them so they can be reviewed.
This is a particularly clear-cut example of CF's obsession with sexual morality over all other areas of teaching.
In fact, part of the disturbing irony of this situation is that Catholic submission to the authority of the Church is supposed to follow a clear hierarchy. You do not obey some guy on an internet message board; you obey your priest, who obeys his bishop, and so on. In fact, if you are not a bishop, you are generally not supposed to argue with bishops.
As a result of this, Catholic members do not necessarily want to be identified as "Catholic" at CF. One woman I know, who is currently doing a year of full-time volunteer work with some Franciscans, has changed her icon to plain old Christian because it is contrary to her moral duty to the Church to submit to the judgement of some guy on an internet BBS. In general, many of the Catholics who think about issues other than current mainstream American politics are sort of uncomfortable with this, so they often sort of keep quiet.
When she left, she wrote this:
OBOB is and, has been since I joined CF two years ago, alien territory for me. This is hard to put into words, but for me, Catholicism isn't...I dunno...a list of rules. It's not a checklist where if you put Xs in all the boxes you're a "Good Catholic." It's a holistic philosophy and a lifestyle. The "rules" of Catholicism make sense (to me, at least :D) in context of the theological and spiritual underpinnings of the faith, but separated from those underpinnings, they begin to appear like nothing but arbitrary hoops to jump through, a pharisitical morass of obligations and, for many people, secret frustration and resentment.
What ends up happening is that a bunch of casual laymen make gloriously stupid comments about doctrine, and then demand strict authoritarian punishment for people who argue with them, even when they are the ones rejecting Church teaching. For instance, many of the members regularly assert that Muslims worship a false God.
The teaching of the Church is quite clear:
But the plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator. In the first place amongst these there are the Mohamedans, who, professing to hold the faith of Abraham, along with us adore the one and merciful God, who on the last day will judge mankind.
When I asked someone about this, I was told it's not "dogma", so he's free to disregard it. The document it's taken from, Lumen Gentium, says at the top of the page:
DOGMATIC CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH LUMEN GENTIUM SOLEMNLY PROMULGATED BY HOLINESS POPE PAUL VI ON NOVEMBER 21, 1964
So, well, actually it is dogma.
But you may rest assured, no one gave him any trouble about arguing with the Church. The people who get hassled are people like the folks at St. Joan of Arc, a local and "liberal" parish.
For instance:
http://www.christianforums.com/t64220
This thread, titled "Bad News for 'Liberal' Catholics Awaiting Pope's Death", goes on and on at some length about the horrors of liberal Catholics, with snide remarks made to a particular participant. The reason the thread starts with post #2 is that the original poster was banned. The people who dogpiled after him are not banned.
http://www.christianforums.com/t2098975
This thread, titled "Catholics only :This Parish in Minneapolis is pretty much horrifying ", is a particularly disturbing one, simply because many members quickly found out that a member of that parish was present.
But here's the thing. Remember that remark about submitting to the authority of the Church?
That parish has been complained about before. The complaints went to the bishop. The bishop did make a few changes, but anything he didn't change is approved by a bishop. In their griping about the alleged horrors of this parish, these people are themselves completely rejecting the authority of the Church.
Oops.
It's not about consistency, see. It's not about the authority of the Church. When Pope John Paul II said "If you go to Iraq, you go without God", most of these people dismissed him as a naive old man.
No, it's about sexual morality and the importance of kicking people out of the church first, and asking questions later.
This goes on all over CF. It's particularly noticeable in the Catholic forum, simply because the official Church teachings on many of these issues are available for study, and the people who dominate discussions are so very clear in their rejection of these teachings. A lot of them have serious anti-Protestant issues -- a theme which comes up a lot in discussion of the interdenominational fighting at CF. (On the whole, the scary thing is really not how very vicious some of the anti-Protestants are, but how much their meanness is drowned out by the anti-Catholic folks.)
Once upon a time, very early on, one of the proto-boards which eventually merged to become ChristianForums as it's known today used the Apostle's Creed as its standard of "who is a Christian here". By the time I reached the site, it was using the longer Nicene Creed. A brief experiment in 2003 allowed members to use either, but a "problem" was found: Mormons accept the Apostle's Creed, but almost none of them can agree to the Nicene Creed.
Many traditional Christian groups say some pretty nasty things about Mormons. They are generally called a "cult", for instance. (CF specifically prohibits calling Christian groups they aren't kicking in the teeth "cults".)
So, the Apostle's Creed was yanked. There's just one problem, which is that many, many, Christians have never even heard of the Nicene Creed. To this day, CF is full of people who don't accept it, although they've mitigated this somewhat by adding footnotes allowing people to reject certain claims.
What they can't do is just admit that the real rule is "You have to accept the Apostles' Creed, but not be a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness". In practice, that seems to be it.
There's a great deal of struggle around the boundaries, as some other Christian groups (to avoid confusion, I'm just calling all the Jesus freaks "Christians") accept the Apostles' Creed, but not the Nicene Creed. They are generally told smugly that they are not qualified under the site's definition -- often by the people who needed the footnotes.
But no matter what, the Mormons are a special case. A special ghetto has been created for debates of a few points of theology, and for kicking the snot out of the Mormons. There's a couple of interesting points to this. The first is that the forum has a rule against "promoting" non-Christian religions. The second is that no two staff members agree on what is, or isn't, promoting.
Policy rulings on the topic have gradually made the fence higher, and the Mormon side of it spikier. The bullies are allowed to demand that the Mormons substantiate claims, and declare victory if the Mormons fail to do so, even when doing so would be treated as a rule violation and edited. They are even allowed to declare victory if the Mormons do provide evidence, because it will usually be removed.
The prize-winner was a Mormon receiving an official warning for demonstrating convincingly that a particular claim about Mormons was false. The rationale offered was that, since Mormonism is false, if a Mormon wins an argument, he must have broken some rule. (I don't have the exact details of the case right, but the net result has been a general stance that, if a Mormon wins any point, it is a de facto violation of the rule against promoting other religions.)
There is a theme which runs through a number of movies and TV shows; I think I saw it in some movie related to the Kung Fu TV series. Two people are told to fight, and the more skilled one is told he must not attack, only defend. Eventually, he loses. The point of the story is that you cannot win a fight if you cannot attack.
In Unorthodox Theology, the Mormons cannot attack. Under some rulings that are still sometimes upheld, they can't even defend.
What this produces is, of course, exactly what you'd expect. There are a few Mormons who come to CF, and they are very patient and Godly people, who have more patience and kindness than most of the people you will ever meet. If they didn't, they wouldn't stay around, saying what little they can, correcting the most egregious errors, and getting warned for it over and over.
Since there's no way to ask them honest questions and get real answers (that would be "promoting Mormonism"), no one with any actual interest in the question participates for long.
So who does?
Think about the kind of person who hears the story of the two fighters, one who only defends, and thinks "I want to be the guy who only attacks." They're bullies. Not only that, but they are without exception really weak bullies; they are people who cannot win arguments if their opponents are allowed to argue.
What's pathetic isn't that there are people who come to the forum to take advantage of this. What's pathetic is that they lose anyway.
The problem is that the net result of this is to present a snapshot of "mainstream Christians vs. Mormons" in which the Mormons are polite, well-spoken, and patient beyond the normal limits of human endurance, and the Christians are petty and spiteful liars, who present atrocious argumentation backed only by the smug assurance of knowing no one can really argue with them.
One of the standing policies of CF for a long time has been that moderators are not exactly subject to the rules. In principle, moderators are expected to follow the rules. In practice, it is not always the case that they do.
The problem is that, when a user violates a rule, responses can be quick. A post can be edited or deleted, for instance.
When a staff member violates a rule, [b]even if it is agreed that a rule has been violated[/b], nothing can be done quickly. Posts can stay up for weeks.
For instance, consider the rule that one may not call other users non-Christian:
Not only is what Spurgeon preaches Biblical Christianity, by juxtaposition it exposes your beliefs as mere humanistic relativism cloaked in a particular religion.
