We are different
To make the G+ Philosophy Community one of the best online forums for philosophy enthusiasts to participate in, I have been working hard to increase the standards and the quality of the contents in the community. That is one reason why most posts in the community have a high engagement rate, no spam of any kind, and you rarely see a post in the community that does not attract any comment and discussion.
Unlike many other G+ communities, when someone posts something in the G+ Philosophy Community it is almost guaranteed that a conversation will ensue. Not a trivial achievement! That is all possible thanks to you and other members of the community. So, thank you! I am proud of what we have been able to achieve with the help of all members and contributors.
Standards
To get even closer to an ideal community, there have been a set of standards that are being enforced upon all contents posted in our community. No post is exempt from these standards. That ensures consistency, better communication, higher quality posts, relevance, a higher rate of engagement, and overall a much better experience for all members.
Your post, if you made any, is one of the many posts I need to approve or reject on a daily basis. I am always excited about new posts and what they can bring to the community. I am committed to the highest level of quality that I can achieve through the moderation process. I strive to be fair, play no favouritism and hold everyone accountable against the same set of standards, and use sound discretion in corner-cases where there is no guideline upon which a situation can be decided. I do not operate in isolation. That is where your posts come into play.
You and the other 41,000+ members of this community are integral parts of the life of this community. Without your help and attention, there will be no community, no posts, no discussions, and no fun. Eventually, it is within your power to make it work or break. My job here is to make this community the best it can be so your discussions can flourish and you get a qualitatively different experience in this community compared to others.
To achieve that goal, I have devised a set of standards, as explained in the community guidelines, that I have been adjusting, polishing, and monitoring for years since 2012. Most contributors neatly comply with all of them. However, every day there are a few posts that do not. Once informed of the issues, the authors of these posts usually adjust their posts promptly and everything keeps moving smoothly. In rare occasions, a poster finds themselves in contempt of the standards and decides to leave the community (happens a couple of times a year; sourly unfortunate).
Behind the scene
If you are curious about what I deal with behind the scene, here are a few issues against which I see the most number of non-compliances:
(1) disruptive writing styles, e.g. disruptive punctuations, all caps, grammatical and mechanical errors, typos, etc.,
(2) images under the posts (a post must not have any link, attachment, or image. Instead leave them in the comment section under the post if necessary).
The 2nd issue is easy to understand and fix.
Not much the 1st issue though. Some might not care about any of the aforementioned errors. They might even like them and feel liberated by incorporating even more errors in their posts as a way to show how carefree or cool they are. They might have made a patented style out of it. Fair enough. That certainly is their choice and I respect it. Nevertheless, I happened not to see those stylistic choices as appropriate in a large community such as this one, and as a result, do not allow such posts in this community. This is not going to go away anytime soon, so we have to live with this disagreement.
Let’s improve!
I have increased my attention to the 1st item lately, and I am going to hold members accountable to a higher degree of professionalism than before. As such, I am going to ask all members to fix their posts, if they contain such errors, before approving them. There is no exception to this rule. This is not a new rule though, and it has already been explained in the community guidelines that has always been available to all members at all time. I am going to enforce them a bit more diligently now.
Who would be affected?
Everyone is held to the same standard. As such, I expect all members to have read and understood the community guidelines upon joining the community and post in compliance with its standards.
Need your help
With your help, we keep having a great community that looks professional, clean, active, enthusiastic, and relevant to all of us. I won’t be able to achieve these goals without you. If everyone helps, we can make it happen and even improve upon what we have already got. It certainly takes a lot of time and effort, but it is worth it.
