Drew, I saw you locked down the Christ is Risen thread, citing the guidelines, which I've read before, but thought I'd check out again. I'm wondering why the change I quote below was made? I don't have a horse in this race, so I'm just asking out of curiosity. It's a surprisiing change...



Thanks,
belly

so that is new ... i thought i was just losing my mind ...

Whew! For a second I was afraid this was a religious post.

Freak.

FTR, the irony inherent in the title was actually unintentional. It's beyond habit at this point; it's a lifestyle.

Erm ... may I ask when/why this change took place? I don't have a problem with not discussing religion (especially knowing how deeply some Apples are bothered by it), but I wish I had been aware of the change in the Guidelines sooner.

I think that post may have been Drew's understated way of announcing the change. Maybe? Cause he's always so shy about stuff and stuff;)
~m

Actually, the word "religion" has been in the Guidelines for a long time, back before the addition of the word "politics"... Several months at least.

I should mention that the reason the CHRIST IS RISEN thread was closed down was because I received several PMs about it.

At some point can we get some more help as to what this means for conversation? If the religion ban has been there for awhile, what made the "Christ is risen" topic more controversial than other topics that were not closed (or maybe I should check if more has been closed).

Not to be sarcastic, and I do respect that this is not our turf but Karin and Linford's, but does this mean we shouldn't talk about Jesus in New Orleans or Long Lost Brother or Changes Come or A Gospel Number? To name a few? I guess as a religious person it is hard to know how to parse. And I know the same has been difficult for political people.

edit: Drew's second post regarding why Christ is risen was closed came while I was writing this.

Wow do they pay you for this task? Do you purchase Tylenol in bulk?

Thanks for your message. Because the makeup of the religious beliefs of this forum are quite diverse, the decision was made long ago to call religion off-topic (along with other divisive topics).

Certainly you can separate discussion about CHANGES COME, JESUS IN NEW ORLEANS and other songs from the type of content in the CHRIST IS RISEN topic. The former is okay, the latter is not. We want people to be sensitive to the fact that not everyone believes the way they do. Personally, I don't close topics or anything until/unless I get complaint PMs, then it is my duty to handle it. Generally, the first step is to post a reminder message, and the second is to close the topic. In the case of the CHRIST IS RISEN thread, I'd gotten a large number of complaints, so I went ahead and closed it down.

Above all, remember that this is a band forum and not intended to be the be-all-end-all of forums. There are better places than this to discussion topics like religion.


No, and yes.

Yeah, we wouldn't want to talk about food, or tv, or movies, or sports in this *band* forum....

I have just as much fun/interest reading and posting in the religion/politics type forums as I do in the Answer and Question thread and they are both against board guidelines no?

just sayin....

edited for spelling

One of the reasons I love talking religion (and politics, when that was allowed) in the Orchard is because of the diversity. Most of the boards I know of that focus on religion are very one-sided (either wholly conservative or wholly liberal, and will no representation of atheists, agnostics, pagans, and adherents of other faiths).

This is just to say that if anyone knows of a board that addresses religion in a diverse way, could you pm me?

The conversations about religion here at the Orchard have been some of the best I've had, and I'm in school to talk about this stuff. I'm a little sad today.

The ban on religion is news to me too, but I really don't understand why people here can't be satisfied with talking about sports and the weather. Although to be very honest, lately I've had to wonder -- is the orchard becoming ESPN?? It seems like more and more threads are popping up about sports. Furthermore, I've been very disturbed by the emotionally charged debates recently over the merits of various college basketball teams. Apples never seem to change their deeply entrenched views about which teams are best, and yet these pointless and upsetting discussions are allowed to go on. So I really think sports should have a separate forum, or better yet, let's ban all sports discussion from the orchard!

It's raining pretty hard here in New York.

Me too. I seem to remember that we've been having debates about why religious discussion is allowed while political discussion is not since at least the board officially opened. But I'm old and a pot head to boot, so maybe I'm disremembering...

FTR, I don't care who talks about what anymore, as long as it's not deliberately mean or outrageously offensive in the collective sense of the word (God hates gafs, Bobby Knight is a baby, etc. etc ). Color me mellowing as I age (at the speed of freaking light), but it just doesn't seem that important anymore.



Here too. We're miserable together. Er...

I was gonna correct this in edit, but for some reason I find it utterly delightful...

Obviously I mean "fags," but maybe he/she/it hates gafs too. I hope not...

one gaffy mofo,
belly

I've found the discussions very rewarding myself. I don't know of any similarly diverse and reasonably civilized forums for discussing religion (the CJ board seems to become a snarly thornfield every time the topic comes up), but we do have the option of moving such discussions over to eustacescrubb's forum. We had some good discussions on politics there a while back, but almost all the members to date are pretty liberal and eventually we got tired of agreeing with each other.

Anyway, his place is at http://the.backstreetsofheaven.org/forum/ .

Don't you mean God hates gaffes?

Ya know what? Heck with it... I'm removing religion from the Guidelines.
That should solve the problem.

Oh, and God hates GIRAFFES.

Religion without guidelines? Is that possible?

ohhh... sorry! I get it... guidelines without religion.

Lookit, mister, that unintentional juxtaposing was a DELIBERATE attempt on my part to embrace, in hindsight, my ironic lifestyle, alluded to in earlier posts in this very thread. So put THAT in your mug and drink it.

Oh, and cool by me, Drew. Whatever you say.

You know, Drew, maybe the way to do it is just to remove all topic "types" from the guidelines, and pull the plug on any particular thread if it gets nasty.

Maybe all discussions have positives to them. And kinda like porn, hard to define but ya know it when ya see it.

While I do not dispute that most every discussion can have positive aspects to them, I'm not convinced that is the best approach because in that case the damage is already done by the time I see a thread or it is reported to me.

I'd rather continue to put the responsibility on the USERS to post appropriately in the first place, rather than on ME -- I've been called a dictator any number of times trying to run this place gently as it is!

Generally, the self-policing around here works pretty well, but every now and then someone gets a wild hare (pun intended) and posts something that's a little... too... much and I need to step in.

WTH! I've NEVER heard this saying before and you're the third person I've "heard" it from today.
weird.
~m

make me the 4th...

a famous first ammendment quote;

In 1964, Justice Potter Stewart tried to explain "hard-core" pornography, or what is obscene, by saying, "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced . . . but I know it when I see it ."

This quote, and the intent behind it, is well known as summarizing the irony and difficulty in trying to define obscenity. For at least fifty years, the Supreme Court has been struggling with defining what speech is "obscene".

"Obscene" speech is "unprotected" speech as ruled by the Supreme Court. "Unprotected speech," means speech that does not enjoy First Amendment protection and may even be criminal to express.

THAT'S IT!!! You can take away politics! You can take away religion! But HOW DARE YOU!!!!!!

Come on, amorous giraffe....we're getting out of here!!!

:: stomps off ::

....

:: turns around ::

I said come on.

Would you quit your flirting, and get over here?!?

:: shakes head ::

You just never give up, do you?

drew, this is a good space to apologize--i didn't read the forum guidelines until AFTER starting a very religious thread. :( whoops...

i guess it doesn't matter now though :)

emily