Hi all
I need to firstly give all glory to God for all He has done in my life. There is no question that He has blessed me with everything that I have and He deserves all the praise. God is good, all the time, and all the time, God is good.
[bible]Exodus 15:11[/bible]
I admit that I have neglected the running of CF for most of the past 12 months. This is because of 2 reason - Firstly, I have been truly busy - my day job is to run a hospital, and that is a very busy job. In addition, I am an elder in my church, and I also sit on various medical and legal committees outside of work. I am also studying a second Masters degree at the moment. I have a busy life.
However, the second reason why I have avoided CF is because CF has become like "hard work" to me - I no longer felt that visiting it was a positive thing. I did not look forward to reading negative posts about the site nor having to deal with PMs from various factions within CF wanting me to do something to support them. I had developed an aversion to the site - I dreaded clicking on my CF bookmark. I was in despair, to be honest. I suspect some of you, including staff members, have felt the same.
But God reminded me:
[bible]Jeremiah 1:5[/bible]
I had to return to my roots. Just as returning to your first love for God is important, I had to return to why I started CF in the first place. The original vision for CF. The vision I have for CF has always been to unite ALL Christians on the Internet. Somehow, the site has ended up dividing some Christians, and caused strife in the body of Christ. It doesn't matter that our intention was good - it is the outcome that matters. Sure, CF has done a lot in the lives of many, but the Bible says:
[bible]Luke 15:4[/bible]
CF is here for Christians on the Internet, and not the other way around. CF should not try to make Christians conform to what it believes to be Christian. Who am I to judge the heart of another man? I can't. CF should be a place of refuge, as ones who bear the name of the Lord, a strong tower for Christians to feel safe in. It should attract Christians because we raise Jesus up to draw all men unto him.
[bible]Proverbs 18:10[/bible]
CF should also be a lighthouse in the wilderness, to be a good testimony to those who are not Christians instead of showing the world that Christians are actually worse than they are.
[bible]Matthew 5:13-14[/bible]
We must be the light, not the ones that block the light.
Are we really helping each other by tearing each other down? Are we really being good witnesses to the world by refusing to let the world in? Are we that afraid of the dark when we have the Light of the world?
The Christian world is a world that is diverse. Make no mistake, we are all different, and we are meant to be that way.
[bible]1 Corinthians 12:15-18[/bible]
Instead of putting other Christians down because they do not believe in what we do, because we believe we have the "truth", we should celebrate our similarities and revel in our differences which makes us useful for God to be used in different settings for different people.
We are all part of the same body. One Body. One God.
Okay, enough proselytising.
Let's discuss the "new" CF. One thing to make clear is that these are things that I want happen, and that will happen, and whether staff or members agree with them or not, they are what I believe to be the right things to do. Some, maybe a lot, may disagree, but I believe it's time for a MAJOR paradigm shift at CF.
Unlike what people might have mistakenly expected, the "new" CF is NOT going to happen overnight.
It's going to happen in stages. However, there are mainly going to be 2 stages:
1. The first stage is the CULTURE change stage. This is going to start happening from TODAY but will be an ongoing process. This will involve:
a. Changing the site rules - simpler, less legalistic, and more open
b. Changing the way rules are developed or changed - wikify it! The rules process should be a member-initiated community-propelled, and consensus driven, not something that a minority can decide on.
c. Changing the way moderators are appointed - the members decide! There will be forum moderators, category moderators, and then super moderators. Members nominated, members vote, members appointed. Appointments are for a 12 months - at the end, can be renominated, or not. The power is with the people. And yes, if you are not a Christian, you can be on staff, if people vote for you to do so. The whole process will be open, transparent, and clear. What about current staff? They will all have to be renominated and voted in at some stage.
d. No more warnings. If God can forgive, so can we. Of course, consistent rule-breakers and trolls will still be banned, but hey, that's not going to be avoidable for any site. But not legitimate users.
e. No more restriction of forums for non-Christians - if a non-Christian can walk into a church, a non-Christian can walk and post in any forum here. Some forums may still have gender or age restrictions, but the whole side, as should be any Christian site, will now be totally [OPEN].
f. No more restriction of faith icons - who are we to tell you who you are or what you believe in? In fact, no other restrictions - if you want to call yourself married, go ahead. It is between you and God, not you and CF.
g. Related to the above, if you believe you are a Christian, you are. No more reliance on our own definition of what we think is a Christian. In the end, who are we to judge.
h. Transparent appeals of moderator actions in a much more simpler format - with member input allowed - in fact, the community has a say in all appeals. The way it should be. As the community has written the rules up in the end.
i. No more hidden moderator forums - in fact, no hidden forums at all (except trash forums). If we can read it, you can read it. What is there to hide? If it has to be private, it can be in a PM. This will mean more transparency from all people.
The above outlines the setup of the new rules. A lot of the above cannot happen overnight, and will require some work. But the aim is for culture change at CF.
Many people, including current staff, will not be happy with the above, and some will quit, leave or resign. I bear you no ill-will - you do what you think is right, I do what I think is right. Yes, some of the above changes are controversial, and in fact, radical. But it's time for a total new way of looking at CF. We want to unite all Christians. Not just some.
2. The second stage is the TECHNOLOGY change stage. This is going to start happening over the next MONTH as this will involve extensive recoding and even software replacement. New features will be added. Members would have noticed that we have hit a hiatus in terms of new features being added and CF has not had a new feature for a long time. Well, I am looking at changing this. In the past, I've been the only server administrator, webmaster and coder. I've outsourced the server administration part of things, but there is room to outsource other things. The software behind CF requires a lot of improvements, and this WILL occur. I won't say too much about them because the second stage will be the part that will be most visible and trust me, when it happens, it will be obvious.
In other words, stage one, the culture change, is the change of CF's heart and soul, while stage two, the technology change, is the change of CF's look and body. In my mind, stage one is by far the most important. Both stages are hard to do.
Stage one starts now. Stage two will occur later and will mean some significant functionality changes.
[bible]2 Corinthians 1:10-12[/bible]
Let's go.
As unpleasant as all this is, it's probably actually really healthy. Plus, it's sort of a lot of stored up frustration coming out - which is definitely healthy.
