The comments on this site are moderated. We reserve the right to block comments and block users. The purpose of moderation is to maintain discussions which are interesting to read and participate in, not to provide yet another chat forum. We do not intend to use moderation to drive the discussion, only to set reasonable boundaries. The purpose of the Thinkers Church is to welcome discussion and disagreement of ideas that concern deeply held beliefs in an environment that welcomes the discussion rather than attempts to silence it.
The criteria for allowing a comment are based on its usefulness. Useful comments include civil discussion with something interesting to say. Examples of comments which are not useful include, but are not limited to: Personal attacks, vague sarcasm with no humor or insight to give it redeeming value, comments that merely dismiss ideas without any reason provided, comments that simply restate ideas already presented in the same thread, comments that contain advertisements, or comments which simply prophesy that those who participate in the discussion will meet some divine retribution. It is not our policy to silence opposition to any idea, only to limit the way ideas are presented to advance understanding.
We do not have a 24/7 staff sitting on hand to approve your post. This is not a chat room. Moderators have lives and jobs and families and get to reviewing posts when they can. Currently, our aim is to attempt to handle most posts within 24 hours with knowledge that it will frequently be 72 hours between posts.
Helpful hints:
– Remember that the aim is to listen, learn, think, and discern, not just to say something.
– Before investing time in a comment, read the post and the prior comments. Someone may have already left essentially the same argument you intend to make. By reading the entire discussion, you are more likely to make a more useful contribution, or you may learn something that changes your perspective. Make sure that you have understood what you are replying to. If it sounded like nonsense, then you probably did not get the point, and a comment may not be useful.
– Use a word processor with spelling and grammar check before you post.
– If you reply to a specific prior comment, make sure you identify which one. There may be many other comments that are awaiting moderation that will show up between your entry and the one you are referring to. The user name and a brief quote from the comment will suffice, such as ‘@joeUser: “… the point about predetermination was …”’
– Don’t flavor your comment with words and phrases that may cause it to be passed over by the moderator as unnecessarily personal, such as “grow up”, “people like you”, “that’s silly”, etc.
– Don’t confuse what someone thinks is true with the desirability of believing it to be true or the desirability of it actually being true. Each may be a worthy discussion, but they are not interchangeable within a single discussion and may render a comment less than useful.