I think there's room for people who make the claims and the people who debunk them, but not both.
As a forum, you thrive on acquiring interesting content. Have you noticed how much more activity we've had since the appearance of people like this? Whether it's real or not, how can you expect to achieve a COMMUNITY if those who want to contribute something interesting are constantly shot down by "senior" members?
I used to be in that camp and look what happened to the site during my ownership; down the fucking tubes. It's taken over a year for Num's higher tolerance for silliness to get this place back to a respectable level of activity. Now that's it's coming back I think we need to have a mechanism to insulate those with fantastic claims from those who have above-average reasoning skills.
There is room for both sides of the argument, but clearly not in the same thread. The naysayers tend to outnumber the wishful thinkers and the conversation eventually decends into negativity that nobody wants to read. I suggested this to Num via PM the other day but I'll post it here too:
I propose a "Fantastic Claims" category which contain both an "I Am A..." forum (for those claiming to be time travelers, vampires, tri-sexuals, whatever) and a "Logic Brigade" forum (for the debunkers).
Each thread containing a claim like the Titor deal we have going on now would be moved to the I Am A forum where all new posts are moderated before becoming visible, and a corresponding thread is created in the Logic Brigade.
If a post contains something along the lines of this, it gets moved to the Logic Brigade thread. Otherwise it gets approved. This lets the conversation, however ridiculous, continue and generates interesting content for the site while at the same time not censoring or penalizing the people who know how to tear a story down.
I realize this coddles the idiots who like to play pretend, but come on. Would you rather read a mildly amusing story and THEN have a resource to educate yourself, or a site full of threads containing nothing but "you're full of shit"?
As a forum, you thrive on acquiring interesting content. Have you noticed how much more activity we've had since the appearance of people like this? Whether it's real or not, how can you expect to achieve a COMMUNITY if those who want to contribute something interesting are constantly shot down by "senior" members?
I used to be in that camp and look what happened to the site during my ownership; down the fucking tubes. It's taken over a year for Num's higher tolerance for silliness to get this place back to a respectable level of activity. Now that's it's coming back I think we need to have a mechanism to insulate those with fantastic claims from those who have above-average reasoning skills.
There is room for both sides of the argument, but clearly not in the same thread. The naysayers tend to outnumber the wishful thinkers and the conversation eventually decends into negativity that nobody wants to read. I suggested this to Num via PM the other day but I'll post it here too:
I propose a "Fantastic Claims" category which contain both an "I Am A..." forum (for those claiming to be time travelers, vampires, tri-sexuals, whatever) and a "Logic Brigade" forum (for the debunkers).
Each thread containing a claim like the Titor deal we have going on now would be moved to the I Am A forum where all new posts are moderated before becoming visible, and a corresponding thread is created in the Logic Brigade.
If a post contains something along the lines of this, it gets moved to the Logic Brigade thread. Otherwise it gets approved. This lets the conversation, however ridiculous, continue and generates interesting content for the site while at the same time not censoring or penalizing the people who know how to tear a story down.
I realize this coddles the idiots who like to play pretend, but come on. Would you rather read a mildly amusing story and THEN have a resource to educate yourself, or a site full of threads containing nothing but "you're full of shit"?
