Directs everyone to the rule thread above

hey guys,

check out the new and revised rules. Better explained, much condensed and easier to read.

a million thanks to Deamiter and Erwin.

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"Rich? More like mired in minutiae ..... In this case it was an indolence characterised by a pursuit of knowledge, a frenzied search for answers to everything, no matter the value of such answers. A civilisation can as easily drown in what it knows as in what it doesn't know."

- Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson

Can we use this thread to ask questions?

I have one about the civlity issue, and whether people who get to uppity will be dealt with via scalpal or sledgehammer?

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(The Library of Alexandria) questioned the permanence of the stars, but did not question the justice of slavery - Carl Sagan in Cosmos

that depends on how 'uppity' one gets.

/me whips out a scalpal and starts making a mod hat out of wet flour.
those kinds of action accompanies a scalpal, but sledgehammer type usually remains between the member and moderator in question.

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"Rich? More like mired in minutiae ..... In this case it was an indolence characterised by a pursuit of knowledge, a frenzied search for answers to everything, no matter the value of such answers. A civilisation can as easily drown in what it knows as in what it doesn't know."

- Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson

LOL

O.k. One and a half more about civility.

First the half:
Since TEs and AEs dominate this forum, would "just for fun" threads like the one Praxiteles posted tonight about shoes and I posted a few months ago about the Theory of Aerodynamics be inherently considered trolling or causing disruption towards YECs? Or would it just be allowed to run its course as long as it didn't get out of hand?

And on the civility issue, is sarcasm completely verboten? I many times will use sarcasm, even when I'm trying to demonstrate a salient point. I can tone it down, but I'm a frustrated stand up comedian and it's difficult for me.

Case in point:

Elfeye, a newbie, posted a variant on the old Tornado/Junkyard/747 abiogenesis strawman.

I replied thusly:

Would that be out of bounds under the new (or - I hope not for my sake - previously existing) civlity rules? I might have been snarky, and he is a newbie, but I did explain both that his argument was a straw man as well as what a straw man argument is.

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(The Library of Alexandria) questioned the permanence of the stars, but did not question the justice of slavery - Carl Sagan in Cosmos

You - sarcastic? I had never noticed that.

The rules haven't actually changed much at all, but they've been clarified to reflect how we've been moderating this forum. Sarcasm is okay in general (your post about the straw man would be fine by me) but can get really close to warnings when it begins to attack others by comparing them with idiots...

It really must be taken on a case by case basis, but in general, stay away from ridiculing others' beliefs especially Christianity. While NOBODY should have their beliefs directly ridiculed on this forum, it IS a Christian forum, and by posting here you accept that there will be some bias. I don't mean that anybody can go saying all atheists are stupid or that they're all Nazis -- do report posts like that. However, we won't tolerate much directed toward God or the Christian Church in general -- even if we DO find the particular post funny.

Finally, sarcastic posts are much more likely to slip by the filters than sarcastic threads... It's fine to have some fun on these boards, but I've only seen one or two sarcastic threads (out of a dozen or so) that made an intelligent point without attacking a person or group of people. Your best bet is to stay away from starting threads devoted to ridiculing somebody as even if the origional post isn't out of line, others tend to take it further and get the thread shut down.

Anyway, it's pretty pointless to get into specifics here, but overall, these rules are simply a clearer version of the earlier rules; not much has changed, but if you want to avoid warnings, you might check them out to refresh your memory.

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Ack Metairony! My brain!

Deamiter,

Thanks. I just was curious about a few specific things to see if I might need to adjust my style to avoid getting zapped.

- edit: Dang, I just realized how to phrase what I really was getting at. I understand the case by case aspect of all this, but if someone has posted something that they didn't realize was a rule breaker, but a mod considers breaking a rule, is any consideration given to severity and innocuousness of the transgression regarding a request or an order to self edit or an unofficial warning or will official warnings be meted out in a shoot first, ask questions later manner?

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(The Library of Alexandria) questioned the permanence of the stars, but did not question the justice of slavery - Carl Sagan in Cosmos

Now why would we want to do that, when we can just go to our private messages and have the mods spoon feed it to us one rule at a time?

No comment.

Actually we do try to give out edit requests as much as possible, or at LEAST as much as appropriate. We even discuss where we might give more leeway etc... and different moderators have slightly different styles.

It's hard to give a direct answer, but in short: yes, we do try to give edit requests as much as possible for smaller infractions. Especially newer members are given more leeway as they usually don't have quite as good an idea of where those fuzzy gray lines are.

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Deamiter, again thanks.

One more question... Can we get a sticky fellowship/pub/chill thread for this forum? I have a few suggestions for the title:

- Bones and Bible
- Fossils and Faith
- Mountians of Evidence
- Disagreement on Age, Agreement on Earth

Whatever a title, I think a fellowship thread in C&E would be a good idea.

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(The Library of Alexandria) questioned the permanence of the stars, but did not question the justice of slavery - Carl Sagan in Cosmos