Don't forget the confused nihilists!

It only takes one great idea or break through whether purposed or not by a average poster to over shadow and out do all those whom claim to be high level philosophers. Though, I wish I was a brighter crayon, I can only stay humble and hope the powers that be help my troubled mind find peace is the glaring depression that comes with not knowing.

True enough. So "how do we get new blood?" might be the most relevant question...

I certainly don't think that the average is outside of the extraordinary.

Wet t-shirt Fridays may help.
But seriously I agree with some of the other comments about getting new blood.
But not the type that tells you that you have to be wrong because some bloody fella from 300 years ago said in his book that it was not the way I believe it is. People that spout old philosophers and their 250 year old defenses as if they were gospel without adding one iota of personal thought piss me off.

To be honest finding new blood will be a group task. My wife has an instragram account with a few hundred followers that I could post a picture/link. We both have facebooks that can be linked along with Twitter. We can try what many are doing by using the old PF along with other Philosophy sites to respectfully share links with. But, even then it will be a slow process as the old PF did not peak for many years.

On the other hand we need to be warm and inviting. Respectful and not flaming towards new people with an open mind. I am not saying put up with trolls, I am just saying for now, you may need to endure some " low quality" and allow some to mature and evolve.

I agree with that. I think back to my first philosophy class -- and all the horribly crass shit I said. We all talked over beers and gin and everything else, and no on recorded. . . it might be good to realize that we have come so far, and that it actually takes *time* to go further.

I say that as a relatively young person -- 31 now -- so . . . hopefully it's taken in good cheer.

Libel against another website's owners is not a good way to get started. I suspect they have lawyers. And I find it very far-fetched that they're after anyone's password, especially since they'd expect passwords to be hashed.

the old PF did not peak for many years. — The outlaw Josey Wales

Maybe so according to the notion that more = better, but the most fun times I had at PF were in '02-'05. For me, the discussions were more fun precisely because there were few enough people that I could actually read a whole thread instead of having to skim 10 pages super-quick. And it was possible to get a good back and forth going with someone. Why bother to post if there are going to be too many replies to engage with?

We need some more "lower quality" posters. Many of the current members are made up of a selection of the better posters from pf. Conversing with them may not be the best entry way for new members. We need people who are worried about solipsism, scepticism, have weird ideas about God etc. We need more people whose views are incorrect in obvious ways. — shmik

I'd never thought I'd say this, but apparently we need Randroids. :-O

Maybe so according to the notion that more = better, but the most fun times I had at PF were in '02-'05. For me, the discussions were more fun precisely because there were few enough people that I could actually read a whole thread instead of having to skim 10 pages super-quick. — Paul

Same reason I feel I do have the time to moderate here. For me the golden years of PF were 2003-2007 I guess.

Maybe so according to the notion that more = better, but the most fun times I had at PF were in '02-'05. For me, the discussions were more fun precisely because there were few enough people that I could actually read a whole thread instead of having to skim 10 pages super-quick. Why bother to post if there are going to be too many replies to engage with? — Paul

One possible problem with this new platform as opposed to PF is that all posts work kind of like Facebook comments or even internal replies, in that they're inline, quick and AJAXy. The temptation is to post, post, post.

The Google bot finally turned up and indexed a few pages on the site. I hope it won't be long before it comes back and crawls through the categories and indexes some of the discussions.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Athephilosophyforum.com

Maybe so according to the notion that more = better, but the most fun times I had at PF were in '02-'05. For me, the discussions were more fun precisely because there were few enough people that I could actually read a whole thread instead of having to skim 10 pages super-quick. And it was possible to get a good back and forth going with someone. Why bother to post if there are going to be too many replies to engage with? — Paul

This. A friend and I started a discussion forum for Leftist literature a few years ago. While it had less than 50 members was the most productive time for reading groups, email exchanges with academics and so on. Friend left due to general malaise, so the admins (self included), decided to promote growth.

A few years down the road it's very difficult to discuss anything due to people spamming Mario-Stalin pictures and shit-talking Jaden Smith for an inappropriate understanding of Hegel.

Probably something structural about it. More people means more replies to older posts in the discussion if everything is working well.

Libel against another website's owners is not a good way to get started. I suspect they have lawyers. And I find it very far-fetched that they're after anyone's password, especially since they'd expect passwords to be hashed. — Paul

Libel? What the fuck are you talking about? And no.. it's not far-fetched, Paul. How do you think password trafficking works? You don't sit there trying to guess a hashed password. You let a computer do the guessing.

Was the mention of lawyers supposed to be a threat directed at me?

Nobody who has criticized Porat has done anything wrong @Paul. And I'll say it again here: He is a potential criminal and the warnings about passwords should still be up on PF. That's not libel or slander or even an unjustified appraisal of the situation. It's a recommendation of a common-sense safety measure. I don't think Paul was threatening you though Mongrel. And he is putting pressure on Porat to be more open. Personally, I will never trust the new owner and I think it's a travesty he's in charge of PF. But I think the best thing to do is to move on and forget about him. It's a polarizing issue and there's not much point us arguing about him here anymore.

For me, the discussions were more fun precisely because there were few enough people that I could actually read a whole thread instead of having to skim 10 pages super-quick. And it was possible to get a good back and forth going with someone. Why bother to post if there are going to be too many replies to engage with?

