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As of late July, 2018, the Religion and Spirituality forum, along with all of the sub-forums, are being moderated by mensaguy and Mightyqueen801.
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November 20, 2019
I hope everyone is as pleased as I am to have Rachel NewYork join us as a moderator for the Religion and Spirituality forums. Her primary focus will be on the Judaism forum at first, but she will be an equal part of the moderating team throughout the R&S forums.
We want people to quote posts correctly. A lot of people do not know how to do this, so quotes are incorrectly formatted, sometimes the writer of the original post is not identified, and sometimes the message gets mixed up. If you get a quote messed up and can't fix it, report the post quickly so we can fix it before it gets quoted with the error in it. That's how posts end up show the wrong author.
The City-Data FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). Become familiar with this forum: //www.city-data.com/forum/faq/ There are threads in there answering many questions and providing details about how to do many things.
This thread covers Multi-quoting: //www.city-data.com/forum/faq/2277292-multi-quote-how-multi-quote-posts.html Although this isn't new information, take a look anyway. The post says to click on "New Post" to post quoting all the selected posts, but you can also click on the "Quote" button to do the same thing, quoting the post you are currently reading.
You need to know what the "Wrap [ quote ] tags around selected text," "Multi-Quote This Message," and "Reply With Quote" buttons do.
All proper quotes show between two tags. The first opens the quote and consists of the word "quote" contained in brackets "[ and ]" (1) and the second closes the quote, with the word "/quote" contained in similar brackets. Experience has taught me that the quotes don't work if they are bold or italic or any color other than black. Very important: BOTH tags must be correct or the quote fails, leaving one valid tag. That leads to the problems where the next member quoting the post picks up the extra tag, which may cause the quote to appear to come from the wrong member.
When a post is quoted correctly, you can see who posted it and there will be a little blue icon to the right of the username that looks like this symbol: ">"
We expect quoted posts to appear correctly. If you don't understand this, ask for help. If you make a mistake and spot it after the edit time limit, report the post as quickly as possible so we can try to fix it before it gets quoted.
(1) This quote tag had to have spaces inserted to keep it from being parsed as an opening quote tag that had no matching closing quote tag.
As an addendum to the pre-existing R&S Forums guideline: "When starting a new thread, please do not post only a link or a video. Other members may not know what your intent was if that is all there is. Also, subsequent posts may be off topic if people have no idea what topic you wanted to set forth with your link/video. Add a line or two to let the readers know your thoughts," please note the following:
This applies also to posts within a thread: Provide some commentary to accompany the link or video that you are posting. Most of the time, we want some original thought. Do you agree or disagree with what you have posted? If you have posted a link in response to someone's request, at least ask them if this is what they were looking for. Let's keep discussion flowing.
-- The R&S Forums Moderating Team (mensaguy, Mightyqueen801, and Rachel NewYork)
We said several years ago that quoting posts must be done honestly.
We said: "Changing others' posts that you have quoted, is not permitted. Do not change others' posts ... EVER. It is trolling and violators will be infracted. If you see it being done please report. Don't reply."
Now, it seems we need to be more specific.
There is to be no "Fixed that for you" posting. There is to be no editing of a quoted post that alters the meaning. You can expect a posting restriction infraction if you do so.
If this is the quote that you want to “fix”:
Quote:
Originally Posted by DogDad
Dogs are the best animal!
You are not allowed to do this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by KittyKing
Quote:
Originally Posted by DogDad
Dogs are the dumbest animal!
There, fixed that for you.
However, you are allowed to do this:
Quote:
Originally Posted by KittyKing
Quote:
Originally Posted by DogDad
Dogs are the best animal!
Quote:
Dogs are the dumbest animal!
There, fixed that for you.
The point is that you are not allowed to put words in someone else’s mouth. It is almost the definition of trolling, and will be treated as such. Don't expect warnings to be issued on something so fundamental as this.
Note: Sometimes people remove parts of quoted posts for brevity when the reply only applies to a portion of the quote. That's OK as long as the meaning and/or intent of the original post is not compromised.
Be very cautious of changing font colors to such an extent that the original post nearly disappears. That's also a dishonest way to quote somebody.
There has been a lot of contention and discussion in the R&S forum over the concept of pantheism. It has been expressed as "The Universe is God", "Reality is God", "God is in everything", "what people think is God is really the biosphere" and so forth. The overarching bucket into which fall of all these views is pantheism, defined by Oxford Languages as :
1. a doctrine which identifies God with the universe, or regards the universe as a manifestation of God.
2. worship that admits or tolerates all gods.
This is a subject that the mods feel should be discussed on its own merits; however, historically, the concept has been inserted into unrelated conversations time and time again, causing thread hijacks and derailments.
Therefore, we are opening a thread on the R&S general forum for discussion of this worldview. Conversations about pantheism, the Universe, etc., must be contained to that thread. Attempts to hijack other topics by inserting pantheism will result in deletions and/or infractions as necessary. Certain posters have hijacked thread after thread with comments about God is everything, God is Reality, and "something more" until they were called out on that and started calling it pantheism. Moderators are not stupid. We know what you were doing, and it will no longer be tolerated, no matter how you word it.
In addition, since pantheism often overlaps and/or can be contrasted with various worldviews found under the Pagan umbrella, discussions of the topic are permitted in the Pagan forum.
Pantheism should not be brought up in any other of the R&S subforums as it is unrelated to those worldviews and is therefore off topic.
We sometimes end up having to write rules because people say things we never thought would be said. This is one of those.
Within the Religion and Spirituality forums, referring to any member, either explicitly or by implication, as "Devil," "Satan," "Baphomet," "Beelzebub," "Diablo," "Mephistopheles," "Lucifer," or any other term that implies a member is or represents the Devil will be viewed as an incredible personal attack and infractions can be expected, possibly including being banned on a first offense. It shouldn't even be necessary to post this rule, but it has been made necessary.
Announcement: Stop griping about how many posts a person has
Let's get something straight here. This forum, titled Religion and Spirituality, is to discuss issues ABOUT Religion and Spirituality. That means any religion is an appropriate topic, including None. This is obvious from the announcement that Administrator made in the Atheism and Agnosticism forum.
As the owner of the company, he decided what format his forums would take.
We have people that have been members since the forum was created in 2006, and we have new members joining all the time. The number of posts a person has made, the frequency of a person's posts, and how many threads a member may have started are generally off topic and not appropriate for repeated mentioning.
It is worth mentioning that some of our members are very invested in their point of view. Some people had traumatic events cause them to become religious, and others had religion lead to such painful events in their lives that they talk about it in this forum, where all views are welcome.
Repeatedly remarking about how many posts a person has or which point of view they hold is not conducive to good discussions and is frequently off topic. Please don't do that.
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ANNOUNCEMENT: No more Corona Virus threads
