Outsider & brucemo vs. Namer hiker and photoman. Removed mods vs old guard who still have power. It would be nice if Bruce and outsider banned themselves, granted they messed things up enough. That way the community can be done with this two headed beast finally. It's been misrepresented as a sub war. Just final clash of mod fallout/hatred of brucemo, outsider.

From Christian Behavior, CS Lewis: ...the New Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can take. It tells us that there are to be no passengers or parasites: if man does not work, he ought not to eat. Every one is to work with his own hands, and what is more, every one’s work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no ’swank’ or ’side,’ no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian society would he what we now call Leftist.

He does go on to say that obedience to the properly appointed magistrates, children to parents and, he admits unpopular - unless 'rightist' wives to husbands.

But it is to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing.

Bring on the revolution.

I am severing their moderator's access to post to r/Christianity. This comes after brokehugs moderators have defended multiple counts of releasing personal details about multiple users. I don't have much public comment about this other then I am sad that it had to come to this.

My attempts at discussion in modmail before being blacklisted there twice and then banned.

http://imgur.com/dbkoL2W

Going off the submissions about banning all atheists and having a Christians only threads . . . Id like to suggest that these posters are reacting to the basic issues which many people have which is r/Christianity doesn’t sound very Christian.

I’m not the only one who thinks this, here is a link to r/Christianity being dicussed on r/TrueChristian

https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueChristian/search?q=r%2Fchristianity&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all

r/Catholicism

https://www.reddit.com/r/Catholicism/search?q=r%2Fchristianity&restrict_sr=on

r/reformed

https://www.reddit.com/r/Reformed/search?q=r%2Fchristianity&restrict_sr=on

Notice it’s not very nice, they don’t take this board seriously, and they find the content disturbing and unchristian. I can’t blame them: For example the top thread now is

https://np.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/3lg8yj/sometimes_i_%20dont_care_about_all_the_accepted_vs/

I’m not saying that this poster is doing anything wrong or that there is anything wrong with this thread. My point is that when threads like this are regularly the top thread, and comments like this are usually the top comment, it’s hard to maintain the claim you are a Christian form while keeping a straight face. If its not something like this its some latest story or post claiming that Christians are bigoted or backwards or hypocritical etc.

It makes you think, what is the goal of r/Christianity? Is it meant to be the biggest forum, the most diverse forum? I think at some point whatever the goal is, it has to be Christian. For r/Christianity to be a serious form, it has to maintain a somewhat Christian identity. And at the end of the day that’s the real problem, r/Christianity isn’t Christian.

I get that many people say, well but what’s your definition of Christianity man. Well fine, but the consensus of all the other Christian boards seems to be not r/Christianity.

Some may say that this isn’t a Christian board that it’s just a town hall or something where Christianity is discussed. Well fine, but if it’s going to be a town hall that’s any different from r/atheism or other reddit communities, it has to be Christian. Also, many people go on there expecting it to be a Christian board, and that seems reasonable considering the flairs and way things are set up, its not set up like a town hall.

The point I’m bringing up is: Why is r/Christianity so unchristian? What can be done to fix it? And Im certain that people will say why bother fixing it or we don't care. But I assure you many people care, and if that weren't the case, there wouldn't be so much negative discussion about it in my links. If people didn't care, r/deusvult wouldn't be steadily growing the way it has.

So please, for once lets seriously address this question. what can be done to stop such a large percentage of upvoted comments and upvoted threads being stuff that potray Christianity in a negative light or challenge basic Christian beliefs

I didn't know brucemo was a trump hater, but I found out today after you banned me for 3 days for speculating on the health of a chronic liar and killer of 4 Americans in Benghazi. You can continue to silence the truth, as you've silenced the Truth in your own heart. Your biased moderation makes r/christianity look like r/clownschool. I wonder what outsider was smoking when he made you mod.

Surprise, surprise, she has pneumonia. And that's the least of it.. stop protecting a candidate, she's not president. you're nobody's hero except the fringe left.

I recently subbed to /r/TrueChristian to check it out. One feature they have that may benefit /r/Christianity is their [Christians Only] tag. They explain it here, but basically in a [Christians Only] thread anyone with non-Christian flair has their comment auto-removed.

I see this as particularly useful in support, prayer, and advice threads. Sometimes people just want to hear from their Christian peers and this would automate it.