How about the rule against derisive or hostile language? This charmer is from a politics thread; it was in response to a 2004 election query about whether Republicans felt that Bush should concede gracefully if he lost the election:
Ho ho ho ha ha ha ho ha ho ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!!This is just too funny!! Oh my goodness!!
(Wiping away the tears), Yeah, well, it was the Dems who started the plan of hiring 10000 lawyers and declaring victory on election night no matter what the vote is, and throwing the whole thing in court right away. That's how your side plays, honey.
Feel the love, no?
Or how about this charmer from one of the marriage icon threads:
You are right I do not consider you validly married
One of these was edited substantially quite some time later. One was carefully edited in a way that preserves the insult, but allows some small plausible deniability about it being a personal remark. Another is still there.
Even when their posts are edited, staff are not affected by them. There was at one point an official staff disciplinary system, a counterpart to the "warning and suspension protocol" covering users. So far as I can tell, it was never actually used; it was scrapped, months later, because staff couldn't use it.
Members generally get edited first, then offered some possible chance to argue that their post was misread. Staff posts are not edited without talking to the staffer first, and going through a procedure. Why?
Staff are presumed to be acting in good faith and to be clear on the rules; it is assumed that a staff post does not violate any rules, even if it blatantly does, because to assume otherwise would be to question the credibility of staff. Why is this bad?
You certainly are very free to live as you will , and the owner of this site is free to make membership and participation rules for himself.
As a Priest do you not believe that all authority is ordained of God (Romans 13) and that we are to be subject to that authority ? Or is the Bible subject to your interpretation to be truth?
Simple! They're ordained by God. They have divine authority, and if you question them, it's like you're questioning God.
CF politics are dominated by people who seek power to rule. The people who are there to serve are more numerous, but they lack the killer instinct to seek out power. So, of course, the power-seekers tend to be the most powerful. There are ways to gain power at CF without being too political, but it's very hard, of course; the competition is fierce and cutthroat.
The problem is just that, well, what do you do about people who do not wish to serve, but rather to rule?
This is my best answer:
The Gospel According to St. Matthew, Chapter 18, Verses 15-17
Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.
They have been told in private, and they have been told with witnesses. They continue.
Many years ago, one of the CF regulars, who had gotten the feeling he wasn't very welcome, started a thread over on Internet Infidels, called "CF Outcasts". This thread grew, and more threads followed. Originally they were in the "Miscellaneous Discussions" forum, but when a forum reorganization moved that into the "no-preaching" part of the site, the threads were moved into IIDB's catch-all "~~Elsewhere~~" forum.
There have been a lot of these. IIDB staff started merging them together, then splitting them every so often; every 1000-2000 posts, perhaps. The current chain is up to Continuation LI, and that's roman numerals.
These threads are often the subject of a great deal of consternation at CF, as various material from CF will tend to get reposted and talked about. Many staff believe that the participants in the IIDB/CF threads are in an organized plot against ChristianForums, Christianity, or who knows what else. This belief is frankly just stupid. Various attempts abound to make a big deal about how many of the posters there have an "agenda". The word "agenda" is used to denote what happens when someone you don't like wants to do something; it's distinct from "taking a stand" in that it's not one you agree with.
One of the interesting side-effects of these threads is that, since IIDB does not have all the rules squelching discussion that CF does, sometimes people at IIDB are able to actually work things out.
Let's have an example. One of the most infamous conservative members of CF went by the username "sweetkitty". Under CF's restrictive homosexuality rules, her own position (that gay sex is a sin) was problematic, moreso because she is an ex-lesbian, who believes that God delivered her from this. As you might guess, she has been in a fair amount of conflict with some of the "liberals". CF's very restrictive rules were problematic; for instance, under the "you must have citations and evidence" rule, she was prohibited from sharing her own testimony and experiences.
I remember for a long time believing her to be a really nasty person, because of the filters imposed by the CF rules. One day, though, I made some comment about people trying to keep other people out of Heaven, and she said that there is no one who is opposed to seeing other people go to Heaven. I pointed her at a thread I'd seen where someone argued for a position based on the belief that, if it were not true, there would be murderers in Heaven, and that would be horrible. Her response was that this was so upsetting she had to go bake some cookies.
It may sound trivial, but I think I understand. Sometimes human evil is so overwhelming that there's simply no way to confront it head-on, and all you can do is go make something, as a sort of fundamental affirmation of creation itself.
Sweetkitty changed her username later to kdet. A number of people (myself included) originally assumed she did this to get away from her fairly impressive bad reputation, but she denied this, and I think in retrospect it was just uncharitable bitching to think so.
Anyway, one of the people kdet got along with least was UberLutheran, who is an older gay man. He's a very committed liberal, active in politics, and deeply concerned about a lot of liberal issues. You can see how they'd end up in conflict. They fought. A lot. And, in fact, CF staff ordered them to not communicate, at all, with each other on CF. No private messages, no responses to posts, nothing. So that just festered.
Because people griped about her in the IIDB threads, kdet showed up. What followed was a conversation I will just reproduce here:
kdet: Well, we can only hope. [about the possibility of UL leaving CF]
elanor: So out of curiosity, are you content with feeling that way about a brother in Christ? I know sometimes I get fed up and think my world would be easier without someone around, but I'm always upset with myself for that attitude and have to take it to the Lord to ask for a change of heart.
kdet: Ok, you are right. I shouldn't want him to leave or rejoice if he does leave. I'm reading The Bait of Satan by John Bevere, I haven't gotten very far in the book yet but it has addressed not rejoicing in situations like these. I'm sorry Uber and I aplogize to the rest of you for speaking like I did. No excuses, I just screwed up. I tend to let people get under my skin and then lash out. Something I need to work on alot. Sorry
elanor: I'm in the same boat with you, kdet. I'm still waiting for the day when I get to the end of it and don't have to say, 'I screwed up again, Lord.' Thank you for apologizing. That's a very hard thing for me to do--stubborn pride being what it is--so this is a witness to me.Hey, I get to WA sometimes. If you ever want to say howdy and sit down for a coffee (or Diet Coke--my version of coffee ), just holler.
kdet: Thanks for your patience and thanks for making me think
UberLutheran: kdet knows she's prohibited from responding to any post I make on CF. Which is why she can come over to the heathen board on IIDF and spew.Isn't that right, kdet? I believe The Colonel prohibited us from having any contact with each other on CF -- but now you've come over here to witness to the Democrats and the liberals and those awful homosexuals (who certainly aren't like you, are they, hon?) and you can say whatever you like without fear of recrimination.
Would you like to have this out once and for all, kdet? Right on this board? Because I'm not the least bit afraid of taking my verbal scapal and doing a dissection of you, right in front of everybody -- if that's what you really want.
Your choice. :)
kdet: I guess you missed my apology to you. So here it is again. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said what I said. I have a hard time dealing with people I don't like, something that I am really trying to work on and sometimes I really fall flat on my face. I realize every day how 'm not as good of a person as I want to be nor as good of a Christian as I hope to be. But I am trying, and I do hope to grow and change every day and to become a better person and Christian. So again I apologize and please try and remember I am like everyone else, not horrible and not perfect, just a work in progress.
UberLutheran: Hon, if I had a nickel for every time I'd screwed up...I would have enough money to take both us to Europe for four weeks, stay in four-star hotels, and eat haute cuisine every single meal.
Though I would probably recommend that we stay in separate rooms, lest you and I kill each other during the trip. :D
Actually, you posted a couple of things very recently over in Liberal Theology which I agreed with. Obviously, I can't rep you without violating the terms of the agreement set in place by The Colonel; but I thought your comments were right on the mark.
What happened between us is called life; and the fact that both of us are Christian -- staunchly Christian, even -- doesn't mean we're necessarily going to agree or that we even need to agree. Which is OK. I really believe Christ has a big enough tent to be able to accommodate differences in belief.
kdet: Thanks for being so understanding :) I do have to disagree with you about one thing though, I really don't believe that we would not get along in real life. There is so much about you that is fascinating.
UberLutheran: :bugeyes: You're kidding??!! Not to sound vain, but what about me do you find fascinating?I'm not "begging compliments", but nobody has EVER said that to me before!
kdet: You must be kidding! How about this for a few reasons?storm chasing, classical music, cats, cooking
You are incredibly intelligent and articulate and have a delicious sense of humor.
