Forum Reform

[gad-fly]

Topics can be classified into two categories:

Hot and Marginal: like hurricane on the US south, Trump elected as president, and book-club discussion. Sudden burst of interest as they may be, the span of attention is short, and soon taken over, if not forgotten.

Perpetual: like Climate Change (CC), pandemic, God as Creator, and democracy. They endure and persist with the serious concern of the public, philosophically and mentally.

This Forum makes no difference between the two. Every New Topic will be put on the top of the chart, to drop an earlier topic from the table-top. Topics, important or trivial, will all last for a week or less. Exception to this rule can be found. Some 4 topics here as raised by Scott, for example, stay permanently on the top, which makes sense. The implication? Probably that prioritization is sometimes necessary.

It is about time to introduce Reform. Establish a list of say not more than ten Perpetual Topics which can be reviewed from time to time, to attract new and old audience and commentators. If someone has some burst of thought on CC, for example, he can then be served with the convenience of a ready forum rather than to start a new thread. For me, I would certainly check the forum more often.

[LuckyR]

Topics can be classified into two categories:

Hot and Marginal: like hurricane on the US south, Trump elected as president, and book-club discussion. Sudden burst of interest as they may be, the span of attention is short, and soon taken over, if not forgotten.

Perpetual: like Climate Change (CC), pandemic, God as Creator, and democracy. They endure and persist with the serious concern of the public, philosophically and mentally.

This Forum makes no difference between the two. Every New Topic will be put on the top of the chart, to drop an earlier topic from the table-top. Topics, important or trivial, will all last for a week or less. Exception to this rule can be found. Some 4 topics here as raised by Scott, for example, stay permanently on the top, which makes sense. The implication? Probably that prioritization is sometimes necessary.

It is about time to introduce Reform. Establish a list of say not more than ten Perpetual Topics which can be reviewed from time to time, to attract new and old audience and commentators. If someone has some burst of thought on CC, for example, he can then be served with the convenience of a ready forum rather than to start a new thread. For me, I would certainly check the forum more often.

I guess I am missing the problem that your solution is designed to solve.

[gad-fly]

Topics can be classified into two categories:

Hot and Marginal: like hurricane on the US south, Trump elected as president, and book-club discussion. Sudden burst of interest as they may be, the span of attention is short, and soon taken over, if not forgotten.

Perpetual: like Climate Change (CC), pandemic, God as Creator, and democracy. They endure and persist with the serious concern of the public, philosophically and mentally.

This Forum makes no difference between the two. Every New Topic will be put on the top of the chart, to drop an earlier topic from the table-top. Topics, important or trivial, will all last for a week or less. Exception to this rule can be found. Some 4 topics here as raised by Scott, for example, stay permanently on the top, which makes sense. The implication? Probably that prioritization is sometimes necessary.

It is about time to introduce Reform. Establish a list of say not more than ten Perpetual Topics which can be reviewed from time to time, to attract new and old audience and commentators. If someone has some burst of thought on CC, for example, he can then be served with the convenience of a ready forum rather than to start a new thread. For me, I would certainly check the forum more often.

I guess I am missing the problem that your solution is designed to solve.

The problem: everybody is famous for five minutes. Call that universal equality. Whatever your weight, you will be pushed away by the next guy to the dustbin of history. Caution: this is not about me, as I may be that next guy, after you. The picture: We are worse than ants, since there is no queen. The consequence: We are no longer relevant as a forum. Time to exit the stage.

[LuckyR]

Topics can be classified into two categories:

Hot and Marginal: like hurricane on the US south, Trump elected as president, and book-club discussion. Sudden burst of interest as they may be, the span of attention is short, and soon taken over, if not forgotten.

Perpetual: like Climate Change (CC), pandemic, God as Creator, and democracy. They endure and persist with the serious concern of the public, philosophically and mentally.

