Questions about Premium Forums

[BurgessLau]

I am considering signing up for the Premium Forums. The idea is appealing, and the price is right. I am hesitating only about the level of etiquette I can expect. (Etiquette is the art and science of developing and applying rules of behavior for the purpose of facilitating trade among individuals.)

I have three questions about the Premium Forums:

1) Will the Forum Rules that apply to the lesser forums also apply to the Premium Forums -- no more, no less?

2) In the Premium Forums, will moderators be proactive or will they be reactive -- that is, will the moderators regularly "patrol" the Premium Forums or will they wait for the rare member to file a REPORT, and even then only when a violation is egregious?

3) How will Premium Forum members -- whether or not they file a REPORT -- know moderators have taken action against a violation?

[Edited for punctuation.]

Edited February 3, 2005 by BurgessLau

[AndrewSternberg]

I see no reason why there should be a difference in rules for the Premium Forums. The moderation should be the same too.

I do however expect an increased level of etiquette, since there will be a higher percentage of members more dedicated to Objectivism. Would a troll pay money to do his trolling?

[DavidOdden]

I see no reason why there should be a difference in rules for the Premium Forums.  The moderation should be the same too.

I suspect that you are right, and actually hope that no explicit rule is established that ups the bar on submissions to that forum. I'm a strong proponent of market solutions over regulatory ones, so it would please me greatly for you to be proven right on this point.

On another matter, which I find myself unable to properly reply to otherwise at least for the moment, let me point out that "collective noun" simply refers to one aspect of grammar -- a formally singular noun referring to more than one member of that set. Since your question asked about collective nouns, you're restricting the matter to specifically collective nouns, i.e. single words, and not collective phrases such as "South Korea" referring to the South Korean soccer team vs. nation (in British English this is made clearer in the distinction between "South Korean have won the semi-finals" vs. "South Korea has outlawed pornography"). There is a considerable similarity between "collective noun" and "concept", but "collective noun" is fairly arbitrary in the language, while "concept" is not. A concrete example of a collective noun, in American usage, is "team". Note that you would say:

"The team is in Detroit this weekend. They have a good chance of winning"

In the first sentence, the subject is the collective noun "team" -- formally singular (note the use of "is", not "are") but conceptually plural ("they have", not "it has", though you could say that, which gets us into another level of complication).

Concepts can be formally (grammatically) singular or plural. Every collective noun is a concept, as you observed. However, a concept needs to integrate two or more units -- thus all concepts are "referentially" plural (any concept refers to any of a non-singular class), as are collective nouns.

I hope that isn't hopelessly obscure. "Collective" is about grammar, "concept" is about cognition and metaphysics.

[JMeganSnow]

I expect the Premium forums will tackle the more theoretical topics instead of the practical topics that predominate the general forum. The funny part (to me) is that the practical topics are actually more difficult to address, because they contain so many niggling little contextual details that sometimes it's hard to tell up from down.

[DavidV]

The same forum rules apply to the Premium Forums. My goal is that the fact of a subscription itself will improve the quality of the posts. I will also personally moderate that forum, which I currently only do for the “About” and Moderator’s forums.

The Premium section will expand to into new sub-forums as the volume of content grows. In some cases, I might move threads to one of the free forums, but the forum is too new to say when.

[softwareNerd]

A recent post in a regular forum, referring back to a thread in a premium forum got me wondering:

Do "Patron" members think they derive value from the existence of the Premium forums?

If so, what is the nature of the value to you?

I see two features:

1) Special placement at the top of the forum list

2) Disallowing non-patrons from posting. (This feature has advantages and disadvantages).

Ofcourse, there's the dollar question. Do the premium forums offer so much value that discontinuing them would prompt you to shift back to being a regular member.

What do the paying members think?

[DavidOdden]

I am happy to exchange value for value, but the premium fora have not been active, although they certainly got off to a good start. As such, there is no actual thing to keep. What motivated me to join was the potential of detailed discussion of ITOE which I couldn't join in; alas, there were technical problems and when they were sorted out, the buzz had died down. In principle, I see the merit of keeping riff-raff out, though there is (or are) relatively little riff-raff here to begin with. I was not aware of any other perk of the status. There are economic requirements for keeping a well-run e-forum like this one running smoothly, so on those grounds I consider this to be a fair exchange. I think it's analogous to government funding: voluntarily supporting the proper function of government is a rational thing to do. On the face of it, I doubt that closing the premium forums would cause me to cancel my subscription.

[JMeganSnow]

SoftwareNerd:

I think that the reason the Premium Forums are slow is that, from my observations, the members that seem inclined to be patrons don't often start new threads. They devote most of their time to answering questions and discussing complications in existing threads, or just reading for the less-frequent posters.

However, I've noticed that, since the Premium forums contain fewer threads newbies tend to read them to get an idea of what's going on in this forum. (This observation is not backed up by as much evidence as the first one, however, so I'm not 100% about its relevance).

Here's my suggestion, although, of course, GC would have to be amenable:

If you're a patron and you see a thread that has a significant degree of debate going on between multiple posters, why not start a mirror thread in the Premium forums so that the patrons can debate it in parallel? It's only a thought.

I wouldn't convert back to regular-member status if the premium forums were gone, but I would like to see them be used for something.

[DavidV]

That sounds like a good idea, Jennifer.

[softwareNerd]

I don't like the idea of parallel discussion in two threads. (Sort of the opposite of the current spring cleaning ). Yes, I do understand the two key motivations: quality of discussion and funding.

I was curious about the funding aspect. If most patrons would go back to being regular members without Premium Forums, then we need those forums. I suspect that patrons would remain patrons anyway. That's why I raised that question in my previous post.

As for quality...

A discussion among patrons is likely to be more polite and productive, since the trolls are kept out. Problem is that many of the younger non-patron members would be kept out too.

I think that moderating the trolls and sundry pests out of existence is important but it is not "the fountainhead" of quality, so to speak.

As Jennifer noted: "... patrons don't often start new threads. They devote most of their time to answering questions ..."

I think therein lies at least part of the problem of quality.

Ofcourse, patrons have no obligation to start threads. Also, replying to a thread is easier; takes less time. However, the starting point to quality is to create a decent number of quality discussions. The forum has moderators; it needs writers. To that end, the Egosphere move is a very welcome addition. As I said in another post, I'd love to see at least selected entries from Egosphere be born into forum discussion threads.

[dondigitalia]

Like David Odden, I initially became a Patron because of my interest in a detailed discussion of ITOE, which seems to have fizzled. (What give, people?!)

Of course, I've found OO.net to be a great value to me, and I'm happy to trade with David for its use, so the absence of the Premium Forums would not cause me to cancel my Patron membership.

Like Jennifer, I would like to see the Premium forums used for at least, something, even if it's just a drop box for pictures of Teri Hatcher. (Hmm... sounds like an idea... does anybody really believe she's "desperate?" j/k). I like the idea of starting parallel discussions of hotly debated threads in the Premium Forums, but I think the Premium Forums can be best put to use as they began: as a place for truly serious study of Objectivism, rather than a random collection of debates and question-and-answer sessions as we see in the other forums.

Those of us who already grasp the basic points of Objectivism usually seek a place to "chew" Miss Rand's ideas so that we can really understand them down to the root, and threads on the regular forums tend to be either discussions of isolated, particular issues or basic "Objectivism 101" topics. I think the Premium Forums are the perfect place for those of us interested in "philosophy for Ragnar," rather than "philosophy for Reardan."