This seems to be a recent change, within the past couple days?
Edit to add: For the record, I am Protestant and non-Calvinist.
Posted Jun 17, 2014, 5:38 AM UTC · edited
Maybe after the mods' suppression of freely-chosen flair,
I should just add a suffix like the one below to every comment that I make.
It's a bit of a bother to do so, though.
Flair substitute - Righteous_Dude: where's my CARM? | Protestant | non-Calvinist
I would be careful with this (though I fully support this action) as mods who engage in oppressive behavior commonly also enact bans without explanation.
You're being extremely disruptive. Please stop.
Not with that particular comment, he wasn't.
He was simply making claims about mod behavior.
[deleted]
I'm reporting your comment as a personal attack.
I'd like to start with "mea culpa". This is a subject I brought up with the other mods (removing custom flair) and although there was a lot of support, actual action was taken and and goofed up where all flairs were removed. My intentions were to first get the mods on board and go from there rather than make any decisions without asking the community.
For those that have flair, they typically fall into these groups:
I was trying to remove the fourth group and the third group is in violation of the first sub rule.
Clearly there was a miscommunication. However, since the cat is out of the bag and I don't want to create yet another topic about it, what do people think about removing CUSTOM flair. Assuming the community approves of this, we'll have open requests to have their flair be added as official. For example, u/Righteous_Dude's "Protestant, non-Calvinist" would be added since it's an official religious position.
what do people think about removing CUSTOM flair.
I don't think custom flair should be removed or prohibited.
It is the wrong method to attempt to deal with those in group 3.
This doesn't affect group 3 because that's rule #1. This is meant to deal with people in group 4.
I have never seen group 4 as a problem, and I think that people should have the ability to set their flair to whatever they want.
However, if the content of the flair violates a rule where similar content in a comment would violate a rule, then that person is in violation, and should be asked to edit their flair, just as mods ask people to edit their comments to remove violating phrases.
For example, if a user sets his flair to 'Righteous_Dude, you are stupid', that constitutes a personal attack, just as it would in a comment.
Jumping in here. My approach to this issue is that the purpose of this sub is to debate Christianity. Anything and everything about this sub should contribute to that end goal. All of our rules and all of our features should serve to meet or enhance that goal. All else is just fluff. I don't think custom flair does that. It certainly could. But, unfortunately, you get people with completely irrelevant or nonsensical custom flairs that do not clarify their position or enhance debate.
In reality, we could leave custom flair as an option and just create a bunch of rules to regulate it, which we would have to actively enforce. But I think the much more efficient solution would be to remove the custom option and just add more stock flair options. Such as "Protestant, non-Calvinist". Then we would only have to worry about regulating one aspect of flair use.
People put fake religions there. It's like having a guy walk into a religious debate wearing a colander. There are also ones not related to religion at all.
I don't think there's anything wrong with the 4th. It may not be very useful, but it's not any worse than not having any flair either, unless you're going to make a rule that flair is mandatory.
The problem with that is unfriendliness towards members of the less common denominations, and people whose beliefs are copied and pasted from various disparate sources.
So I don't think anything really needs to be done, other than enforcing the first rule.
If it's a legitimate denomination, they can message the mods. I was specifically referring to actual nonsensical denominations, like Pastafarians, for example.
Please stop using Pastafarianism as an example of a "nonsensical" religion. I take it very seriously, and don't like people thinking they can limit what religion is just because they find it silly. I find most religion to be no less silly.
From their website:
Pastafarianism is a real religion.
Most of us do not believe a religion – Christianity, Islam, Pastafarianiasm – requires literal belief in order to provide spiritual enlightenment. That is, we can be part of a community without becoming indoctrinated. There are many levels of belief.
Q: Is this a joke?
A: It’s not a joke. Elements of our religion are often described as satire and there are many members who do not literally believe our scripture, but this isn’t unusual in religion – it’s only more obvious in the case of our particular religion. A lot of Christians, for example, don’t believe the Bible is literally true – but that doesn’t mean they aren’t True Christians.
If you say Pastafarians must believe in a literal Flying Spaghetti Monster to be True Believers, then you can make a similar argument for Christians. There is a lot of outlandish stuff in the Bible that rational Christians choose to ignore. We do the same with our scripture. This is intentional.
From their website:
Not a reliable source.
Please reply with evidence of US Government recognition of Pastafarianism. EIN would serve as proof of your religious tax-exemption status. If you have any other verifiable government paperwork, I can take a look.
Flairs appear to have been disabled in this sub.
Yeah, and that happened today.