This Forum makes no difference between the two. Every New Topic will be put on the top of the chart, to drop an earlier topic from the table-top. Topics, important or trivial, will all last for a week or less. Exception to this rule can be found. Some 4 topics here as raised by Scott, for example, stay permanently on the top, which makes sense. The implication? Probably that prioritization is sometimes necessary.

It is about time to introduce Reform. Establish a list of say not more than ten Perpetual Topics which can be reviewed from time to time, to attract new and old audience and commentators. If someone has some burst of thought on CC, for example, he can then be served with the convenience of a ready forum rather than to start a new thread. For me, I would certainly check the forum more often.

I guess I am missing the problem that your solution is designed to solve.

The problem: everybody is famous for five minutes. Call that universal equality. Whatever your weight, you will be pushed away by the next guy to the dustbin of history. Caution: this is not about me, as I may be that next guy, after you. The picture: We are worse than ants, since there is no queen. The consequence: We are no longer relevant as a forum. Time to exit the stage.

I'm still trying. So the Forum should seek to regain it's former relevancy? I don't have a good feel for the standing of the Forum in the overall scheme of things.

[gad-fly]

I'm still trying. So the Forum should seek to regain it's former relevancy? I don't have a good feel for the standing of the Forum in the overall scheme of things.

I don't know much about the forum's former relevance. I was attracted by its format and its ease of access to serve my subdued outburst of opinion.

Nothing lives forever. Every institution comes to a stage and time of reform or die. No guarantee of survive and thrive even with the best reform. suffice to say that change is the norm, and longevity is the reward for due diligence to seek change to improve.

[LuckyR]

I don't know much about the forum's former relevance. I was attracted by its format and its ease of access to serve my subdued outburst of opinion.

Nothing lives forever. Every institution comes to a stage and time of reform or die. No guarantee of survive and thrive even with the best reform. suffice to say that change is the norm, and longevity is the reward for due diligence to seek change to improve.

Ah so, change for change's sake. I have to concede it is the Modern norm, though as an old person I find it illogical.

[gad-fly]

I don't know much about the forum's former relevance. I was attracted by its format and its ease of access to serve my subdued outburst of opinion.

Nothing lives forever. Every institution comes to a stage and time of reform or die. No guarantee of survive and thrive even with the best reform. suffice to say that change is the norm, and longevity is the reward for due diligence to seek change to improve.

Ah so, change for change's sake. I have to concede it is the Modern norm, though as an old person I find it illogical.

NO. Not that.
i don't know what you mean by the modern norm. We may be moving at a faster pace than before, or much faster pace, but we do not blindly worship change. Not me, and not what I would advocate. Change to improve, to be better than before. Call that reform.

In the present case, imagine a concert hall allowing everyone inside, including the dog, taking the stage to sing for five minutes. It is losing audience. How do you stop the drain? Change the rule, I say.

[JackDaydream]

@gad-fly
What I don't see is who or on what basis it would decided which are the trivial topics and the importance ones. What are you are suggesting sounds so miserable because it would be like reading the same news headlines each day. It would remove creativity for new topics if people had to keep adding to old threads.

Also, topics don't disappear at all when they go from the top and people write on them for ages. Also, it would probably not be a good thing if there were threads which just went on and on because new members wouldn't wish to read these in full. It may also be useful when questions are answered with a slightly different slant for generating further thought than previously.

[LuckyR]

I don't know much about the forum's former relevance. I was attracted by its format and its ease of access to serve my subdued outburst of opinion.

Nothing lives forever. Every institution comes to a stage and time of reform or die. No guarantee of survive and thrive even with the best reform. suffice to say that change is the norm, and longevity is the reward for due diligence to seek change to improve.

Ah so, change for change's sake. I have to concede it is the Modern norm, though as an old person I find it illogical.

NO. Not that.
i don't know what you mean by the modern norm. We may be moving at a faster pace than before, or much faster pace, but we do not blindly worship change. Not me, and not what I would advocate. Change to improve, to be better than before. Call that reform.

In the present case, imagine a concert hall allowing everyone inside, including the dog, taking the stage to sing for five minutes. It is losing audience. How do you stop the drain? Change the rule, I say.

