YmirGF
Bodhisattva in Recovery
What a marvelous effort, @Debater Slayer
I'm honored to be mentioned. Thanks!
*has a Sally Field moment*
I'm honored to be mentioned. Thanks!
*has a Sally Field moment*
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Summary of the History of RF
- Thread starter Debater Slayer
- Start date
Rex
Founder
I sure don't. Wish I did though.
DennisTate
Active Member
I just posted a question that would be especially relevant to Latter Day Saints.
Thank you for having a look when you have some free time.
Is there something wrong with this opening post?
DennisTate
Active Member
Thank you for making yourself available here Rex.
I got myself into trouble already here........
A good friend of mine from another forum has me all worried about what could happen over the coming months and years. He gave me the statistic that there are 4.3 trillion USA Petro-Dollars out there floating around...... that I believe could be dumped on the markets in a disorganized manner and cause panic with many investors...... that could lead to a significant devaluation of the USA dollar.
This reminds me of the Hurricane of Money dream given to Pastor Shane Warren that he spoke about on an episode of Sid Roth back in 2012.
I would love to put forward a theory for you how your forum could become the platform for organizing a plan to defeat the George Soros / Warren Buffet plan that sure looks like a gambit to devalue the USA dollar? (This is on the site feedback forum):
https://www.religiousforums.com/thr...of-religiousforums-volunteerism-hours.203851/
Proposal for the creation of ReligiousForums Volunteerism Hours....
My question is.... Did you make the brownies for your girlfriend.
lunamoth
Will to love
Loved Lilithu!!!Oh my gosh! What an incredible history and what a tremendous amount of work! This thread was an absolute joy to read. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
P.S. Katzpur met lilithu (remember her?) and will be meeting Terrywoodenpic in September of this year!
This is a wonderful history you put together, @Debater Slayer! I didn't see it until today since I was taking a protracted break from the Forum when you published it.
It looks at the moment that I am currently the longest standing member still active on RF. Unless @Jayhawker Soule or @Mr Spinkles comes back anytime soon, that might remain true for awhile. I miss both those guys, so I hope they come back.
I'd like to add a couple details to your history, if I may.
The First Administrator
@Green Gaia -- or Amy -- was the very first staff member that our founder and original owner @Rex hired to help him administer the Forum. It was a very wise choice on his part because Amy was to my recollection an exceptional person.
She combined such traits as fair-mindedness, high intelligence, rationality, and reasonableness with a dedicated work ethic, and a vision of the Forum as a friendly gathering place for people of all religious (as well as non-religious) views.
Amy began as a mod, but Rex promoted her to administrator in order to cover for him while he took a real life vacation. When he got back from his vacation, he offered her a modest salary for her help in running the Forum.
Amy was so dedicated to the Forum that she declined the money and remained on staff as an unpaid volunteer -- something that is still true today of every staff member apart from the actual owners and their representatives. That is, to this day, staff are unpaid volunteers.
As you said elsewhere, Debater Slayer, Amy's influence on the Forum was huge. In my opinion, Rex could not have gotten the Forum off to a better start than to have hired Amy to administer it. More than anyone else -- even Rex himself -- she laid the foundations for what it would become.
Rex, the Founder
Rex himself, of course, was also extraordinarily important in laying the foundations. I credit him with firmly establishing that the Forum was to be a place for nearly all views and opinions. I think the primary difference between Rex's vision for the Forum and Amy's vision for the Forum was that Rex saw it mainly as limited to religious discussions and debates, while Amy saw it as also involving a wider range of topics.
One of Rex's greatest strengths as a leader was that he was able to spot folks who would make good staff members -- a rather difficult thing to do with any consistency. He also, like Amy, was extremely tolerant of views he himself did not hold. Unlike some forum owners, Rex never banned anyone merely because they disagreed with his views on some matter or another. That ethos continues down to this very day.
The Second Administrator
@Pah -- or Bob -- was the second administrator to be hired by Rex. Bob had a bit narrower vision for the Forum than Amy. In Bob's view, the Forum should be dedicated only to discussing and debating religion. He was opposed to expanding it into other topics -- and especially opposed to expanding it into political topics. Despite their differing visions for the Forum, Amy and Bob were a good team who got along well with each other.
