Your post indicates he was technically found innocent, although that was not my understanding of the articles I read. The matter was civil, not criminal, meaning reference to guilt or innocence entirely mischaracterizes the proceedings.

Of course, I'm just going on what I read, but if you know more, do share.

Now that PF is a for profit company, are you currently on its payroll or do you remain there as a volunteer?

Regarding whether this site should grow, of course! It is far from unwieldy at the moment, and I look suspiciously upon any suggestion that it remain a tiny, uncompetitive entity. We can worry about being massive and cumbersome at some point in the very distant future.

My suggestion is that a collaborative effort be made to arrive at a meaningful marketing plan outside of public discussion groups. We are no doubt mostly among friends. Mostly, just mostly.

There's a reason that the new owners over at PF are suggesting articles on topical current events, that can be plastered to popular web feeds. This is probably the best way to bring in traffic. Of course people are making a lot of search engine inquiries into what is current and topical, and having links to your site from other sites with a lot of traffic all improves your traffic. We can always sort the wheat from the chaff later, but that actually is a really good strategy for popularizing the website. I say that we steal it.

I agree, and I actually have opinions that will find more acceptance with the general public than they do here.

This site actually comes with a blog, which I turned off because the header link got in the way of the subscribe link. One use for that is to post OP's about current events. Or there's nothing stopping us setting up a Ghost blog, or another kind of site, at a subdomain, e.g., articles.thephilosophyforum.com.

Incidentally, I noticed that the Refugees discussion was the first one to be indexed by Google.

Yes, I think that we should do that, turn on the blog, or set up the subdomain. I believe that Tiff was going to be working on facebook and twitters pages, where articles could also be posted.

I really think you guys/girls are on to something here.

Yeh I think the blog is a good idea. I do like it here, seems a breath of fresh air after years at pf, but it's currently tiny. There's a danger that if it doesn't grow people will just lose interest and leave. It would be good to know how pf managed to take off itself and how long that took.

I'm happy to help out writing some articles for the blog. Unlike Hanover my oppions are more appreciated inside the forum (I think) and may be seen as somewhat eccentric to the public, judging from the reactions of my friends. But, I can write about more pop issues such as evolution etc.

Thanks shmik, it's in the works and we'll let everyone know when things are set up.

Incidentally, I noticed that the Refugees discussion was the first one to be indexed by Google. — jamalrob

Nice.

I've noticed that some of the more eccentric or specialized threads at least on the old PF found their way quite high in a Google searches. Hopefully same happens here too.

I typed in "philosophy forum" in Google, and the old forum was the first suggestion.

Well I'm one of the new members you're talking about. I've been following the original PF for about 4 years. (I was unable to join due to a technical problem.) It was a very interesting and educational experience to say the least. At any rate, I always got the impression that a lot of new posters had never read the posting guidelines, which really get your message across and never read through some threads to get a feel of what's expected. You might consider adding the guidelines on this site. Also when some God proofs or science of morality came along you all really seemed to enjoy trying to get through to them. Just my two cents.

By my count 64 people have joined the old PF in the last week.

Yeah I know, and there're reasons for that, and if I may be so bold, many of those reasons have left the place.

Also when some God proofs or science of morality came along you all really seemed to enjoy trying to get through to them. Just my two cents. — Monitor

Who doesn't like fish in a barrel?

If you end up with a surplus from donations any of these months, you might consider targeted ads on philosophy based sites or searches.

By my count 64 people have joined the old PF in the last week. — Monitor

... and how many have posted anything or been active online more than 2 hours?

Meow!

GREG

Who doesn't like fish in a barrel? — Wosret

... or do you mean a barrel of monkeys?

Meow!

GREG

By my count 64 people have joined the old PF in the last week. — Monitor

We're not in a competition with old PF over how many new members we each attract. That's a competition we can't, as of now, win. They have over 13 years of building up exposure. We've had a week. We are, however, in a competition with them about which of us is the best place to do quality philosophy. And that's a competition we can and will win.

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum

... and how many have posted anything or been active online more than 2 hours? — Mayor of Simpleton

Very few. When I first started following the OPF there were about 48,000 members and most of those who actually posted are here now.