Of course there is more, but I think that should hold you for now.All things that I LOVE
I have two cats, use to have 30 show cats untill they contacted feline luekima that I brought home from a Siamese I had bought from a pet store.
I love to cook, it is my passion. I just found a new dinner roll recipe online that I was so excited over you'd think I'd discovered gold
I love music and I love storms.
...
And that's that. Reconciliation, because they were allowed to say things, and then, having said them, go further and say other things, that might not have been what came to mind first, but which mattered.
There's been a lot of reconciliation that has happened off in the dim and dusty corners of IIDB.
It's not all bad. ChristianForums staff do some really good work. In particular, let's talk about trolls and spammers.
All forums get trolls and spammers. ChristianForums allows automated signup (you don't have to be manually approved), and is a very large target.
They get a lot of trolls and spammers.
You'd never guess this from reading the forums. With the case of the purely unambiguous abusers, CF staff do an excellent job of catching and nailing spammers. The entire forum staff is (or was last I checked) empowered to yank them.
One example that I find particularly interesting is exodus4321/timex/mead/delur. There was this guy. And he was frankly a very annoying and mean poster, but he wasn't really a rulebreaker. Then, one day, a staffer he had a problem with did something that set him off. She deconverted. She stopped being Christian, she resigned from staff, and she participated in the forum for a while as an atheist.
He flamed her, a lot.
He got banned.
What followed was a series of troll accounts that frankly became legendary. I lost count. I think I personally banned him ten times or more. (You could argue that this information is a breach of staff confidentiality, but anyone in General Apologetics from that period could tell you as much.) Many of his accounts were just brand names. He had a very distinctive posting style, and some users would spot him on his first or second post. David Gould, in particular, could almost always spot him.
He got clever after a while, using more elaborate made-up names, pretending to be a girl, and so on... But he had one key weakness, which was that he seemed to have a constitutional limit of a week or so, at most, before he would track down some old post of Lanakila's and write immense rants about how she was a liar.
It was sorta noticeable.
The night John Paul II died, a large number of the non-denominational and Baptist members made poor decisions. They made decisions that this was the right time to go insult the Catholics. They wrote rants. They wrote rants about how JPII was in hell. They wrote "questions" like "Why should we be sad about the death of a man who lead millions of people away from God?"
These posts disappeared at an astounding rate, and I think the staff must have been putting in insanely long hours on that for a few days. Some users got very sneaky, and registered new accounts; Iollain (a regular Catholic-basher) had a particularly nasty bit of vitriol nuked; five or ten minutes later, a brand-new Baptist showed up and posted a substantially similar rant.
For all that there's plenty of horror stories about CF, it's important to remember that there's a lot of people whose stories aren't nearly so horrifying. There's a lot of good work getting done. One of the downsides of CF's secrecy is that people may feel morally obliged to blow the whistle on harmful behaviors, but they don't feel right doing so on good ones. But rest assured, there are good ones. I'd guess that perfectly reasonable or even particularly good moderator actions are the overwhelming majority of staff actions at ChristianForums.
This is gonna be a partial story, because there's a lot more to the story, but much of it is covered by various confidentiality agreements.
I have removed the name of one of the participants, replacing it with the deeply mysterious "Ms. X."
By the way, flesh99, one of the CF staffers of old, is now also writing about CF.
So, Ms. X. Ms. X was a very active moderator. She was also, I think, the single worst moderator I have ever seen in my time on internet forums. She believed it was her job to win arguments. She moderated the politics forum, and did it with an iron trunk; she was, as it happens, a Republican. Lemme be clear that I don't think her behavior was abusive because she was a Republican; it just happens to have been her bias.
Ms. X actively sought to reclaim the politics forum from the liberals she believed were destroying it. Her tactics were many and varied, but mostly they consisted of issuing warnings for anything and everything that might stick. Calling George W. Bush by the nick-name "Dubya" was worth an instant official warning... if you were a liberal, anyway. Calling Bill Clinton "Bubba" or "Slick Willy" was, of course, a recognized nickname.
The pinnacle of this, of course, was the Republican Safehouse, a thread in which only Republicans were allowed to post. It consisted of snide remarks, sweeping generalizations and hyperbole about Democrats, mocking and insulting pictures, and so on. She defended it as a purely social thing, insisting that they were "just joking".
Well, no, that's not the pinnacle. When a couple of Democrats started a very similar (though tamer) thread called the Democrat Safehouse, she gave out warnings like candy, and closed the thread.
What followed was a marvel of bad moderation. As an active participant and even flamer, she picked fights with members. She spent a number of days arguing with one particular member about this decision. Some readers will remember that, in theory, there was a rule against arguing with staff. Why, then, did she keep arguing?
So that, after a couple of days, she could assign him three warnings at once for posts in that thread, triggering the "permanent ban for three warnings in a week" rule. (This rule was used heavily by some staff as a way to get rid of users they didn't like; they'd sit on reports and then process a bunch at once. No appeal, sorry.)
Ms. X, more than any other moderator I've seen at CF or any other board, blurred the line between personal beliefs and forum rules. She made remarks about the topic of threads in her official moderator postings, saying things like "This thread is getting really loud, and those of you who believe X should read the Bible, because you're wrong".
Ms. X was also central in another event. Sometime previously (I think it was during the Great Crash of 2003, so there's not much for records), there was an announcement on CF: There had been a dangerous sexual predator on staff, but he was removed and banned now. As time passed, more information came out; it turns out the "dangerous predator" had been out of town (at a funeral, no less) when the story broke, and no one had gotten a chance to hear his side.
His side, as it turns out, was rather interesting. In his words:
I would like to know what stories went on about me and [Ms. X].... I mean I have heard from some but many kept their silence. Did anyone know of the Nudes [Ms. X] sent me. I know she created a site for Christians and I posted her nudes on every thread possible. That let her and many MODS from CF that followed her show her true colors. I even posted the emails. I had nothing to hide from anyone
See, that's the other half of the story. It turns out that Ms. X was the only actual source for concerns about his alleged behavior; the other people were too shy to come forward, but they told her.
Riiiiight.
My best guess at what actually happened is that the victim didn't react as positively to the nudes as she hoped, so, next time he was out of town... Bang. Case resolved before he got back, let alone heard anything. He was not told about this until quite a while later.
Now, here's the thing. Eventually, the victim was allowed back on CF. People concluded he was innocent.
Do you think this led to Ms. X losing her staff position? It did not.
And I know what did, but it's confidential. I will say, while it is certainly something that could be seen as a problem, I would not have viewed it as being nearly as serious as setting users up for spite bans, actively persecuting people you disagree with using moderating powers, or setting someone up to take a fall for sexual harassment that, so far as anyone can tell, never happened.
ChristianForums is essentially gnostic.
Each layer of staff is protected by "confidentiality". Like the rule about criticising mod actions, this has grown substantially over time. It used to be just sort of understood that you didn't spill secret stuff. Over time, it's gotten more and more dire, with threats of banning if you spill secrets, and so on. (The obvious corollary is that, if you are banned, you no longer have any reason not to spill secrets. The peril of a rule which is based on enforcement rather than morality is that there's no reason other than enforcement to follow it.)
Now, as you might guess, there's a certain amount of leakage.
What you might not expect is that it is absolutely endemic at all levels of the organization. Moderators reveal things to non-staff friends. Admins reveal things to moderator friends, or to non-staff friends. Selective revelation is a tool for obtaining loyalty and friendship. The more secrets you know, the more power you have.
However, it's more gnostic than that.
There is a separate staff prayer forum. This is kept isolated from the regular users prayer and prayer request forum. Nominally, this is so staff can ask for prayers in privacy. Now, why do they need more privacy than others? We could pretend it's because their prayers might involve confidential information, but honestly, that's not reasonable. No one has any trouble offering, or asking for, prayers that do not reveal very much. The consensus among Christians is that God will know what you are asking about.
Every forum on a vBulletin board has both a name and a description. The staff prayer forum is called "The Upper Room", and the description for it is "This is the private staff prayer mountain - where the elect retreat to seek the face of God."
