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Forums FAQ

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User Commitments

Establish and use a single identity for yourself in all these forums. (For example, I should always post as Mark Roth since that is what I have been using.) Do not post as anyone else.

Write a user profile for yourself if you post regularly. In that profile you do not need to include your email address, unless you wish to. And please do not include your snail mail address. Do tell us at least your . . .
  • real first name
  • geographical location
  • religious/denominational affiliation

    • All Christian participants commit themselves to write for edification and in the spirit of meekness.

    Avoid mocking or belittling each other and your views.

    Avoid feeling attacked personally by anyone who believes differently than you.

    If you think you need to rebuke someone for a public post, try first to resolve the matter via private email.

    Do your best to keep each forum on-topic.

    Vision & Background

    My vision for this community came as I observed seekers being mocked and belittled in other forums.

    So I wanted to set up a safe haven for them. Hence the name: The Seekers' Refuge -- intended to be a spiritually safe place to ask honest questions and give Biblical answers.

    In time, this forum's scope grew to such an extent that I established new forums.

    The Seekers' Refuge remains as a forum set aside where you may . . .
  • Ask and answer questions regarding Anabaptist faith and practice
  • Provide information
    • The Seekers' Refuge is a moderated forum. Posts that meet the two criteria above are most likely to be approved.

    The Forums

    As mentioned above, The Seekers' Refuge is only the first. These are the others:
  • General Christian Issues
  • Marriage-Related Issues
  • Education Support
  • EduSwap
  • Homemaker Helper
  • Health Issues
  • Bless, Encourage, and Lift
  • Book Comments

    • General Christian Issues covers a wide range of topics:
  • Christian doctrine and living
  • Contemporary issues
  • The merits and Biblicity of doctrines and practices considered unique to Anabaptists
  • Scriptural insights
  • Bible study
  • Prayer requests

    • Questions

    1. Are these Anabaptist forums?

    No, not in the sense that they are solely about Anabaptist issues, practices, and doctrines. And certainly not in the sense that only Anabaptists post here. In fact, as far as I know, very few Anabaptists are active participants here.
    2. Why does it get so contentious sometimes?
    Proverbs says that contention results from pride. In all fairness, though, it should be noted that not all spirited discussion is necessarily contentiousness.
    3. What do you do with posts that "cross the line"?
    As of late July 2002, my intention is to delete them. I will try to be charitable and cautious in such action. Whenever I need to resort to deleting posts, I will try to let the poster know.
    4. Why such a drastic approach?
    I think such posts tend to violate Christian principles and character.

    Such posts detract from the purpose and vision for these forums.

    Readers get tired of and discouraged by such posts.

    Such posts generally aren't worth the server space they take.

    I don't have the time nor inclination to go through a bunch of hoops with people who should know better than to "cross the line" in the first place.

    5. What should I do if I read a post that I think should not be on your site?
    Contact me right away at this special email address: abuse.
    6. What will you do about problem posters?
    First, I will appeal to them for their cooperation. Should that approach fail, I will do my best to make it impossible for them to continue posting. Should I fail in that, I will just have to resort to deleting their posts as soon as possible.

    Do you have any ammendments to suggest? If so, contact me via private email, please.

    By default, the forums show messages posted in the last week. To see more (or less), personalize your settings for each individual forum.

    Thank you very much!
    Mark Roth -- January 1, 2003

    The First Disaster

    The Anabaptists Web Project was hard hit by a server crash the afternoon of April 5, 2005. It took down all our Web sites and associated email addresses.

    Although it took eight full days, our hosting company was able to restore all our domains except www.anabaptistbooks.com. Among other things, that means all these forums and their thousands of archived messages completely disappeared . . . irretrievably so.

    Mark -- April 19, 2005

    The Second Disaster

    Thanks to another catastrophic server crash early the Monday morning (September 12), the Anabaptists Web Project has suffered another staggering blow. (OK, so those are quite the superlatives.)

    Many portions of the project are still offline.

    I continue the long, tedious, laborious the process of moving to another hosting provider.

    God is great and Elijah was His prophet.

    Mark Roth
    Saturday -- September 17, 2005; 6:45 pm Pacific

    September 14: I successfully brought General and Education back online around 8:30 this morning.

    early September 17: I transfered eaf.net to our new server. Now I need to reinstall the forums there. Hopefully General and Odds will be up and running by Monday.

    late afternoon September 17: All forums are back online. All messages after August 28 sometime were lost. Thankfully, I had the previous 3325 or so on local back-up.

    The '06 Spam Disaster

    June 28: A spam assault over the last several days in particular finally forced me to switch all the forums over to moderated status.

    I understand that may well finish off these forums.

    It's disappointing, but that's the way it is.

    My apologies to all of you who had to deal with the spam-related notification emails.

    A Solution for the Spam Disaster

    October 28: This morning I implemented some script changes that I hope will solve (or at least drastically reduce) the spam onslaught.

    To post, users are now required to provide a lowercase answer to a simple question.

    If you run into problems, please let me know via email.

    All forums (except Seekers and Odds) should be unmoderated again. If I missed one, please let me know.

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