So I want to start this out with an apology;
I have noticed an issue here with the temple on the forums in general, but it was a hard one to necessarily prove, so I've intentionally been making a few different posts in the last 2 weeks that have been far to one side or the other in terms of opinions on things to intentionally get a reaction. The reasoning behind this was to try and grab the responses I was fully expecting to get. In which I did get them. However I think it sparked some anger my direction and probably damaged some of my reputation,not that were not supposed to care about but we seem to do anyway in the process.
The other is a disclaimer that this is not an April fools joke post either, sorry if that's what you were hoping for.
all that being said...
The problem that I started to noticed was a general inconsistency in our views(as a whole, or as a temple) at any given topic. This is a complicated issue because we each have our own personal views of any given topic. We each have our own paths we follow as has been stated many different times, which just makes it even more complicated. However in general the temple does have a doctrine we all try and get behind, we do try and give a general idea and view of the common ground and denominator when we can. However due to the ratio of the number of long-term members here vs the number of newer members and posts, trying to keep to that consistency is difficult. It's even more difficult when members intentionally ignore posts because they just don't either care about a subject or look at the title of a thread and read the book by the cover, or whatever other reasons they have, or they are avoiding it because it either bothers them, or annoys them, or they do it because getting involved would probably not be best(such as me and mental health threads) because it would spark some very serious controversy)
For example, towards the end of the build up thread there is a nice long discussion about how we should not be hiding lessons and the world and the truth and various knowledges to minors or any Jedi who or want to be jedi the moment one shows up here in the forum at all. It's very strongly one sided to that area, then I can create a similar post, call it secrets so it has a slightly different perspective, talk about similar things about how we shouldn't be hiding information in general just to get people to view the post(again apologies for the act) and there is a huge flood of people who argue the opposite. To everyone who argued the opposite view, not one of them were in the argument in the build up post, and you will find those in the build up post didn't really post their opposite views in the secrets post. So if one person read one thread and not the other, what is there view of how the temple operates?
As a result we are hugely inconsistent on the overall message about what lessons or information or topics we should provide when and for what. If one person reads one post and not the other or visa versa how is that new person going to view totjo in general?
There is a lot to be said about the diversity of views, I'm not saying we should always be 100% consistent on a message unless its generally doctrine specific since we are teaching that. I do think we need to do a better job of posting our individual views and perspectives on topics, especially if the community is 50/50 on any given topic, rather then ignore it and allow things to be purely one sided when they truly aren't. Those who often agree to a post, do not post that. Those who strongly disagree do post. It's more rare to see an agreement post then there ever is to see a disagreement post. To the estimated ratio of about 10 agreements to every 90 disagreements based on those and a few other recent posts I've looked through.
Some topics get ignored simply by the subject message, or by who posts them. Some of them get unsubscribed after a couple posts and don't ever get revisited even if the topic changes direction mid-thread. Not all the time's that topics change direction does it get split out properly or even noticed, and a lot of good discussions end up getting buried.
Another misconception I've had to answer to someone personally on chat recently, "Knights in general read all posts and monitor and respond to everything if they feel they are needed". Someone actually believed that all knights responsibilities are to monitor every post and jump in when needed to correct things or give their points of views if something goes way off base and I know that's not true. But I can see the angle they are coming from, knighthood and training and what is expected of a knight is a discussion thats recently been hammered out to the point that the training process I believe is under review, but it makes for another common issue is that even when there is no replies from knights, or that there are very few, that knights/temple or knights who are viewed as representing the temple who don't post, don't post because they don't have a problem with the post, therefore whatever topic or discussion you had in it is fine and correct, even when it may not be.
It's not really fair to say at this point that everyone carrying a knight title should be responding to every post because we are all "part-time" forum people there are just too many posts that proceed here for that to even be a thing. I think just better educating that there are forum moderators that do keep track of that would be better, but the moderators are there to...moderate for forum rules, not necessarily always respond about the overall thread in general. Or so I'm told.
I would like to propose one feature/plugin be introduced to the forum that would help with getting attention into posts when needed is the @tagging. This is a feature that is used in several modern forums today, I could go into a thread go 6 pages in and see someone answer a very interesting question, and since after 6 pages most people maybe ignoring the thread, even though its too on topic to split it off that question can go ignored. I could spend time sending 5-6 pm's to various people or what is nice about this feature is I could say, hey so and so, that's an interesting thought, I know of a few Jedi here that have some good views on that question, I bet @Proteus, @MartaLina, and @OB1Shinobi would have some great thoughts on that. Each one of those @'s would get a notification that they were mentioned at that thread and be able to click a link and follow straight to that post. Or hey someone asked a question about their account mid thread, Let me get @MartaLina for you because she may have "unsubscribed*peer*" from this thread and not have noticed it. Maybe that persons question didn't know that was a person to contact.
That's a feature that I think would help as long as its used appropriately get various views into a thread so that it isn't always one sided. Especially if we as a temple try and grab for people we know would have strong opposing or like views as needed to get each perspective in on any given topic we come across. The diversity of perspectives is what gives us the most knowledge on any given topic. It's become really easy based on, I'd hate to say it but based on the prejudice of a topic's creator, the subject line, and even the first paragraph of how that thread will turn out, for people with some of the best perspectives on a topic to ignore it.
Overall we are giving inconsistent messages and responses in some of these discussions. I just feel like maybe there are some ways we can improve upon that. I don't have a 100% answer or fix but I wanted to find a way to point out that the problem exists, of which I did, and then start to discuss some idea's for improving our ability to improve our temple overall.
And Again I apologize for creating some of my posts in a manner reflecting previous posts here to spark one-sided discussions, but it was just to prove a point at how easy it is to create these one sided discussions that can be completely opposing each other, and how easily threads can be ignored by people despite the good discussions that happen within them.
The topic has been locked.
