Flagging System Proposal

magilum
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Flagging System Proposal

I partly think this idea would be too abusive to theistic participants, or too complicated to implement and maintain, but I wanted to run by the board while it's still fresh in my mind. There are a lot of Christians on the board, and from what I've seen not a single one of them shares with another a common model of “god,” or a common interpretation of what parts of scripture are meant to be literal, metaphorical, symbolic, mistranslated, given only to a certain context, no longer appropriate, etc. While I have little confusion about WHY that would be, keeping track of the eccentricities of each testimonial to the “infallible word of god” is difficult and beyond my commitment as a forum goer. What I propose is a flagging system for posts, voted on by members, given a choice of in a predetermined set of categories of: religions and denominations, types of fallacies, rejection of evolution, etc. Posts flagged consistently beyond a given threshold could be highlighted as examples of a certain argument or fallacy; members with their posts flagged consistently above a given threshold could be labeled for their reliance on appeals to wonder or Pascal's wager. A page could be put up with graphs and totals using the collected data to show the most popular arguments, and whom the biggest proponents of certain arguments are. That way, it would be easy to know where you stand, without having to constantly quiz every new theist that wants to dialog.


Susan
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That would be a programming

That would be a programming and mod nightmare.  I'm also not sure it would be fair to theists if people started clicking indiscriminately.

 We had problems just using the "Theist" badge, so imagine what kind of problems we'd have with a "rating" system!

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James Cizuz
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It's not that hard to code

It's not that hard to code in. Whos doing the forum, and site coding for you guys anyway? A lot of stuff here is... not poorly coded but I do see a lot of errors.

"When I die I shall be content to vanish into nothingness.... No show, however good, could conceivably be good forever.... I do not believe in immortality, and have no desire for it." ~H.L. Mencken

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Vastet
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The biggest problem I see

The biggest problem I see with this is that there are ways to easily abuse the system, ending in a slanted and unrealistic end view.

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magilum
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Voting could conceivably be

Voting could conceivably be limited to members confirmed not to be trolls, or themselves having a certain rank based on flagging (which would have to be primed by mods, but would be self-maintaining after that). The possible flags I envision would encompass only categories of rhetoric, fallacies, etc., and a few things that suggest differences in denominations and religious views; so there'd be little incentive for a theist to abuse the system, though I can't speak for a disgruntled atheist.


magilum
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MetaFilter has a good

MetaFilter has a good flagging and favoriting system. But that's written in ColdFusion, which is probably a lot easier than wrestling with Drupal.