Advanced Philosophy forum.

[Wobbly]

I remember seeing a thread about the Advanced Philosophy forum when it first popped up, but now I can't find it, so I will post here.

What happened to it?

[Obw]

Yes, please bring it back, preferably with the unfinished threads still intact.

[Wobbly]

That forum was the impetus behind me developing a well researched inciteful thread, now that it is gone, I'm afraid I'll return to the nihilistic trash i've been calling philosophy.

I must once again engage the cretins

[Marshall McDaniel]

We're reworking the 'heavily moderated forum'. The current plan is to make it a user group. Contact your local moderator now if you deem yourself worthy.

[Wobbly]

So, uh, which moderator likes me the most.

[Obw]

What things are the admins doing to ensure people stick around here?

- Deleting forums without any mention beforehand or immediately after.
- Not moderating any threads, however off topic
- Not communicating well with the users, the exception being Marshall.

Someone incorrectly spelled the announcement about this new forum anyway, which stands uncorrected on the main domain page. If image is an indication of a product..

The forums lack any real structure or any thought out rules for posting. The forum sectioning seems as if it was done without any consideration and allowed to stand. There is no real attempt to make the other forums philosophy, so who can blame the posters?

If you want your google ranking to reflect the actual quality of your site, it's probably about time you gave it some proper attention again. For a philosophy site there is only about 1/20 philosophy and that is not the fault of the users.

[ben]

Thanks for your input OxfordWill, please accept this refund. Oh wait...

[Obw]

I was fully expecting that response from you Ben, and while my access to your board is free, that is hardly the point.

I hope you can take my criticisms as they were intended - constructively. If I come across disappointed it is only because I fundamentally like what you have here, just wish it to improve.

[ben]

Hi Will,

I don't disagree with anything you pointed out in your post. Of course I wish the board was consistently moderated, that topics were always spelt correctly, and that I was always able to communicate in the best way with the members. You and I are on the same track, but you should understand the reality.

ILP is not my full time job. I am a 20 year old full-time student and combined with university societies, extra-curricular activities and the need for a social life, I don't always have the time to sift through the growing number of posts on here to separate the wheat from the chaff. Obviously that's why I have a great team of staff who give their time and effort. But they also have lives and although we'd all like to create a perfect site, it's just not a reality.

So we do our best and sometimes we fall short of our own expectations. Sometimes we may fall short of yours and you are always welcome to make a suggestion and you are also free to leave if things get bad enough. What I don't really appreciate (and i'm not singling you out) is people who whinge and moan and complain as if they have paid for a premium philosophy service and demand that they get it or else.

Constructive criticism is good, but there are better ways of doing it. Maybe next time do it privately, or even better, maybe offer to help out yourself. I have no time and no love for people who just sit on the sidelines and tell me how bad my site is.

Cheers

- ben

[Obw]

Hi Ben,

I think one solution may be to point out more obviously on the main page what the nature of the set up of the site is (i.e. what you just told me). That was the first I knew of it and had I known before I might have thought twice about 1) posting such criticism and 2) becoming a member.

Blunt honesty will help you gain users who, from the outset, know what to expect and therefore are less likely to complain or be disappointed.

As it is, to the outsider (as I was) this has all the trappings of a fully moderated, full time professional etc etc philosophy board, not the student run effort you have explained. I think its great what you have managed to achieve but simultaneously I feel I should have been able to find out for myself without too much investigation what the situation is.

Hope that helps you to understand at least some portion of your users. You are of course as you point out, perfectly within your rights to not accept moaning from people who pay you nothing and simply seem to criticise 'your site'. On the other hand, one has to ask oneself why they may feel aggrieved or such, and hopefully I have offered one such explanation. (i.e. that they have invested time in something that is not what it immediately appears to be.)

Obviously, none of this really matters, it's not life and death.

[Marshall McDaniel]

Thanks for the compliment Oxfordwill.

Criticism is good, although not necessarily easy to swallow. Sometimes at work I'll work hours on a project only to have my boss point out something really trivial. I usually get upset, but then later see the rationale and appreciate the criticism as a gift. One of the things I tried to do, especially as a new poster, was stop and think and cool off before posting. Some people did get to me, however, Rafajafar comes to mind.

It is true that I devote a lot of time here, but then again, I'm not a working student as a lot of the moderators are.

In the past a lot of experimental forums have failed to receive the support that I felt they should have garnered. I did my utmost to get 'The Chamber' off the ground, a forum similar to what we are considering now. Something should be done to improve the quality of the posts. Anyone who has been here any length of time is very aware of the general decline. I know that I too, at times, have contributed to that decline, but now I think we need to pool our energies and surmount the lethargic atmosphere which now surrounds us.

[Pax Vitae]

This is all my fault... I pushed Ben into making the Philosophy (Heavily Moderated) available too early, before all the mod's had a clear idea of what direction this forum should head. Also I had lots of problems with my network at home this week and had no way to access ILP to help set the record straight.

*** This is a cross post from the one in the Rant Forum ***

The original idea was: But forward a proposition to discuss detailing the idea and what it was that you wished to discuss about the proposition. This was not meant to be a simple question like "Where the Stoics right with their attitude to life? What do you think?" But should included your own opinion and view on the question be proposed. The replies would deal directly with the proposition and not with stupid one-liners of people who like to read their own posts! Despite the Heavily Moderated tag it would be flexible with it’s connect so long as it was constructive and cogitation had gone into the reply. The Tag was mostly for allowing Mods to delete redundant posts without starting a flame war about first amendment rights. Posters would have been encouraged to quote philosophical works so others who where interested could read the quoted work and many be learn a thing or two.

To be blunt, and this is my opinion and does not in anyway necessarily reflect the views of other ILP Moderators. Is that there are a number of different level people at this site, people who have read a couple of the classics some who wouldn’t even know the name of a single classic philosophical text; and those who would have read most of the classical works. Such is the nature of all things: Bruce Lee once said, “Before you begin Kung Fu, a kick is just a kick. When you are learning Kung Fu a kick is more then a kick. But then after, a kick is just a kick.” There are a number of posters who have posted at this site that would be very well informed on philosophical matters but their posts have gotten lost in all the newbie type posts. There is nothing wrong being a newbie, we were all there at one point or another. The problem lies in the fact that people, who some newbies would call elitist, are trying to decussating ideas that only a few people have had time or interest in studying. The new forum was to give those a chance to talk without having to root through all the beginner / intermediate topics, which these people have already discussed to their satisfaction and have little else to say on those matters. They need a place where posting is much less common and a lot more time goes into replies. This is where Philosophy (Heavily Moderated) was going to come into play. It would be a slower forum may be only a couple of posts a week were those “elitists” could talk and not be drowned out by all the other posts that are happing at the same time but at a lower level to them. It was to give these people who love philosophy also a home to talk where its at the level they need it to be so it interesting for them to take part in the discussion.

I hope everybody can come to understand this need and not see it as a new forum for elitists. We want it open to everybody, but only under two conditions! You must take it more seriously then the other philosophy forum and that you have read some of the classics. Otherwise you will find that you can have more fun in the other forum.

I think that would have been a fair way to work it???

[Marshall McDaniel]

I agree that it is the way to go. It is perhaps not the most desirable solution, but certainly the most workable at this juncture. Perhaps some of the people who have read the classics and produce a lot more than the typical one-liners now dominating the site will return. Anyone who has been here any length of time can tell you that there has been a general decline which most of us would like to see reversed, after all the FUNdamental philosophical question, "Why are we here?" starts to rear it's ugly head.