Haven't played with it yet but yeah, I think it will work fine.

I feel like I just watched a game of tennis, back and forth, back and forth.
Regards ...........Dick

It says I need an invite from a leader.

Does that mean I gotta ask Bull to let me in?

Don't join "Birthers". Join "Birther engagers". It's an open group, anyone can join.

You should be able to join the group by selecting the box... no invite needed.

Thanks Foggy, for trying to keep everyone happy, but geeze people, what is so difficult about ignoring birthers?

They mostly just stick to a few threads where they think they have some "expertise".

Ahh, that workee!

Thankee!

OK FogMaster

I haven't even managed to read 50% of SB8s threads, but then again I was busy IRL.

Having seen the discussion so far, I was wondering about something along the line of your present solution, to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak in those nice Christian images.

My suggestion goes actually one step further and may possible integrate the 'Birthers forum', but you may well want them separated from my suggestion as to not fog up the minds of these other visitiors.

Having seen the efforts to bring Fogbow into the limelight of MSM, eg. expose the combined knowledge to the greater public, I suggest a general "Visitors" forum, possibly also open to non-signedup anonymous guests (though it may become a spam magnet if not moderated sharply). The intended usage in my opinion would be "Ask a question and we try to answer".

The forum should not become a focal point of the lazy seeking an easy answer, but a clearing center to point visitors to more and indepth reading, either to Fogbows CMS or to any of the known anti-birfing websites.

Specify these special rules in a sticky post in the forum. I didn't check yet, but I would add a similar special rules stickly post to the birfer forum too. Is MichaelN already a Birfer, too ? Also.

Just my CHF0.02

Now I need a new "View Active Birfer Forum" Topics button!

It's the "Kick Me" sign they have cross stitched on their backs. It's simply irresistable.

Unfortunately, this is a really bad idea.

Open posting draws spammers like moths to a flame -- I found gold-farming spammers at PolitiJab today in both of the threads I visited. Each had copied and pasted in a sentence from someone else's post upthread to get their post approved; one had 3 "Buy WoW Gold" links in the post, the other had put the links in the sig. They wanted it there enough to pass it through moderation (and knew how to fool busy moderators -- that's what the copy/paste was about). If it were open ... do YOU want to sit here 24/7 with a delete key?

On top of that, when you allow anonymous people to post without registering at all or having any sort of pre-moderation, you bring out the worst behavior in people who otherwise might behave if there were any sort of accountability. Since we're already well-known as pinko commie atheisty obots who are all going to hell and who attract "patriots" who would like to send us there, opening for anonymous posting for people who "want to know more" would get us a lot of silverbullet^10 types.

Anyway, the point is to have a good, well-informed resource that people want to join. It's not like we're charging $$ for it. If you want to open it more, then let non-members use the search system, but please don't invite anyone to post anonymously.

My $.02, but based on years of experience in online communities, including running my own.

They were still there today, when I was finally able to get on the site (which is not always the case), and it was the first time in a couple of days that I was able to.

I did ban the poster.

I have a feeling those links were added in an edit, as I generally check for that sort of thing before approving posts, though it is possible I missed this one.

Nevertheless the poster is gone.

Just FYI, that same poster had joined here and has also been banned, like, a week ago.

Well, I think it was an elegant solution.

So this means I can't call him silverbullshit even ONCE? Dammit. I feel grumpy.

Because lurker/browsers still then have to read all the posts in RESPONSE to the birthers.

It ends up with very long threads that look something like this:

Birther: IGNORED
Birther-Engager: quote: BIRTHER TRIPE === fact, fact, fact response
Birther: IGNORED
Birther-Engager: full-detailed-quote: MORE BIRTHER TRIPE === fact, fact, fact, fact
Birther: IGNORED
Birther-Engager: Jane, you ignorant slut!!!

That does save the wanna-be ignorers the trouble of reading birther tripe twice, but other than that, the ignore stuff wouldn't work unless we also set all Birther-Engagers to ignore. Which is hard, because sometimes the Birther-Engagers have good points.