Bob, by the way, is the person most responsible for the layout of RF's "Everything But the Kitchen Sink" section. Rex and Amy did the DIR sections together, but Bob created most of the longer-standing sub-forums you see today under the Kitchen Sink section, such as "The Material World". "The Social World", etc.
Rex's Curious Habit
Now back in the day, Rex had a curious habit. His habit was to NOT ask you if you wanted to be on staff, but rather to simply promote you to the position without prior warning or notice. That's how, one morning, I woke up, logged on, and discovered I was a mod.
Given that Rex normally made excellent staff decisions, you might well wonder why he departed from all common sense in making me a mod. The real culprit was Amy. Rex had sought her advice about who to make a mod. She had responded that I was "the most fair-minded and rational member that the Forum currently had", and that in her opinion, that was what was needed in a mod. So anyone who understandably regrets I ever got on staff must stop blaming me now -- it wasn't my idea at all! It was entirely due to an unfortunate, but temporary, lapse in judgement by two people who otherwise were excellent judges of other people.
Sometime after my initial promotion to the modship, I woke up one morning to discover that I was now a super-mod, rather than a mere mod. Rex again.
Back in that day, there were three levels to the modship. Mod, super-mod, and administrator. When I eventually became an administrator I eliminated the mod position and started everyone off as a super-mod -- among other changes I made.
What were those other changes? Among a few other things, I:
- Designed and established the political forums -- their current layout and division into regions (North America, Europe, etc.) was my doing. Bob was aghast! He declared that politics would now overtake religion as the core focus and purpose of the Forum, but Amy and I thought that unlikely. As it turned out, Bob's fears were to some large extent justified.
- Designed and established the Eros Room. The idea for an Eros room came from @Feathersinherhair -- Meggie -- who was on staff at the time as a supermod. Meggie wasn't interested in the Room for herself, but rather thought it would be something other people might want and benefit from. Which was so typical of her: She was always thinking of others. All I did was set the Room up, and create the special rules for its use.
- Created the "Interview Place". For awhile I was very active in interviewing members about themselves. Hence, I needed a sub-forum for it, and hence I created one.
- Wrote the first and original version of the Forum Mission. The Forum Mission has since been re-written several times, but I gave it its first formal, written expression.
- Set up various things that are no longer in use today, such as the Member's Awards Program, etc.
I would now like to bore you with the history of the consensus system, Debater Slayer.
At the time Todd promoted me to administrator, there were three levels to the staff. Mod, Supermod, and Administrator. Mods were assigned to specific sub-forums, such as "Religious Debates". One sub-forum, one mod. Each mod was like a little baron with his or her own turf over which they made decisions and ruled to the best of their abilities and wisdom.
Naturally, I decided to mess with all that.
I have always -- all my life -- been suspicious of power; very, very much including my own. Like Lord Acton, I believe power corrupts. And even when it doesn't corrupt, the powerful make mistakes. Mistakes that create injustices. And I do not think even for a moment that I myself am either above being corrupted by power or above making mistakes when wielding power -- let alone anyone else.
I also have some practical political experience in my distant past. So I know a wee bit about how to place checks and balances on power.
Now, RF is no world government. We're just a moderately-sized internet forum. But we still have mods, and our mods still exercise some wee bit of power over the forum and its members. So, to my thinking, that means checks and balances are necessary.
Hence the consensus system.
I designed and implemented it in order to ameliorate any abuses of power and/or legitimate mistakes that might be made when moderating the Forum. Here's how it works: With a few exceptions, no mod decisions can be made unless at least three mods agree on what the decision will be.
That's it. Short, sweet, and simple. But I believe it's an effective rule. It does not entirely eliminate mistakes and injustices -- no system can do that -- but it arguably ameliorates them. It arguably reduces them to the lowest number practical.
I implemented it early on in my "career" as an administrator. In addition to the consensus system, I and @TashaN worked out the Site Feedback Appeals system together.
Up until we worked out and implemented the Site Feedback Appeals system, members more or less had a right to appeal mod decisions. That is, they could always complain some decision wasn't fair. But there was no official, formal way to do it. Usually, someone would just PM one or another administrator who would then make an unilateral decision about whether or not to reverse the mod decision.
