I’m not sure I agree with your point. Personally, I’ve never had a problem with arguing my opinions. But I can see that some people might not be comfortable with the idea.
So to me, a witnessing forum would be a place where people can state what they want with the security of knowing they won’t have to defend their position. It would be a place for non-confrontational discussions. If you allow the same kind of responses that are allowed in GD, then what’s the point? If people just want to post something while having no plans to ever read the responses then they can do that now.
I’m aware they can. I’d prefer never to have to read their blathering if they are just blathering. On the other hand, if they are interested in discussion, discussion is good. Knowing up front would please me. Not knowing displeases me, though it’s not really a major concern of mine. I’m describing what I consider an ideal world, not a necessary one.
MPSIMS is all about posting things that “you don’t want to hear debate.” Eg, I took a great crap this morning, my wife’s driving me crazy, etc. Often, and I presume with witnessing, it seems like the wrong forum because what you want to post is, to you, not mundane at all.
But in theory this is a community. It’s nice to think that someone cares, or appreciates it for what it is, something important (and in this case, happy, although MPSIMS need not be) you want to share, get off your chest, see what it looks like, so to speak, when typed out and objectified and clarified.
Why the fuck are so many people not only into, but proud of the fact, and believe that SD mods agree with them, of mocking religious people? And not just because “well they won’t debate, so they don’t have a case.” (And, as I said that’s not the sine qua non of all SD posts.)
Worse is being proud of being in such fine company and confident in your ability to mock, debate and “win,” etc. I mean, you don’t think or feel that it’s nasty and mean when it’s the fallback response, not about religion in the law, or education, science, whatever, or about particular people knocking on your door or cornering you on a subway. That witnesser is not haranguing anyone; a pushback is not demanded by definition.
It’s fun to share kindred thoughts and inclinations about your secular intellectual or moral position. Kind of like witnessing, in a way.
I agree with the OP. As it stands, there aren’t firm, bright-line rules distinguishing GD from IMHO; it’s more a matter of tone and whether the OP is looking for opinions on a subject or looking for debate. When witnessing was placed in GD, there was no IMHO forum. When IMHO (which I still think of as the “new” forum, btw) for formed, it was because people wanted a place for discussion that was neither rigorous debate nor blog posts (blog posts going then as now in MPSIMS).
Since the SDMB has gotten more and more divided by subject matter, people have forgotten that the original intent was to divide threads by tone and style. Back then, if I found the best burger joint in the world, I’d post in MPSIMS if I just wanted to discuss it, IMHO if I wanted to know what other people thought, GD if I wanted to challenge others to name a better one, or GQ if I wanted to know what the secret sauce recipe is. Nowadays, any of those would be tossed into Cafe Society.
When it comes to religious witnessing, I think most people who do it want to discuss it casually or, at most, ask other’s opinions without having to back up every assertion. I don’t mind witnessing threads; in fact, I kind of enjoy them, but there is no denying that they are very different in tone from most GD threads.
Let’s suppose that as I’m drifting off to sleep tonight, I have a vision in which God reveals to me that blue is the best of all colors, fags are cool, and the numbers for the next Powerball drawing are consecutive primes. I know that the experience is purely subjective and that until the Powerball drawing, nothing I say will be convincing to anyone, but I still want to share because, hey, cool vision, right? Where could I post such a thing and answer questions about it without being immediately shouted down by people blaming me for all of the evils of religion and asking me to prove that it was really God and not one of Skald’s minions playing a prank?
Or do you really think that “old person smell - its [sic] real” and “I have poor impulse control” are legitimate topics for the SDMB, but this isn’t?
I think “I have poor impulse control” is implied in all the topics on this board.
That said - what about other topics where I want to talk and don’t want to hear any argument? Someone mentioned George Bush already. What if I want to say that cilantro is the chin scruff of the devil and that Batfleck will be the Best Batman Ever and I don’t want any lip from the peanut gallery? Shouldn’t I just get my own personal forum where I can be the Queen of All Opinions?
This is a discussion board. Why would we want to provide a place for people to spout off their bullshit while everyone else just has to shut up about it.
