Change and Reform for the...Forum!

[Red Phoenix]

Originally Posted by Lallous

It is still there scattered in different forums and mostly in the Orange room forum. The best way to search the old threads is through google.

site:forum.tayyar.org KEYWORDS

If you encounter any links with lfpm.org/forum/**** when you check the threads, just change it to forum.tayyar.org, it will redirect you to the initial thread.

thx, i found some of them, i tried to find them using the forum search function but it didn't detect any of them.
so the new forum only has the new threads indexed for searching ?

[Souss]

Originally Posted by Lallous

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.

Does being FPM's official forum give you the right to censor? Yellow journalism and propaganda is practiced by both sides, see for example the thread about the objectivity of OTV's opening statements. But in any case, the threads that I saw deleted did not have any yellow journalism (or any journalism for that matter) or propaganda. As for preventive deletion, it seems you are creating a Bush Doctrine for online forums :P

Originally Posted by Lallous

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.

How does being an affiliated forum affect how you apply the rules? While the GMA Syria thread was kept, others were not allowed to stay. For example, there was a thread entitled "Time to speak out" opened by xcoder which was deleted for no valid reason, and to this day there has been no explanation as to why this happened, despite repeated messages to the mod team.

Freedom of Speech is only relevant in cases where you are in disagreement with the other party. Being for Freedom of Speech only in instances where you agree is meaningless.

Originally Posted by Lallous

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.

This is a fundamentally authoritarian attitude, whereby you think you know what's good for members, more than members themselves. So authoritarian it makes you unable to "sit and watch" members criticize their party (what you call auto-flagellation).

Political affiliation and being a public forum are not parameters for whether you respect the members or not. Here there is a fundamental choice to be made: Is this forum a place for openly discussing ideas, or is it a propaganda tool for the FPM? Over the years the forum has oscillated between both, with sadly a clear tilt towards the latter in more recent times.

Originally Posted by Lallous

Please, let's not dwell more in that issue.You made your point and we made ours.

Actually you haven't made your point. Thread deletions are rarely explained, and the majority of the time the member's private messages are ignored, as you very well know. It's been about 4 months, and I have yet to receive an explanation for why the "Time to speak out" thread was deleted.

Originally Posted by Lallous

We would appreciate if you could rather have some other consensual ideas of threads we could enjoy.

What you're saying nicely is "shut up about the things we don't like, stop bugging us about the times when we censor you, and put in some time and effort to find things to talk about that we like". I have my reservation about whether that strategy will work

If you want to attract serious, creative members, and have them be active participants, give them the freedom to say what's on their minds. Many of them have busy lives and don't have time to waste. They will not have much patience for thought control.

[elie2]

I have a suggestion that might be worth considering. I'm one of the 'visitors' that quite frequently read posts but rarely post (with whatever account i can remember as i must have plenty by now..):
Why not allow 'visitors' to "thank" (or even "not to thank" if this feature becomes available as proposed earlier).
This will as least get them one step closer to being involved and showing some sign of life, with minimal involvement.

[ceaoun]

Originally Posted by joseph_lubnan

Let me start by saying that I like the forum, and I thank the moderator and administration team for continuing to make it available for all of us.

The single biggest problem facing the forum in my opinion is that there isn't enough diversity of political opinions amongst current active members. Attracting members from all sides and of diverse opinions is critical to the health of the forum.

Here are few suggestions, that may help:

1. Control bullying in the forum. It discourages many readers and members from contributing, when they see bullying unchecked by the moderator team, because bullying doesn't always explicitly break forum rules.
2. Do not tolerate character assassination posts, and personal attacks posts.
3. Reduce the number of threads and posts overtly bashing and insulting your opponents, it discourages many followers of other parties from contributing. You certainly would never allow similar posts about your leadership or the opposition's leadership.
4. Reduce the level of "babying" of Hezbollah related issues, and Hezbollah supporters in the forum.
5. Allow threads to appear immediately, like regular posts. You can manage them later.

I will try to add more suggestions later, if I think of more...

