People creating their own rule son the forum

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At least one user has been making posts along the lines of "You are not welcome to post here, unless you believe as I do."

This poster does not own this site, nor is he a mod here. And this bigotry is more than a little offputting to people. Its one thing to say "I'm looking for people with similar beliefs" but quite another to tell posters they aren't welcome to post in a thread which they have right to for no other reason than they hold different religious views. Can something be done about this asap?

They have every right to post a thread just for discussion about Christianity. They have the right to a quiet thread.

I never said he didn't have the right to post about Christianity, or to have a quiet thread. What I did say was that he doesn't have the right to make posts telling people they aren't welcome to make any replies at all just because they hodl different religous views than he does. WHen will this issue be addressed?

As an atheist I have the right to browse the threads on this site without being told "atheist aren't welcome to make any posts here, regardless of how relevant they are to the topic at hand"

Everytime he has posted on anything to do with Christianity, he apparently has been attacked. I suggested the thread idea to him, and I'm an agnostic.

Your being an agnostic is really irrelevant. The nature he starts the threads is very discriminatory, and starting by immediately telling people they aren't welcome, is bound to result in beig attacks. After all such a message is an attack itself - its saying "You're not good enough to post here."

As I said he could have easily just asked for christians, and other theists, to come to discuss his views, but he didn't. He very clearly told people they weren't welcome to post unless they shared his views, and then became angry when they did post. As he is not owner of this site he has no right whatsoever to tell people they aren't welcome to post anywhere on here, and by telling people they aren't welcome he is very clearly sending out a message of "I'm better than you and don't want you around." Its no different than apartheid or segregation. there is nothing about searching for like minds that requires the inclusion of blatantly rude discrimination. And indeed he wouldn't have been reacted to so rudely if he had opened with rudeness to notheists

Look, I don't know what this is about,
but people can spout garbage. And you
can call them on it. That simple. Don't let
it bother you.

Can I suggest something, I hope that I am not "asking my grandmother to suck eggs", but as a admin of another forum, I might proffer advice. Which one can take or leave.

Firstly thing, any post should be within the Rules of this Forum. Rules should be displayed in the Announcement board, where users can easily find it. Rules should give clear boundaries to members and guests as to what is allowed and what is not allowed. Such clarity would be helpful for Aspies, and indeed to NT and anybody, to prevent confusion.

To give an example here is a section from my forum rules:--

"Respect
Posts must not be offensive with respect to sex, sexual orientation, age, race, nationality, ethnic origin, religion, disability, nor should posts be false, defamatory, inaccurate, abusive, vulgar, hateful, harassing, obscene, profane, threatening, name-calling, nor invasive of a person's privacy (eg. members shall not reveal another member's address or phone numbers)."

Regarding members holding strong religious beliefs (such as Christianity), there should an understanding of freedom of belief, and respect be accorded to people of different beliefs. They should be able to post concerning their beliefs, as long as within the rules of the forum. Members should be permitted to express their opinions in the relevant board or sub-forum.

However, doing so invites dialogue from people with differing beliefs. Ideally there should be discussion and sharing of beliefs and open mindedness between members of different beliefs. There should not be any attack on members' character or hate talk or anything that could lead to flaming. The moderators' job is to curtail any personal attacks proactively and respond to complaints of personal attack or offense against his beliefs. In my experience as an admin I have found it better to better to err on the side of censorship.

On the other hand, IMHO a member should not think that he is preaching from a soap box as if evangelizing, and at the same time not allow people to reply to his posts.

Just my 2 pence worth!

The idea of banning "anything which could lead to flaming"
would silence ALL speech.

Well, if anything seems "iffy" the moderator could PM the poster and ask them to edit their post.

Gee, what a great idea. That's what Mr. Mark did, which
caused this site to damn near melt down, a couple
of months ago. You know, this place runs a LOT better,
the less the mods do.

I don't think the site near melted down. Maybe one or two threads did but that's about all. Personally, I would take orders better from a mod than from somebody who wasn't because the mod is in a position of authority.

Also I understand that a large forum such as this would require more moderators than say my forum (which has 200 members and up to 20 online typically 5-10 online). In my estimate a forum of this size would require at least 10 moderators, as well as admin and 2-3 global moderators. There will be amongst the 13000+ members a few who like to think that free speech means saying anything they like, and these are the members that moderators would need to keep an eye on, as they are likely to disturb the other members who are in the majority who would prefer reasonable debate rather than a flame war.

I suspect you have not read the "Announcement: WrongPlanet Rules. You must read this before posting.". It's in the first forum on the site. It would be tedious to link it into every forum. I linked to it from the FAQ, but on looking, that's a little obscure, I guess.

Yes, I read it before posting!

Sorry... I missed off a smiley.

I have to say, though, that it might not be such a bad idea if it were linked from every forum. It's quite a regular thing to find someone who has started posting, because they're responding to something in a forum other than the first, and has never actually realised where the overall WP rules are. I.e. they haven't read the rules because they hadn't actually looked in that forum, or even had looked, but hadn't registered that those rules are to be applied as basic across all forums.

I, like many here, inherently distrust authority.
Indeed, regular members often shame me into
being a better citizen. The authority ALSO makes
me a better one, but only in the defense of the
community against their possible depredations.
I actually think that more people ought to serve
some time in the role of moderator, as it was quite
liberating to see that these decisions were made
be VERY fallible people (including even Alex - gasp),
who don't necessarily have a better grasp on what to
do than any of us. Maybe even more important is to
see the effect the position has on someone's self
importance and ego; you see it both in yourself,
and in your fellow mods - and it's kind of horrifying.
Probably why police end up being the way that they
are (which is again why no one who really wants the
position should be trusted with it).