Encouraged About CF

Hey friends,
I wanted to post this thread to catch you up on some things that have been going on at CF lately. Now, I know that your feelings towards CF aren't exactly feelings of warmth and affection, but I ask that you would hear me out.

So in October last year, I created one last-ditch-effort thread in the Member Services Center. There I explained my discouragement over the deterioration in the forum's upholding of Christian values that no longer made it a safe place for discussion, encouragement, and edification. After receiving no replies from staff in 3 days, I checked out as many of you did. I was convinced that CF was at a point of no return. Since then, I have occasionally visited the Singles forum only to find that things were still basically the same. Terrible threads, encouragement of sinful behavior, etc.

About a month ago, I received a PM out of the blue from a staff person that I did not recognize, and she had only been a CF member for several months. She expressed a lot of empathy regarding that thread I posted and said that she wanted to work towards making CF Singles a safe place again. She also posted in the thread I made echoing the same thoughts she communicated to me in her PM. Since then, I have exchanged thread posts and PM's with her and another moderator and it seems as though they really desire to make CF Singles a viable place for fellowship again.

I will also say as a disclaimer that I'm really still in the early stages of communication with them, so it could be that the desired end of all this isn't every achieved, but I'm at least optimistic that things will get better. I also have to admit that things seem to have gotten at least slightly better than I have noticed them being in the past. For one, TeaCat doesn't seem to be posting at all, but obviously that could change in a flash. Anyways, I've posted in a couple of threads here and there and things don't seem to be as bad as they were this past summer/early fall.

So why do I post this thread? Well, one of the moderators is likely going to post a thread in CF Singles in the near future looking for thoughts and suggestions about how CF Singles and its environment could be improved upon. To me, this seems like a much more futile exercise if you all aren't contributing your opinions because most of you had posted in CF Singles for such a long time.

So I would ask that you would take a moment to contribute your opinion once that thread is up. I will be sure to let you guys know when it is. I simply ask that you post respectfully and not aggressively. One of the things that appears to have improved a lot is the lack of drama, and to speak honestly, some of that is probably because we are no longer there. So I mention that just to say please do not start drama there as you are posting. Make it about how to make CF Singles a better place. Don't fight with people, don't call out individual usernames, etc.
My main hope for CF Singles is that it would be a place where Christians can debate, discuss, encourage, and be encouraged without being mocked, and a place where non-Christians can come to respectfully express their views and engage in dialogue as well. If you want, you could express some thoughts along those lines, and also add any other thoughts or ideas you might have.

Last thing: You are by no means obligated to participate in this, and I did not start this thread to stir up bad feelings and cause drama, nor did I start this to convince you to return to being active on CF. I just have not given up on seeing CF Singles return to being a viable place for fellowship and edification. I have too many good memories there that I still want to see it succeed. Who knows? Perhaps little communities/groups of friends like what we are blessed with here will pop up in the future as a result of this. So I do hope that you will participate by respectfully expressing your thoughts.

Thanks for reading!

P.S. I will be posting this same thread on the Chatty Christians forum to seek the input of former CF Singles there as well. I have not up to this point joined Chatty because while I do not harbor hard feelings towards anyone there, I felt that I could not in good conscience join and be active there simply due to the way everything went down regarding how it was launched and then communicated to us. I do not plan to be active there, but I am going to create an account so that I can post this thread and interact directly with the members there.

Sounds good to me. I will contribute to that thread when it's up.

That would be great if it could be nicer on CF again. If not for us but in future for people when they google "christian forum" like I did. I will try to think of any suggestions if I can. The main thing that made me leave (from actively posting) over a year ago was really the aggressive feel of the place and not feeling comfortable to post because of that feeling. I'm not sure how that can be changed. I do still go on CF sometimes especially lately and see if there's any new interesting threads, but I don't post much there. Another reason I stopped posting there as much is sometimes I had the feeling that anything I posted was drowned out. But perhaps that's normal for a busy forum.

Dandelions in the Rain wrote:

That would be great if it could be nicer on CF again. If not for us but in future for people when they google "christian forum" like I did. I will try to think of any suggestions if I can. The main thing that made me leave (from actively posting) over a year ago was really the aggressive feel of the place and not feeling comfortable to post because of that feeling. I'm not sure how that can be changed. I do still go on CF sometimes especially lately and see if there's any new interesting threads, but I don't post much there. Another reason I stopped posting there as much is sometimes I had the feeling that anything I posted was drowned out. But perhaps that's normal for a busy forum.

I agree with Dandelions on almost every point.
I am encouraged to see that the problems that the Singles section encountered are still on the minds of the moderators and that there are some who care. It was a great forum, and I do hope that one day it can be improved upon and can become a place for supportive Christian fellowship.

My only problem with the advice thread is that I can't put my problems into words. I don't feel very eloquent and have trouble articulating the problems I see within the sub-forum. You just have to be a part of it to see what the problem is. I would love if a moderator spent active time there, and perhaps they could just see what needs to be done. I mean, they have the power, right?

I guess, my main issue were the posters. But maybe I'll find a better way of phrasing that if I do contribute to that thread lol. We'll see.

Paul, thank you for taking the time and making the effort to voice the opinions of many of us to the staff, and hopefully "fix" a once great forum.

Thanks for your thoughts, friends. The fact that you're actually offering thoughts is helpful, as opposed to other former CFers who are only concerned for their own communities. Keep them coming!

Also, if you would rather not post on CF, let me know and I would be happy to simply relay your thoughts to the moderators in that thread without any mention of names.

The thread is now up and live in Singles. It's stickied all the way up at the top.

Is it possible that we gave up on CF Singles too easily? Sometimes I think that if we had really stuck up for our values, things might have turned out differently. Maybe we still could.