Editorial Guidelines & Style Sheet
We don’t have an official style sheet for the posts in this community (should we?). Nevertheless, the following items are the bare minimum criteria that all posts need to meet before I approve them (they don’t apply to comments):
- paragraph spacing: there must be one line-space between each paragraph; no more, no less;
- meaningless punctuations: avoid using meaningless punctuations such as ?????? / !!!!!! / …….. / ?!?!?! / ?, / ?. / ?... / !, / !. / !... / ,,,,, / etc. They don’t mean what some think they mean. They don’t mean anything at all, and they are annoying;
- ALL CAPS: avoid using ALL CAPS. Use bold or italic to emphasize a word or a sentence sporadically;
- wall of text: avoid copy/pasting a long paragraph with no proper line-space. It gets annoying and hard to read;
- first-word capitalization: unless it is a list, English sentences must start with a capital letter;
- end-of-sentence punctuations: unless it is a list item or a header, all English sentences end with a punctuation of some sort (list items might end with a semicolon or no punctuation); and
- punctuation marks do not mix: in most cases, punctuation marks do not follow one another in an English sentence. Those few corner-cases have meaningful reasons why two punctuation marks do follow one another (for example a closed bracket at the end of a sentence or something like “this”). See “meaningless punctuations” above.
If you are in doubt, consult the University of Oxford Style Guide for more information (or see the relevant part of this cheat-sheet: http://bit.ly/2wehQpf). As a rule of thumb, “Use as little punctuation as necessary while retaining the meaning of the sentence.” [Source: the same cheat-sheet.]
All Indo-European languages follow similar rules. Most posters naturally follow them since there is nothing exceptional or extraordinary about the rules. Those posters who do not, will be asked to edit their posts before they can be released into the community. Posters have 24 hours to comply. When the grace period elapses and if all the edits are not properly applied, the post will be rejected. It applies to all posts, regardless of their content.
Keep It Simple, Stupid
All we need to do is to pay attention to how we compose our posts when we post. Just follow the KISS principle and all will be good. Remember, if we don’t have time to compose a professional-looking post or if we don’t care, then we cannot expect others to have time to put up with our poorly-written piece of word-salad.
Please comment below
As always, you are welcome to comment below. Don’t be afraid of holding me to the same set of standards. I would love to hear your constructive input.
Thank you for your time and happy philosophizing!
To make the G+ Philosophy Community one of the best online forums for philosophy enthusiasts to participate in, I have been working hard to increase the standards and the quality of the contents in the community. That is one reason why most posts in the community have a high engagement rate, no spam of any kind, and you rarely see a post in the community that does not attract any comment and discussion.
Unlike many other G+ communities, when someone posts something in the G+ Philosophy Community it is almost guaranteed that a conversation will ensue. Not a trivial achievement! That is all possible thanks to you and other members of the community. So, thank you! I am proud of what we have been able to achieve with the help of all members and contributors.
Standards
To get even closer to an ideal community, there have been a set of standards that are being enforced upon all contents posted in our community. No post is exempt from these standards. That ensures consistency, better communication, higher quality posts, relevance, a higher rate of engagement, and overall a much better experience for all members.
Your post, if you made any, is one of the many posts I need to approve or reject on a daily basis. I am always excited about new posts and what they can bring to the community. I am committed to the highest level of quality that I can achieve through the moderation process. I strive to be fair, play no favouritism and hold everyone accountable against the same set of standards, and use sound discretion in corner-cases where there is no guideline upon which a situation can be decided. I do not operate in isolation. That is where your posts come into play.
You and the other 41,000+ members of this community are integral parts of the life of this community. Without your help and attention, there will be no community, no posts, no discussions, and no fun. Eventually, it is within your power to make it work or break. My job here is to make this community the best it can be so your discussions can flourish and you get a qualitatively different experience in this community compared to others.
To achieve that goal, I have devised a set of standards, as explained in the community guidelines, that I have been adjusting, polishing, and monitoring for years since 2012. Most contributors neatly comply with all of them. However, every day there are a few posts that do not. Once informed of the issues, the authors of these posts usually adjust their posts promptly and everything keeps moving smoothly. In rare occasions, a poster finds themselves in contempt of the standards and decides to leave the community (happens a couple of times a year; sourly unfortunate).
