Who can remember the old forum?

[dochawk]

• The relatively unobtrusive moderation is an improvement, in my view.

I fled the old forum in discuss multiple times.

The critical change in moderation that has let me stay is that the talking down to EC and explaining why we’re wrong about our own Tradition, and that it doesn’t mean what we teach it means, as well as the insisting that we are. only free to explain western notions in eastern terms as opposed to having our own, is no longer tolerated.

hmm, that wasn’t meant to be a run-on, but . . .

oh, and someone collected the old emojis:
[Album] CAF Smilies
you can cut and paste them.

 

[Cruciferi]

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My personal favorite

 

[Irishmom2]

This is the one I miss the most.

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[Adairio]

There were these altar boys who could genuflect…! And I think do the sign of the cross too…

I say "them’ because I always used them in pairs.

Now I have no idea what I’m doing… LOL.

 

[Bixx]

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[MarysLurker]

On a technical level, Discourse is much better than vBulletin (the software used by old CAF). The biggest benefit is that Discourse is a modern open source product, which makes it much more secure against hacking. Catholic Answers has often been targeted by hackers, and having modern, up to date software is the first defense against such attacks.

However, I have noticed a huge decline in the number of active users versus old CAF. The forum statistics show that there are still thousands of users a month, but that doesn’t reflect in the activity. They are likely bots and not real people. Sometimes I wonder if the number of people who will read what we post will never exceed the number of fingers that we have.

I don’t think this is because of the Discourse switch. I think that CAF is a microcosm of the state of the Church. There are not very many “interested users” left. I think I need to concentrate on making sure my kids will be among them.