As for those in the past I have banned they say its because I disagreed with them. This is a funny one, if that was the case I would have never let a atheist on this board even back when I started.
I always have allowed all manner of people here, 99.9% of bans on here have come when people have overstepped forum etiquette or just avoided requests to ease up ..
funny enough its been the non regular Christians who remained the longest.
The ones who have got booted from this forum either
A. Never read the rules which over time had to be changed and referred to several times due to " Self Proclaimed Christians " thinking they should be treated differently to opposing views
B. Moderators who went crazy and started following people around the forum and deleting all their messages, Th1bill was one, originally the guy was banned and booted from another forum before he came here, then after he agreed through PM that he was out of line and avoided multiple warnings.. he was removed
C. Removal of th1bill, led to him leaving, he came back ( as they all do to attempt to cause others to leave ) he was finally banned from here, he moved on to another forum.. Gave them the same speech he gave me ( basically saying he was not to blame ) he then went on to say on the other forum things that were not accurate about this place.. I jumped on that forum cleared that up by explaining what took place.. He then left that forum and disappeared for a long while and ive just recently seen him on another Self Proclaimed Christian forum.. still at the same rehashed nonsense he gave when he first came here.
D. This left quite a bulk of people here.. NOW up to that point I was advertising on yahoo, google and msn this website through paid advertising, so membership was increasing a lot... I decided to stop doing that.. so hence.. only people who came to forum was search engine traffic who stumbled on the site or was referred here.. This meant considerably a lot less people..
E. People remained mainly made up of a mixture of Fundamentalists and some folks who were less fundamental... Now a handful of those were close with th1bill and they decided to leave with him, buying his story about what went down, yet not seeing all the PMBS that were sent to me from people complaining about th1bill.... so a few more left.
F. Once those people left.. ( ive mentioned this in the Snowball effect thread ) others didnt leave but were now very touchy concerning myself and the moderators.. at that time i think there was around 4 moderators... each day i would log on there would be at least 3 to 6 messages from people complaining about Moderators.. being too harsh, being too fundamental, being too ... You fill in the blanks.. I now had the job of trying to deal with those folks and the moderators and backtracking lots of threads to see what was going on.. as at that point i used to come on the forum about once to 3 times a week, as the moderators did fairly good job of keeping some order and preventing spam.... I would get pms from Moderators i wont mention names they know who they were.. they would be complaining about people on the forum and asking me to BAN them and some requested deletion of posts.. In some cases i did, this landed me in trouble.. and when I never.. this also landed me in trouble with them LOL.. go figure ... A few moderators decided to leave.. after a few people saw them go.. they too left..
G. Now... in among all of this.. My beliefs in what I had been taught regarding christianity were changing, from quite a left wing radical position to giving more thought to researching my beliefs and teachings from christians, the bible etc etc... This obviously is going to effect the forum as now instead of AGREEING with the main group of Christians who frequented here, I now was seen as playing the Devils advocate.. a kind of " Hey arent you meant to be on our side " as if SIDES exist LOL.... At times i would say hold on a moment.. I dont think they are meaning that, this is what i think they are saying, or.. see it from their point of view for a moment..
Obviously this didnt go over well and slowly by slowly.. the fundamentalists among the remaining group of self proclaimed christians began to dig their feet in the ground and use PMBs ( a few good folk forwarded them to me ) as a means to talk behind peoples backs, and blow things out of proportion over situations, threads and discussions where things were being misunderstood.
Note: I do not remove myself from all the responsibility of alterations that have occured and threads, posts misunderstood, I would say I did my own fair share of saying things and then coming back later and thinking.. um shouldnt have said that or.. man i was an ass there, maybe that would have come across wrong, or maybe that person would take that the wrong way.. Either way.. this place became a very very heated place.. Honestly it was pretty sad to see the backbiting going on from all sides, we all steeped pretty low reacting to each other out of defense, frustration and personal pride.
Hence several other key members left, and with them took others who no longer felt good about being on a forum where they were not there too..
H. Lastly what remained was about 4 to 5 of the die hard forum visitors, such as humble pie, vhayes, nashdude, brotherbrian, my father, christa, some really good people...and a few others i forget their nicks...unfortunetly... im sure they would agree this place had become extremely different... from what they first came into.. their ideas on what they wanted from this forum and what they expected compared to others here Atheists, universalists... and my own was very big in difference.. I would say a Big chasm had been formed not over night but over a period of about 10 months..
Finally, again through threads and large disagreements over what I was allowing to happen and what I was disagreeing over.., pmbs that were forwarded on to me from others, several others were booted out because instead of coming and just chatting it became more of a " How can i have a dig at myself or an atheist " Honestly when it gets to that... you might aswell move on.. several moved on, others left kicking and screaming wanting to fight to the last breath... blaming me for banning some members who funny enough were people that they at one time themselves had asked me to ban.. though I never told that to the person I banned, had they known I doubt they would have been so CHUMMY over at the new forum they went together on..
IN the end I had people saying Your not a christian, and we are praying for you ( i.e Isnt that noble of us and letting you know " like please give me a break
Those people formed a new forum elsewhere.. I visited there and for the few weeks much discussion was over this place and several threads got quite out of hand.. but Get a group of hurt people together ( both in emotions and pride ) and you can see why lynch mobs appeared on the scene in the old days
Many who still remained, the last drags were staying only to PM new users of the New forum they were going too.. basically using this place to draw people away and tell them only ONE side of the story... they never got involved in discussions and so were removed.
I went there and tried to explain things.. that only added more fire and in the end the Owner of that forum understood himself the challenges of running a forum as he himself banned and kicked several of the very people who used to come here.. including my own father..
Now down the line several of them are on a new forum.. the one mentioned above by Commodore and of course..
IF their prayers dont work to bring my poor soul back to the Lord, then they are praying that this site stops operating.... as they have to have a backup plan for their prayers not working on the first thing
tut tut Of course.. If the site no longer exists.. AH it must have been GOD on their side, in their corner, agreeing with them the delusion is quite deep
If I close this place down it wont be because of a prayer, it will be because I choose to move on to a new chapter of my life and decide that this site is no longer what I want.. Maybe ill start a forum on sausages, im sure their will be less people on that subject who would want to argue or get defensive over
But im sure some will still attribute it to.. God finally getting around to their seriously seriously delayed prayer request. and deciding to agree with it ..
Just on a funny note if and when i do close this place.. I might leave one page up saying " Closed due to Answered Prayers from Christians " ... you know the odd few something to help them sleep better at night, and shine their knuckles over
Honestly though.. they are some great people and no matter what has happened on this site and forum, I still will say they are great people, but life and people change..we are either flexible or we are rigid.. end of story
The challenge is not with them as people. It is with the beliefs held and that have been taught and accepted.. Its one based in FEAR and so any diversion from what has been taught and what is agreed upon is met with fierce opposition, anger, and exclusion.. only inclusion on their terms.. i.e you have to agree with us, with the bible, say this, do that, be this...
its silly really but hey thats people and religion for you..
Any others who have been banned or removed from here, were likely because they were ignoring pm warnings over being asked to take it easy or stop pasting large amounts of scripture without explaining why your pasting it..
Others are part of other forums and like to visit several so when it got heated.. naturally they are going to be like.. shoot im out here .. i dont blame them.. Its all good
As for some reading this and thinking.. does that mean you are saying its all their fault? nope go up and read where i said about doing my own share of saying things out of place and getting things misunderstood...
Its just a clash of beliefs and characters.. mine included