So, the whole rep whining debate....

Fuck you and your holier than thou bullshit! You are a hypocrite.

It's definitely important to you, seeing as you so desperately want to keep changing it.

All for the lol'z, baby. The firestorm of whining you, Soaky and KIRK will unleash is what I want to see.

The whining you are doing right now is amusing us to no end.

I am glad we can amuse each other.

It's the Red Room.

It's not a welcoming environment for anyone. It's rough.

Now go to the Green Room and you will see how welcoming WF really is.

Sometimes I think we should hide the Red Room and not let new people in there until they have 500 posts so they understand this place before heading into the heat.

Any thoughts on an idea like that, everyone?

I'm sorry Mikey, but you and your lot are the only ones that are whining. As is usually the case with a loser socialist such as you, when you are incapable of surviving on your own, you run to the powers that be to beg for assistance.

500 posts might be a little much (I don't think I've ever hand 500 posts anywhere) but otherwise it might not be a bad idea. Or it could be 500 posts or by request, if someone with fewer than 500 posts wanted to be able to post in the red room and they had to be approved to do so by a mod. Or it could be just a group that you have to join, like the blue room and the grey room, that way noobs couldn't stumble in unawares.

Having it read only for noobs could let them get a chance to see what it was like while not letting them post without realizing what it is like.

On the other hand, some of us do know what to expect and what the Red Room's all about the moment they join. Hell, my first thread got chucked from the Green Room here into the Red Room

But the reason it was reset to zero was to put an entirely different system in place. I really fail to see how a reset, unless it involves a major change in the whole system (which is clearly against the will of a substantial majority here), will change anything. Those who don't care about rep still won't, those who rep war will still do so, those who whine about it will still do so, and so on.

Might be a good idea, might not. I wonder how many people come here just for, or at least primarily for, the Red Room? (I know I joined TBBS primarily for TNZ; if it had been a hidden forum back then, I probably wouldn't be involved in these boards to this day.) And of those who do so, how many would simply spam up the other forums with "Yah, I think so, too. " posts until they got the minimum necessary to get into the Red Room?

Furthermore, any disincentive to newbies to post in the Red Room will aggravate the problem we all have felt over the years of the RR discussions lacking a certain flavor after a while because we all pretty much know what everyone else is going to say on a given issue.

Would it be possible for the Red Room to be visible even to unregistered lurkers, but subscription only in order to post? You wouldn't have to have a minimum post count to subscribe, but you would get a chance to be warned specifically about it before you started posting in it.

This is blatantly not true. Do we really need to link to the posts you and others made when Lanz tweaked you by setting Rick so high? It has very definitely caused you to whine about rep more than the posters who you condemn so strongly for "starting rep whine threads" because they get negged all the time.

You really don't have any room whatsoever to criticize anyone for whining about rep, after your posts the last few days. It has been firmly established, for all the board to see, that you are one of the primary rep whiners. The only reason you don't do so very often is that you have the system working more or less the way you like it right now. But as soon as it doesn't work just the way you want it, even for one poster for a few hours, and we all see how much of a rep whiner you are.

It was a neat trick Lanz pulled if for no other reason than to show all of that to everyone.

No, it was a violation of his board policy in my opinion. Go ahead and pull my complaints about rep in those threads.

Violation of board policy? For fucksake man, get a grip!

Just for the record, I've been a Wordforger since day one. In all that time through board upgrades, board ownership changeovers, board drama etc etc, there has never been an edict that says the owner can't reset someones rep!

Asyncritus is absolutley bang on the money, in the past couple of days, you and your gang, but you in particular have been shown up as one of the biggest cry babies on the board!

Reputation is a feature we've installed for everyone's entertainment, and is subject to be removed at the discretion of the staff. We, the staff, usually do not care about reputation "wars" or "attacks" and in fact will often participate in them.

Not seeing any violation.

I was going to be silent on that whole "So Chup wants to buy the board..." thing because I really didn't have any evidence one way or the other.

Thanks for the evidence.

This board is all about the Red Room. If you couldn't see it, you'd think the place was dead, and then you'd just move on. Nobody'd ever get to 100 posts in the other forums before losing interest, let alone 500.

You think the Red Room is rough?

You should see the Bear Pit at ARF.com. A lot of people that go in there don't come back out...literally.

Why should it be? Is "Urgent" an operative word?

There will be no whining.

What there will be, however, is a shitstorm of posts in every thread that use to be contained in rep instead. Every barb, jab, flame, insult, simple agreement or disagreement will be moved into the thoroughfare of the threads themselves without regards to context or disruption of the conversation. This board will be bathed in useless comments that use to be simply appended to a stupid post.

And when I and everyone else does this, we can spam with absolute impunity. Normally I would expect to get bitch slapped with a neg rep storm, but not any more. Weapons free baby!

But by all means, let's cater to these crybabies. As soon as they get what they want, they will move on to whining about 'hateful rhetoric' in general and how it is destroying the board and must be dealt with.

That is their way, both in the real world and here.

Indeed. Not to start a whole other debate here, but if the work was being taken care of by non-religious organizations then someone has to do it.

Besides. Just because humanitarian work is being done by religious organizations does not mean it's being done "in the name of religion."

As long as it leaves people entirely free in their own convictions, without putting pressure on them ("You have to attend services to be helped in our hospital" or some such thing), what difference does it make if religious people do humanitarian work out of their religiously-based conviction that doing good to others, even at major cost to yourself, is what people ought to do? Even if that conviction is ill-founded, surely the good that is done is still good?