Thanks for the Welcome.

My wife just ask me to check the assumption that the new members of PF simply join and never really post.

Since October 1st there have been 205 new members and only 5 have posted 10 or more posts, whereas 128 of them have never posted anything.

Indeed we have some people here who have joined for the sake of 'playing the safety net card' in case PF goes sour, but really... 50% of new members since October 1st have never once posted a single thing. :s

Interesting if nothing else.

We are making the effort to attract 'active members', as far as I can tell.

Quantity vs. Quality... ;)

Meow!

GREG

So is it worth $20,000 to buy a forum with maybe 100 sets of active eyeballs to advertise to?

... and it's worth it for an advertiser to have only 100 sets of eyeballs see their ads? :s

So you understand why I was so confused at this purchase too...

... good to know I'm not alone. ;)

Meow!

GREG

btw... maybe it's like Chinese Restaurants here in Austria? They are what Chinese Laundries used to be in terms of 'laundering' dirty green to be cleaner greener green. :-$

Well that would make some sense of all this wouldn't it? How many ego based impulse buys are you going to get from 100 people in the lucrative pursuit of philosophical truth?

That was the first reaction of my wife. (she's wicked smart!)
Explains why I'm happily married. (L)

Meow!

GREG

Given that this site isn't high up in the list of google results, how will this forum attract new members? Can it move higher up the list, and if so, is that achievable? — Sapientia

I don't want to disregard the importance of new members. But one very important lesson that this site should take from PF is that curating a site's membership is just as important as growing it (indeed, perhaps more important than growing it).

Note that it's The Philosophy Forum, singular. I always hated that plural nonsense. — jamalrob

To each their own, but it wasn't nonsense. PF is made up of several forums (e.g., ethics, metaphysics, feedback), some of which had subforums (e.g., logic and math homework, politics, religion). These forums were also arranged in sections (philosophy, not quite philosophy, and off-topic). Calling sites that are arranged this way forums is actually quite typical in communities that devote themselves to multiple topics or that restrict certain areas to specific topics.

I understand the terminology PB. My use of the word "nonsense" was more expressive and emphatic than precise: I always found the plural usage unintuitive and grating, because for me, the web site was the forum, which happened to be divided into various subject areas. I'm not sure of the history of message boards, but I imagine that subject areas or categories came to be called "sub-forums" only because the original boards were modelled on the hierarchical file directory structure, where the whole forum is the parent node and child nodes are instances of the same kind of object.

Several terms still in use in the world of discussion forums (that is, web sites that host discussions) reflect how things were done in the early days, such as "thread". I'm happy to be moving away from many of the terminological and functional conventions of that software, because I think they can be alienating, distracting or needlessly obscure. That, at least, was my own experience.

This may just be a matter of taste. In any case, I did not mean to malign PF in particular.

The way we do it here seems more logical to me too. It's a forum with categories. Full stop. But, of course, each to their own and @Postmodern Beatnik's point about the importance of curating present membership is well taken anyhow.

I don't want the site to be as big as PF. I don't have time to read every post in every thread I post, and respond to them thoughtfully. PF was more of a home when it was smaller, and even then I didn't really enter PF until 2006, roughly a year after I presume it was the right size. I think it should be our aim to have around 200-300 relatively active members, at most (defined by at least 1 post a week), with maybe 1000 floating members (defined by at least 1 post per month). Anything beyond that would just be a torrent of repeated topics, over and over again.

At the end of the day, I'm here to discuss and hear interesting ideas, and occasionally fuck around with other philosophers on a relatively on-demand basis.

Also, I don't really care for inter-forum wars, but I also dislike the blocking of suggesting movement to another, smaller forum, from relatively active members to others. These are relationships that have been built over multiple years while in PF, and suggesting an alternative place shouldn't be frowned upon. But in anycase I can't do anything about it, so I'm not gonna concern myself too much about it, except that, previously, I didn't really have an opinion about the new owners of PF, but now I think they're a buncha fascists (term used colloquially).

So, I'll channel my inner evil chakra into the universe and hope all falls into place, and different people get what they deserve.