Dealing with waste of time threads and their posters...

Sorry Holmes.I'm responsible for the derailing of your topic. And I don't have time to start a new topic right this minute. I'm waiting for another technician to come over and review some plans. He should be here momentarily.To the others: I think this home school topic is critical. As Truth points out, not all home schools are anti-evolution or based in fear of "ungodly" public school curricula.As Holmes points out, it may benefit home schoolers who come to this Forum if we had a section to answer their questions, and I would add, within some kind of bounds that would not immediately intimidate the kids or alienate their parents.Somebody give this whole thing a shot.Peace.

You and Ned, always the source of centered reasoning. Believe me I aspire to your guys's levelheaded commentary.To put things straight, I was only referring to the damaged kids from bad home schools or in some cases creationist schools.I personally WANT to home school my own children. Having known too many bad teachers and looking at the US's turn from teaching to indoctrination, has left me critical of the system. At the very least I would like to home school till middle or high school.Of course if I found a good school nearby, I'd be willing to rethink this position.However... home schooling has to be about learning, and not indoctrination, or its just not an education. While your homeschooling may be great (and it sounds like your little society is pretty interesting and openminded so I don't doubt it is) this is not the state of affairs in many home schools. And it is definitely not the state of affairs with those kids who have been coming here in recent months.So let me rephrase everything to make it clearer. For kids that are getting a bad science education whatever style of school they attend, perhaps we ought to have a place for them to come and learn.

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Give me the home schooler prejudiced against science, but who likes learning, over the public school kid who believes the three or four things he can remember that his science teacher told him and who only knows learning as enforced boredom.

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Okay I agree that instilling a love of learning is more important that just blurting out facts and hoping the kids memorize them properly. HOWEVER, I cannot agree that it is better that kids are prejudiced against science, yet love learning. Despite hating school I had a love of learning from outside school and thankfully was NOT prejudiced against science, so did most of my learning outside school.If I had been prejudiced against science, I might never have attempted to learn it for myself, instead learning how to put it down... and this is exactly what some of these kids have sounded like.There is false knowledge and bad ways to do science, and if kids are poisoned in this way, it really makes no difference if they like to learn or not, they will only learn what is not helpful and actively work against those trying to help.There were many very educated people throughout history swept up in the folly of hatred and ignorance of science.I'd rather have a kid bored out of his mind in school, but with a longing for real knowledge outside school walls, than eager to go to school every day and learn one view of the world over and over, and worse still gaining a hatred of learning any more than that.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Like I said, this's Holme's hate creo thread and SHOULD BE WHERE IT BELONGS IN THE FREEFORALL!!Holmes, this is just more of your false spin. You cannot document anywhere that I hate Muslims (correctly capitalized, btw) nor that I have been shown to be posting any factoids. Either prove your allegations or please stop posting them! This's is meanspirited hogwash and imo, against forum rules!

I do not hate creos Buz. I hate specific actions of specific creos.This thread is fine where it is. At the very least for suggesting a place where creo-science kids can get their answers, rather than having to have them open the exact same threads asking the exact same questions.If you have a problem with the fact that Creo-kids keep coming here asking for the same info, take it up with them and their teachers, not with me.

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You cannot document anywhere that I hate Muslims (correctly capitalized, btw) nor that I have been shown to be posting any factoids. Either prove your allegations or please stop posting them!

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I have replies waiting for responses in your hate, fear, and ignorance mongering threads. I find it interesting that you have to come here and ask me to debate you or prove my allegations in Free For All... when I already have.If you want to dispute my claims, why don't you go back to those threads (you know where they are) and reply to my posts with something other than restatements of your original premises.

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This's is meanspirited hogwash

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Prove me wrong and answer my replies, otherwise it is fairgame for me to criticize you for making false statements that badmouth others and then don't reply to counterposts.BTW, I realize you don't hate muslims buz. As you have stated quite clearly, you love every one of those fanatical amoral murderers hellbent on aiding Satan by trying to take over the world in the name of Mohammed and his pagan moon-god. Correct me if I have your position wrong... in your thread on Islam being 100% opposite of Xianity if you please.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I opened up a thread in Free for All specifically to allow you to prove me wrong by saying something nice and encouraging about Islam, Atheism, and Homosexuality.See you there, or in your own threads.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

I think most home school parents who don't have their head in the sand worry a little about their children's social development. A lot of home schoolers have few or even no close friends outside their own family. I've met a lot of home school parents who admitted the retarded social development.A wise home schooler will be part of a home school group that can help meet those needs. (Even better would be a neighborhood where the home school child can have friends s/he sees daily, but a lot of home school parents are so religious they're not open to that.)I'm under the impression our kids are pretty safe from that. A school totaling close to 100 children is small, but not smaller than what's been common in some small towns. And we do a lot of things that allow interaction with the public outside our village. I don't know that many home schoolers have the kind of options we have.

I think the home schooling part of the topic has gone far enough here.New topic for it?Adminnemooseus

I have an idea about improving new topic quality (and quality of the opening messages), cutting back on topic redundancy, and eliminating junk topics. I think this could easily be implemented.Proposal:All forums be closed to the starting of new topics, except for the "Welcome, Visitors!" forum.Instead, we have a new forum called something like "New Topic Start Forum". In this forum, members could submit proposed topics, with their proposed opening message. No replies to this proposed message would be allowed (I think this can easily be set up for an individual forum). Individual members could only have a certain number of topics in the "start bin" at one time.Then, the various administrators/moderators can consider the merits of the topic, and the quality of the proposed opening message. Suggestions could be added by edit, and the topic proposer could make needed changes. Of course, the original form of the topic may be perfectly fine, and will get fast advancement.At any point any of the admins/moderators deem proper, the topic can be moved to one of the regular forums, at which point it is open for debate.Junk topics could be moved to a new "Junk Topic" forum. There would always be the possibility of pulling them back out, if needed.Adminnemooseus

I agree.To help some of these posters that we may see as "junk" I think the suggestions thread could be enhanced a lot. I will act as editor for that if anyone wants that.I see individuals posting material to it and suggestions and I will consolidate it into one post. Improving it as we go. (it may have to be broken down into more than one if it starts to become to large).

