[Lallous]

Originally Posted by Abou Sandal

Great forum.Great moderation.Participation is a little lazy lately,but probably mostly due to the political and social conjunctures.

I suggest the administration sends an E-mail to the old and valuable members who suddenly stopped posting,and try to get them back.

Keep it up.

Thanks.

Thanks for the cheer-up. We appreciate it.

Originally Posted by hannaalsayssa

i love the forum,it is like home away from home.
i would love to suggest some ideas though
1-allow our avatars to be active and to accept larger sizes of pix.
2-as we give thanks, allow us to also get no thanks ( but for each thx or no thx a min of 1 hour wait must be observed in order to limit abuse of it)
3-a bit easier on the moderating.
lately i must admit it is easier .
a bit of rough language during heated arguments sometimes adds spice ( many other foreign forums are looser in that field).
4-merge otv thread & the regional rooms too with the political one ( radical idea bass worth the try).
5-allow some threads for jokes in the local political forum, it will liven up matter, at least one thread that emcompasses all kind of jokes and funny stories
6-create a thread of world caricatures only , we have excellent members who can post wonderful links and stories.
7-try to engage members by trying to know each member kaza ( by the specific members posting a brief history about their kaza)and than select a kaza for each month decided by popular voting to be discussed..in all aspects ( political, cultural, posts pix, etc..)
8-a thread for rumours and stupid stuff , that will be a hit i am sure ( we lebanese thrives on that LOL)

finally i want to thank the administration, the mods and the members who make up the forum a lively place,ALSO the members who represent the other point of view.
u have no idea how this forum help us the expat keep in daily touch with home

1-2 no comment.
3- Hanna, in fact we already reached a bottom in looseness, so we recommend you not pushing it any further...
4-No, we already did that in the past and never worked. Activity was the same.
5-We're looking to improve the level, not to downgrade it any more.
6-I'll pass
7-Fair idea. We'll look into it. It has been done already, we could do it in a more original way this time.
8-See number 5.

Originally Posted by ceaoun

For instance (ironically), this thread and the negative responses ( or critics) are in violation of Rule # 18 of this Forum.

I suggest more pro-active roles of Mods/Staff in instigating debates and fueling controversies in relation to all aspects of life and all political spectrums to include FPM and its allies.

Relax the roles on starting a thread and make it start ASAP when submitted. Try not to merge a new thread with an old one ; it might inhibit people once in a while from starting a new one thinking it might get merged(some people don't like mergers).

I have read many posts lately telling people to go to their own Forums and play there instead of posting some unpleasant (politically) remarks here.

And most importantly, if you want more participation, there is nothing better than incentives:( P.P.P.) :Pay Per Post (of course just a joke)

Don't worry. Rule #18 is on hold in this thread.
That's what we aim for. However, mods' main job is to... moderate at first. We'll do our best however to have more initiatives in that matter. Unfortunately, as soon as a mod creates a thread and I could speak of my own experience, members are not that appealed as it is not a usual pissing contest, so there is a problem from the members too at some point.

Approving threads is a must. We're pretty fast on approving them and very few of them are ignored; the fact is it's not much about the subject itself as much about if the member has put some effort in it to have some rich content so it could be discussed with more then one-liners posts. We merge the threads also on the criteria I just stated and it's pretty rare to witness these things.

For some of the members' derogatory remarks, we would appreciate your efforts to report anything we could have missed. We are rather prompt on that and the posts are deleted.

As for the PPP, it's FPM's forum, not Mustaqbal's forum

Originally Posted by The Jade

Having seen the forum change in the past couple of years, here are my observations:

If this is to be FPM's official forum, why don't we have exclusive news from FPM's staff (cadres, MPs, etc).

By exclusive news, I mean interviews with MPs, leaders, etc.
A place where we could ask our MPs some questions and get answers from them.

Very good point. It was often repeated and we'll seriously work on it this time.

There are many strong elements in the forum, some of them related to the very organized team and the faithful members who keep this forum alive.

But I'll concentrate on the weaknesses here:

1) One of the main weaknesses of this forum is the lack of independant or rather anti-FPM voices. (there are a few, bit a time came where there were almost as many anti-FPM than pro-FPM people).