Thank you Joseph
I was going to write a post and use you as an example . I wanted to be personal and specific example.
Many times you were personally attacked just because you believe in something different. While I disagreed with your point of view, I felt you presented your case in a much better way than your attackers(Hint: I used to think like you years back).
While I read most of your posts and I quiet enjoy them, I stopped reading your harsh attackers posts as I got familiar with their way of debating. I might agree with what they want to say but I don't like HOW they say it. And to be frank, many times I did not post and challange you just because of those harsh attakcs(affraid of guilt by association I guess).
Sometimes I admired how you kept it going despite those attacks.

I agree with all your points mentioned above.
I think you are a valuable member of this Forum and moderators should learn how to balance objectivity and subjectivity and when to sense the inappropriatness of an attack even if they agree with attacker's idea..
I truly believe the points you mentioned did cost lots of posts and posters.

regards

[ceaoun]

Originally Posted by Lallous

Thanks for the cheer-up. We appreciate it.





Don't worry. Rule #18 is on hold in this thread.
.

So we suspend the Constitution just because it is convenient. Fine.
But the problem is, as mentioned in other posts here, many rules were being suspended erratically, based on the moods of the mods.
Selective suspension does not reflect good on you frankly. You noticed that in so many complains already. Just be fair and balanced toward all your visitors irrespective of their belief system. A bully is a bully no matter if he or she an FPMer or LFer or Futuristic or Allawi.
regards

[>Watani<]

Thank you everyone for your contribution in this thread.
We will try to take all the advices and opinions in a serious way. Also we will try not to repeat the same mistakes as before!

Please feel free to post everything you have in mind politely.

Best Regards,

[Nasser]

I like this forum for its activity which is far better than other forums.
What I think is going wrong in the forum are the following:
1. biased mods.
2. Allowing secterianism. (eg: allowing some members to spread the 'wahhabism' and 'salafist' accusations , and when we reply to them explaining their false understanding of these two terms , post gets deleted while these posts containing these accusations NEVER got deleted.)
3. Allowing personal attacks and qualifying people as LFers/FMers/Whatever, against anti-Opposition or Independents.
4. Allowing Gloating on some special events where people were slaughtered which increases tension , and if a reply was with harsh words ( which is normal against such posts ) , the reply gets deleted while the gloating post stays there.
5. Deleting posts when a mod disagrees with the content.
and many ideas posted by others, as threads should just show up directly same as posts.

Conclusion: There is NO diversity allowed in this forum , and it has became a one-sided cheering-Opposition forum where no real ideas discussed. Therefore many people don't bother to check and post frequently like myself.

[Lallous]

Originally Posted by Souss

Does being FPM's official forum give you the right to censor? Yellow journalism and propaganda is practiced by both sides, see for example the thread about the objectivity of OTV's opening statements. But in any case, the threads that I saw deleted did not have any yellow journalism (or any journalism for that matter) or propaganda. As for preventive deletion, it seems you are creating a Bush Doctrine for online forums :P

If you want to attract serious, creative members, and have them be active participants, give them the freedom to say what's on their minds. Many of them have busy lives and don't have time to waste. They will not have much patience for thought control.

First of all, I apologize for any hasty action I may have taken, but the thing is not about not answering your concerns as much as it is not drifting the thread. I didn’t want to get involved in the political decisions made behind the forum but rather stick to some technical moderation policies, as the first one, neither me and much less you have a say about it. This policy is here to stay no matter if it would cost us some members; which by the way make you wonder the added value of some members when their sole participation is in these auto-flagellation threads when they are not related anyhow to FPM and even if they are, there is no ‘official’ members to reply them back.

When you joined the forum, you agreed to a set rules which are only an interface for something bigger which is promoting and protecting FPM's interests. You may consider it censorship; I would rather call it gatekeeping. Difference is huge. Gatekeeping is practiced in every media outlet. Nothing forbids to you to have your own blog if you want to talk about some topics or to get any other information you may lack elsewhere. You make it sound as if this forum is extremely repressive which isn’t the case as your whole concern is about a single thread that got deleted 4 months ago; well let’s give you a reason why it got deleted. You see there is a notice made sticky since June 2008. http://forum.tayyar.org/f8/2009-parl...portant-34862/
The thread in question was published next day by some yellow journalists under the label “massadir 3aouniyeh”. Sorry, notwithstanding it may unplease some members, but this type of threads doesn’t help much on a public forum. We won’t give our opponents extra reasons to attack us. That’s only a part of the reason because you could add to that how the thread was getting emotional and people attacking each other personally which is a major one too.

