What has happened to Catholic Answers Forum?

  • Thread starter Thread starter bmaz
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
bmaz said:
I haven’t been here since they changed the format of the site, don’t know how long it has been, maybe a year. I’m having trouble adjusting to the site. I’ve also noticed a difference in the tone people take with each other. People used to be nicer, wow, I’m a bit shocked. Also, there seems to be more people posting who are very liberal in their thinking in regards to the Church. I’m a bit shocked at some of the responses people give. Is it just me, or have I just been away too long?
Click to expand...
What has happened to Catholic Answers Forum?

It was me. It changed because i willed it to with my mind. The world revolves around what i want. It’s all about me. I’m the main character in the story. Everybody else is the supporting cast.

Why can’t you accept that?
 
Last edited:
IWantGod said:
he world revolves around what i want.
Click to expand...
Not too far off the mark. Less inclination to a rational discussion, mor of the I’m right and your are evil. It goes far beyond the right / wrong dialog.
 
IWantGod said:
It was me. It changed because i willed it to with my mind.
Click to expand...
Okay, thanks for revealing that. Can I (or we, if I can speak for certain others) ask you to “will” it to be slightly more friendly, slightly less combative? No need to “will” anybody off the forum, just “will” everyone to be a little less eager to voice dissent, and to be a little more content to stick to threads where they are at home.

Thanks 🙂
 
margaret42 said:
What was the old forum like. i joined this group in March
Click to expand...
For starters it looked totally different. It was using somewhat old website technology, while this new forum is using “state-of-the-art” web technology. Which you like best probably depends mostly on what you’re used to, and maybe on how old you are. Avid users of mobile phones and tablets will probably feel right at home on the forum as it is now. Old-schoolers like me and some others preferred the “classic” look and feel. There were also some things you could do on the old forum that you cannot on this (the new) one; and the other way around too.

Second, as me and some others have reported, the atmosphere was a bit different.

Third, it seems the forum has a lot more users now, and therefore a lot more new threads and new posts per day.
 
Hi R,wereyou onthe old CAF ? It says you joined this year 🤔
I tried to ‘like’ your post back a bit further ,but had ran out.
 
bmaz said:
I haven’t been here since they changed the format of the site, don’t know how long it has been, maybe a year. I’m having trouble adjusting to the site. I’ve also noticed a difference in the tone people take with each other. People used to be nicer, wow, I’m a bit shocked. Also, there seems to be more people posting who are very liberal in their thinking in regards to the Church. I’m a bit shocked at some of the responses people give. Is it just me, or have I just been away too long?
Click to expand...
We no longer have the full-time moderators being vigilant about removing threads, posts and people who cross lines, so the tone has become less civil because of lack of enforcement. We can flag people who cross the line, but it takes a number of flags before their posts are hidden, a number of hours or even days before flagged stuff is removed (if indeed it is), and the flagged person will often flag others in retaliation, which can discourage people from flagging because they don’t want to get a flag in return.

As for “liberal comments”, some of the people who post here regularly are very clearly not Catholics and their posts reflect that, but setting them aside, I didn’t realize CAF was supposed to be a conservative or trad forum. I see people from all across the spectrum here, from very traditional to pretty liberal, and to me that just reflects the diversity of the Church.
 
Last edited:
Hi Greenfields, not sure if you’re addressing me, because your post doesn’t indicate who you’re replying to. But, there are only two "R"s in this thread, me and @Reuben_J. He joined in '05 (wow!), I joined in '14. When I click on my own profile pic, it displays correctly, so I’m not sure why it shows up differently for you. So in any case, yes, I was on the old forum.
 
Oh,sorry 🙂 I must have read it wrong in the beginning.
I can’t even remember what the site was like before last August as I wasn’t on very much.
 
margaret42 said:
Just from hearing you, it sounds like the old forum is worth looking into. I too am an “old-schooler”-60. Is there a way to find it?
Click to expand...
Well, the old forum is gone in the sense that the old website no longer exists. The new forum (this one) has replaced it, so in that sense you can’t go on the old forum and have discussions there anymore.

However, all the posts and threads that were on the old forum have been moved to this forum as “read-only” threads. So in theory you should be able to find all the old stuff if you want to take a look at it. One way of doing that would be to pick any user that was on the old site, load his/her profile page, and click/tap on the “Activity” field and then on the “Topics” button. That would show you a list in reverse chronological order of his/her threads. If you scroll down enough, you will start seeing that user’s threads from before the forum changed from the old to the new. They look different because they are all locked and are “greyed out”. By clicking on one of those old threads, you can read what was posted back then, but you can’t reply to anything anymore.
 
Well one reference for me is the fact that on the old CAF articles from news sources such as Lifesite and Church Militant were banned yet articles from America, Crux and even the national cafeteria reporter were allowed.
 
It has changed a lot. I have been here nine years. When the new format was introduced, I left. I came back on account of a thread on adoration that I happened to see on one of the rare occasions that I checked to see how CAF was doing.

Too much nastiness and fighting among Catholics. There’s probably a lot of trolls here, especially in the political section which I avoid because it’s more of the same - nothing the right does is good and the left can do no wrong. Ever.

We ought to be leading the way in peace and harmony instead of feeding into the divisions and nastiness and hatred and vitriol. Unfortunately, due to our original sin nature, this is hard for us to do.
 
Last edited:
The look of the forum changed, but all the content is still here (except for a couple of categories that did not get transitioned over). Here is what it used to look like:

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

Along with the change in platform came a change in moderation. Whereas before, the moderators were more numerous, they were also “contracted out” to different people all over the place. Now, there are fewer moderators, but they are “in house” at Catholic Answers.

Posts still get deleted, threads still get pulled, and people still get banned. It just doesn’t always happen as quickly as we remember it.

Honestly, though, I feel that such changes in tone started long before the transition. I don’t know that we can blame the new format for that.

I still miss a lot of the drama mostly because I avoid topics that get too heated. If I see people bickering back and forth, I just enter “skim mode” and move on.
 
It’s probably why the forum doesn’t seem so bad to me. When I see bad posts, I skim past them and it doesn’t move from short-term to long-term memory. 😁
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top