What other forums on the Internet are similar to CAF?

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Tis_Bearself said:
somebody is either telling me I’m going to Hell for being a Democrat,
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Well, I suppose I shall have to get both of us a pitcher of ice water, because I’ve been forced into a “shotgun marriage” of sorts with the Democrats, as my state doesn’t like people crossing over and voting in somebody else’s primary. My overall political sympathies are far more in line with the Democrats, but I vote pro-life, ergo Republican, and generally refuse to support Democratic candidates unless they are in positions (such as county sheriff) that have no relation to life issues. I seek to push the donkey party as close to the pro-life position as I can — this year, that meant voting for Tulsi Gabbard in the primaries (best of a bad lot). I get the feeling of being both a DINO and a RINO at the same time, which is truly schizophrenic if ever there were such a thing.

Nobody’s told me I’m going to hell yet (not over that issue, anyway). I won’t be surprised when it happens. I am no stranger to being verbally attacked, doesn’t faze me a bit.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
what other forums, accessible to lay Catholics and supportive of the magisterium of the Church, are there on the internet, so that those of us who have found a “place” here, could continue the work we do here?
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While my top piece of advice would be for someone here to start their own Discord forum (apparently it’s free, and it has a sort of equivalent to threads (‘rooms’ or something, I think), and enables admin and moderators…

I am aware of an already existing Discord forum, that you can find in the sidebar of Reddit’s Catholicism page. Let me see if I can find the link or be more specific…


Does that link direct you to a Discord page that says “balgorath has invited you to join r/Catholicism”? (I assume ‘balgorath’ is one of their admins.)

If not, there’s a sidebar on the right hand of this page, and you can find the link to the Discord server under ‘Official Community Groups’:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/

I’ve looked around inside and there are admins, mods, and priests identified as such (who apparently have to prove themselves to be priests before they’re allowed to have that label).

As far as community “flavour” and whether it meets a need a particular person has, I’d have to leave that to each individual to decide for themselves.
 
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MNathaniel said:
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HomeschoolDad:
what other forums, accessible to lay Catholics and supportive of the magisterium of the Church, are there on the internet, so that those of us who have found a “place” here, could continue the work we do here?
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While my top piece of advice would be for someone here to start their own Discord forum (apparently it’s free, and it has a sort of equivalent to threads (‘rooms’ or something, I think), and enables admin and moderators…

I am aware of an already existing Discord forum, that you can find in the sidebar of Reddit’s Catholicism page. Let me see if I can find the link or be more specific…
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But can’t forums such as Discord and Reddit pull the plug at will?

Might be better to go with something free-standing. As I said above, I’d like to see something started de novo, but I haven’t the time or resources. Anybody want to “stand in the gap”?
 
RhodesianSon said:
Why is caf going away?
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Read the letter:
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CA Forums Shutting Down Patrons
A message from the President of Catholic Answers Dear Members and Patrons of the Catholic Answers Forums, On Thursday December 31 at 5pm PT, Catholic Answers will close the Catholic Answers Forums (CAF). I have made the decision to close the CAF after lengthy consultation with the Catholic Answers executive committee and board of trustees. Because Catholic Answers has limited resources, we are always evaluating our programs to determine if they provide a good return on investment. I understan…
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HomeschoolDad said:
well, you’ll get in bed an hour earlier at night, and you’ll get back at least ten hours a week,
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Only 10 hours a week? My you are disciplined.

Oh we of little life, and what little there is has been pandemiqued into nothingness and with a wife absent on the Wet Coast for 3 months on a family matter… I’d be afraid to count my hours on here, especially since the, ummm, recent political events in our great neighbour to the south. Especially since the cycling season is slowing down. Though on the last point, my son, a bike shop owner, scored a set of studded snow tires for my old beater mountain bike. I tested them on snow and ice yesterday and they worked great until my feet froze. There’ll be no Gran Fondos this winter… but I digress
MNathaniel said:
my advice would be to make sure it’s a trusted person from CAF (or better yet, multiple) who set up their own forum (e.g. on Discord) as admins,
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It was in fact a former CAF member that set it up. I forget his username here. It’s Professor Q over there. He was banned on CAF for I forget which reasons, but he’s is (was?) OK. He’s from India.

The main worry for me, is that he’s been inactive… probably largely because his board has since CAF migrated, and the board might not have enough capacity to manage the traffic of lost CAF sheep. I guess it depends what plan he has with ProBoards. Hopefully he’ll awake from Sleep Mode when he sees traffic picking up.

