Posts by Apognophos

8

Reasoning Book PDF

by konceptual99 in

can anyone supply a link please?.

.

ta.

Apognophos

Yep, we still use it. Reader beware: old light ahead.

75

New forum 'parousia' is upon us! (software version)

by Simon in

the time has nearly come to switch over to the new forum software.

of course it's not completely finished yet (and never will be) but i think it's good enough to go live with and probably already better than the current one.

i'll give you a quick overview of what to expect and post more detail about the changeover process later.. cloud platform.

Apognophos

Well, now you will at least get a warning if you start posting or editing something and try to navigate away. I am going to work on having it save drafts locally to protect against browser crashes as well.

Ah, yes, in fact I think this may be the most important improvement you can make. I type all my long posts in a text editor just to prevent this. On the Mac, at least in Firefox, Command-Shift-left/right arrow, normally used to navigate to the start/end of a line of text, will cause the browser to navigate back/forward, wiping the post I was trying to reposition the cursor in. This doesn't happen in other forum software, so I had to learn the hard way to stop using that key combo whenever I'm on this particular forum and use Option-Shift-arrow instead to move one word at a time. It was a very Pavlovian learning experience to become disabused of that shortcut through the trauma of lost posts (think of animals being shocked electrically instead of rewarded with food).

What you are describing sounds more like a forum coerced into use as a Wiki.

I'm not sure what you mean. Are you referring to my examples of editing old posts? Updating the first post in a thread is very common practice for threads that are used for:

- releases (software, charts, etc.), because usually the first post should be changed to reflect later versions when they're released (a link might need to be updated, or an instruction changed),

- compilation threads ("Let's compile a list of examples where the Society's publications contradicted modern-day medical wisdom"), and

- "papers" which might need corrections based on subsequent discussion. E.g., this was the most labor-intensive topic I ever created, but despite my best efforts I still made a few factual errors which were pointed out by other members. If I could have edited the original post, it would have prevented my giving out any incorrect information in what I felt was a very important post that deserved a lot of attention from active Witnesses.

24

Bible Teach book

by factfinder in

the revised edition of the bible teach book is up on jw.org with a new cover..

Apognophos

If we had a PDF of the old and new versions, we could use the same program that MeanMrMustard developed for analyzing the NWT revision, expect that it would be much more effective on the Bible Teach book than with the myriad tiny changes in the NWT. That being said, one of the main changes to the new Bible Teach book is apparently replacing the old NWT quotations with the rNWT text.

75

New forum 'parousia' is upon us! (software version)

by Simon in

the time has nearly come to switch over to the new forum software.

of course it's not completely finished yet (and never will be) but i think it's good enough to go live with and probably already better than the current one.

i'll give you a quick overview of what to expect and post more detail about the changeover process later.. cloud platform.

Apognophos

One reason for the post edits is that it allows, for instance, someone to edit a post as they want it to be even if the time has run out and then be able to flag it for review by a mod (or maybe the review flag happen automatically) who can then decide to accept the edit or not.

I appreciate that you are making the change in order to allow long-term post editing. One of the biggest problems with the current system is when a link breaks, say, a year after the poster used the link in his post, or when the first post in a thread should be updated on the basis of later information in the thread. Of course, most forums allow unmoderated, unlimited post editing, so they've never had this problem. Personally I've only witnessed one occasion, out of all the forums I've been a part of, where an exiting forum member abused the editing feature to blank all of his posts on his way out.

Thus, as far as I'm concerned, the rule about designing the system for general use and handling the occasional exception should apply in this way: users can edit their posts whenever they want without version control making those changes accessible to their peers. If someone abuses this, a moderator can view or roll back the post to an earlier version. Simply making this one change -- restricting the viewing of a post's history to those in the moderator group -- will be an improvement. I can't see what advantage there is to allowing regular users access to it at all, no matter whether conveniently or 'with some effort'.

-----------------

I forgot to mention that I wasn thinking of adding a draft authoring option as well to allow people to author things over a period of time, saving as they go but only publishing when finished (only for topics though).

Draft authoring would be nice. I've had a number of drafts for topics that I was pecking away at, and I've had to store them in .txt files around my hard drive, or in Google Drive, which isn't much fun.

