Red Ryder wrote:NOMIsh by nature but with the intent of graduating posters in under 3,000 posts!
I know that comment is tongue-in-cheek, but I have no intention of graduating from Mormonism. However, I do like a familiar Mormonistic environment where we can be more honest and not engage in a mutual deception of what is real and what isn't. I think there are truths to be found in Mormonism even among the falsehoods. NOM was a safe place for appreciating the many colors and shades of gray that make up belief, even if the newly awakened were disconcerted when they found things not to be the black and white which they had been taught. It takes a while to either shake-off or laugh-off that trauma.
I wonder how much the broader internet environment affects where people end up or how likely they are to find a community that meets their needs well?
For example, when I joined MDB in 2010 it came about because of partisipation at the old MAD board. Certain posters there more or less filtered those like me who were not interested in buying the FAIR party line over here. Once one arrived here, it turned out there were a number of new, active and interesting posters who joined around the same time and the conversation made this my preferred place to talk with others who were in various stages of exploring Mormonism and it's issues from a skeptical position. But it also functioned as a place where there were many other people exploring what post-Mormonism meant for them. Just Me, Darth J, Zeezrom, LDS Toronto, and Sethbag come to mind as members who were active then and seemed to have joined up around the same time. All still dealing with the Church actively, some with family support others without. I think MrStakhanovite was a recent new poster then who brought a never-mo perspective while having a genuine interest in what Mormonism was all about while earning a degree or two, and the pool of veteran posters was very different then, too. Different times, those. And things evolved, people found new lives, new places in their own journeys along with new places to have the discussions that meet their needs today. The MDB of today is not the MDB of 2010, and it would be unrealistic to expect it to be so.
But I also don't think the path that led me here is available today. Google would more likely have sent me to reddit or who knows what site rather than the FAIR boards or beliefnet where I first met moksha (a great guy who only gets funnier and more insightful with age it seems, said knowing him 12 years now). I'm sure the RfM site is still a top hit today like it was back when, and probably still filters people out quickly who don't need the hate while looking for more content to chew on. But otherwise? MDD isn't what it was, and one doesn't see many people showing up here who first went there and were shown the door quickly for asking too many questions without buying they had been answered by the FAIR wiki.
I think that's part of the question, because in a real way, MDB in 2010 was exactly what I needed to help move past Mormonism with a group of interesting people who were somewhere on a similar path. It's not just the place, it's how people get there and who they can connect with when they arrive.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Before you make a final decision, please try to contact Thayne again via the information I previously posted >>>
"First time poster, long time lurker on both this and the NOM forum.
After a net search, I found Thayne's contact information. Someone who was a member of the NOM forum should be able to reach him via the information below. He's been open about his identity on NOM, (including posting his facial photo), so I'm not outing him inappropriately.
You can contact him at work, by phone, or at home.
I do think the NOMs who have taken refuge here could use the celestial forum for support. But the problem is that newly disaffected members looking for support in figuring out the transition from TBM to whatever they are going to become will not recognize this website as a place for the kind of thing NOM used provide. This website claims to be for open discussion. Even the celestial forum does not suggest anything beyond polite discussion.
So, what is someone who has just decided that the church is not what it claims to be actually looking for? My guess is they are looking for a place they can get questions answered without being criticized for asking them. They want support without getting preached at. They want to know they are not the only one who thinks the way they think, that there is nothing wrong with them for being unable to believe the unbelievable.
To change this website into one that will attract the newly disaffected, it would have to change into something that it was not designed to be. It has it nitch, and NOM had its own different nitch.
One of the things that make "discussion" work is people with opposing view points. So, here it is open to TBMs and them giving the official church teachings, appologetics, and preaching.
One of the things that made NOM work was that TBMs were banned from appologetics and anything that approached preaching. People like Mentalgymnastics were banned. We got plenty of Mormon preaching from our TBM relatives. What we needed was not the Mormon point of view, but ways to cope with the people in our lives that felt they had an obligation to correct our thinking. We had the discussion forum for the talk about history and doctrine, but it was different than the discussion here. Because there were no TBMs defending the faith, the discussion was sort of one sided.
Part of "support" is protection from people telling you that you are going to hell, which was something NOM provided.
alas wrote:Part of "support" is protection from people telling you that you are going to hell, which was something NOM provided.
No one should go to hell without first taking a Book of Mormon side tour to Jackson County, Missouri, and Chichen Itza in the Yucatán. With any luck, Everybody Wang Chung will be sitting across the aisle from you on the bus, anxiously awaiting the tour's Keynote Speaker and hoping to get his dowsing rod personally autographed.
"Be excellent to each other." - Bill and Ted “The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” - Mark Twain
Corsair wrote:Red Ryder and I did have lunch today. I would be willing to provide basic administration for a new site. I don't know how desirable a new site would be and I am reasonably persuaded for using the Celestial Forum for NOM support. I'm not sure that I am moderator material, however. In any case I don't want to be the guy who barges in demanding changes to a website like MormonDiscussions that has been functioning just fine without me for a decade.
I could pick up a domain name like newordermormon.net (currently available) or newordermormon.org (not yet available) and point it towards whatever resources make sense. It would not be difficult to put up a new phpBB site but I'm still wanting to make sure that their is a real and ongoing need for a discussion board for NOMs, middle-way Mormons, and mixed faith marriages.
Dr. Shades is a better arbiter of using the Celestial forum or setting up a "Quorum of the NOMs" for the refugees.
I'm in. I'm not very technical but I'll do whatever I can to lend support. I think you should snag newordermormon.net.
"Be excellent to each other." - Bill and Ted “The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” - Mark Twain
GameOver wrote:Before you make a final decision, please try to contact Thayne again via the information I previously posted >>>
"First time poster, long time lurker on both this and the NOM forum.
After a net search, I found Thayne's contact information. Someone who was a member of the NOM forum should be able to reach him via the information below. He's been open about his identity on NOM, (including posting his facial photo), so I'm not outing him inappropriately.
You can contact him at work, by phone, or at home.
Thayne never answered my attempt to contact him. I talked to Dathon again today and he hasn't heard a peep from Thayne either.
One lesson we should take away from this is that a single administrator/owner may not be such a great idea. Even if Thayne started turning the crank again there's no guarantee this wouldn't happen all over again in a year or two.
"Be excellent to each other." - Bill and Ted “The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” - Mark Twain