The only reason I can think of that someone like El Chup is so opposed to someone like me doing humanitarian work is simply his thorough dislike of religion. Yet he is inconsistent with his own principles in taking such a stand. He himself said that an immoral action is justified as long as it leads to a valid goal, so even if he thinks that religious motivation for humanitarian work is "an immoral action" (because, from his point of view, it is founded in the error of believing that God wants us to help those in need), he should still think that it is a good thing as long as it leads people to help with the development of countries in need.

But I do believe his hate for religion and/or fear of it (since he so often refers to religious people expressing their views as "forcing their ideas on others" I think he is not actually all that sure of his own ability to withstand the claims of those with whom he disagrees; otherwise I don't see where "force" is involved) has blinded him to the good it can do. Because religion has so often done bad things (and it has), he does not want to allow its existence even when it is doing good things.

His business, I guess, but fortunately for the poor of the world, the religious people of all stripes in the world don't need his permission to help underdevelopped countries.

I do agree that religious organization can and do carry out humanitarian works without proselytizing. But, I would hope that it's a relatively small or adjunct part of their overall mission. Otherwise, why should I support the religious group at all when their are already plenty of other humanitarian groups out there?

(and, yes, I'm setting you up here. )

Because truly caring about others is part of what Jesus told us to do. If I help out the poor and they are interested in my motivation, I can tell them it's because Jesus teaches us that kind of love for others. If it interests them to pursue that line of reasoning further, they are free to do so. But even if they couldn't care less who I am or why I do it, it is still part of Christian love. I refuse to make acceptance of, or even interest in, my spiritual values a condition for humanitarian work. Otherwise, it seems to me that the humanitarian work is not honest, and is just "bait" to try to "make converts."

There is also, for the question of supporting religious groups, the confidence factor. There is, unfortunately, a huge amount of scam in humanitarian work and Third-World aid. From reports I have heard in Madagascar and Congo, it is estimated that in some of those countries, as much as 80% of what is sent through government channels to "aid the developing countries" actually ends up in the pockets of governent officials somewhere along the line.

Even with humanitarian organisations (NGOs), sometimes 50% or more of what is donated to help the poor is actually used for the organization itself, sometimes even in fairly blatant waste and/or corruption. But if you care about the poor and you can help through some group you trust, because you believe that their spiritual motivations are sound, there is a much better chance that what is given "for the poor" will actually be used for the poor.

That of course will be irrelevent for those who don't share the spiritual convictions of the people involved, but it is nevertheless part of the answer to your question.

I've donated to religious organizations because I believe they do good work, not because of the religion associated with it (I always check to be sure the money goes where the organization says it goes).

But, I wonder - not you Async or Bock specifically, but others - how many people would donate to those same causes if the religion attached were pagan? Not many, I'd wager.

While it may be the cause for some of us, I really think it's more about the religion to others. - "can't let those pagans be prosylitizing about the devil to those poor people" ....

Since the issue is confidence, I personally would want to know the pagans involved. But then, I want good references on Christians, too. Unfortunately, not all humanitarian organisations that are attached to Christian churches are trustworthy, either. I could tell you some very hair-raising stories about major scams carried out by people pretending to be Christians.

El Chup doesn't think we Christians should "judge" people, but Jesus says he sends his disciples out "like sheep among wolves" and therefore encourages us to be "as prudent as serpents but as harmless as doves." If you don't do your best to evaluate people's actions, words and motivations, you can end up getting burned very easily.

Personally, I have no problem whatsoever with non-Christians who don't want to channel their humanitarian aid through a Christian organisation. They don't really have any particular reason to think that Christians are any more worthy of confidence than anyone else.

The Evangelical church in America is huge, and I don't really think it's possible to know any significant portion of it. But here in France it is relatively limited; about a half million people (though growing regularly). That means that it's possible to get pretty good information on someone. I know a guy (an Evangelical Christian) who is setting up a project for urgent medical aid in natural disasters. He was contacted by someone I (unfortunately) know very well, but even before he talked to me about this person, he had been able to find out from a number of sources that the guy is not worthy of trust.

OTOH, a person who was not themselves an Evangelical would not have been able to do that nearly as easily. And not being able to discover easily that a person is not trustworthy also implies that it is not nearly as easy to determine that a person is trustworthy. So I don't blame people at all for working mostly "within their own circles." I even think it is fairly wise, if you really want your charitable contributions to be used to help those in need.

In some cases, they don't. Not all those who benefit from my work have any idea that I am a Christian.

OTOH, why should I have to hide my faith just because I'm helping the poor?

There's a phone number or a website or ... someplace you can check the references of charitable organizations. I've used it before. But, the ones I've given to the last couple years, are ones that I know and have given to for years.

There's one that advertises a lot on tv - for kids, that only about $0.30 per dollar actually goes toward the children. can't remember the name and I don't watch much tv anymore, so I don't know if they still advertise or not.

First of all, I probably wouldn't donate to non-Christian religious organizations because there are so many good Christian ones that I'd want to support first. And, after all, I support the US government and it's about as big a pagan organization as I'd want to get anywhere near.

I was setting Async up with his answer because I know he generally follows what I believe in his charitable work. First you help people and then. when you've got a relationship with them, you can tell them something about yourself if they want to hear it. If not, you've still done what Christ has commanded and that's to take care of your fellow man. that way you don't leave them feeling they're just another mark on some scorecard you're keeping.