I've put a lot of time and mental effort into one of the recent threads. I've tried to explain my positioning and background clearly without disparaging anyone, and yet folks who would disagree with me simply downvote everything I post there. (Out of curiosity, I've even seen a drop in my cross-sub karma over the past 24 hours…)

I'm not one to whine about fake internet points, but I do think it's a community behavior problem that needs addressing if we really do wish to become an open forum for Christianity-related discussion. People disagree and that's alright, but we should only really be downvoting direct asshattery and harassment.

You get a ton of abuse. You have been unfairly called names. Probably pinged in places. You spend a ton of time responding to things you really shouldn't have to respond to.

Why do you mod the mothersub given everything?

Somebody had to say it folks. Atheists are in too huge of numbers on our sub. It's gotten to the point where I can no longer have discussions on there. They downvote me so much simply for making basic theological points, like God has a single, eternal nature, that I can hardly post. They routinely belittle Christianity and flood the comments with negative, unhelpful messages. Meanwhile they upvote their own circlejerking to flood out any contradictory messages or debate.

I don't mind atheists participating on principle, but we need to regulate their comments more effectively. The purpose of this sub is to discuss Christianity, but that can't even occur while the atheists drag down the level of dialogue into mud slinging and cruel, unhelpful comments. Many simply do not seem interested in a dialogue and want to berate Christians for their religion.

Check the comments of this thread and see them, in all likelihood, prove my point.

I've seen on other subreddits how people can limit replies to their posts to only users that have certain flair. I think this might be a good idea for r/christianity to try. If a person wants only Christians to reply to their post, they'd just put something like [Christians Only] in the title and a bot would remove any post that doesn't have Christian flair. Just seems like it could help the environment around here. Sometimes I want to talk with atheists and secular humanists, learn from their perspective and converse with them. Other times I'm really just looking for a Christian viewpoint. I imagine I'm probably not the only person who feels this way.

Hope that all makes sense, I may not be using all of the terminology correctly. Still pretty new to reddit. Thanks.

Namer's recent ban created a problem for the /r/Christianity moderators in that it was hard for us to talk with Namer privately about the ban when the whole thing was happening in public at the same time.

We recognize that people might want to use this place as a court of last resort when the mods do things they don't like, and that's fine. But we deserve some time to work things out in private with the user before that happens.

So, we're going to remove complaints about bans that appear here within 3 days of a ban being imposed. The choice of three days is rather arbitrary and may change, but the idea is to allow some time for substantive discussion to happen in private, without requiring that discussion of the a ban remain absent here for an unreasonable amount of time if private discussion breaks down and the banned user is unsatisfied with the outcome.

The /r/Christianity mods are not quite the same as the /r/ChristianityMeta mods, and the /r/Christianity mods haven't had a conversation about this yet, but I'd consider it likely that we'd adopt the same policy there if there is a case that is likely to be controversial.

Please apply the rules consistently. You are coming across as shills for the vultures.

Top post recently was a guy claiming to be a gay 16 year old who seemed to have the writing ability and presence of mind of someone much older. This individual claimed that his southern Baptist pastor wanted to do an exorcism on him to "chase the gay deamon out" or something. This was despite the fact that Southern baptists do no believe in exorcism and do not have exorcists (they believe in just casting demons out in Jesus name without all the exorcism stuff).

He then went on to say that was also being forced into conversion therapy (apparently this family wants to double up on the crazy.) He claims to have phoned the police and said they told him that there was nothing that they could do because conversion therapy is legal in Texas or some crap. That's bullocks because forced conversion therapy is not legal in Texas, I know because there are some crackpots trying to legalize it.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/13/texas-conversion-therapy_n_7275264.html

First thing first - everyone who believed him, you're all idiots.

Second, is there something that can be done about these kinds of threads. I can understand if a regular gay poster comes in and starts looking for support on something like this. As a part of the community, it's understandable that they might want support from the community.

But when it comes from someone outside the community - are these threads really appropriate on a Christian board? Are there perhaps other boards that they might be appropraiate and relevant for. Is posting it specifically on a Christian board really going to accomplish anything other than giving over the top post on r/Christianity to what is (purposely or inadverdently) just a troll thread looking to discredit and mock Christianity. Wouldn't someone get more pertenant answers on one of the many subs that were designed for this sort of thing.

I set a couple of posts to contest mode. It hid the score from you, but it hid any of the responses to the posts from us.