All of the birther v. birther-engager stuff is what has kept me away most of the time over the past few months. Has anyone else noticed that it gets kinda repetitive? It's not as if the same point hasn't already been made, and made, and made.....

Anyway, maybe Foggy's solution will allow people like me who actually appreciated the informational value of this forum to come back. At least when I see a new thread pop up, I can open it with a reasonable expectation that their might be something new afoot.

I believe the decision to display the birther forum only to those who join the engagers' group is an excellent idea.

I want to share some observations from my time in Hannityland regarding some birthers and their posts.

For two years plus many, if not most, have been claiming that a federal court will declare Obama ineligible. That court order would then remove Obama and Biden from office (they were elected as a team), invalidate all acts signed by Obama, and declare all nominations by Obama to be null and void. These posters believe Obama need not be impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate (since he is ineligible to be POTUS and not really one), but rather be removed via a court order.

They have yet to admit that it's GAME OVER for this scenario, but the limited time remaining in Obama's term coupled with the status of birther lawsuits regarding the 2008 election is apparently raising both the stress and stupidity levels for some.

In addition to their usual deVattel, WKA and Minor v Happersett rants (repeated ad nauseum), they became more creative in offering interpretations of court decisions, statutes and the Constitution that no court recognizes (or probably ever heard of).

For example in recent months I read that the federal standing requirement:
1) Is not in the Constitution. One birther stated he read the whole thing and couldn't find that word anywhere.
2) Is something a prior Supreme Court invented to prevent frivolous lawsuits.
3) Is of less importance than Article II and should be ignored (a birther favorite for everything).

It appears that some birthers I regularly engaged have gone into their two minute offense. The "Hail Mary" plays they have created remind me when I played football as a 10 year old with my friends (Sam is the Pepsi bottle cap, Dave is the pebble, Bill is...).

These posters have an enormous emotional investment in birferism. The closer the clock gets to 0:00, the higher their stress and stupidity levels will be. It's not going to be pretty (but I'll still laugh).

Thank you, Foggy. Personally, I think it's a FANTASTIC idea and way to resolve the problem. For people who want to engage the birthers, the ONLY actual inconvenience is the need to go into their user panel exactly *1* time and under group memberships, click on "birther engager"

That's it.

When the birthers are loose in the whole forum, those of us who have been putting them on "ignore" have to do that for each and every time a new birther breaches the gates.

You've done a really great job setting up the place, Foggy. Thank you for your efforts!

I dunno. Doesn't the typical birther who joins and contributes here have something like... a three day lifespan? Sometimes they come back, but it is always as "someone else." They just come in, spew their warmed-over unproven pablum, then disappear. Whatever. I've chosen to not join that forum and I thank Foggy for giving the option.

I think I'm in love!

Are there any Birthers in the Birthers cage? I always thought they came here to harass the people who know Birthers are crazy, and now they can't do that anymore.

Me too. It's too bad web fora suck so much compared to Usenet, where newsreaders with regular expression capability allowed you to filter them in any imaginable way. It's amazing that online discussion has become worse over time, with virtually every web-based discussion forum being utterly abysmal in terms of features. Even phpBB, which is one of the better ones, is a resource-hungry pig. Not a single web-based forum has regex capability.

It's interesting to see that none of our Birther friends have made any comments here, after Jan Brewer's rebuke of their heartfelt theories. I sure hope they don't get too discouraged. Please, Birthers, keep up your quest.

Foggy, it's my opinion that the days of having a conversation with one or more birthers regarding the merits of their claims are long gone. Three years ago, we didn't have 70+ court decisions that ended a lot of speculation for both sides. In addition, there have been some novel attempts to circumvent the standing requirements in federal court that probably won't be repeated. The LFBC demanded by birthers for some time has been released.

Some birthers are beginning to recognize that while it's not GAME OVER yet, the clock is ticking, they're behind, and they can't do a damned thing about it.

IMHO most of any new birthers joining here will behave similar to vattel. You'll get some claims, the inability to back them up, followed by a spit ball contest.

Your decision to isolate them was a wise one. Thank you.

This thread, while very interesting to me, is pretty old now.