Behind the scene
If you are curious about what I deal with behind the scene, here are a few issues against which I see the most number of non-compliances:
(1) disruptive writing styles, e.g. disruptive punctuations, all caps, grammatical and mechanical errors, typos, etc.,
(2) images under the posts (a post must not have any link, attachment, or image. Instead leave them in the comment section under the post if necessary).
The 2nd issue is easy to understand and fix.
Not much the 1st issue though. Some might not care about any of the aforementioned errors. They might even like them and feel liberated by incorporating even more errors in their posts as a way to show how carefree or cool they are. They might have made a patented style out of it. Fair enough. That certainly is their choice and I respect it. Nevertheless, I happened not to see those stylistic choices as appropriate in a large community such as this one, and as a result, do not allow such posts in this community. This is not going to go away anytime soon, so we have to live with this disagreement.
Let’s improve!
I have increased my attention to the 1st item lately, and I am going to hold members accountable to a higher degree of professionalism than before. As such, I am going to ask all members to fix their posts, if they contain such errors, before approving them. There is no exception to this rule. This is not a new rule though, and it has already been explained in the community guidelines that has always been available to all members at all time. I am going to enforce them a bit more diligently now.
Who would be affected?
Everyone is held to the same standard. As such, I expect all members to have read and understood the community guidelines upon joining the community and post in compliance with its standards.
Need your help
With your help, we keep having a great community that looks professional, clean, active, enthusiastic, and relevant to all of us. I won’t be able to achieve these goals without you. If everyone helps, we can make it happen and even improve upon what we have already got. It certainly takes a lot of time and effort, but it is worth it.
Editorial Guidelines & Style Sheet
We don’t have an official style sheet for the posts in this community (should we?). Nevertheless, the following items are the bare minimum criteria that all posts need to meet before I approve them (they don’t apply to comments):
- paragraph spacing: there must be one line-space between each paragraph; no more, no less;
- meaningless punctuations: avoid using meaningless punctuations such as ?????? / !!!!!! / …….. / ?!?!?! / ?, / ?. / ?... / !, / !. / !... / ,,,,, / etc. They don’t mean what some think they mean. They don’t mean anything at all, and they are annoying;
- ALL CAPS: avoid using ALL CAPS. Use bold or italic to emphasize a word or a sentence sporadically;
- wall of text: avoid copy/pasting a long paragraph with no proper line-space. It gets annoying and hard to read;
- first-word capitalization: unless it is a list, English sentences must start with a capital letter;
- end-of-sentence punctuations: unless it is a list item or a header, all English sentences end with a punctuation of some sort (list items might end with a semicolon or no punctuation); and
- punctuation marks do not mix: in most cases, punctuation marks do not follow one another in an English sentence. Those few corner-cases have meaningful reasons why two punctuation marks do follow one another (for example a closed bracket at the end of a sentence or something like “this”). See “meaningless punctuations” above.
If you are in doubt, consult the University of Oxford Style Guide for more information (or see the relevant part of this cheat-sheet: http://bit.ly/2wehQpf). As a rule of thumb, “Use as little punctuation as necessary while retaining the meaning of the sentence.” [Source: the same cheat-sheet.]
All Indo-European languages follow similar rules. Most posters naturally follow them since there is nothing exceptional or extraordinary about the rules. Those posters who do not, will be asked to edit their posts before they can be released into the community. Posters have 24 hours to comply. When the grace period elapses and if all the edits are not properly applied, the post will be rejected. It applies to all posts, regardless of their content.
Keep It Simple, Stupid
All we need to do is to pay attention to how we compose our posts when we post. Just follow the KISS principle and all will be good. Remember, if we don’t have time to compose a professional-looking post or if we don’t care, then we cannot expect others to have time to put up with our poorly-written piece of word-salad.
