Sciforums and our young friend.
The quality of the sciforums website is primarily due to the members who post here. But while Dave has furnished the medium and its structure, the content is very much up to us, the members.
There are effectively no rules yet there is significant respect between members and there is almost no abusive language or flaming, at least nothing that lasts for more than the occasional post.
The site is open to everyone and anyone and of all ages. And we do have members from 13, and perhaps younger, to I think around 70. And the variety of interests is also vast, and of course the site is open to all countries.
This represents a superb opportunity to explore and examine an extensively wide set of ideas, concepts, perceptions, and beliefs that would be difficult to find anywhere else.
I have learnt a lot from being here and I hope I may also have amused and helped others. I’m here to learn from others, to have an outlet for my own ideas, and to practice respectful and effective two-way communication with people who I would not normally meet in my usual life.
I hope that most members would have similar expectations. Without being forced, most here have adopted a civilized approach to communicating with other members and with a significant degree of tolerance for often very different perspectives. Certainly the religion forum can create the greatest heat. There are no winners or losers, and while many of us might lose a particular point, we generally move on and try again. There is usually an unspoken forgiveness if someone does screw up, perhaps because we all know we may do that ourselves sometimes.
However, occasionally, the site is used by some for quite different purposes: Some to preach, or to be vindictive, or to just annoy. There are no rules here to say such behavior is not acceptable, and there are no police to enforce standards, since there are few that are official. This means that the quality of the site and the behavior of potentially problematic members are entirely up to the majority of members to control. But there is no formal mechanism that would facilitate that role apart from our own debates and agreements such as this.
I don’t want to have anyone banned; neither do I want to prevent anyone from expressing their views.
Is truthseeker a problem? Perhaps not, but when some place him on their ignore lists then perhaps there is an indication of a potential problem. Perhaps I/we are being too sensitive and should just ignore posts we find foolish. But let’s agree that many of us find his manner and approach largely unacceptable and I think most would prefer he displayed a more mature attitude.
He is a young man with little to no experience of life and is desperately struggling to comprehend the world around him. I hope most can see that he has latched onto some concepts that do not relate very much to reality, and I’m not talking about religious differences here, but more along the lines of misconceptions about how real people view the world, and that seems to be really a lack of experience. Perhaps he just needs to get out more and mix with real people. Hiding behind an anonymous userid as if playing at a computer game will not help him develop any real social skills or understand how to more appropriately interact with other people.
Am I being condescending in discussing another member in such a way? Perhaps, but then I suspect many of you can see the same obvious facts as myself; so what I am saying should not be a surprise to anyone.
The solution: I don’t want to do anything to limit the freedom of another. I hope that truthseeker might read this and re-consider his approach to his posts. Perhaps he doesn’t even recognize he has a problem, and that is a real possibility. Perhaps we should all just give him our unconditional love.
I think I will just carefully choose his rare perceptive posts as a basis for a polite response, and those posts that are particularly arrogant or immature I will simply ignore. I just hope he doesn’t assume that silence means an endorsement for an idea.
Cris