Hello, is anybody home?

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Just wanted to say hello … I was mostly active in the prayer forum … in the later days of the forum there was some nastiness … hope it doesn’t come back when you open up again.
 
Katherine438 said:
in the later days of the forum there was some nastiness … hope it doesn’t come back when you open up again.
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I am firmly committed to having a civil forum and stamping out any nastiness or ad hominem attacks. I’ll ask for the community’s help with that by flagging these sorts of posts.
HomeschoolDad said:
Are we live yet? Or is CAF 2.0 in a kind of “beta” mode?
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I apologize for the delay in getting going. I have run into some family and personal issues over the past few weeks that have taken me away from putting the final touches on the technical side of the forum. I am back to working on that this week and I will provide an update by the end of this week.

People are free to post; it’s just that emails are not yet turned on and the community is not very large.
 
Katherine438 said:
in the later days of the forum there was some nastiness … hope it doesn’t come back when you open up again.
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@Katherine438, I’ve been thinking about the comment you made, and I decided to do a little research. Normally, a little over 1% of posts are flagged by users as being inappropriate, spam, etc. In the last month of the forum, that doubled to a little over 2%, so I can imagine that it was a palpably worse community in that last month.

I’m reading all the posts in December 2020 that were flagged (not specific to the prayer forum). I’m about 20% done, but what I’ve noticed thus far is that the ones that seem most egregious frequently had one thing in common: the word “you”. Here are some actual quotes, in no particular order:
  1. “Perhaps … you can…”
  2. “It is your integrity, not mine”
  3. “you probably don’t know…”
  4. “You have not thought this out”
  5. “You seriously need to…”
  6. “Then maybe you shouldn’t…”
  7. “you could not be more wrong”
  8. “You seem to have a…”
  9. “Why in the world would you come to such a conclusion”
  10. “you don’t care”
  11. “Your logic is flawed”
  12. “Strange that you should…”
  13. “I know you would like to…”
  14. “Hard to wrap your head around, huh?”
  15. “Yes, you keep repeating that.”
  16. “are you aware of how often you…”
  17. “You might consider taking [your words] back”
  18. “Shame on you.”
  19. “Of course you think that; no big surprise”
  20. “You’re being ridiculous”
  21. “Guess you didn’t get the memo”
  22. “Apparently you haven’t been paying attention”
  23. “You are being naive”
  24. “If you think everything is…”
Is this getting at the heart of what you were talking about, or are there other kinds of nastiness that I’m missing? (Being a software engineer, I thrive on specific examples.)
 
From what I could gather towards the end, it was the moderators gone mad that was a bigger problem. On the very last day, I learned that one of the members who continually featured in my responses being flagged… was actually a moderator! This to me is a massive conflict of interest. Members who double as moderators need to be transparent.
 
Yeah, that makes sense. Moderators need to be impartial and transparent. And at the very least, they should be very careful about participating in the conversation.

As a side note, many of the posts that were flagged seemed to be a situation where someone disagreed with the post (similar to the concept of “downvoting” something), rather than the post breaking the community guidelines.
 
Just a quick update about the progress of getting this forum back up. I have been dealing with some personal issues and haven’t had the time to devote to the project this week. I am very optimistic that I’ll get it done next week. I do apologize for the delay.
 
I’m unaware of any CAF users also being mods after the switch to Discourse. There were named, visible mods prior to that and everyone knew who they were. I have seen posts on other forums claiming that I myself was a CAF mod or had some inside connection to CAF, both of which were 100 percent untrue. I was never a mod, never worked for CAF or CA in any capacity, and was suspended and sent warnings like everybody else. If such bogus claims have been made about me, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have also been made about others.

I would strongly suggest that your mods and admins have a named online presence with the moderator badge. I know Discourse allows this and it would be an improvement over the anonymous, faceless mods that CAF had under Discourse, which fostered mistrust, among other things.
 
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Thank you to everyone for your prayers and well wishes. FYI, I’ve created a separate thread requesting your prayers.

I really enjoy working on this forum; it’s fun, challenging, and yes, sometimes a bit stressful. But it’s good, healthy therapy for me as I re-train my brain to handle stress in a productive manner. I’m going to take it easy for the next few weeks. I’ll provide an update before Thanksgiving.
 
I hope we can get this up and running soon, with as large a membership as possible, to re-create the best traditions and best features of CAF, and insofar as it is possible after almost a year’s lapse, to pick up where we left off.

I never had an issue with the lively and sometimes passionate discussion, and up to a point, I even viewed the dissidents and malcontents as a necessary evil. Arriving at the truth can sometimes be a messy proposition. I suppose I come from a time and place where, in my university education, classmates could disagree, sometimes vociferously and vehemently, yet still maintain respect for each other, and often build lasting friendships even if they were polar opposites in ideology. Now, it seems like everyone seeks out “safe spaces” where their assumptions will never be challenged. That’s no way to live.

I hope we can get this show on the road, sooner rather than later.
 
I came here from a link your forum Bear, but I think I prefer it over there still. I will check back here now and again and see what’s happening but at the moment it is kind of hard to navigate with so many closed threads.
 
Just wanted to note that I’ve now disabled that link on my forum which was posted by someone else, as we have a policy of not linking to any outside forums, or at minimum not to any specific threads.

Offering prayers for the admin and family to receive God’s help and grace in dealing with their issues.
 
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I really hope more people return here and we can start up some good threads again.

The other forum created by Bear is a bit too dictatorial at times. Just rule after rule. Sorry Bear, but I think you have a bit of a power issue. Hopefully this one will offer a bit more freedom of opinion, and it might be the only one i post in soon if I get banned from the other one.
 
Looks like a shell of it’s former self.

Perhaps others will notice the lights on and come back.
 
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