What is the purpose of Freethought Forum?

[ShottleBop]

Originally Posted by -FX-

Not for those of us who are still doing it.

You mean, "trolls"?

[democracy]

Hmmm

[-FX-]

Originally Posted by democracy

Hmmm

Introducing the Freethought Forum - Freethought Forum

The founders and current administrators of the Freethought Forum (livius drusus and viscousmemories) met in January, 2003 on the Secular Web's "Internet Infidels Discussion Board" (IIDB). Viscousmemories had registered a year prior, but did not really dive in until January. At that time livius was a long-time member and former moderator at IIDB.

Back then IIDB had a couple of private, hidden forums for avowed non-theists only called the Freethinkers Private Forums (FPF's). Unfortunately there was a fair amount of interpersonal turmoil in those fora, which was more of a burden than the administration wanted, and ultimately resulted in their being shut down.

In the interest of providing the members of the community that had developed there a new private forum - and to satisfy my lust for power and control - I created one in May, 2003. I enlisted livius, who by then had resumed the role of moderator at IIDB, to be my co-administrator. And with a nod to the old FPF's we called it the Freethinkers Forum.

The Freethinkers Forum was largely successful, but by the fall of 2003 livius and I realized we were unhappy with it. We had hopes that it would grow beyond being a purely social forum, and that more serious discussions and debates would take place. But moreover, we began to question the value, to us, of running a private forum which excludes people on ideological grounds.

So, after a few days of extensive and sometimes heated discussion with the membership, we decided to resign our positions there and start a new Freethinkers Forum. When we resigned we turned control of the forum over to a couple of members there, Godot and Christ-on-a-stick, and they changed the name to Godless Heathens. When COAS resigned a couple months ago, the site underwent yet another name change to its current name, Heathen Hangout.

At the same time COAS resigned the HH technical administrator, NobleSavage, stepped down as well. I then offered to step in as technical administrator to implement a number of improvements to the forum software, but with the exception of the occasional thread lock or split I remained officially uninvolved in the politics of running the forum. I resigned my technical admin role last week, shortly after opening this new forum.

At some point during the planning of this site, during a focus group we had on the subject, we established that labels are too hard to define, and often inadequate. So rather than have a name for the forum that implies identification with a particular label "freethinker", we opted to create an environment we hope is more conducive to what exactly we are looking for, "freethought".

And so the Freethought Forum was born.

[democracy]

Seebs seems to object to the words "automated moderation." The nifty thing about drafting a constitution is that we can revise it as we discuss it. So I deleted those words as I had some reservations about that myself.

Article 2. Purpose
The purpose of Freethought Forum is to provide a free speech area for public use.

The following belongs to the Bylaws, I think.
1a) The administrators and/or mods shall not remove, edit or delete posts, nor delete threads, nor ban users, without the consent of a majority of the active elected membership.

Another simpler way to express this is simply
1a) The administrators and/or mods shall not log into the ACP without the consent of a majority of the active elected membership.

The problem is that it seems too restrictive. Adms have routine maintenance tasks. These can be authorized by the majority of a quorum of the active elected membership. In the case of 10 members, 4 could authorize routine tasks. What we want is the tighter controls over administrative actions against human beings and laxer controls concerning routine tasks. Two clauses should cover the main concerns.

So, there is a lot to discuss here. How do we define an active elected member? In this plan nothing will change for you. If you do not want be an elected member, you can continue posting as a guest. The difference is that we can qualify members by election in accordance with the purpose. With this system only an active elected member shall have a right to vote, because we cannot allow people who are not working for the purpose to degrade the integrity of the purpose. A guest who is posting against the whole idea of free speech can do so but will not be assigned any portion in the voting bloc which regulates acts of speech and censorship.

Election is an act of positive moderation. From the moment a guest arrives we can begin to integrate them into community, if they choose to be a part of the program, with a view to the purpose. The programs I will be introducing here will allow a guest to voluntarily take on moderation duties in their very first posts, if they choose to participate.

It is a system and all systems can be gamed. So you might want to sign up for new sock puppet accounts and demonstrate the holes in the system so we can perfect it. Think of discussion and administration as a game. We are simply changing the rules of the game which will make it a lot of fun to play. Expect a lot of stumbling around and poor coordination. If we can go through this system multiple times, each time we will become better coordinated.

This opens some possibilities for training elected members to become elected officers. We want people at the ACP who are fully trained by the active elected membership to properly represent the will of the membership.

ANY QUESTIONS?
How will your next post help us to administer our common purpose?
What can we do today to increase the free speech here at FF?

[-FX-]

Fire, and lots of it

[viscousmemories]

The "Freethought Forum" is in fact not a democratic institution, it is a software application installed on a virtual private server (VPS) on the Internet, which (along with the freethought-forum.com and freethought-forum.org domain names used to access it) are legally registered to me.

The purpose of this forum, therefore, is entirely mine to decide and is documented here.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Further to that, anyone who wants their fully under their control freeze peach can host their own blog.

[LarsMac]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

The "Freethought Forum" is in fact not a democratic institution, it is a software application installed on a virtual private server (VPS) on the Internet, which (along with the freethought-forum.com and freethought-forum.org domain names used to access it) are legally registered to me.

The purpose of this forum, therefore, is entirely mine to decide and is documented here.

There ya go. Capitalism RULES. ..., sorta.

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Originally Posted by LarsMac

There ya go. Capitalism RULES. ..., sorta.

Thinking of it as a city state run by a philosopher king.

[LarsMac]

There's the problem with the world, right there, ya know.

Why does everybody gotta have a purpose?
Me, I'd rather have a dolphin.

[democracy]

Freethought Forum - Powered by vBulletin

1. Freedom of thought
2. Freedom of expression
3. Community
4. Self-determination

Article 2. Purpose REVISED
Freethought Forum is a self-determined free speech community.

[Stephen Maturin]

As an Active Elected Member of the Freethought Talk Forum, I propose suspending democracy's posting privileges unless and until he submits satisfactory proof that he's completed a remedial reading course. At that point we can discuss whether he should be required to provide a written report of a SLUMS evaluation administered by a qualified professional.

[-FX-]

Originally Posted by LarsMac

Me, I'd rather have a dolphin.

Pervert

[-FX-]