If you're not familiar with the weighted terminology here, in Calvinist Christianity, "the elect" are the people God has predestined for Heaven; they are the people who are not totally unregenerate, and thus "totally depraved". Suddenly, the separation takes on a whole new meaning. And yes, "Upper Room" is the name of the place on Mount Zion that is believed to be above the tomb of King David.
To be fair, there's another reason for this room to be private. Prayer requests are often a way to make snide remarks look holy and innocent; imagine someone responding to a teenager on a bulletin board with a comment like "Your profile says you are 14 years old. You will be in my prayers, my young friend." The sarcasm is pretty obvious (in fact, the original I refer to had an emoticon rolling its eyes, stressing the sarcasm a bit more). Prayer forums are often used this way, and a staff prayer forum is a place where staff can mouth pious remarks which are intended mostly to attack other staff, as well as a place for sincere prayers.
However, the key thing here is that, the more of the secrets you have access to, the more holy you are. Regular users just have to beg God. Staff, with access to the secret forums, are declared to be the "elect", and the prayer mountain is higher -- more exalted -- than the regular prayer place.
There's more.
If you get promoted above the regular level, you get access to another forum. The ARK, that one is called. So, we're from the Upper Room to the ARK. (Probably, in context, "... of the Covenant.")
But hey, that's not really quite blasphemous enough. To get the full treatment, you have to make it to the even more-secret room, which is called Zion. Only, not like the one in the Matrix. No, this is the top-secret promised land. As one staff member put it, "What is said in Zion is not disclosed to anyone who does not have access to that forum not ever." Obviously, this is no more true than the others; selective disclosure is the name of the game. The more secrets you know, the holier you are, and distributing these secrets to people binds them closer to you.
These names are "symbolic", but they are symbolic of a systematic attempt to create the appearance of holiness. They are not humble names. They are not names which inspire people to greater care; they are names which inspire people to greater presumption.
The secrecy might not be so bad without the carefully selected cultish naming conventions, but with them, the tie-in of approval and declarations of holiness to perceived loyalty to the site is huge. Ironically, this just makes people more eager to share their secrets, as they can prove that they have access to the secret forums, and are thus more powerful, and more holy, than the people who don't.
The Gospel According to St. Luke, Chapter 18, Verses 9-14
And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
So, sometimes, staff don't really want to take a personal hand in things, but they want to break the rules. One user at CF, who posted under the name "Sharp" (he's currently banned, it appears), used to get a lot of complaints about his posts being flames. He called people names, and asserted that they were not true Christians when they didn't agree with him.
Now, this could be a problem, so he helpfully turned to the staff for clarity:
Originally Posted by: Karl - Liberal BacksliderNevertheless. If you continue to paint "Liberals" as "not true believers", by implication or explicit statement, Sharp, I will report your posts. You are violating Rule 1 of these forums and I am sick to the back teeth with self righteous fundamentalists who know they're so much more Christian than the rest of us.
I am disappointed you feel so bad. Perhaps liberals are not used to disagreement. I shouldn't be surprised though. After all, who gave the world "political correctness" anyway? Some liberals like to stifle dissent. I hope you are not among them.
My personal policy is never to insult another poster, never to reply to rude posts and certainly never to make any. I always try to play by the rules and ask for helpful advice. In order not to offend I ran my post past the moderators and received the following reply:
Originally posted by: rnmomof7
Originally posted by: SharpYes, I will gladly change it. I want to communicate that fact, but have no desire to offend. Here is what I will write.
"It is my most sincere and deeply held belief that liberals are probably not Christians."
That avoids the harshness of a declaritive statement and merely states what I sincerely believe with all my heart. Do you approve? If so, then I will make the change. I will remain online so please reply ASAP.
Thanks.
Sharp
How about many liberals have never had a personal relationship with Christ .
Christians is a target word hereRN
Immediately upon receipt of the above moderator's reply, I complied with alacrity. In fact the moderator suggested the sentence, "Many liberals have never had a personal relationship with Christ." This seems to me to be a charitable compromise with which we can all agree. It is certainly neither disrespectful nor a violation of the rules.
Be at peace, my friend. My sincere disagreement with liberal theology is NOT disrespect for those still in it. I bear no hatred for liberals; there is nothing inside but warm, loving fuzzy feelings for liberals. In fact as another great American, Rush Limbaugh, says, "I am just a harmless little fuzz ball."
Now, as anyone even marginally familiar with Christian practice can tell you, the "corrected" statement is just as offensive, and just as much a violation of the rule (which stated that one must not imply that others are not true Christians).
The point of rnmomof7's advice was not to make him comply with the rule, but to make him comply with a completely legalistic interpretation which ignores the word "imply". To state that a given person has "no personal relationship with Christ" certainly implies that the person is not a "true Christian", but is carefully chosen so that a naive reader can pretend otherwise.
Now, that's questionable.
What's not questionable is what that post says now:
Rule No. 7 - No Public Posts about Specific Moderator Actions7) You will not post questions or comments about the specific actions of a moderator in a public forum (eg. editing a post, deleting a thread, banning a member), as this remains a private matter between the member and the staff involved. However, members may PM or email a moderator at anytime. General questions about staff and feedback about moderators are allowed, just not specific questions about a particular moderator action. All decisions to edit, move or delete a post or thread are based on this set of rules listed here.
The owners of Christian Forums reserve the right to remove, edit, move or close any thread for any reason. They also reserve the right to modify the forum rules at any time. Members are expected to check the Announcement Forum or the Rules page to keep up to date with current rules.
I have read, and agree to abide by the Christian Forums rules.
Who edited the post, do you think? Why, that would be rnmomof7.
Normally, when a post is edited, the original text of the post is saved for future reference and documentation. Do you think that policy was followed in this case?
Apparently, when the future reference and documentation would be evidence of malfeasance on the part of a moderator, it becomes less important to comply with that policy.
Sharp continued using the suggested phrase for quite a long time. He was particularly fond of making statements such as "Liberals ignore the context and translation issues when reading the Bible", or otherwise attacking liberals simply by taking complaints people sometimes make (possibly unjustly) about conservatives, and pasting the word "liberals" in.
It's not really that much of a surprise that he's banned; what's surprising is how long it took, given his active and consistent hostility, and his consistent baiting.
It is not a surprise at all that rnmomof7 stayed on staff, and even rose fairly high in the CF hierarchy. She left for a while, but came back after the Great Reform of 2006. She still occasionally does things like this; in a recent thread, she claimed divine authority over other members and openly flamed a number of them.
CF's elaborate and complicated warning system was, in late 2004, rather a mess. The idea was that, if possible, staff should merely talk to you about things. If you kept pushing it, you would get an unofficial warning; unless you had received an unofficial warning (or, possibly, an unofficial warning for violating that same rule), you were not supposed to get an official warning. Only official warnings led to bans.
ShannonKish, a regular poster, published a book, and posted about it. This was, strictly speaking, a violation of the forum rule against self-promotion. She received an unofficial warning, but on reviewing the record, the staffer assigning the warning (nyj) noticed that she was actually due for an official warning, so he gave her one. This was her third warning, so she got a suspension.
Shannon had no idea what was going on, and software errors at the time made it very hard for her to find out. Due to a design flaw, or possibly a bug:
1. Suspended users could not use the PM system.
2. Staff did not know that suspended users could not use the PM system.
You can guess what happened, of course; Shannon was told (over in the IIDB threads) to PM staff, she tried, she failed, so she made an account to PM them with. The staff member who received her PM determined that she was in violation of the rule against creating an account to get around a suspension, and thus upgraded her to a permanent ban. When she complained, she was told that she needed to PM staff...
Much drama ensued. It was resolved by nyj, whose response to her she reposted over at IIDB:
Shannon,After giving this whole issue much thought, I have come to the conclusion that I was in error twofold.
1. Because of a procedural error on my part, I issued you an unofficial warning. Grace should have stayed my hand at that point, since the problem rested on me. Going back and reversing the decision to a higher offense was wrong.
2. While technically, your PM and post were self-promotion, I did not afford you the chance of accepting a verbal warning to "not do it again", to use a medium more suitable for promotion of your book (ie: a CF webpage) and correct future action. Instead, I immediately went to the strongest measure available to the staff without showing any mercy and not allowing you to right any potential wrongs.