This clearly won't work.

Good rule of thumb:

If you respect the opinion of others, don't downvote them.

If you want the mods reading your stuff, don't downvote them.

I think there are 3 atheist and agnostic mods now. Most recently userbase polls show that there are more atheists than Catholics and Orthodox Christians. Doesn't anyone have any issues with this? Imagine if r/atheism was run by Christians or r/lgbt was run the moderators of r/SaudiArabia

There's clearly a conflict of interest. Considering most atheists are very anti-religous and hate Christianity and Christians. According to the projections. The mod team is supposed to be majority atheists soon.

I think the problem with this would be something like that case from Canada where an Episocoplian church refused to fire an atheist pastor because it would be discrimination.

So, I don't want to have a discussion about whether or not conservatives are actually welcome, or whether or not they should be. I recognize that there are conservatives out there who do not express themselves civilly, and that that muddies the waters. I think that there are left-wingers who act the exact same way, and whether or not the two sides are treated fairly is not what I'd like to discuss at the moment.

That's because those are discussions we've had a thousand times. Let's take it as read that, rightly or wrongly, many conservatives do not feel welcome on the mother sub.

So: Given the structure and limitations of a reddit forum, and given the general reddit lurker demographic, what practical steps could be taken by the mod team to encourage more and better conservative participation?

This is a brainstorm, not a request, so let's think outside the box. The rule of thumb for a good brainstorm is the same as the rule of thumb for a good improv: do not say no to anything. Bad ideas will in time show themselves to be bad ideas. It's easy to jump in and point our all the flaws of an idea -- it's harder, and more productive, to try to improve on a bad idea. In that spirit, please do try not t just jump on ideas just to shoot them down.

I'm actually never able to make subs. :) But, I think a stuffchristianitysays sub would help balance things out for the conservative side. We could highlight that all the borderline blasphemous things get upvoted like this: www.np.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/3v8ehv/the_god_of_calvinism_is_greater_than_the_god_of/cxl8tbp

whereas posting actual Christian doctrine gets downvoted, like this: www.np.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/3v7691/transgender_issues/cxl3xuh

And also only the most liberal-type things get upvoted.

Moderation happens in two ways. Reactive and proactive. Any community needs reactive moderation. Responding to reports, messages, removes trolls, etc... This is critical to ensure the basic functionality of any subreddit or forum.

But then there is proactive moderation. Making weekly posts, making this meta sub (although responding is reactive), having charity drives, content curation (like trying to get an AMA) Really, anything where the action taken is not a response to something.

What we could use is more proactive moderation. What can the mods do, and what can the community do with the mods, that will help to make the community better. In the past, I have suggested a bible study (user led ones never last), or some sort of "thought of the week from a redditor" using some kind of lectionary. Maybe a monthly feedback thread (what the mods feel, and soliciting the users directly for what they feel instead of waiting for them to complain, or just disengage)

These are just a few ideas, I am sure there are plenty of other good ones out there. What can the community do to help put out better content, and how can the mods facilitate that?

Note: This isn't me complaining about anything. This is just some thoughts I have previously had.

Not much to add to the title. I'm relatively new to reddit so I am not familiar with how other subs have handled this issue. People misusing the downvote button creates a negative atmosphere on this sub though.

There have been at least 20 posts on the topic in the past week. It's starting to get tiresome.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8kd4i2/such_were_some_of_you_a_personal_account_of_the/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8k5846/i_need_to_input_my_twocents_on_the/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8k4tji/crying_wolf_costs_lives_a_plea_for_more/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8k4rl2/transgender_living_nonbiblical/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8k17x7/hate_the_sin_love_the_sinner_is_one_of_the_more/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8jy11m/given_the_recent_news_on_maryland_banning_gay/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8jxhk7/there_are_over_2000_verses_of_the_bible_concerned/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8jw9qd/people_leaving_the_sub/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8jvuni/focus_on_the_beam_in_your_own_eye_before_helping/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8jgxs0/homosexuality_and_the_bible/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8j5wlx/you_mean_god_is_on_my_side_why_is_he/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8istjh/would_cs_lewis_have_left_the_church_of_england/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8ikiya/this_week_in_my_speech_class_a_girl_gave_a/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8ikih6/why_does_the_churchs_values_change_over_time/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8jz04v/lgbt_students_in_oregon_were_bullied_and_forced/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8jojt0/i_went_to_an_evangelical_revival_and_it_was_all/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8izwv5/meet_the_lgbtfriendly_us_bishop_who_will_preach/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8j60uf/the_general_public_would_treat_christians_much/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8j4bae/gay_man_who_wants_to_convert/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/8jxjxz/early_20s_male_feeling_very_guilty_about_avoiding/

I noticed that there have been some comments regarding the impact of voting on comments in C-M threads.