Got it! Loss of audience. I'm open to changes to build the number of participants.

[gad-fly]

I don't know much about the forum's former relevance. I was attracted by its format and its ease of access to serve my subdued outburst of opinion.

Nothing lives forever. Every institution comes to a stage and time of reform or die. No guarantee of survive and thrive even with the best reform. suffice to say that change is the norm, and longevity is the reward for due diligence to seek change to improve.

Ah so, change for change's sake. I have to concede it is the Modern norm, though as an old person I find it illogical.

NO. Not that.
i don't know what you mean by the modern norm. We may be moving at a faster pace than before, or much faster pace, but we do not blindly worship change. Not me, and not what I would advocate. Change to improve, to be better than before. Call that reform.

In the present case, imagine a concert hall allowing everyone inside, including the dog, taking the stage to sing for five minutes. It is losing audience. How do you stop the drain? Change the rule, I say.

Got it! Loss of audience. I'm open to changes to build the number of participants.

The staying power of the Forum is as crucial as any other factor to impact on the survival of this forum, if not more.

Say I am a casual visitor, looking for something mind-opening. I find the topic "What will be the impact of the pandemic in the near future?" I am attracted to read on, and I may even contribute my comment. Suppose another like me visited a few days later. Sorry, but that topic has already been displaced from the five top spots, and being a visitor do not expect him to take the trouble to look for hidden corners. At the same time, I would soon lose interest if the top 5 spots consist of no more than book club discussion mundane stuff.

In this respect, the Forum has no staying power. Visitors are no more than cannon fodder. Once gone like smoke and flame, they will not return. The only hope for the survival is the sparkle of attractive topics lasting a few days, like newspaper selling on sensational headlines.

[JackDaydream]

@gad-fly
I do agree with you in many ways about the problem of threads vanishing so quickly from the top and I think that it is a problem that only 5 recent topics show up. What this means is that in practice that sometimes a topic is created and it gets lost within about 2 days. This can happen quicker as well, especially when a whole group of book club discussions is added. If a topic has not interested a few users by the time it can only be found by looking into the individual sections which are placed down below the section on books of the month, which takes so much prominence in the layout, it is highly likely that a thread topic will 'flop'.

[Nick_A]

@gad-fly
I do agree with you in many ways about the problem of threads vanishing so quickly from the top and I think that it is a problem that only 5 recent topics show up. What this means is that in practice that sometimes a topic is created and it gets lost within about 2 days. This can happen quicker as well, especially when a whole group of book club discussions is added. If a topic has not interested a few users by the time it can only be found by looking into the individual sections which are placed down below the section on books of the month, which takes so much prominence in the layout, it is highly likely that a thread topic will 'flop'.

Very true. But there are also those with a sincere interest in "meaning" and the purpose of life, that will be rejected on modern secular site. They are the ones Simone Weil represents as the "Patron Saint of Outsiders? They have felt what Socrates meant by "I know Nothing" and seek to know why in comparison to human conscious potential they know noting. Where do they belong?

We have philosophy OF this and that but what of philosophy and its unique purpose as the love of wisdom? There is no place for it in the modern world so it must go underground.

"...It is not for man to seek, or even to believe in God. He has only to refuse to believe in everything that is not God. This refusal does not presuppose belief. It is enough to recognize, what is obvious to any mind, that all the goods of this world, past, present, or future, real or imaginary, are finite and limited and radically incapable of satisfying the desire which burns perpetually with in us for an infinite and perfect good... It is not a matter of self-questioning or searching. A man has only to persist in his refusal, and one day or another God will come to him."
-- Weil, Simone, ON SCIENCE, NECESSITY, AND THE LOVE OF GOD, edited by Richard Rees, London, Oxford University Press, 1968.- ©

What of these young outsiders who have needs the secular world does not understand? Religion and philosophy have become secularized So their questions remain unless they get lucky and find each other. A separate board for philosophy rather than philosophy of could help but secularism would never allow it.