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Common sense isn't

I am in no way suggesting you belong in a gallery of dunces holmes. However, for a long time, unregistered visitors could post there and you had guys like Wise, Syamsu and others posting pure nonesense confined to that forum. That it is less controlled than the other forums occassionally makes it more interesting and cool topics do spring up there as well. But some of the most lame brained threads also occur there...though not exclusively.

I think it's a good idea, just so long as there's also a "Free For All" type forum with unrestricted posting. But have topics close automatically/be deleted after a certain time limit/thread length.That way you can preserve a place for social atmosphere without a great drain on server space. Plus it's a useful booby hatch to throw people in without outright banning them.It would probably take an outright overhaul of the server backend. And the "New Topic Start Forum" requires the constant attention of admins to vet new topics. I'm not certain that there's enough admin attention to make that always happen.Other than that I think it's a good idea. There's just some downsides that, if not taken into account, could drastically reduce the quality if the EvC "experience", rather than enhance it.

Personally, I'm against the existance of the "Welcome, Visitors!" forum. I think that if you want to take part, you should register.As per the "Free For All" forum, I think that most of those topics could just as well be in one of the "regular" forums. Behavior is usually no worse there, than elsewhere. Even in the "FFA", we do have the policy of staying on topic.Perhaps a new version of the "FFA" could be for the unregistered, the exiled, the flamers, and the topic oblivious.Per the "New Topic Start Forum", perhaps we could manage to bring on some additional moderator status "topic review staff", who would not be burdened by any other moderator duties. One problem there, is that the system is only set up for a maximum of 4 moderators per individual forum. I don't know if Percy could do a software rewrite, to get around that problem.Besides, I think the "NTSF" format might encourage topic starters to do quality topics and opening messages. If such were done, they would promptly get moved to the active debate forums. Do a dubious topic, or poor quality opening message, and the thing might be stranded in the "NTSF" for a long time, or get bounced to the "Junk Forum".Adminnemooseus

I guess maybe what I meant was a "Misc. Topics" forum, with unrestricted topic starting but expiring threads.Mostly for topics that are of dubious intellectual value but great social interest, like "How about them Cubbies?" or "Who likes ice cream?"As frivolous as such topics are I think they form a vital part of the social flavor of the board, and I think that I am not alone in feeling that a place to discuss frivolities would be sorely missed. I fear that most of the topics that provide the social atmosphere would not likely make it past administrative review.

The recent prime example of a topic opening message, that very much needed to be pruned down, was "If evolution is wrong, is Creation right?", from MPW. I first viewed this topic when it was only 1 or 2 messages long, and it was obvious that it was destined to be a big mess. Perhaps I should have killed it right off, as it contained way too many very broad topics.

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If evolution is wrong, is Creation correct? Or is there a theory that we haven't come up with? By the way I'm new here, I'm 15 years old and a scientist. No, I don't work in a labratory. You see the definition of science is basically knowledge. More specifically knowledge gained by study, experimentation, etc. Check any dictionary. So 'scientist' can thus be defined as a person in pursuit of knowledge, thats me! So, with that said, I will ask the question this forum section discusses: Is it science? If evolution is true, everything MUST be explained by science, which is impossible. If Creation is true, God is the inventor of science and anything can be explained. So, is evolution scientific? To define "scientific" I mean something that we can observe, test, and demonstrate at any time. Evolution is divided into six groups: (you've probably heard this before, but its worth it)

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Even the newbee topic originator realized there was a problem, as he expressed in message 2:

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Sorry, I noticed after typing furiously that the topic does not match the rest of my post. Oh well, reply to either of them.

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The topic, as defined by the title, had the makings for a good topic. In hindsight, perhaps what I could have done, would be to have copied everything past the " If evolution is wrong, is Creation correct? Or is there a theory that we haven't come up with?", and copied it to a new message 3, where I would explain that it was pulled from message 1, and should be deemed "off-topic". Then I would have deleted same from message 1. A compromise of forum principles, in that I did edit the first message for content, but I also did preserved the edited out text, for public view.Had the "New Topic Start Forum" been in place, this opening message could have been refined down, before it got released to debate,Adminnemooseus

In theory, the proposal is great (RE: New Topics forum). I do see problems though.1. After a new topic is started after clearing an admin., it will suffer the same topic drift as any other thread. This will necessitate the opening of new threads, most probably in the Free For All.2. Most people will ignore the New Topics Forum and just go directly to the Free For All. They will ask themselves, "Why wait for approval when I can start a thread right now?" Also, if someone comes up with a great idea for a thread they may not want to wait. Impatience may be a "New Topic" killer.3. Creationists who may already be timid in starting new threads will feel even more intimidated by having their topics go through a review process. I think it may stifle some creationist posting, which I think is a bad thing believe it or not.Of course, I could be mad out of my gourd. Afterall, I am starting to understand Brad McFall's posts a little to well .[This message has been edited by Loudmouth, 02-04-2004]