Please comment below
As always, you are welcome to comment below. Don’t be afraid of holding me to the same set of standards. I would love to hear your constructive input.
Thank you for your time and happy philosophizing!
I would like to thank every one of our members who is participating in the conversations in this community despite all of its limitations.
We have been trying to improve the quality of the materials and conversations that appear in this forum since 2012. We’ve been trying to steer it away from spams, memes, deepities, and things that are not related to philosophy. This community is demonstrably more focused on conversations and less on share-it-and-run culture that dominates most other communities in particular and the Internet in general. A place where many intelligent folks, such as you, hang out, have fun, and hold philosophical dialogues.
How can we improve it even further?
We have been trying to improve the quality of the materials and conversations that appear in this forum since 2012. We’ve been trying to steer it away from spams, memes, deepities, and things that are not related to philosophy. This community is demonstrably more focused on conversations and less on share-it-and-run culture that dominates most other communities in particular and the Internet in general. A place where many intelligent folks, such as you, hang out, have fun, and hold philosophical dialogues.
How can we improve it even further?
I have to take a drastic measure in this community to fix a persisting issue. Ad hominem attacks.
From this moment on, I will ban any member who verbally attacks any other member in this community for any reason. I will then remove all the posts and comments made by the offender.
When do I know an attack is likely to occur?
For one measure, whenever a sentence contains the word “you”. As soon as I see this word in any sentence made by anyone, I will be interested immediately. I will read the comments before and after the given comment and will put the name of the author of the comment in a watch-list.
Does it sound ridiculous? It does to me. Ridiculous problems might need equal measures to be addressed.
Resources
Graham, Paul. 2008. How to Disagree. http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html (thanks to +Bill Reed for suggesting this)
From this moment on, I will ban any member who verbally attacks any other member in this community for any reason. I will then remove all the posts and comments made by the offender.
When do I know an attack is likely to occur?
For one measure, whenever a sentence contains the word “you”. As soon as I see this word in any sentence made by anyone, I will be interested immediately. I will read the comments before and after the given comment and will put the name of the author of the comment in a watch-list.
Does it sound ridiculous? It does to me. Ridiculous problems might need equal measures to be addressed.
Resources
Graham, Paul. 2008. How to Disagree. http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html (thanks to +Bill Reed for suggesting this)
Hilary Putnam passed away on March 13, 2016 at age 89.
" Notable ideas:
Multiple realizability
Functionalism
Causal theory of reference
Semantic externalism
Brain in a vat · Twin Earth
Internal realism"
Source: Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam
" Notable ideas:
Multiple realizability
Functionalism
Causal theory of reference
Semantic externalism
Brain in a vat · Twin Earth
Internal realism"
Source: Wikipedia
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilary_Putnam
Today we reached our 10,000-members mark. Congratulation! Thank you everyone for making this community one of the most exciting, engaging, and challenging places amongst Google+ Communities.
There are several, in-depth discussions going on in Philosophy CLUB, such as:
✭ What is truth? (started by Eric Bright)
✭ Questioning Kant (started by Zheninng Pei)
✭ What does “free will” mean? (started by Eric Bright)
✭ What is philosophy? (started by Eric Bright)
✭ ...let us ask: why do we push for, or against ‘free will’ (started by Pat Johnston)
✭ Deduction versus Induction (started by Eric Bright)
✭ The other side of semantics: How do we know what signs (started by Andreas Geisler)
✭ Is it possible to stop thoughts? (started by Eric Bright)
✭ Is Spinal Cord and Rest of the CNS impervious to Sensations? (started by Sajjeev Antony)
And several others.