In addition, the fact that I warned you for a religious, devotional book makes my actions that much more draconian. For that, there was no excuse.
Therefore, I am reversing the warnings I gave you (striking both the unofficial and official off the books) and I reversing your suspension, which would not have resulted had I not given you the official warning.
I cannot repay you for the time you lost away from CF, but I can offer you my sincere apology for the manner in which you were treated by myself. I ask that you not lay any blame at the feet of P4I or Quaffer, who were only doing their job based on proper procedure. They would not have had to be involved if I had not taken a pharaseeical stance in the first place. I hope that this ordeal does not taint your experiences at CF.
Please accept my apology, I am truly sorry for this incident.
What we see here is one of the reasons that, despite all sorts of problems and confusion, CF has stayed functional. A single person willing to act on Christian ideals can undo an amazing amount of harm. All the harsh words, all the conflict, all the confusion, *poof*, gone.
This kind of behavior is a credit to ChristianForums staff, and has given many people hope for some kind of real resolution to the concerns about staff errors and abuses. The only problem is that, while a staff member certainly has the option of choosing to act this way, there's no way to encode such things in the rules. You cannot write a system of rules which provides grace. Some staffers, having read this message and others like it, got in the habit of calling it "grace" anytime anyone failed to punish to the fullest possible extent on the first offense, and would tell users "you have received far too much grace already". A fascinating notion, if theologically problematic.
Many of CF's quirks come from attempts to write rules such that any warm body trying to follow the rules will produce the same kind of supportive community which encourages good behavior that nyj's actions here did. They have always failed, and honestly, if simply writing the right rules could make a loving and supportive community, I'd be writing about "JewishForums", not "ChristianForums". Rules alone are never enough without spirit, and the spirit is all too rare.
The astute reader may note that nyj was also the person who apologized to Annabel Lee for the longago witch hunt. He's like that; he's one of the people who has gone beyond the "WOO HOO GOD IS GIVING ME PRIZES" phase of Christianity and is now buckled down and giving it a serious go. I have not always gotten along with him, but I have to seriously respect the guy.
One of the quirks of CF is that it has always been dominated by people who feel the need to draw firm lines and boundaries to exclude the people who aren't quite right. It's generally phrased in terms of protecting people from bad doctrine.
The problem, of course, is that many of the people this is supposedly going to benefit, such as younger folks and people who recently converted, are the first to get kicked out.
As an example, consider the user "Moo Tipping", who showed up one day. She's from a small town, and grew up exposed to both Buddhist and Catholic teachings; in fact, she identified as both Buddhist and Catholic. Some people might argue that these are conflicting. I think there is certainly some potential for conflict, and I certainly wouldn't hold her up as an example of pure Christian orthodoxy.
On the other hand, she was 14.
Needless to say, the inquisition was fierce and directed. So, rather than, say, leaving the question up to her actual priest, or anything like that, a bunch of people jumped on her for holding unorthodox positions, and accused her of being a liar when she said she was Christian. Apart from successfully defending the forums against a 14-year-old girl with more questions than answers, they also managed to convince her that, if this was Christianity, she should not be in confirmation classes, because she didn't want to turn out that way.
This story repeats all the time. Every time the CF staff decide that someone doesn't count as a "real" Christian, the result is a scorched-earth policy aimed at eliminating any possible middle ground. People are expected to abandon their own search for God and mouth the empty phrases favored by the administrators, or be forever exiled. The site admins always say "We are not trying to say anyone's non-Christian", but if the victim mistakenly follows a link to a Christians-only thread and tries to post, the forum software's answer is clear; "You must be a Christian to post here".
It's perfectly reasonable to ask the question: Why should you care what some message board thinks of you?
However, I think it's a bit ridiculous to ask a 14-year-old, or even a 15-year-old, being daily instructed in the necessity to listen to and obey adults, to suddenly realize that these particular adults are, in fact, just full of shit, and the right thing to do is ignore them. Being attacked like that, being called a liar and told that God will hate you, by people who claim authority and appear to be respected community leaders, is gonna be hurtful no matter what.
She's still out there, somewhat older and wiser now. She knows better than to let some anonymous jerk on a message board tell her what God is, or isn't.
I oughta point out that, as a fairly firmly convinced Christian, obviously I think the best case would have been for her to be welcomed into the community, in the hopes that she would end up being persuaded by us. But honestly, after the way "Christians" treated her, I can't help but suspect she might be closer to God on the outside of that particular fence; after all, when we exclude people, we generally find that God has gone to the outcasts and the unwanted, and left us to our comforts.
I should point out that this is hardly the only example; it's just one of the few where I've been able to get in touch with the person before the Sanhedrin drove her off completely.
Buy stock in Federated Millstone. I'm just sayin'.
Okay, so, in a previous episode, I mentioned how Stray Bullet got suspended from CF for claiming to be Christian.
Now, it's time to get into the question of what he did while he was suspended. Most of this was in mid-2004, for those who care; I'm sorta jumping around a little chronologically.
What he did was create a sock. His sock, under the name "David Waffen", was a borderline over-the-top parody of conservative Christianity. A sample quote:
Please, creationism the only way to be Christian.
What he found was this: No harassment, no warnings. He occasionally got told to edit posts. (The above sample was not the subject of moderator action, even though it unambiguously violates the forum's rule against implying that other members aren't Christian.)
In short, he could get away with anything. Now, this may seem surprising, but it's not really; the majority of staff have usually been fairly conservative (enough so that a Catholic who holds to Church teachings is likely to be labeled a "liberal"), and have been the sorts of people who feel that the solution to accusations of bias is to treat them as personal attacks and deny everything. That is to say, people who are not only biased, but firmly convinced that they are perfectly objective, and thus totally unable to compensate for their own biases.
This came to the attention of staff after Stray posted about it on another forum, that being Internet Infidels (IIDB). The IIDB forum has been host to a lot of chatter about CF, because CF won't let people discuss or criticize staff behaviors. Thus, a number of people who have been poorly treated have gathered there to chat about their experiences. (In fact, a number of people have reconciled there; more on that when I get to the story of sweetkitty.)
Interestingly, some of the staff were stunned enough by the fairly egregious nonsense that "David Waffen" got away with to actually suggest that other staff do something about it. Of course, not much ever came of it; the people who were biased were not about to accept merely empirical evidence.
Stray eventually managed to get his record cleared up, and applied for a role as a moderator on CF staff. He got it.
That's when things get interesting. Unspecified anonymous people complained about stray, and demanded that he be removed from staff. He was told to step down from staff, and he was told that, if he said it was for personal reasons, he could come back later. Of course, neither part of this was true; it wasn't for his own personal reasons, and they didn't let him back until after the Great Reform of 2006.
There's more to it; for instance, after stray "stepped down", staff started gossipping about him, now that they had a safe forum to do so in. The nominal reason for kicking him off staff was that he was "anti-Protestant", and senior staff began telling more junior staff that this was the case, despite the incredibly weak substantiation. Of course, this happened after he was gone, so he couldn't defend himself.
The practice of faking up a story to avoid the appearance of anything being wrong in staff land continues to this day, although it's sometimes more overt and sometimes more subtle.
A major shift in CF occurred in 2003-2004. Staff began to adopt a fortress mentality, in which they viewed themselves as being under constant attack from all sorts of sources. One of the funniest examples of this was masks.
CF, like many graphically-heavy sites, allows people to select little images which go with their posts. A couple of the regular participants in General Apologetics adopted avatars which had masks on. By coincidence, they were atheists. They began making a joke about it, and other atheists added masks to their avatars. A couple of Christians did too, possibly just because it was funny.
Staff proposed active efforts to crack down on this clear attack on the site. I am not kidding. People concluded that a pattern of users whose avatars had a running joke in them were clearly a threat to the site's ability to be an effective "ministry".
The fortress mentality has generally gotten worse over time, and the most visible form of this is the ever-increasing secrecy of, well, just about everything. The rule about criticising staff actions grew and morphed until it became "you may not comment on specific staff actions". No exceptions, no places where it's okay; all staff actions must be kept entirely secret. (For quite a while, there was no attempt at all to enforce this as applying to other sites.)