Is this forum a place for openly discussing ideas, or is it a propaganda tool for the FPM? Over the years the forum has oscillated between both, with sadly a clear tilt towards the latter in more recent times.

Thanks for stating the obvious. You answer your own reply.

N.B. : I won't answer any furthr reply on this subject. I already said more then what's needed.

[jaoun]

J'aurais deux suggestions pour le moment :

1) L'idée a été déjà discutée avec Lallous dans un autre thread et je vais la clarifier ici.
Il s'agit d'un petit bouton à côté de chaque avatar qui permet d'ouvrir une petite fenêtre. Dans cette fenêtre, on peut trouver des liens qui nous conduisent directement à toutes les nouvelles réponses qu'on a eu sur nos posts (comme celui de Facebook en bas de l'écran à votre droite).
Ça pourrait être très utile pour les utilisateurs. Je vais donner un exemple :

* quelqu'un qui s'est connecté au forum pour 1/2 heure, et a participé à 10 threads et puis s'est déconnecté. Le lendemain, quand il se reconnecte, il ne va pas pouvoir se rappeler de tous les threads dans lesquels il a posté (déjà). De plus, il aurait du mal, ou le plus souvent la flemme, à chercher si quelqu'un a répondu à ses posts ou pas, surtout dans un thread commne "Metn"
Donc cet outil facilitera les choses à l'utilisateur (intéractif et en deux cliques). De plus, ça fait une sorte d'engagement, ça oblige l'utilisateur en quelque sorte de répondre pour ne pas montrer qu'il est convaincu (al soukout 3alamatou al rida ), ce qui conduit à des discussions plus longues et donc plus de participation des forumers.

2) Ouvrir un thread dans la page d'accueil pour les questions (n'importe lesquelles) des nouveaux et des anciens utilisateurs, plutôt que de leur demander qu'ils adressent leurs questions a un moderator. Pourquoi ?
Et bien parce qu'il y a des gens qui sont plus ou moins timides, qui se demandent si leur question est bête ou pas, ou si il faut la poser ou pas.
Un tel thread pourrait leur donner une idée des questions qui se posent. ça fait moins de boulot pour les moderators et ça évite (parfois) la répétition des questions les plus posées. Après on peut toujours contacter un moderator...

Je rajoute que je suis tout à fait d'accord sur le fait que personne ne devrait être attaqué personnellement. ça ne doit pas être toléré, surtout dans la section politique.

Je profite de ma contribution à ce thread pour remercier tous les administrateurs de ce forum, et de les féliciter pour ce travail énorme et très professionnel.
Bon courage pour l'avenir !!

[lebanesecanadian]

Originally Posted by Lallous

Dear members,

For our members who became inactive, what is it that you lack to start participating again? Are you disabused from Lebanese politics, this forum, both? Please share your insights.

Since last spring, my activity on the forum decreased to a degree where thisthe only thread I can remember having more than 1 post is the US election thread (where I updated). I also was surprised that moderators are using their members/ names now so I guess you can call me inactive. A lot of the reasons for that inactivity are personal: traveling to Lebanon, moving, career, other interests... But even before that I rarely contributed to the political forum and stuck with the CF.

The problem with the political forum is simple. You can take any thread, read the title or the opening post, close your eyes, think for 10/20 seconds and predict 90% of what will be said in that thread. What's worse is that you can predict who will say what. Even worst is that you can guess who will thank who. Obviously part of the problem is fatigue/spending too much time here before (and you can't influence that). The other part is that, for all the bragging about the 16000 members, the discussion here is between a closed circle of people who keep running the same arguments. Most of these people have created a very narrow line of thinking and support and act as a team in cheer-leading their own and marginalizing and chiding and bullying the other. There is obviously great interest in preserving these members because of a) their level of activity and b) the fact that they keep this an "FPM" forum* but for this to remain a "forum" in the first place i.e. a place to discuss ideas they can't be allowed total domination. That was supposed to be solved by therules. The problem is that they spent too much time to learn to do whatever they want without circumventing the rules (as said before by Tai and Jl). The very few members who don't agree with FPM and keep coming back do it because of a dedication bordering on addiction.

*I would argue from an extremely subjective point of view that there's too much HA forum in the FPM forum. But that's just my opinion.