Thank you, Measure for Measure. I think we need more clarity and concreteness—as in, a bunch of actual examples—of what sort of threads we mean when we’re talking about “witnessing.” But, I tend to agree with jsgoddess about the specific threads you linked to:
An OP that consists of a single question is not what I’d call “witnessing.” If I’m witnessing, I’m telling you what I believe, in hopes of persuading you—not asking what you believe.
And, such witnessing is often a subset of, or close cousin to, apologetics, which involves presenting arguments for and answering challenges to one’s belief, hence the appropriateness to Great Debates.
Everyone gets lip on the SDMB, it’s a question of the kind of lip you want. If you post about cilantro in GD, in the brief time before the thread is moved to CS you’ll be asked to cite a survey showing that a majority of people agree with you and (if you’re lucky) a treatise on the economic, cultural, and culinary impact of cilantro on the world refuting your claim, possibly followed by a debate on whether utilitarianism is the best philosophical framework for evaluating the moral and aesthetic status of a vegetable. If you post in IMHO, you’ll get people telling you that you are wrong because they love cilantro and you just haven’t had it prepared properly in the right dish. In CS, you might get either or both, which usually is fine, but if enough people wanted one discussion and kept getting another, it would make sense to start allowing cilantro threads in another forum, or even moving them there as a class.
Witnessing threads: comment. Many will want to emulate Der Trihs and deliver pointed jabs towards the witnesser. (Though I’ll note that I documented some time back that Der tended to avoid purely theological discussion.)
I’ll opine to my fellow posters that surely there is some role for polite questions, combined with a low key presentation of one’s own beliefs. Even if you are a strong or weak atheist. I concede that for most drive by witnessers, there will be no response. I’ll concede that for most remaining witnessers the response will be circular. At that point it might be time to get meta. What’s the point of instant impatience to weak arguments that persuade nobody?
I repeat that I am intrigued by the tagging system described upthread. It’s a solution in search of a problem though: I don’t perceive that anybody here thinks the proper categorization of witnessing threads is a Defcon 1 (or even Defcon 3) situation. I suppose such tags could be introduced organically, rather than via official pronouncement.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here except that, as you say, everyone here gets lip for their posts. The point is, witnessing threads shouldn’t be able to dodge getting lip for it, regardless of where they post their thread. Even if they put their threads in MPSIMS they would still get challenged on it - and so they should be. We shouldn’t have a class of thread where the posters don’t have to discuss their posts, this being, as I said, a discussion forum.
People who don’t want to discuss their beliefs should be gently encouraged to get a LiveJournal, as tradition dictates.
Nope. I was the guy that tried to stop people who objected to any opinions other than their own from turning poll threads in IMHO into Great Debates by telling them to take it elsewhere. What this has to do with an OP starting a thread about a subject then never responding to other posters is beyond me.
Poll threads are special cases, and have absolutely nothing to do with witnessing threads unless the person who starts the poll “poisons the well” at the beginning of the thread.
I don’t know how I can be any clearer. Not all discussions are the same. Not all “lip” is the same. What this thread seems to be about is the people who want to discuss their beliefs without claiming that those beliefs are objectively verifiable. See my example earlier of a hypothetical vision. Where would I postfif I wanted to discuss it? The kind of discussion that sort of person seems to be looking for is the kind that happens in IMHO or MPSIMS, not GD. The rest of us (including myself) often wantto respond with the kind of discussion that happens in the Pit, so maybe witnessing threads should go there. But witnessing threads almost never turn into the kind of discussion that usually takes place in GD, and that makes them an awkward fit there at best.
A forum for witnessing without fear of disagreement would be inherently out of place on this board.
Individual threads may occasionally need that sort of protection (in cases where disagreement represents off-topic or insensitive/aggressive threadshitting), but in general, witnessing threads are just debates that haven’t started yet - so GD really is the right place for them.
Hypothesis: Witnessing threads submitted by members with more than 10 posts are fairly rare.
Corollary: So we shouldn’t worry about thread placement.
My hypothesis is falsifiable, unchecked in recent years, and might be wrong. My conclusion assumes that newbie threads aren’t all that difficult to deal with. Yes, all of this is arguable and subject to review. Possible bias: I’m an empirical agnostic so witnessing is less likely to rankle me, perhaps.