The most visible example is probably the Shaman's Place incident. One regular poster, who went by SqueezetheShaman, opened her own forum where a number of CF folks hung around, and some of them were banned members or ex-members, and some of them even went so far as to create new sock accounts to stir up trouble.
Needless to say, after the level of worry inspired by people doing nothing at all, an actual attempt to disrupt the site, however playful, merited a serious response, and a CF staffer broke into the Shaman's Place by guessing someone's password. What ensued was a substantial bit of drama, as CF staff egged him on and encouraged him to repost information, including information from the private administrator-only forums at Shaman's Place. As it became clear that information from these forums was leaked, the Shaman's Place admins looked into things, and identified the compromised account... But they didn't realize it was compromised. Recriminations, hurt feelings, and anger ensued.
At the same time, a user broke into CF, using a more subtle method, and got all sorts of information from CF staff forums. When this information was made available -- some of it posted on shaman's place -- the CF staff went wild, with the same sorts of anger and accusations, only without any specific person being identified.
Drama ensued.
Eventually, the CF staffer who had broken into Shaman's Place came clean, and apologized, and was encouraged to "step down" from staff. (Very few people have ever been fired from CF staff; I can think of two, both liberal.)
The person who broke into CF was convinced to come clean to Erwin and reveal the security hole he'd used.
There is some followup to this, and it's one of the things I'm happiest writing about, because it's a genuinely good thing. The guy who broke into Shaman's Place, after a few months, and after offering sincere apologies, ended up getting back on staff on CF, under a new user name. After a bit of drama, it was revealed that staff knew it was him, and had decided to forgive him and give him another chance. The notion of forgiving someone who has visibly repented is a good one, and he turned out to be an excellent staff member. He's no longer active on staff, and he's always been sensitive to the desires of the people who aren't in power. He also has a much more personal view of privacy questions, and the famous confidentiality of staff forums, than many other members. He has never denied that he screwed up, and that what he did was wrong, and he has also never repeated it. He is, these days, one of the most sincere and thoughtful participants in discussions of CF policy.
Still, the stage was set; even when it became clear that CF had been broken into, staff were set to worry about leaks. Of course, this was nothing new; CF staff have been leaking things to their friends since the forum was founded, and still do today, at every level of staff, up to the top. Still, it has become a gradually bigger and bigger deal when other people do it, and even accusations that someone has leaked may be enough to get them in serious trouble, with or without any evidence. Conspiracy theories continue to abound.
Another major outcome of this was the growth of a widespread belief that CF is "under attack", in that there are people who actively oppose CF and wish to see it destroyed. We'll see more on that in coming episodes; there's a lot of paranoia out there, and some of it is really quite funny.
So, the time has come to examine what I think is probably the real beginning of the end in many ways. Technical enforcement.
Up until sometime in 2003, non-Christians were not in general supposed to debate in the "Christians-only" forums, but there was no technical barrier to them doing so. A couple of friendly non-Christian members were regular participants in the "Reilly's Pub" thread in the Catholic forum.
The new policy was simple. Members have always been asked to identify their religious persuasion in their profiles. The new rule allowed only people whose identified church was considered Christian by the site to post in the Christians-only forums.
This sounds, at first blush, like an excellent idea. In fact, it has been one of the most harmful and divisive things ever done, and has led to a number of similar policies which have done immense harm to a number of people.
One of the most subtle points in this is simply the actual text of the message one receives when trying to post in a prohibited forum. "You must be a Christian to post in this forum." Now, you might think this makes sense, but there's a small problem: Many people who are very devout followers of Jesus do not meet the site's formal definition. The technical enforcement has no capacity for sympathy or understanding. It can't look at questions like "Jill just converted, and is still unclear on some of the formalized teachings, obviously we should let her post here".
However, even this could have been liveable. The problem is that staff lie about it. Time and time again, staff say "when we order someone to change their icon to a non-Christian icon, we are not saying they're not Christian." It's a lie. The forum software message is quite clear, as is the phrase "non-Christian icon".
The definition of Christianity at CF did some evolving. Most of this is hidden in the Great Crash. Many Christians do not actually use the Nicene Creed; they use a shorter creed called the Apostles' Creed. For a brief period, Erwin was persuaded to use this as an alternative. Unfortunately, this allowed Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses to participate in the Christians-only forums, and many people believe that these groups are "cults", rather than "real Christians". (The definition of "cult" is very elastic at CF; it means "people most of staff dislike".) So, the rule was changed back; Nicene Creed only.
Unfortunately, the Nicene Creed has a couple of problems, some of which are even acknowledged, for an ecumenical site. Most Calvinists do not actually agree with what the Nicene Creed says about baptism ("We believe in one baptism for the remission of sins").
CF's solution is an excellent example of sheer dishonesty:
***This can be interpreted to mean that baptism is a matter of obedience and not a requirement for salvation or a regenerating ordinance.
That is to say, you can believe that baptism is in no way "for the remission of sins". In fact, CF has other exceptions; you are allowed to disbelieve in apostolic succession, and you are allowed to ignore "Whose Kingdom shall have no end.". They don't even bother to footnote the last one; it's obvious to the casual observer that there are too many Rapture-believers to enforce the Creed's statement of amillennialism.
In fact, to this day, many people at CF do not know about or understand the Creed. They are in theory supposed to notice it in the tiny little scrolling box containing many pages of rules that they see at registration, but many don't. Furthermore, the division of churches into "Christian" and "non-Christian" does not reflect the Creed at all. A sizeable number of Baptists openly reject some or all of the Creed. (A poll I ran confirmed that about 10% believed that the Creed was wrong on significant issues.) However, they are all counted as "Christian". Proposals have been floated to ask the "Do you accept the Nicene Creed" question separately; they cannot be adopted, because they would exclude hundreds of people who go to churches that are too large to risk offending.
What this did, though, is set the stage for a number of similar rules. The marital status in the profile is used to control access to the Married Couples forum, and so on and so forth. It also made the icons important enough that their number has burgeoned substantially. This has consistently been a source of division, as people pick fights based on assumptions about someone based on an icon.
It also set the stage for the first time the ability to change a given profile entry was denied to members. There was a problem of people changing their icon, posting in a given forum, then changing it back. A rule was adopted against putting in false profile information to gain access to restricted forums. When this didn't work, technical enforcement reentered: Users cannot change their own icons. Staff can change their icons for them.
What this means is that, for sound technical reasons, staff who decide a given user isn't really Christian just label the user something else. They don't have to ask, and the user doesn't get a vote. In principle, they're supposed to ask; it doesn't always happen.
Finally, since we're on the topic of icon changes, let's have a little story time. It involves a user by the name of "stray bullet". Stray is a Catholic. Stray is also a serious thinker and questioner. At one point, back when users could change their own icons, Stray changed his to "Agnostic" for a bit. (He may have had it as Muslim for a while, for reasons unknown to me.) Then he changed it back. (He may have had it as Muslim for a while, for reasons unknown to me.) He posted in the Catholic forum.
Edited to add:
Stray dropped me a line. In his own words:
saw your log- thought I could explain the icon. It was changed for a number of reasons, but the primary one was to prevent me from going into CO areas to debate Christians- like members that ask for 'bans', I just wanted to give myself a break. Another part of it was in seeing if 'agnostic' or 'Muslim' icons meant different attitudes from staff members following complaints I heard from those of other faiths. It was sort of a preliminary study that led me to David Waffen, to see how one is treated when in the 'in' crowd.
... I'll get to the David Waffen thing in a bit.
End of edit
He got warned for "falsifying" his profile information, by one of the mods. He was told that he was not Catholic, and should not pretend to be. Of course, he is Catholic. Once a number of people pointed this out, the mods did the obvious thing; they lied. They said it had never been about him pretending to be Catholic, but about him being "disruptive" by changing his icon too frequently. In fact, it may well be that this case is the real basis for getting the icon change power restricted to staff.
It took stray months to get his warnings reversed, despite the obvious fact that any staff who were involved ought to have known that the actual basis for the warning was fictitious.