As they leave to find others with their quality of needs they will be replaced by the desire for pragmatic solutions debating the need for human meaning. It does seem that all good things must come to an end in a given society. That includes the unique purposes of universal philosophy and religion

[JackDaydream]

@Nick-A
Rejection of outsiders in society is a problem in general.
It is a pity that there aren't that many people using the site because it gives less diversity of views.

I wonder what the worst form of rejection is , especially on a site. I think that it might be by being ignored completely.

[psyreporter]

Topics can be classified into two categories:

Hot and Marginal: like hurricane on the US south, Trump elected as president, and book-club discussion. Sudden burst of interest as they may be, the span of attention is short, and soon taken over, if not forgotten.

Perpetual: like Climate Change (CC), pandemic, God as Creator, and democracy. They endure and persist with the serious concern of the public, philosophically and mentally.

This Forum makes no difference between the two. Every New Topic will be put on the top of the chart, to drop an earlier topic from the table-top. Topics, important or trivial, will all last for a week or less. Exception to this rule can be found. Some 4 topics here as raised by Scott, for example, stay permanently on the top, which makes sense. The implication? Probably that prioritization is sometimes necessary.

It is about time to introduce Reform. Establish a list of say not more than ten Perpetual Topics which can be reviewed from time to time, to attract new and old audience and commentators. If someone has some burst of thought on CC, for example, he can then be served with the convenience of a ready forum rather than to start a new thread. For me, I would certainly check the forum more often.

Did you already notice the overview with most popular topics and topics of the month by year?

https://onlinephilosophyclub.com/most-p ... topics.php

I personally believe that the forum is performing quite well and that the setup chosen by @Scott is very nice and allows both newbies and advanced users to participate.

The book club addition is also very nice, as it provides a means for the forum to be optimally maintained on the longer term. That the forum is as fast and performant as it is for example, is due to a costly server that is funded by the book club.

Since I have my other much more active website, OnlineBookClub.org, I am able to let this much smaller website use that website's vast resources at essentially no charge.

I pay over $800 per month for the server I have it on currently, so in theory at least the forum software should run fast and reliably. The server has a 16-core CPU and 64GB of RAM. I don't think it would run well on, for example, a $5 per month shared web host, especially considering those are generally always oversold (i.e. running over capacity). There are a lot of other concerns like the SSL certificate, the IP address, the MX records, just to name a few of the top of my head. Cheap shared hosts either don't offer these kind of features or charge extra for them. Plus, someone has to set them up and manage all that which can take quite a bit of technical knowledge. I think I put a lot more time into this website than people realize, which is itself part of the reason I don't have as much time as I would like to log in as a regular user and join in on the actual discussions, which I do enjoy very much when I can find the time.

[Sculptor1]

Topics can be classified into two categories:

Hot and Marginal: like hurricane on the US south, Trump elected as president, and book-club discussion. Sudden burst of interest as they may be, the span of attention is short, and soon taken over, if not forgotten.

Perpetual: like Climate Change (CC), pandemic, God as Creator, and democracy. They endure and persist with the serious concern of the public, philosophically and mentally.

This Forum makes no difference between the two. Every New Topic will be put on the top of the chart, to drop an earlier topic from the table-top. Topics, important or trivial, will all last for a week or less. Exception to this rule can be found. Some 4 topics here as raised by Scott, for example, stay permanently on the top, which makes sense. The implication? Probably that prioritization is sometimes necessary.

It is about time to introduce Reform. Establish a list of say not more than ten Perpetual Topics which can be reviewed from time to time, to attract new and old audience and commentators. If someone has some burst of thought on CC, for example, he can then be served with the convenience of a ready forum rather than to start a new thread. For me, I would certainly check the forum more often.

At the top where?
When I come to the Forum it defaults to "New Posts" so that only the ones most recently contributed to are listed. Additionally "Active Topics" is much the same except the list in longer.

So what you do mean by "chart"?