I totally agree with this. It seems to me this new site would do well to keep things small and quality-focused. Why do we need to push for new members if all our favourites are here already? I haven't posted on PF a lot for several years, largely for the reasons Paul mentions. Sure, we might get accused of being elitists, but which philosophers haven't? ;)

Sane words. It just sounded like Paul was insinuating a threat. It brought out my "bring it motherfucker." As for moving on.. I wish the best for everybody including the old PF.

It seems to me this new site would do well to keep things small and quality-focused. Why do we need to push for new members if all our favourites are here already? I haven't posted on PF a lot for several years, largely for the reasons Paul mentions. Sure, we might get accused of being elitists, but which philosophers haven't? — coolazice

I think if we grow, it needs to be a slow and sustainable growth. There's no point us paying for space if that's being filled up with low quality posts by low quality posters, which will drive away some of our good posters. On the other hand, we do need new members to keep things fresh. All of us were new members once, right? Anyway, great to see you here coolazice. It was a loss when you left old PF.

I have just now resigned my admin/mod post at old PF and will be concentrating 100% of my efforts on making this site work.

The only way a computer is going to guess your password is if it's a really bad password, and password crackers have the same chance of guessing your password whether they have the database or not. Hashed passwords do not help the guessing.

And libel lawsuits can happen whether justified or not. I'm not a lawyer but I'd think anyone involved in any official way with this site should be very careful not to actually accuse Porat of a crime for which he was technically found innocent, or this site might be targeted over it? But lawyers feel free to correct me.

Obviously I'm not suing anyone.

8-)

It's time for me to do the same.

(Y)

Although I admit it's been quite useful to use PF's IP address search to identify mystery members.

Google's started indexing the discussions:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=site%3Athephilosophyforum.com

Promising.

Maybe Paul has a point about not being in a rush to grow, but my feeling is that we need to be visible in the search engines just to maintain the turnover of active members we'll need as some members inevitably drift away or become inactive for a while. And anyway, I liked the constant arrival of new members at PF and want to achieve that here on a smaller scale. We don't want to be the ex-PF members club, right? Reminiscing about Banno's red cup, blue blood, and goats.

Anyway, great to see you here coolazice. It was a loss when you left old PF.

I never actually left! I stopped posting for the most part, but I did still read the threads... I found my favourite posters' thinking to be deeper than my own... but it's very nice of you to say so.

We could start a few abortion and gay marriage threads to get more traffic.

Or an evolution vs. intelligent design debate....

http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/44/we-still-havent-had-an-evolution-vs-intelligence-design-debate-on-these-forums#Item_2

... or rather not.

Let's keep the twatterish farcebook crowd elsewhere. Besides... they have sooo many options anyway...

... oh!

And who really enjoys 'traffic'? >:O

Meow!

GREG

jamalrob, of course. He needs to get more traffic so he can sell this site to Vaygmedia in six months and start another. Eventually Vaygmedia will be the proud owner of hundreds of philosophy based forums!

This is terrible, but it came from my wife and not me.

She noticed that the websites of Vaygmedia were:

Mom Training
Yummy Deserts
Top Fashion Wear
Glamor Post
Fashion Fixation
Fashion Scope

She ask me why the owner of this stuff is so stupid and cannot spell.

It should read:
'Vaginamedia'.


WOW! :-O

Meow!

GREG

The only way a computer is going to guess your password is if it's a really bad password, and password crackers have the same chance of guessing your password whether they have the database or not. Hashed passwords do not help the guessing.

And libel lawsuits can happen whether justified or not. I'm not a lawyer but I'd think anyone involved in any official way with this site should be very careful not to actually accuse Porat of a crime for which he was technically found innocent, or this site might be targeted over it? But lawyers feel free to correct me.

Obviously I'm not suing anyone. — Paul

OK. Let's say someone buys a database of login names and hashed passwords, but decides it's just not possible, given time, to crack the passwords that correspond to those emails. Really? OK. But he is in a position to start storing passwords that are typed in.

Compare this scenario with the notion of buying a 10 year old philosophy forum with the intention of growing it for the sake of ad revenue. Let's imagine that there is great success and in a matter of a few years, $5000 per month is coming in for various websites that have been developed. After taxes, a single owner in Montana would have a nice thing going. If it's three guys in NYC splitting the proceeds.. it doesn't become inconceivable, but there's something odd about it. How are they finding time away from their full-time jobs to work on this project, which for each of them is just a mildly lucrative hobby? Are they eccentrics or something?

Eccentrics or criminals? All it takes is the fact that one of the three has a history of being suspected of cyber crime to engender suspicion. Surely, if there's no criminality on the scene, dude will be happy to explain what happened that brought him to the attention of the authorities. But he says nothing that actually makes any sense, but appears to be turning away from opportunities to clear the air. Maybe he has recently addressed it. I haven't been over to the old PF site lately.

What I'm saying is that the mere fact that Paypal fraud and identity theft is big business whereas ads usually aren't, leads me to what I'd call a legitimate question here. That's it: a question. If anyone has actually accused anyone of a crime, I didn't catch that.

I realize unjustified lawsuits happen. Any moron who sues me for libel will come out the financial loser, though. If your intention was to warn people to avoid committing a crime, that's great. Let's just say that's all you meant to do and leave it at that.