If any of these topics interests you and you think you meet the membership requirements of the CLUB, then please contact either of these moderators and get a registration key to join the CLUB and the discussions:
Cory Conley
Andreas Geisler
Pat Johnston
Alain Van Hout
Eric Bright
========================
Notes
========================
Philosophy CLUB at http://sophy.ca/PhilosophyClub/ is an extension of our Google+ Philosophy Community. There are only a few who might be interested in deeper philosophical investigations than the many who join our philosophy community. The CLUB is for them. We invite those who actively engage in deep philosophical investigations and don’t want to be distracted by an influx of new posts every minute. So, in many ways, this is a quite philosophy café and might only suite a few who are interested. That is why we decided to have a slower and more focused conversation together in a calmer corner of the Internet.
========================
✭ What is truth? (started by Eric Bright)
✭ Questioning Kant (started by Zheninng Pei)
✭ What does “free will” mean? (started by Eric Bright)
✭ What is philosophy? (started by Eric Bright)
✭ ...let us ask: why do we push for, or against ‘free will’ (started by Pat Johnston)
✭ Deduction versus Induction (started by Eric Bright)
✭ The other side of semantics: How do we know what signs (started by Andreas Geisler)
✭ Is it possible to stop thoughts? (started by Eric Bright)
✭ Is Spinal Cord and Rest of the CNS impervious to Sensations? (started by Sajjeev Antony)
And several others.
If any of these topics interests you and you think you meet the membership requirements of the CLUB, then please contact either of these moderators and get a registration key to join the CLUB and the discussions:
Cory Conley
Andreas Geisler
Pat Johnston
Alain Van Hout
Eric Bright
========================
Notes
========================
Philosophy CLUB at http://sophy.ca/PhilosophyClub/ is an extension of our Google+ Philosophy Community. There are only a few who might be interested in deeper philosophical investigations than the many who join our philosophy community. The CLUB is for them. We invite those who actively engage in deep philosophical investigations and don’t want to be distracted by an influx of new posts every minute. So, in many ways, this is a quite philosophy café and might only suite a few who are interested. That is why we decided to have a slower and more focused conversation together in a calmer corner of the Internet.
========================
The following new topics have just been started in the CLUB:
What is cognition?
Started by Andreas Geisler under Nesuroscience, Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind » Cognition
The other side of semantics: How do we know what signs mean?
Started by Andreas Geisler under Philosophy of Language » Semiotics
What is science?
Started by Alain Van Hout under Philosophy of Science
Also, the following topics are being discussed under other boards:
- What is truth?
- Deduction versus Induction
- What is language?
- Is it possible to stop thoughts?
- ...let us ask: Why do we push for, or against ‘free will’?
In case you would like to have a look at them you can contact the following moderators to be directed to the right place:
Alain Van Hout
Andreas Geisler
Cory Conley
Eric Bright
Pat Johnston
Sajjeev Antony
For more info on the CLUB please visit http://goo.gl/Cy86hD.
What is cognition?
Started by Andreas Geisler under Nesuroscience, Cognitive Science, Philosophy of Mind » Cognition
The other side of semantics: How do we know what signs mean?
Started by Andreas Geisler under Philosophy of Language » Semiotics
What is science?
Started by Alain Van Hout under Philosophy of Science
Also, the following topics are being discussed under other boards:
- What is truth?
- Deduction versus Induction
- What is language?
- Is it possible to stop thoughts?
- ...let us ask: Why do we push for, or against ‘free will’?
In case you would like to have a look at them you can contact the following moderators to be directed to the right place:
Alain Van Hout
Andreas Geisler
Cory Conley
Eric Bright
Pat Johnston
Sajjeev Antony
For more info on the CLUB please visit http://goo.gl/Cy86hD.
Dear Philosophy Community members,
I proudly announce Philosophy Club (CLUB for short), a place to dig even deeper into philosophical issues.
https://sophy.ca/PhilosophyClub
Why the need for a Philosophy Club?
We do share valuable information and insights in this great Google+ community. But occasionally we have need to delve deeper into individual philosophical topics. Google+'s technical limitations prevent that.