I worried that that wasn't enough. One day, I was discussing the problem with TashaN -- Faisal -- and he told me of another forum he was on in which they had a sub-forum that members could create threads seen only by the staff. That allowed the staff and members to sort out any disagreements they had in private.
I at once thought that was a good idea. But it further occurred to me that "Going to Site Feedback" could become part of a formal appeals process.
And all of that has today evolved into the system we have today. Whenever a member is found in violation of a rule, they get a notice that in effect tells them they can appeal the decision by starting a thread in Site Feedback.
Now, Debater Slayer, I've got a bone to pick with you.
You call my designing and implementing the consensus system my "greatest accomplishment". But I think the way I handled the Great Schism was almost just as great of an accomplishment as my implementing the consensus system. So I demand satisfaction! Pistols at dawn!At the time of the Great Schism, there were three administrators. Markablue, Michel, and I. As it happened, Markablue and Michel chose to leave most of the decisions on how to handle the situation up to me. To be honest, I made some mistakes. Including one or two big ones. But in the end, I mucked through -- with absolutely crucial help from some key mods, such as @Quagmire, @MysticSanghai, @Mister_T, and others -- and the Forum recovered from the Schism, and went on to grow and prosper. So, I think that was one of my accomplishments too.
Important as the consensus system, the appeals system, and dealing with the Great Schism were, they are not the accomplishments I am personally most proud of. No, these are the accomplishments I am personally most proud of:
- Proposed and implemented the Friday Night Staff Orgies.
- Started the first and original "Random Meaningless Announcements" thread.
- Created the Girls on Trampolines Religion
- Hired Quagmire (among many others) who turned out to be one of the best admins this Forum has ever seen.
- Shipped several bottles of locally brewed Colorado beers to Mister T.
- Introduced @Songbird and @Doppleganger to each other, who are now married.
- Annoyed @Jayhawker Soule for over a decade.
- Abused my position and authority only 144 times over nearly 15 years.
- Remodeled the second floor staff restroom into my private bachelor pad complete with dance pole and aesthetically pleasing garish lighting.
At the time Advameg bought the Forum there was a great deal of confusion about who and what the company was. Advameg was owned by Lech, a Polish immigrant to the US living in the Chicago area. Lech employed a handful of people living in Poland to operate Advameg on a day to day basis. Here on RF, we mostly interacted with Markablue and Piotre. Marka was Lech's general or overall representative on RF, and Piotre was her tech guy.
Marka, Piotre, and the few other employees of Advameg were paid a tiny monthly salary -- in Marka's case, about $100 -- by Lech plus they owned some kind of revenue generating stock in Advameg, too. That is, at the time Advameg owned RF, Advameg was a very small company of about five or six people, all of whom were Poles or of Polish origins.
Curiously, at the time Advameg bought RF, several RFers circulated the rumor that Advameg was some kind of huge, cold, international corporation interested only in ruthlessly maximizing profits. It was a very strange rumor to start about the tiny little company.
I think Cardero's comic book series about RF is still somewhere in the database, but I'm not sure where.
And how dare you not mention the great religion of Trampolines?
Here's how that came about. Someone -- I forget who -- made a post one day in which there was a link to a video of girls bouncing on trampolines as a paid sex show. The whole thing had me falling out of my chair with laughter. I had never before heard anything in life about girls being paid to bounce on trampolines so men could lust for them. So I changed my religion to "Girls on Trampolines". Pretty soon afterwards, @MyticSangh'ai notice my religion, asked about it, then started posting about girls on trampolines as "the religion of love", and it all took off from there.
Katzpur
Not your average Mormon
@lunamoth! How are you? It's been ages! It's so good to see you.
lunamoth
Will to love
Hi Katzpur! Yes, I am still alive. . Busy with life and all good things. Hope you are also well. When I am on my computer, instead of my phone, I’ll post a longer ‘hello’ to all. Cheers!@lunamoth! How are you? It's been ages! It's so good to see you.
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
I can't say I was laughing the first time I heard about guys apparently having a thing for girls jumping on trampolines, but I definitely wondered what the hell.
Ever watch The Man Show?
Shadow Wolf
Certified People sTabber
Catching a glimpse of that show is the first time I'd heard of it, lol. "They're jumping," I thought. "Is it arousing people that this is supposed to do?"
I say it's more about the outrageousness.