What did he do while he was suspended for his warnings? That'll come up next, in the Saga of David Waffen.
Okay, time for another case study. Gunny. Gunny went by various names; Gunny, gunnysgt, GySgt, and others. (He changed his name away from GySgt after someone thought it meant Gay Sargeant.)
Gunny was a very active poster at CF, a member of staff, an active participant, and so on. He was also a major donator; at one point, when blessings were given for contributions, he had a ludicrously large number of blessings, because he was a financial contributor to CF.
Gunny was sometimes pretty cool, and sometimes viciously mean. It took a while for a pattern to emerge. When dealing with issues like substance abuse and recovery, he was one of the kindest and most patient people at CF. When dealing with atheists, he was heartless. After a number of complaints about flames, he settled on the solution of posting chunks of Scripture with no explanation, insisting that there was no personal commentary there, just the words of God. Of course, when someone picks "The fool says in his heart that there is no God" as a response, one might take it as suggesting something.
One day, Gunny was participating in a debate at IIDB about CF's moderation, and he made an interesting claim:
Originally posted by GySgtInteresting scenario.
An individual created two(2) identical user names and used the exact same dialogue generated by a slang translator. One of the user names was created at CF and one at IIDB.
The user name account lasted less than twenty-four (24) hours at IIDB. The user name account lasted just shy of seventy-two (72) hours at CF.
The user name account at IIDB was booted by negating entrance into forum (same script prior to original administration approval to post). No message regarding why user name account was getting the boot.
The user name account at CF was negated after two personal messages by administrative staff.
Interesting observations?
The user name account at IIDB received public objection by a professing Christian that migrated from CF.
(The very formalized language is typical of Gunny in many cases.)
Now, there's just one problem: Back in the day, IIDB did not announce user bans, and there was no designator on banned accounts. There was no way for anyone but a given user to know that a user was banned, unless that user told people. More interestingly, a particular account matched this scenario: The account "2PAC", posting racist garbage using the "jive" translator. The jive translator is fairly well-known. Sorry, "De JIBE translato' be fairly well-knode."
The user's account page at IIDB has a link to browse his posts. A sample follows:
Hell yes- I hate dat fucking wite nig bullshit noise brace yourself foo'!
Anyway, a couple of people noticed that there was no way for anyone to easily confirm the claim that 2PAC had been banned, and that GySgt and 2PAC posted from the same IP address.
Gunny entered a hilarious series of histrionics in which he denied having confirmed anything, insisted that he owed no one any apologies, and so on, but generally stayed a little clear of actually admitting anything -- not that this fooled anyone.
When this was brought to the attention of CF staff, they did exactly what you'd expect from the people who hounded Annabel Lee to the ends of the earth. They denied everything. They said it didn't matter, that he was a Good Christian. And they pretended nothing had happened.
Eventually, some of them did become convinced, and Gunny's habit of trolling and picking fights did result in a parting of the ways.
But, to this day, many of them remain vaguely convinced that somehow this didn't really happen, because they couldn't believe that a person who held the same beliefs they did about God could possibly have done something dishonest. The belief that Christians are always honest is a popular one, and the world is full of very sleazy companies that take full advantage of it by promoting Christian loans, even Christian legal services.
In and of itself, this might not be so bad; it's perfectly reasonable to give people the benefit of the doubt, within reason.
What's bad is that it speaks to a double standard. Militant conservatives are given the benefit of the doubt; people who might be sorta liberal are hunted to the ends of the earth. We can only wonder how much it mattered that he was a major financial supporter of the site. When I get around to the 2005-2006 stuff, there's an interesting comparison with the abortion ads that now fund CF's discussions. (Yes, ads for abortions, provided by Google ads.)
I'm going to use an example here, but I have to give you a caveat first: One of the CF staff, some time after this, came out and gave a real apology for it. In a very real sense, this offense has been addressed.
However, it gives a huge amount of insight into crucial components of the CF experience as it has gradually changed over time. This story was, once, one of the first things I ever wrote about on my blog; the entry was WinAce, Annabel Lee, and Hypocrisy.
The story goes like this. CF used to have some pretty vehement anti-Catholics, and often they would get pretty hostile about the Catholics. For instance, LouisBooth used to accuse Annabel of ignoring the Bible and just making things up. (One of the staffers commented, in response to a complaint about this, something to the effect of "well, isn't it true?")
Anyway, at some point, Annabel got kicked out of the Christians-only forums. Why? Because someone decided she wasn't really Christian. One of her posts was removed, and so on.
Did anyone ask her? No. Did anything happen? Well, when she complained, staff mobilized. They had a problem -- a completely baseless accusation -- and they reacted in the way that the Sanhedrin and Pharisees have always reacted. They went out searching for a basis. Eventually, they found a sarcastic and bitter remark about their total failure to moderate insults directed at Catholics in general, and Annabel Lee in particular, and they cited it as proof that she was not really a Christian.
This one has a happy ending; when nyj, a senior staffer (and an honest one at that) found out that her continued complaints about this were related to the failure of anyone at CF to actually acknowledge that these actions were wrong and harmful, he apologized. He acknowledged that the actions were wrong, and that they should not have happened, and that he would do his best to ensure that they did not happen in the future.
So, although it took a couple of years, during some of which time an especially devout woman was too hurt by Christians to feel comfortable claiming the title "Christian", it was eventually resolved.
But... Were any of the people involved actually apologetic? No. The only people who apologized were the people who weren't involved. This tells you a lot.
CF has always had a problem with people too proud to admit that they've ever made a mistake.
More to come!
It's funny to imagine that this was the good old days. (And given how far back it is, and that no one realized back then how crucial it was to save everything in case it got deleted, I may have some subtle errors. Feel free to submit corrections, ideally with documentation. Alleged corrections submitted without supporting evidence will be remarked on, but not necessarily accepted as truth.) Throughout this article, there's some references to "Erwin" -- that's Erwin Loh, founder of "Loh Enterprises", which is the company that actually owns CF legally. Erwin is an Australian member of a Willow Creek church. His management of CF is often influenced by his lack of involvement with a lot of American politics.
In 2002, when I first signed up, ChristianForums was a very odd bulletin board, with a lot of weird features tacked on. The forum was fairly loosely policed, but there was some policing. Users were asked to enter various profile information, such as gender, or marital status, but there was very little enforcement. There were some forums identified as "for Christians only", with the understanding that this was understood to mean acceptance of the Nicene Creed. Users accumulated "blessings", which could be given to other users, or used to buy items from a selection of "armor of God", which were tiny icons that would show up by your account when you posted. Blessings were originally handed out by staff, but eventually Erwin added a feature where you got blessings for posting or starting threads.
The forum was run by moderators, who were picked from the user base primarily based on perceived devotion to Christian ideals, and on whether or not they were believed to make good moderators. The selection process was a bit ambiguous. There was a staff hierarchy, running from moderators to senior moderators, administrators, and senior administrators. Erwin had absolute authority, but in practice, a huge number of decisions were made by a user who went by "AngelAmidala"; AngelAmidala was originally just a Senior Administrator, but was later assigned the unique title "Senator".
One of the then-staff, who posted under the name LouisBooth, deleted a post of mine on the grounds that a particular forum was only for Christians, and he personally didn't feel I was Christian. Not much came of this at the time, but I do have some saved messages from around that period. One staffer wrote me, out of the blue, to ask whether I accepted the Nicene Creed. (Back in 2002, there were no footnotes or modifications to the Creed.) I received the following very interesting message:
Thank you seebs! Just bear in mind your posts will be watched to see if you will post in contradiction of your claim.But you must know I encourage free thought and if you feel these beliefs do not reflect your own in the future or whatever then that is your choice and there are plenty of forums for you to debate in! So don't feel obligated to please anyone.
Now, you might take this as a sort of threatening thing, but it's not really anything like the modern efforts. Still, it was interesting.
In 2002, there was a section called "Congregation" which contained a couple of discussion forums; one for Catholics, and one for Protestant, Reformed, and Evangelical Christians. This was, frankly, one of the most impressive things about ChristianForums. In a world where some bulletin boards have emoticons like "smiley face puking on consecrated Host", it was interesting to see a predominately Protestant board that was generally willing to accept Catholics.
