Forums Shutdown

Chris

Administrator
Staff member
Many of you are wondering what happened this past Friday night when the forums went offline. I will attempt to explain.

The forums going offline was the result of a buildup of frustration over the past 2-3 years. There have been significant increases of posting issues, behavior problems, problem posters, and a total disregard for the forum rules. These things, coupled with personal challenges and issues in my life that I will not go into detail about, led me to become so overwhelmed last week that I reached a breaking point. In other words, one can only deal with so much, before something must give.

The forum rules have not been respected, nor have they been followed. I am not speaking here about everyone on the forums. There is a very large majority of regular posters that have been faithful to respect the forums rules and who have tried in good effort to follow them. To them, I would like to thank them for that. Their good behavior is greatly appreciated. They are truly the salt and light of the forums.

Then on the other hand, there has been a small group of people that have not respected the forum rules. They have often violated the spirit of the rules of the forums. They have often ignored the announcement threads and they have also ignored the warnings that I have given them through the forum software. For some of them, I have issued multiple warnings to them about the same topics repeatedly. These posters seem to have felt that they did not have to follow the rules and that they could do whatever they pleased.

So, going forward and to correct these problem areas, I am implementing new policies and procedures on the forums. If a poster on the forums is issued warnings and their behavior does not change, they will be placed in the new forum user group. This user group is where posts must be approved by the mod team before they will be allowed to show up on the forums. When a poster makes a post that has been placed in this new user group, they will see their post on the forums, but it will say something to the effect of “pending moderation” or a similar message. The poster will see their post, but no one else will until it has been approved by the mod team. This will allow me to better manage problem posters and their problematic posts. How long a person remains in that user group will depend on them. There is no set time limit for that user group. It could become permanent for some posters. In fact, when the forum re-opens, some people may find themselves already in that user group going forward.

To help us from ever getting to this point again PLEASE report violations of the forum rules. If you see something that raises a red flag, please use the "report" feature that is located at the bottom of each post. You can click the "report" link and simply say "please check this out" or whatever you want to say. This will bring the post to my attention, and I will take over from there. This will help us address issues as they arise.

During the past week, I have visited other popular sites with forums only to find that they have experienced the same problems. One popular prophecy teacher added a forum to his site about 2 years ago. Now, the forums remains but only a skeleton of what it was at one time. The forum owner reported that: “While online fellowship and discussion can be edifying, it’s not always. It can be distracting and even detrimental.” That is so very true.

In fact, one popular forum that I was involved in the past, the owner said this about the forums: “the forum is 10% of my traffic, but 90% of my problems.” So, what did that forum owner do? He shut it down rather than continue to deal with the problems of the forum. This past week while the forums were down, I have thought long and hard about those posters who did not play any part in creating the atmosphere of frustration that I have felt on the forums. I have received many emails from posters that said that while they were disappointed that the forums were shutdown, they understood my decision, and that they were thankful for the site. It has weighed heavily on me to find a way forward for these posters.

I had initially closed the forums with the intention of taking a break, but after several days decided to make it permanent. It was a couple of days ago when I continued to think about the people who did not play a part in this. While I was at work, I asked the Lord for an answer to the situation. Later that night, I received an email from a long-time poster that made it clear to me how important Rapture Forums is to others. This poster detailed how the forums helped her over the years to grow in her faith. She detailed how she has learned a lot about the Bible from Rapture Forums. Finally, she shared that she had just recently used what she learned from Rapture Forums with a conference of over 200 women! Praise the Lord for that!

I need people to respect and follow the rules here. You don’t have to agree with them, but while you are on Rapture Forums you MUST follow them. The directions and instructions of the mod team are NOT optional. They are a requirement if you want to stay posting at Rapture Forums.

It is my desire that we resume fellowship at Rapture Forums and that we do so under much better circumstances while moving forward. I hope that we will also correct the past problems of the forums that led to the shutdown. I am going to remind people that the forums rules are listed here:

https://www.raptureforums.com/forums/threads/board-rules-and-guidelines-for-posting.188752/

Please read them carefully and follow them.

Thank you.
 
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Chris

Administrator
Staff member
I have enlisted the help of one long time poster on the forums named Tall Timbers. He will help me with moderating the forums as well as discussing issues with posters when required. He will help answer questions on the forums if I do not see them. It takes a lot of time to post content to the forums and main site. I oftentimes am not able to see everything on the site due to running out of time each day. Tall Timbers will be helping in this area. He has been on the forums for a long time, so everyone should already know him. He has helped serve as a moderator on the old RR forums and he knows the forums software very well.

Besides not following the forums rules that are in place, there were several problem areas that have been frustrating to me on the forums. Two of them are listed below.

1. Rapture Forums does not exist to be a referral service to other ministries. I do not have any idea of what all the other prophecy sites teach teach. I do regularly re-post from carefully selected sites that I have approved. Just because you see someone on another rapture site doesn’t mean that we endorse them. I am not able to watch and read everyone’s favorite Bible teacher to see if they are sound or not or if their beliefs line up with the beliefs of Rapture Forums. I have found many that they have teachings or habits that are not edifying (date-setting the rapture, who is the AC, etc.). Discuss the topics, but please leave the names off the forums (see forum rule #14).

2. I have been very disturbed by the increasing commercialization of the forums by the promoting of books, DVDs, CDs, and movies on the forums. Again, I do not have time to watch or read everything that is out there to see if it is suitable for Rapture Forums. Please leave ANY mention of these things OFF the forums. I do not sell things at Rapture Forums and do not like the forums to become a marketplace for commercial products (see forum rule #35).

3. Stirring up trouble when one knows better. Another issue that I have had is that there are a couple of posters that have looked for and taken every opportunity to discuss banned topics on the forums. These are topics that the forum rules and announcement threads have made clear that we are not to engage in for very good reasons. This can be anything from COVID vaccines, alternative rapture timing views, etc. etc. These posters are "swift-footed" to jump in when a banned topic is introduced by a new member or another regular poster. They believe that because someone else mentioned it that the rules suddenly do not apply anymore. This results in creating more work for me and for the mod team in having to edit the thread and in some cases delete completely delete it if the it is too much work to fool with it. I have watched repeatedly over the years a couple of posters doing this. I will not tolerate this anymore. When I was in elementary school we were taught that "just because someone else does something doesn't mean that you can do it or should do it" and that is very true here at Rapture Forums. If you see someone breaks a forum rule, please remind them politely of the forum rules and if you can provide them a forum rule number and link to the forum rules. I think this will help out a lot as well.

Thank you.
 
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