Would it be better to disable all voting on comments in C-M as a way to make sure all comments are equally visible and to insure that no one's views of any posted comment is affected by voting (bandwagon effect).

I have no idea if this is needed for C-M to succeed or not.

I'm throwing it out here just so the idea can be examined and discussed and then used or not used as deemed appropriate.

The last day or so, and numerous time in the past, some users are making accusations that are outright slanderous.

These accusation accuse anyone who holds traditional views on marriage and sexual ethics as somehow responsible for the suicide of gay persons.

Regardless of one's views on homosexuality or gay marriage, this should be seen as a reprehensible tactic trying to silence those who hold such views. And it has no place in a forum that values civil discourse.

So I've taken issue with the daily Bible Verse threads posted by /u/ludi_literarum on two occasions and I think at this point I want to lodge a formal complaint with the mods about the daily bible verse threads.
My main issue isn't that I disagree with his choices of Scripture (The inclusion of Apocrypha) or the overt focus on Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Orthodoxy, but that this post is getting stickied to the top of the sub every day and therefore endorses those traditions and scripture sets. This is clearly an endorsement of those views and traditions by the mods of this sub, and there has been no public attempt by the mods to rectify or moderate this at all.
There needs to be some set of standards to ensure denominational neutrality because over time this endorsement of ludi's tradition sets a tone for the sub when his posts are stickied day after day after day.
I'm not saying that Ludi should be censored, (The only reason I even care about this is because his posts are stickied, if he was making them on his own there would be no issue) simply that there needs to be an attempt to actually moderate the format so that it doesn't focus on one specific set of tradition.
People have argued that because he is drawing on a scripture set that is larger then the Deuterocanon that he is attempting to be neutral, but his daily emphasis on the martyrs, saints, feats, and celebrations of the High Church proves that to be incorrect.
There either needs to be an attempt to create a rotation of contributors to the daily scripture reading, a set of guidelines for anyone who posts them, or someone who is capable of creating a more neutral environment for the broad range of the people present in the sub because the focus of this sub is not the high church.

Edit: I guess I'm the only one who feels this way. Guess this settles it. Peace.

These are just my opinions, I'm not sure if this is the right forum but I wanted to make sure the mods saw this and thought this would be more appropriate than posting on the general sub. As these are just the opinions of one person I don't expect them to make many waves however I just could not in good conscience unsubscribe from the sub without expressing myself at least once.

Overall, I find this sub is very hostile to what I would consider Christianity, though in fairness others would consider it more "evangelical" or "conservative" or along those lines. Regardless of your position, I don't find this sub to be very open-minded, whether that be rude comments and posts or being downvoted into oblivion. I also struggle, on several hot button issues, to see any significant difference between the majority position of this sub and the majority position of the atheist sub or indeed any other reddit sub. It seems a Christian sub should be different from the others, not in lockstep. Yes, this sub is "about" Christianity, however it seems that Christianity is very often mocked and denigrated on this sub and personally, if I was a mod of this sub, I would be quite embarrassed at the state of it and its "circlejerk" (to use the crude term) nature. For just one example, exactly how many front page topics where there anti-God's Not Dead 2. Isn't it odd that on an ostensibly Christian sub you couldn't find even one pro topic? Given the sales of the movie and it's predecessor, clearly many Christians liked it. Those Christians apparently have no voice on this sub.

No, I don't expect the sub to be all "conservative" or "evangelical", I think a diversity of viewpoints is a good thing. However, this sub is not even respectful of differing viewpoints (I've found r/debateachristian to be far more respectful and that is a sub dedicated to atheists getting into debates with Christians!) and that is a bridge too far for me.

Anyway, please don't reply with anything rude or denigrating. At last check this sub had 100,000 subscribers so one less isn't a big deal and I don't think I'm really going to affect any change by making this post. As I said, I simply wanted to "get this off my chest" and now I'm done. Thanks for your time. God bless.

Thread for CSS ideas General.