That said, even back then, some of the early signs of trouble were in the air. Threads on homosexuality often got closed by staff for being long and disruptive, and some staff members had a pronounced tendency to edit posts they didn't like.
Back in 2002, there was a rule against "questioning" moderator decisions in-thread. For instance, if a moderator posted stating that a given topic should not be pursued in a particular thread, you weren't allowed to argue with the moderator in that thread, although you could start discussions of that in the support forums.
From the beginning of the forum, staff were encouraged to maintain separate accounts to debate with, so their moderating would be viewed as separate from their posting habits. This is, of course, inherently deceptive, but it highlights an early policy decision of CF: Favor the appearance of justice over the practice. Rather than trying to confront the inevitable reality of bias, try to hide any evidence.
2003 is a hard time to write about, because of the Great Crash. Due to a large and nasty series of hardware and software problems, a few months of forum records were permanently lost. Posts from this period are simply gone, except in the rare case where someone happens to have saved some.
I have one example thread from this period. The original thread is long gone, but this summarizes the reasons for which many people viewed LouisBooth as a problematic administrator; the account "Outspoken" was his sock puppet:
The interesting stuff starts at post #32 (in 43508-4.html), where I point out that many Orthodox Jews believe in reincarnation. Outspoken (aka LouisBooth) then goes absolutely nuts. It's a wonder to behold. Note that, while LouisBooth often had a reputation for fairness, this did not survive once people noticed that Outspoken tended to bait and troll (this thread is fairly typical), so that other staff, or even LouisBooth, could warn and ban the people he picked fights with. A public comment linking Outspoken to LouisBooth was attacked by staff on the grounds that revealing staff sock puppet names was considered problematic.
One of the biggest events of 2003 was the "no promotion of sin" rule. This rule stated, in essence, that it was forbidden to "promote sin" in the Christians-only forums of CF. There were a number of examples offered, every last one of them having to do with modern American sexual morality. Other things (such as usury, or violence) were not covered. The rule was very broad, and it was used very badly. Users who were perceived to be violating the rules were in some cases told that they were no longer allowed to post in the Christians-only section. One girl, who was sleeping with her boyfriend, tearfully begged and pleaded that she'd shut up, she'd never mention her personal life again, if only she could be Christian again, because she'd just converted a couple of weeks earlier.
After much fuss, the rule was turned into a don't-ask-don't-tell policy; if you didn't specifically mention premarital or extramarital sex, you were okay, as long as you didn't bring it up. At this point, Erwin made an interesting policy ruling. "Marriage" had to be a legal marriage between a man and a woman. In the specific case of, say, missionaries in a country that does not recognize Christian marriages, they would be prohibited from stating that they felt it was morally acceptable for them to have sex, because that would be promoting premarital sex.
After the Great Crash, a whole lot of features which had gradually accumulated on the site were removed; the software modifications in question were gone, and the board became a lot simpler. Briefly. Erwin loves hacking on the vBulletin code, and his bulletin board is constantly acquiring innovative new features.
One feature which began to be more prominent over time is the Warning system. (vBulletin now has a similar feature built in, but at the time, it was a local hack.) Warnings were issued by staff for alleged violations of forum rules. Users who accumulated 7 warnings were banned. Additional rules were added, such as a rule stating that a user who received three warnings in one week would receive a permanent ban. Staff also handed out "unofficial warnings", which did not count for a ban, and were in effect warnings that you might be about to receive a warning. Warnings were tracked on a user's account, and for quite a while, staff would see, in any user's posts, a big red number indicating how many warnings the user had received, if the user had any warnings. (This was eventually removed on the grounds that it seemed to make users into targets. Duh.)
So, that's some of the backdrop. Up next, some of the wild and crazy stories of the 2003 era, in which we find out just how "moderation" is handled.
So, ChristianForums. It's this site I spent a lot of time at for a bit over four and a half years.
It proudly claims to be the largest Christian forum in the world. It is certainly one of the largest forums primarily aimed at Christians.
Throughout the history of CF, there have been things done which were questionable. Recently the forum's owner, Erwin Loh, handed control over the forum's policy to a group of "ordained" people. Well, sort of. One of them's a Catholic Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion (EMHC), which means he's allowed to hand people blessed wafers; it is not any kind of ordination. One of them runs a tiny little church with very unusual doctrine. One is apparently some variety of Baptist. One is in the Salvation Army.
Well, the thing is, someone sent me a copy of a thread in which the Baptist was gossipping about whether or not my spouse had sex reassignment surgery -- and I saw him publically pretending ignorance of the question a day or so after that.
Now, it's not that this is new. It's that this is just part of a long, long, series of events, most of which have been cleverly hidden or kept secret, that make me feel that it's about time that the truth come out about ChristianForums.
As time allows, I'll be passing on some of the stories. Now, by "stories", I don't just mean things someone told me; in many cases, I mean things where I have copies of the discussion, multiple witnesses, and so on.
Because the fact is, the site's been handed to people some of whom are big on claiming a moral high ground that they haven't even looked at, and I think that's hurting a lot of innocents who come to the site thinking they've found a place for Christians to hang out.
We have it all. Someone getting fired and accused of sexual harassment based on the claims of someone who was mad at him for not reacting positively to her nudie pictures. Gossip, systematic abuses, and open lies. Staff ordered to tell lies to keep other staff from finding out what happened. Claims of divine authority.
It's all crazy, and it's all happening right here on the internet.
A lot of people have asked why I spent so much time trying to fix the problems of CF. The answer is, Christianity has a long tradition of believing in redemption. We're supposed to get involved, to care, and to try to redeem things if they can be redeemed. That's why people don't always just go elsewhere when they aren't happy; because they think it's worth fixing. In its prime, ChristianForums was, really, better than many of the competing forums. Unlike nearly every other Christian site out there, CF tried to make room for Catholics [b]and[/b] Protestants, and in general, to welcome anyone who could accept at least most of the Nicene Creed.
Anyway, it'll take time to come up with some of the material, but rest assured, there's plenty of it.
When I was a kid, when I was really sick, there was no help for it but to pick up a 4-pack of "Jamaican Olde Tyme" ginger beer. Good ginger beer is something special; it's sweet, but also genuinely spicy -- spicy enough that you find yourself wanting a cold drink to wash it down with, sometimes. Unfortunately, so far as I can tell, the product is long gone.
Our roommate, Rain, is one of those astoundingly thoughtful people. If you mention, in passing, that you've been looking for something, she will somehow find it. I don't know how. She managed to get me a copy of Whipping Star, which is one of my all-time favorite novels of any sort. It's one of Frank Herbert's best novels; it's better, IMHO, than the best of the Dune series. That may not sound impressive, but it's been out of print forever, and it's one of the books I've spent the longest looking for. The other record-holder in that category was The Dosadi Experiment, which is actually sort of a sequel to Whipping Star; one of the tragedies of the success of Dune is that Herbert's other material is not getting as many reprints as it needs.
Anyway, back to the ginger beer. Having heard my lament of not being able to find anything quite like this ginger beer, Rain apparently started noticing and remembering ginger ales and ginger beers. And, a while back, she stumbled across a very interesting ginger ale, which was hot and spicy. (This is a bit odd; normally, the ones that are stronger flavored call themselves ginger beer.) And she told me about it, and I declared that I would find some and try it out. Only, of course, I forgot.
Well, what should happen today, but a crate of it shows up. A while back, we did a couple of favors for Rain's family, and apparently her mom decided that this merited the delivery of 24 bottles of absolutely excellent ginger ale, with a very touching note.
I'm not sure why this makes me so happy; it just does. It's not that I could never have afforded ginger ale on my own, or anything. It's not that the favors we did them were undertaken in the hopes of obtaining flavored fizzy water. It's just... No warning, no explanation. BAM! Ginger ale.
And man, oh man, is it good.
A bit of effort at google turned this page up:
And yes, it really is that spicy. If you would not put a full teaspoon of cayenne pepper on a plate of pasta, it may be a bit much.
Mmm. Ginger ale.
Anyway, thanks, Jenine. Very much appreciated.