Seems my flair was indeed "inflammable," considering the rules and discussion I would prefer to change it to "atheist, inflammable" but can't because the custom flair option has been removed.
Fixed!
(I'm not sure if it'll stay though. I have no idea if we're going to only allow preset flair or if custom flair can stay.)
Thanks, I'm actually considering changing it again, but I'll wait till a decision is reached, don't want to be a bother.
We are making changes to the flair.
I guess I await an announcement, but I don't recall mods taking input from the community about proposed changes.
You are correct, we did not ask for community input on flair changes. The changes we are making address abuse of flairs and potential changes to the automod. The more immediate reason being the abuse of flairs.
They did not. It just happened today, and the primary reason for this would be censorship and refusing to recognize legitimate faiths in favor of only representing certain view points.
We're removing the custom flair. This will probably lead to adding more flair in general to compensate. We aren't censoring anyone, but putting a stop to the very common flair abuse we see.
If you mods are saying there is a phenomenon of "flair abuse" that you are putting a stop to, it should have been discussed by the community to agree on what constitutes "flair abuse".
What constitutes as "flair abuse"? Are people verbally attacking or hitting their flair? Has the flair come forth with horrible stories of abusive users?
Couldn't have anything to do with further limiting the freedom of expression of users, could it?
Yes, removal of the custom flair further limits the freedom of expression of the users, but whittling away your ability to be unique isn't our goal. This is a debate sub. The flair here serves a specific purpose: to quickly and accurately identify your position so that your opponent has a basic understanding of where you are coming from. The point of the flair here isn't to serve as a punchline, pun, method of complaint, etc. For that reason, we are simplifying the flair and officially enforcing the use of accurate flair to further assist and focus on debate.
I upvoted your comment as "contributing" but don't take my upvote as indicating approval of those plans.
Do you guys stay up late at night dreaming up new ways to drive us away from your sub-reddit? Or is there like a handbook your using or something?
We are pretty good at coming up with them on the fly.
I'm a natural at it.
;)
Changes how so? So that only approved faiths may be recognized and given representation, while others must be oppressed?
If one finds a faith missed in the flair box, they are free to message the mods to get new flair approved.
Is there any method of appeal, if the mods do not approve a flair, but the wider community would say that person should be free to have the flair he wants?
I think that seems to be this conversation -- we'll see how the general community feels about it, and if the community as a whole likes the idea of getting rid of custom flair, it'll all go -- if not, we'll keep it in. This is the referendum, so to speak.
Off-topic, I have you tagged as "Baptist", probably from a previous comment where you indicated that, but it looks like you don't currently have any flair set yourself?
Looks like mine vanished... weird. I guess evangelical is the best fit?
Piggy backing on this: Why was u/Righteous_Dude allowed for so long to have a "Dude Where's my Car" joke as part of their flair, but I got warned for having a literal flair based off of my faith in Discordianism, (that happened today/ yesterday) challenged by that same mod over whether or not my faith was legitimate, and now the mods are editing how flair works due to "flair abuse"?
Apparently my flair is now prohibited as well, and rather than asking me to change it, they are unilaterally suppressing what I can say.
You were invited to be a mod. You could have had a vote in this. You could have suggested asking the community. We contacted you a couple of times with the offer lol If you have ideas how this place should be run, you should have accepted the offer.
As it is, I don't particularly care for flair that serves as an advertisement.
No, I understand that. Please understand that I was never against your flair. Once I figured out what CARM meant, I admit I chuckled a bit. I only used your flair as everyone knew what your flair was (I'd wager) and it served as a nice example of the difference between a joke a legitimate profession of faith.
My fault. I was disabling custom flair and made a mistake. Feel free to downvote this post if you're feeling angsty about it :)
I see, this morning, that flairs are displayed again, thank you, but when I use the "edit flair" feature on the sidebar to possibly update my custom flair, it only shows a list of possible phrases to select, without a field to edit my current value (as r/DebateReligion has).
Do you intend to restore that field for now? As is, I have no way to add accurate information to my flair myself.
I do not. However, if the other mods decide otherwise then yes. In reviewing the community response here, it looks like most users are apathetic.
If custom flair is reinstated, I will suggest the caveat of no advertising - which in my opinion would encompass your CARM reference.
After Luc wrote:
... I wrote to Luc last night:
Suppose I want to have a custom flair that includes the phrase
"Where's my C.a.r.m.? It is here on reddit."
Is expressing that religious position considered flair abuse?
Is using an abbreviation for a phrase allowed? (I assume you permit people to say they are YEC)
Then call yourself an apologetics minister. There's no reason to advertise the website.