Objections and reply

Originally posted on December 17, 2005 – by Andre Piet

What remains is for me to respond to a number of objections regarding the closure of the forum. I’ve gathered them from various places.

For the sake of maybe a few sharp gentlemen or ladies, you just let others who truly benefit from these discussions fall by the wayside, in my opinion.

The forum had become bad publicity for the Goedbericht site. Over the past few months, it simply wasn’t enjoyable anymore. Just about all previously active participants had left. Almost without exception, they stated the aggressive atmosphere as their reason. The tone of the remaining discussions had also become deeply off-putting to me. Talking past each other in a so-called “learned” manner and scoring points through verbal aggression – I do not consider that an edifying activity. I’m not letting people fall by the wayside. On the contrary. I’m returning with full focus (at least, as far as my time allows) to my original objective: expanding the Goedbericht site.

Look, I do understand that it’s all time-consuming for you, but couldn’t you find someone to, say, keep an eye on the forum?

That’s not the problem. The concept of this forum was that I, as site administrator, would respond to criticism and answer questions. Naturally, someone else cannot take over that role for me.

A site where information is only ever thrown out from one side without the possibility to ask questions about it isn’t very lively anymore, in my opinion.

The actual site will become MUCH more lively again. Just watch in the coming period. Besides, I’m always reachable for remarks or questions via email. I can then respond to them in comments, on the weblog, or whatever platform suits.

Would like to once again say that I’m willing to invest (a lot of) time to relieve Andre Piet from all this forum work. Practically speaking, there’s not much more I can do.

The time-consuming part of this forum lies mainly in having to respond to the criticism that’s brought up. If this forum gets in the way of my actual site work, then I’m being counterproductive.

Andre Piet will be very blessed in his personal life and maybe needs a sabbatical with his loved ones?

That’s a good one! I am indeed “very blessed in my personal life,” but a sabbatical with my loved ones isn’t in the cards just yet 😉

If this forum closes, sin has had the final word here (thinking of the discussion about good works)…

Come on now… If the forum is missing its purpose (=sin), then it’s time to shut it down.

There are also readers here who never become members but who do hunger and thirst for Evangelical messages, right?

Amen! Precisely for that reason I will once again focus on my site going forward.

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Finally, a response to some objections and remarks from Jan:

Anyone who doesn’t want “word battles” shouldn’t be on a forum, and certainly shouldn’t become a forum moderator.

There’s word battling, and then there’s word battling. Trying to become wiser together and engaging sharply and open-mindedly with one another on all sorts of themes—that’s useful. Quarrelsome conversations that focus on finding differences and debating for the sake of debate, I consider to be “word battles that are beneficial for nothing.”

André, I have a great idea. Kick me off the forum. I’m offering myself like Jonah once did. That would instantly bring peace and quiet again.

That leaves me speechless 😉 But since I absolutely loathe censorship, I won’t take you up on your offer.

If you want to take the forum offline, I kindly ask you to remove my contributions from the “read-only” version. I’ve always posted my contributions with the assumption that I could, at any time, explain, defend, and/or revise my ideas. If that possibility disappears, so does my permission to have my contributions made permanently available on the internet.

I’m definitely not going to start with that. If I were to delete all the posts of the champion poster, a large part of all threads would become completely unreadable. The request is also unreasonable, because even in the active forum, threads are eventually made read-only over time.

regards,
–André Piet–

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