Strider1002 wrote:

Is it possible that we gave up on CF Singles too easily? Sometimes I think that if we had really stuck up for our values, things might have turned out differently. Maybe we still could.

Well, none of us had gotten much of a response from the moderators around when we all left, and I just started hearing from Aviela only about 4-6 weeks ago. So I think we had good reason to leave then, but I think with Aviela and twob4me starting to grab this bull by the horns, and with things having calmed down there a bit, it seems like things are looking up.

TeaCat isn't around currently and I think that makes a big difference from a spamming perspective. But without a greater emphasis on staying on topic, there's nothing stopping her from coming back and doing the same thing she was doing before.

I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea here. On Chatty, I was harshly accused of promoting CF and trying to get people to rejoin Singles, and that is absolutely not my goal. I like that we have a little community going on here, but I also would like to see the place where so many of my online friendships came from succeed, which is why I'm so involved with this.

So with that said, if anyone is hanging around and posting there, the best thing we can do is report posts that obviously violate the rules, and also report those posts that bring about some concern regarding the issues we presented to the mods (derailing, irreverence towards Christian faith and practice, and promotion of sinful behavior). They may not be able to do anything more than reprimand people right now because I do think they are going to have to tweak the rules a bit to achieve what we're asking for, but it'll at least be a step in the right direction.

I feel a little like Oskar Schindler: "I could have done more!"

Anyway, I like being part of a big community like CF. I can tolerate a few troublemakers as long as they don't have the run of the place. I say we go to Singles and talk about God and prayer and Scripture as much as we can. Kind of like missionaries :DIf everyone respects us, great. If they don't, we can, and should, report them. It's not like we can get in trouble for being too Christian.

Strider1002 wrote:

I feel a little like Oskar Schindler: "I could have done more!"

Anyway, I like being part of a big community like CF. I can tolerate a few troublemakers as long as they don't have the run of the place. I say we go to Singles and talk about God and prayer and Scripture as much as we can. Kind of like missionaries If everyone respects us, great. If they don't, we can, and should, report them. It's not like we can get in trouble for being too Christian.

Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. I totally agree.

Well i'm staying here unless everyone disappears and stops posting here. i still feel safer here. But I've lurkingly returned to CF and might post more there depending on how it goes.
I agree that it could be good to be good examples there.

I'm definitely still hanging around here as well.

Also to everyone, a word from Aviela. She's just asking for everyone to be patient because staff works on a consensus basis and so it can take some time to get things accomplished. I don't think any of you came across as terribly impatient, but it's a good reminder.

Paulie079 wrote:

I'm definitely still hanging around here as well.

Also to everyone, a word from Aviela. She's just asking for everyone to be patient because staff works on a consensus basis and so it can take some time to get things accomplished. I don't think any of you came across as terribly impatient, but it's a good reminder.

Hey, it's just great that she's communicating with us!

Err, you.

Us, through you. Yeah.

Dandelions in the Rain wrote:

Well i'm staying here unless everyone disappears and stops posting here. i still feel safer here. But I've lurkingly returned to CF and might post more there depending on how it goes.
I agree that it could be good to be good examples there.

I'll continue posting here if you do

Dandelions in the Rain wrote:

Well i'm staying here unless everyone disappears and stops posting here. i still feel safer here.

Paulie079 wrote:

I'm definitely still hanging around here as well.

Strider1002 wrote:

I'll continue posting here if you do

  I'll keep this place open and running as long as people want it to be here!

I've also read the thread, and I'm really glad that you've talked to someone from CF about the situation Paul. Thanks!!  

I can't post in the Singles area anyway so I have no reason to go back. I poked around the other forums for a bit but they're all either dead or volatile. Try posting anything in the Politics area (especially if you're a Republican) and watch them rip you to pieces in minutes. It's awful.

I sent reps to the person who started that thread with a couple of my suggestions. Essentially that I think the best solution to improve the section would be more moderation to keep the rules (like what has been already suggested). And that I thought that separating the christians and the non christians, as someone suggested, was a bad idea for the overall health of the section (that it felt like a suggestion to kick the christians out - just my opinion).

I'm not going to really get my hopes up too much because it seems like maybe they can't do anything without new mods, and idk who would even want to step up to do that. It seems that maybe they have less mods/staff or whatever they are called now then they have always had in the past, which is why maybe the overall forum (not just singles) has somewhat gone downhill.

The big question for me has been, if certain people are so anti-Christian, why do they insist they be allowed to hang out on a Christian forum?

I guess the answer is: because they want to be the "bad" kids. The rebels. The smokers in the high school bathroom. If they went to a secular forum, they'd just be... normal. And that's not as fun for them.

Complaints about changes and being reported for disagreeing with someone--that's what I call headway

Someone got reported for disagreeing with someone? :o

Wow, now they're even deleting good posts. It's crazy over there.

Well, tone and being on topic can make a big difference.

It's so interesting to me how Nano always singles out Saucy to argue with. Like he sees an easy target and goes after it. Either way, it's really just Nano fighting the most at this point. He doesn't decide what CF's rules are, and he has shown that he doesn't know how to engage maturely with others (like the snide comment he made in the Singles thread, or the time that he publicly posted one of my PM's to him). At this point, it's better to just post your opinion up and against his without quoting him or addressing him directly.

Am I the only person who was kind of disappointed and perhaps more discouraged by the thread?
The intention behind the start of it was great. And I was really excited to see if others would express feelings and opinions similar to mine, but it became so ugly sooo quickly. The reactions of different members and the mods themselves...
There were some really great points and ideas which were voiced but the … ridiculousness which consumed the thread took too much of the focus and energy.
Sorry, I may be ranting a bit lol.

However on the plus side, there were some really great responses and I was pleased to see some well thought out responses.