Some of the threads turn to cheerleading, which don't get us anywhere.

2) The fact that some threads with no added value are allowed to be opened and others that might be interesting, or critical of the FPM would not be allowed to see the light of day

3) The fact that some members are still kicked out depending on the humor of the Admins.

4) The fact that some rules are broken by the administration and nothing is done about it, but when a regular member does it he gets a warning

5) The fact that any opposing voice is quickly attacked by the members. And I know that the administration has nothing to do with it, but I think that it has to show the good example and lead the way by allowing people to elaborate on the ideas and organizing a good way to counter the critics.

1 and 5) Well we can't do much about it. We are even more lenient toward these members to let them share their POV. Unfortunately, some of them are not used to the dynamics of the forum and end up getting banned after some few bashing posts. We do appreciate our black sheep such as Joseph_Lubnan, chafic, zodiac, etc. Take that as a compliment as without you there is no point to debate. We're very grateful to have you as members.

2)I'll answer this point in my reply to Souss' post.

3 and 4)I guess you heard the expression : Yahokk li cha3er ma la yahokk li ghayrih. Even though this is FPM's forum, it remains the labour and hard work of the administration which represent themselves at first and not FPM. So I guess when you reach this point, you could afford it. No further elaboration. However, we always make sure there is no mzayadeh.

I'm not inactive now since it's elections time.

But when nothing was going on, the forum became so one-sided, so critical of opposing voices that it became a cheerleading forum, which is nothing related to FPM's teachings

Can't say a thing here

Because most of the time initiatives have been killed.

For example, we've been asking for more than 2 years now to have an interview with a cadre or an MP. And when we did that, the administration told us that it's either not the time or that it's taking care of it.

And since I was a member I saw 2 interviews one with Ziad Abs and another with Ghassan Mkheiber I think.

The forum is not using its full potential to get new things done.
It could for example propose for some members to gather all the questions that we need to ask for the MP and go to the MP's office, ask the questions and come back and post them on the website.

I think that the forum administration should start to delegate stuff to their members.

We're discussing all that. Some things you mentionned could be done post-elections. For the interviews, we're pushing for it.

Originally Posted by Souss

Sometimes, threads that don't conform with FPM's views are deleted and the mod team doesn't reply when asked about the deletion.

You can't censor people and not respect the time and effort they put in, and then ask for their contribution and initiatives.

Okay. Things aren't black or white. You always have to bear in mind that is FPM's official forum. It's not we don't appreciate criticism, but rather a pre-emptive measure to counter the yellow journalism and propaganda from the other side. We always try to safeguard this thin margin between censorship and freedom of speech, and the prefect example when you all saw how the discussions were with GMA's recent visit to Syria. We let everyone voice his concern. Add to that, some members push it too far and turn it into auto-flagellation mode, then no sorry don't expect us to sit and watch. This remains a public forum and an affiliated one too. Please, let's not dwell more in that issue. You made your point and we made ours. We would appreciate if you could rather have some other consensual ideas of threads we could enjoy.

Originally Posted by kappa273

threads with more than 1000 replies work negatively for the forum....

I am not talking about the Elections threads (Beirut, Batroun, Zahleh, Metn, etc....)

but when a thread reaches more than 1000, many will shy away from putting down their idea by far that it could have been discussed previously and it is impossible to review 1000 posts to check it out....

also, after 1000 replies, it becomes very difficult to know for sure what the topic is and what has been discussed so far...

Also I would like to see official FPM members discuss their ideas here... like it has been done in the past... questions are asked ahead of time and that member gets to answer them at his own leisure...

i wish FPM would use this forum to release non-official messages, stories....
this would bring more attention and can be used as a gauge to measure people's reactions...

kappa

The threads you are talking about often get closed when they tend to get too circular. Too bad some members just thrive on these threads. As for the second part of your post, isn't it that we all do in here ? Some members take a bribe of information or a rumor and discuss it somehow. Look around you ;)

We wish to thank you for your valuable replies. Please, keep coming the ideas, this is what we are looking for the most. So far, we had the cazas and the interviews.