If it doesn’t pan out maybe we could create a CAF-Refugees board on some other commercial platform that already exists (Reddit, etc… I’m no fan of it… and I don’t do Faceplant…)
 
HomeschoolDad said:
Might be better to go with something free-standing. As I said above, I’d like to see something started de novo , but I haven’t the time or resources. Anybody want to “stand in the gap”?
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I also don’t think these other forums that are being mentioned are going to work. CAF was the most popular Catholic forum for a reason. It’s going to be difficult for another already existing forum to fill those shoes. I don’t think it’s possible.

Like you said, someone from the existing CAF is going to have to replicate what people find here. I don’t see why any other platform other than the currently used Discourse platform would be better. CA already vetted it, and it works well, though there are many opinions about how it could be better.
 
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I think at this point people just want a forum to fellowship with other friendly Catholics they already know.

We don’t need a forum that draws dozens of scrupulous teens and M-threads (either one of the M’s). Just a friendly place to hang out.
 
HomeschoolDad said:
But can’t forums such as Discord and Reddit pull the plug at will?

Might be better to go with something free-standing. As I said above, I’d like to see something started de novo , but I haven’t the time or resources. Anybody want to “stand in the gap”?
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Perhaps, but in the meantime, my impression is that the Discord forum might actually be a decent landing spot. So far as I know, Discord isn’t inclined towards random plug-pulling, and the mods on that server (including priests) have pretty strictly enforced rules about civility etc, so I honestly think it’s unlikely they’d have their plug pulled.

Here’s a screenshot of the ‘forum rules’ on that Discord server (and I edited my earlier post to give the link to it if you’d like to check it out):

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

The mods really do enforce those rules, too. It’s pretty satisfying to watch.

Again though, this pre-existing Discord group may not meet all the particular desires of a CAF-expat. Someone wanting to recreate more of a CAF experience might want to create their own (apparently free) Discord group, then set up or categorize ‘rooms’ differently. But maybe check this site out first before going to that trouble.

PS you’re allowed to disagree that hot dogs are sandwiches. (That most contentious of all topics debated there.)
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
You can also try the trial Discourse forum (see the thread at the other place).
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Ok, just signed up for it. We’ll see which one works out best. I was around when Catholic Common Sense was created by an ex-CAF member, a number of us were shall we say “founding members” including pianistclare and a few other names you’ll recognize. I think it was on the up-and-up, but it may have been left to its own devices since. There was another forum I explored back then; I forget the name but Michael Francis, one of the moderators from CAF v1.0, migrated over to it when CAF sacked most of the moderators when it migrated to Discourse.
 
Well that’s what is mystifying to most of the regular users here…CA can make the Discourse platform perform however they want it to. I don’t know Why they didn’t make the necessary modifications to not allow impulsive posts, or excessive political threads.

They didn’t seem to listen to the suggestions that IMO could have made the forum a place for civil discourse.
 
1Lord1Faith said:
They didn’t seem to listen to the suggestions that IMO could have made the forum a place for civil discourse.
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Before things migrated to the new platform, there were very active and very involved moderators who really helped at keeping things civil, Most of them were sacked because the new platform, with flagging, etc., was supposed to take over a good chunk of that workload.

You can see how well that worked out…

Maybe we need public shaming and shunning…
 
I’ll check out Catholic Common Sense and sign up for it tonight, I bet they could use a dolphin too!
 
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OraLabora said:
You can see how well that worked out…
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There is a level 4 on this platform. No users were ever moved to it so there was no way the moderator(s) that are here we’re going to keep up with everything.

I don’t think CA wanted users to be involved in moderation in any meaningful way. Discourse platform was a good try for what CA wanted but it didn’t work.

With everyone already leaving, and trolls smelling blood in the water, I won’t be surprised if this place is shuddered in a week.
 
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1Lord1Faith said:
With everyone already leaving, and trolls smelling blood in the water, I won’t be surprised if this place is shuddered in a week.
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That “let’s all get banned” post on the Patrons forum had better be just a bad joke. It is in very poor taste. Hopefully you are not right about this.

I’ve said before that CAF is a microcosm of the future of the Church. It looks like that is coming to pass. Now we have the parish closures which will leave behind a smaller, faithful remnant (on other fora) a la Benedict XVI’s prophecy.
 
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