N Cell initially attempted to modify this G+ community to allow deeper discussions, say, ONE active topic can remain prominent (till it is discussed fully) in each sub-discipline, still permitting peripheral topics. But Google+ is not designed for sustained, in-depth “sticky” conversations. You would have experienced the frustration of the navigation nightmare that your favorite thread poses after a few dozen post! You also know that if you don’t keep your thread active by posting every few hours, it might be cast aside like yesterday’s newspaper. Or, if a person deletes their profile, all of the threads started by them will also be deleted with all of the comments underneath. All gone! Good old Google+. Wonderful in its own way but academically deficient.
Hence the CLUB! I have been working on this project since the beginning of January 2014. Then others started joining in helping me to take it to the next level. We have been constantly testing and debugging the platform. It is now stable enough to function with a larger number of participants from the Google+ community. We still consider it a beta version, and shall continue tweaking it.
IMPORTANT:
Philosophy CLUB is NOT a replacement for this Google+ community, but an inner sanctum within, enabling free thought and frank conversations without tangential interruptions by newcomers. Those who join will be pleased to see several familiar faces from G+ and more will be coming in.
The CLUB has two major, governing principles:
(1) Membership by invitation/request only
(2) One active topic at a time only (under each category)
There are other rules also which will be available to you once you join the CLUB.
How will the CLUB function with this community?
Our large community in Google+ is a busy place where new ideas are introduced from different perspectives and worlds. But like all Google+ communities, it is a living room where interesting and often dramatic stuff are spontaneously (often impulsively) shared.
In the CLUB, we relax over cups of coffee between occasional siestas and long walks. We discuss philosophy patiently and thoughtfully, because we know that our topics are not going to be smothered if we don’t keep posting something. Philosophy is speculating about the unknown without the thinker’s ego interfering with the thought. We won’t share exciting stuff as we do on Google+ or on Facebook. We also won’t ask just any kind of question and give just any kind of answer/opinion merely to let people know “I am here!” For these, we already have the G+ community and it is serving us well.
The CLUB will keep active collaboration with this community by announcing new topics both in our G+ community and in the CLUB so that we could discussions similar topics with different perspectives and depth. There are several topics already being debated. Members can join any of them (or all). We will also share with this Community any new insights from our CLUB discussions.
How to join
Membership in the CLUB is by invitation/request only, so we need to know you, and our only source of information about you are your past activities in Google+ and perhaps other publicly shared stuff. We shall keep watch and will approach you when it is time. On the other hand, if you find that Philosophy Club is suitable for you, you might approach us with some examples of your contributions in this very Google+ community (and other fora). In the end, it will be the decision of a moderator to decide to send you an invitation based on evidence.
How the CLUB works
The CLUB will have a different feel. Members cannot post any topic in any category; they can only post comments under a topic that is posted by a moderator.
We try to keep a list of up-coming topics that members can contribute to later, which can only be edited by a moderator.
Each category has its own moderator. These moderators decide what topic should be discussed at a given time. If a topic stays inactive for a while, they can decide to lock it and start a new topic.
Regular members can comment under any topic they like.
Membership (of a regular member or a moderator) is revoked if the account of a member remains inactive for three months. That is part of the maintenance process and to make sure that we always have active conversations and members. They can apply again to be readmitted.
If you happen to be interested in joining the CLUB, please contact any of the following people. They will get back to you as soon as they can (they all have their own lives too, and volunteering in our CLUB is not the only thing they do. So, please be patient. It might take up to 48 hours before you hear back from us, but you eventually will).
Moderators (alphabetically ordered; only the currently active moderators are listed. There are others too):
Alain Van Hout
Andreas Geisler
Cory Conley
Eric Bright
Pat Johnston
Regards,
Eric
On behalf of the moderation team at Philosophy Club
I proudly announce Philosophy Club (CLUB for short), a place to dig even deeper into philosophical issues.
https://sophy.ca/PhilosophyClub
Why the need for a Philosophy Club?
