Subject: Possible Lockman Forum Improvement #1? |
Bible Note: Dear Nolan, Thank you for your further input on the idea of deleting duplicate posts on the forum. Let me try to take some of the things that you said one at a time. You said, "I completely support the 'filtering' of specific threads that are offensive or derogatory in nature, but should we really have the license to edit all threads just to make them more accessible or "look better"?" I completely agree about the filtering of offensive material. At the same time I would encourage you to rethink the benefit of editing threads for duplication. The purpose is not just aesthetic to "look better". Instead it is to help people who are searching for truth to be able to find as much information as possible from this forum. You said, "But just which posts should we decide to keep and which ones should we not keep?" I agree that there would need to be well-thought out guidlines to determine this, but I think a good starting place would be deleting the questions which all of us forum members easily recognize as being repeats. These are the questions that we simply respond by telling the person to do a search on certain words to find the original thread. You said, "If you are the "judge" of this, then does that mean that you will keep all of your particular postings on a subject and consider the postings of others as "expendable"? I do not believe that a single member of this Forum could or should accomplish such an objective task." I agree that it would be too large of a task for one person, but I think that it is deffinately not impossible to be objective. For instance, I just today replied to Prayon about Israel's actions deserving their slavery in Egypt. Afterwards, I realized that you had already replied to them with basically the same answer. In my thinking, my post should be deleted, because yours was first, and mine didn't add anything significant. Simply using chronology is an objective way to do it. You said, "Also, there are other problems like number of postings by users." I do not understand what the problem is there. It seems to me that the number of posts that a forum member has posted has very little relevancy. I do think that knowing whether a person has posted 1 time, 5 times or 100 times can be helpful. However, past that point, I can't think of any good purpose for keeping track of that information. Finally, you said, "Also, what if a completely new subject has spawned off the post or posts that were considered as "expendable"? Does this mean that other valid information concerning a different topic would also be lost?" I think this is a great point. It will be important to be very deliberate to not lose "valid information" during this process (if it ever happens to begin with). There are many threads that have gone in a completely different direction than they were originally intended. In these cases, there are multiple possibilities. Depending on what subject they are about, they could be added to the original thread on the same subject, or to another original thread which they more closely allign with, or to a completely new thread dedicated to that topic. In conclusion, I hope to have shown that although there are many details that would need to be worked out, I think there are answers for all of these very important questions. If this is something that the overall forum sees could be as helpful for enhancing the usefulness of this forum for building the kingdom of God, then it is worth working towards. That's why I started this vote, to see if it is even something that people want. If so then we'll work out the details. If not then I'll drop it and move on. So far the vote is 8 for, 6 against (4 of them just due to difficulty), and 1 undecided. |