FEEDBACK: Help Improve This Forum

Black Swan

Here is an opportunity for you to discuss and recommend changes to the way this forum operates, including the charter, moderation, member interactions, and the general atmosphere and feel of the forum. Yes, you may comment about moderation in this thread, but please do not make such comments in other threads that appear on the Humanities forum.

Let's reshape this forum to meet the needs of our past, present, and future posters. Here's your chance, so please consider commenting. Thanks.

Orion

Hard one to call. There was a period where anything in any forum remotely related to a humanities topic got dumped in here - whether it was relevant or not. Even "take it to Humanities" became a catchphrase in some forums and the mods at the time got pissed - understandably. Now it's the other way around - nothing gets moved here. Instead threads in other forums are closed as they are not relevant to the topic and threads that probably should get moved here don't. It would be tricky to find a balance.

Permabear

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diveout

I think one of the issues is that some people think Humanities is for collaborative discussion and others think it is a strict debating forum, and you are in the middle of a talk and a la kazaam you are challenged for breaking a debate protocol. Both frameworks have their place and their functions but I would like to see room for both in this forum even though at times they can clash with incompatibility.

It would also be a good idea if there were some basic rules in place specifically around ad hominems. This is kind of a personal bug bear of mine and people who get personal tend to go straight on my ignore list, but what I have noticed is once you let one slide it's a very fast descent into a pile of ****. If I were a mod of this forum I think I would be quite severe with this.

Secondly, badgering people over and over and over again with your point. OMG let it go. You said it, now leave it alone. I think also if I wanted to distinguish this forum from AH, I'd ask that new contributors to the discussion read the last five pages or so of the discussion, so at least in their mind they are following the thread in the labyrinth. It gets less messy that way and you have a better chance of some depth in the discussion/debate.

It's also because AH has become less entirely juvenile so it has a draw now.

The Corinthian

Permabear wrote: »

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Boards actually started off as a players forum for the game Quake. It then expanded into other areas, such as After Hours and Humanities and the rest is much as you described.

I'm not sure which came first; After Hours or Humanities, but in essence the latter was seen the high-brow equivalent of the former or, conversely, the former was the relaxed equivalent of the latter. My guess is that Humanities was conceived later, as a means to allow discussion in an environment that reduced the signal-to-noise ratio.

All academic really, as open debate is increasingly confined to what is acceptable to a small group of self-entitled individuals anyway.

The Corinthian

diveout wrote: »

It would also be a good idea if there were some basic rules in place specifically around ad hominems.

Is calling someone dishonest (or disingenuous is the more popular term nowadays) an ad hominem when it can clearly demonstrated they are indeed so?

Secondly, badgering people over and over and over again with your point. OMG let it go. You said it, now leave it alone.

Depends, sometimes you need to badger to underline that the other party is willfully avoiding something. Typical of this is having a point or question ignored repeatedly, as it would mean the other party betraying a serious flaw in their argument. Soapboxers are particularly prone to this.

Permabear

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Permabear

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Manach

Permabear wrote: »

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Back then there was in the back when there was the one truth game, Quake. Now, like Humanities, there are numerous fora for game types alone. For Humanities, I'd think of it as a place to ask meta-queries: that is for topics that are more wide-ranging that cannot be easily categorised into the n+1 other fora.

Black Swan

Please keep the feedback coming. It's grand!

Awkward Badger

I find it hard to know where I stand here tbh. I originally thought it was a place for respectable and intelligent discussion. Thinking you don't have to be an expert to discuss something intelligently as long as you're not ignorant and post in a respectable manner you'll get something out of it.

But each time I've discussed something on here (I've been around for years btw) I got the feeling that it was more than that. I always was left thinking it was a place for really serious intellectual debate and anything less was frowned upon.

So being no expert on anything and not being able to provide a paper for peer review on each topic I wish to discuss I wasn't really interested in coming back here. And although I hate after hours because its 90% absolute dirt I think you do get a more balanced level of discussion (for a brief window) on some stuff after few pages over there if you can ignore all the crap.

I think there is a real spot to fill given so many find it hard to stomach AH discussion. And I know its probably hard to strike a balance with strict intellectual debate and low grade stuff to result in intelligent and reasonable discussions but if you want the forum to be of use and actively used by boards users you need to strike the balance.

If you fall on the intellectual debate side and accept a high quality but low activity rate you're essentially making it a forum for a very small group of people. I think it a waste of a forum to keep it that way when there is a real need for a forum for intelligent and reasonable discussion that will be used by a lot of people.

Permabear

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Awkward Badger

Permabear wrote: »

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Yeah I suppose that is true and the more people who use it the more issues will come along with that. But I'd be optimistic that the majority of people who would seek out and use such a forum would do so because they are looking for precisely that. As opposed to other forums (or how people currently see this forum) where a standard may be expected from people who are there simply to discuss a certain topic that falls under a specific category.

Like you said in the charter:

The cardinal rule of Humanities is that anything that runs contrary to the spirit of rational, thoughtful, calm, and civil debate is strongly deprecated.

Given Humanities as a forum is kind of redundant to some degree as most stuff has a home elsewhere but a lot of people come here to discuss stuff to a higher standard than you can elsewhere. Then perhaps there needs to be a little shift away from the "Humanities forum" aspect and towards the "Intelligent, reasonable discussion forum".