75

New forum 'parousia' is upon us! (software version)

by Simon in

the time has nearly come to switch over to the new forum software.

of course it's not completely finished yet (and never will be) but i think it's good enough to go live with and probably already better than the current one.

i'll give you a quick overview of what to expect and post more detail about the changeover process later.. cloud platform.

Apognophos

Sounds great! I like every point but one. I'm not enthused about general users being able to see my post edits; I edit for the purpose of (1) fixing typos (sometimes no amount of re-reading seems to catch them before I hit Submit), (2) making factual corrections, or (3) phrasing things more diplomatically. I don't feel like getting pounced on over something I already fixed, when I'm having an intense debate with someone who decides to click through my post's change history looking for any vulnerability they can find.

More importantly, new users have a tendency to give too many personal details, not realizing that even the Private forum can be trawled by believing JWs who have registered for the purpose of getting people they know in trouble. Also, sometimes users have also posted anonymized text such as emails and failed to totally scrub a name or address from the text. Making the old text versions viewable for everyone will therefore make it even harder to fix leaks of personal information, as opposed to the current system where they at least have half an hour to completely remove that information from the sight of inquisitive users and Google. Half an hour is usually not enough time, however, to warn a user of such a problem and for them to see that warning and take corrective measures; but it's better than nothing.

17

Can your pervert the meaning of scripture even more...

by never a jw in

for a while i have shaken my head after learning how jw's interpret (rather corrupt the meaning of) matthew 8:11. i thought it couldn't get any worse.

i was wrong.

the following is an extract of the march 2015 watchtower in pg 27. the writer is explaining the meaning of mathew 25:31-46. enjoy!.

Apognophos

I prefer not to talk about my pervert.

17

Why must we APPLY for everything?

by Tech49 in

jw
friends

i was thinking about this today, after seeing another thread on the subject of serving in israel, of all places.

there have been many comments on the recent thread, and the ones a little older, about how utterly ridiculous that premise is.. the bigger question is why do i have to apply?

permission?

Apognophos

I don't know why they are encouraging friends to apply for the Israel campaign, but knowing them, one reason is being able to track how many people go over there. Remember their fetish for number reporting? Secondly, there may be a cultural orientation of some kind for the ones who register. G-d knows there should be. But of course there is nothing preventing a JW from just going over there on their own, as I have known some to do.

Think of this as registering for a tourism trip as opposed to making your own arrangements. There are pros and cons. The Society never said you can't go on your own. Your analogy to the IC is also weak because if everyone who felt like going to Hawaii went there for the IC, they could be overcrowded. There are better places to direct your general anger than at attempts by the Society to organize its events.

3

I'l never sing another song

by naja in

udo jurgens, c omposer of this song died yesterday rip.

Apognophos

Aha, I haven't heard of it, so the reference passed me by.

54

How do you overcome this JW excuse?

by EdenOne in

during one of those meetings that took place before my jc, one of the elders, who was a good friend of mine back then and used to come up with a few outlandish personal views about some teachings, attempted to counter one of my arguments like this:.

eden - "well, if the truth doesn't change, why is it that what we teach as 'truth' has changed over the years (several examples given)?

how can we dogmatically claim at any given moment that we have 'the truth' if our teachings keep changing?".

Apognophos

Clearly I wasn't in a position to win that argument, so I didn't even reply to that. But it stayed in my memory as a monument to religious irrationality.

Granted, that was not the time for you to give him some clever comeback, but I still say it's not an irrational statement. The God which that brother worships is a god who is allowed to mislead and confuse his followers in the name of some bigger picture that we are not privy to. That's not the God that you believe in. So what we have here is a difference of theological opinion.

16

crazy analogy question regarding Jesus' divinity [or lack of]

by TTWSYF in

i heard a preist pose this question and i'll admit, it made me think.. if your neighbor had a dog and a monkey and his dog bite you.

would you accept an apology from the neighbors monkey?.

just asking.

Apognophos

Okay, I didn't realize that the neighbor was Jesus. So... the analogy is saying that Jesus is responsible for Adam's and Eve's disobedience, hence the need to sacrifice himself on Earth? I've never heard this suggested before.