I hesitate to post this-don’t want to seem school-marmish-and will anyone even read it anyway- but WTF: in the interests of improving something that is good but could be so much better:
1. Many of the threads have been hijacked by a) well-meaning(?) ideologues with a single and extraneous point to make or b) religious enthusiasts of the biblical prophesy variety, or c) conspiracy theorists. These people all have one thing in common: a lot of free time to take over a forum.
Suggestion: clearly deranged or narcissistic posters are gently urged by moderators to reform or remove themselves from the thread.
2. Many of the posts are ridiculously long - and directed to another individual poster (“Hey Anaxamander- in my last post I told you to ....”). Unless you’ve been following the thrust and parry between these two the whole exercise becomes exceedingly tedious. And many of these private discussions are off-topic anyway.
Suggestion: posters should make declarative, jargon-free (if possible) statements/arguments that will be intelligible to most readers of the thread—and brevity is the soul of wit.
3. The boundaries between different thread topics are necessarily imprecise- but many posters make NO these effort to stay on topic.
Suggestion: off-topic posting is gently discouraged once it becomes an impediment to communication. Not sure how to do this- should the moderators be doing more? (do they have a life?).
4. The number and frequency of posters is way too small. Come on people! These are in many ways the key intellectual questions of our day, and there aren’t that many fora like CFI. I can’t believe days can go by between posts on “secularism v. religion” or many other threads. I have to assume that problems 1), 2), and 3) above are partly to blame and are turning off many potential posters.
Suggestion: keep it short, to the point and make the discussion flow. Our collective mind is strong.