We do share valuable information and insights in this great Google+ community. But occasionally we have need to delve deeper into individual philosophical topics. Google+'s technical limitations prevent that.
N Cell initially attempted to modify this G+ community to allow deeper discussions, say, ONE active topic can remain prominent (till it is discussed fully) in each sub-discipline, still permitting peripheral topics. But Google+ is not designed for sustained, in-depth “sticky” conversations. You would have experienced the frustration of the navigation nightmare that your favorite thread poses after a few dozen post! You also know that if you don’t keep your thread active by posting every few hours, it might be cast aside like yesterday’s newspaper. Or, if a person deletes their profile, all of the threads started by them will also be deleted with all of the comments underneath. All gone! Good old Google+. Wonderful in its own way but academically deficient.
Hence the CLUB! I have been working on this project since the beginning of January 2014. Then others started joining in helping me to take it to the next level. We have been constantly testing and debugging the platform. It is now stable enough to function with a larger number of participants from the Google+ community. We still consider it a beta version, and shall continue tweaking it.
IMPORTANT:
Philosophy CLUB is NOT a replacement for this Google+ community, but an inner sanctum within, enabling free thought and frank conversations without tangential interruptions by newcomers. Those who join will be pleased to see several familiar faces from G+ and more will be coming in.
The CLUB has two major, governing principles:
(1) Membership by invitation/request only
(2) One active topic at a time only (under each category)
There are other rules also which will be available to you once you join the CLUB.
How will the CLUB function with this community?
Our large community in Google+ is a busy place where new ideas are introduced from different perspectives and worlds. But like all Google+ communities, it is a living room where interesting and often dramatic stuff are spontaneously (often impulsively) shared.
In the CLUB, we relax over cups of coffee between occasional siestas and long walks. We discuss philosophy patiently and thoughtfully, because we know that our topics are not going to be smothered if we don’t keep posting something. Philosophy is speculating about the unknown without the thinker’s ego interfering with the thought. We won’t share exciting stuff as we do on Google+ or on Facebook. We also won’t ask just any kind of question and give just any kind of answer/opinion merely to let people know “I am here!” For these, we already have the G+ community and it is serving us well.
The CLUB will keep active collaboration with this community by announcing new topics both in our G+ community and in the CLUB so that we could discussions similar topics with different perspectives and depth. There are several topics already being debated. Members can join any of them (or all). We will also share with this Community any new insights from our CLUB discussions.
How to join
Membership in the CLUB is by invitation/request only, so we need to know you, and our only source of information about you are your past activities in Google+ and perhaps other publicly shared stuff. We shall keep watch and will approach you when it is time. On the other hand, if you find that Philosophy Club is suitable for you, you might approach us with some examples of your contributions in this very Google+ community (and other fora). In the end, it will be the decision of a moderator to decide to send you an invitation based on evidence.
How the CLUB works
The CLUB will have a different feel. Members cannot post any topic in any category; they can only post comments under a topic that is posted by a moderator.
We try to keep a list of up-coming topics that members can contribute to later, which can only be edited by a moderator.
Each category has its own moderator. These moderators decide what topic should be discussed at a given time. If a topic stays inactive for a while, they can decide to lock it and start a new topic.
Regular members can comment under any topic they like.
Membership (of a regular member or a moderator) is revoked if the account of a member remains inactive for three months. That is part of the maintenance process and to make sure that we always have active conversations and members. They can apply again to be readmitted.
If you happen to be interested in joining the CLUB, please contact any of the following people. They will get back to you as soon as they can (they all have their own lives too, and volunteering in our CLUB is not the only thing they do. So, please be patient. It might take up to 48 hours before you hear back from us, but you eventually will).
Moderators (alphabetically ordered; only the currently active moderators are listed. There are others too):
Alain Van Hout
Andreas Geisler
Cory Conley
Eric Bright
Pat Johnston
Regards,
Eric
On behalf of the moderation team at Philosophy Club
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