Full Version: Important Announcements
DONATIONS
While we have received a small amount of funding in the form of a donation, we are genuinely disappointed at the overall lack of response to our request for donations.
There are real costs involved in running and maintaining America's Debate. The costs are rising at an alarming rate as a result of our recent growth spurt. In order to prepare for further growth, we need funding now.
Beside the real costs associated with running this site, the time required for administration, moderation, and maintainence is also increasing. Even after expanding the staff, the workload still consumes more time than two full-time jobs for Jaime and me. That means that our Monday through Friday jobs are supplemented with another 6 to 8 hour a day, 7 day a week job.
We are currently in the process of soliciting sponsorship relationships with various corporate, private, and government sources. It appears as though our only option will be to serve advertisements on the forum.
In the mean time, if you like the site, and you frequent the site, we need you to donate. A small contribution in the order of $5 or $10 is certainly not too much.
Click here to donate now!
BENEFITS OF DONATING: As an incentive, members who donate $20 or more will be placed into a "Contributing Members" group. This group will receive several benefits:
1. Ability to request Custom Member Titles
2. Ability to carbon copy PMs
3. Contributor icon under name
4. Increased PM storage
5. Colored/bold name in the Online Members List
Click here to donate now!
IMMEASURABLE IMPACT
In the short time we have been around, we have climbed our way up through the search engine rankings. We often rank higher than many of the major news organizations on the topics of the day.
As a result, we continue to experience a great deal of growth in membership, and an even larger increase in readership. Your posts reach a growing audience of thousands. Since the beginning of the year, we have had visitors from 36 different countries on six continents.
The likelihood that we have been visited by members of the media and elected officials is great. What you write here may in fact be read by people capable of setting the wheels of change in motion. It is important we keep this in mind when crafting our posts.
The rewards of a thoughtful, constructive debate may be greater than we think.
SPELLCHECK
For those who may not be aware, we have a spellcheck feature incorporated into the forum. Simply click the "Spell Check" button before submitting a post to bring up an easy-to-use spellcheck. Taking an extra 30 seconds to run a spellcheck makes posts much easier to read, and helps avoid the embarrassment of posting a string of typos.
CONSTRUCTIVE DEBATE
We have received a number of complaints about the recent quality of the debate on this forum. Some think they are going down the drain. While we are not as pessimistic, we would have to agree that the level of maturity displayed by some of the members here has dropped as of late.
For those of who you are not completely familiar with the Rules and Guidelines, we would like to point out one key element:
This line is the first line of the rules for a reason.
Lately there has been an increasing number of posts that are not constructive. We have received a flood of threads that are:
-Unsupported in any way
-Full of blanket statements
-Full of childish name calling
-Useless one-line posts
-WAY off-topic
This forum does not exist as a place for people to rant in an immature way. America's Debate is for people who can handle intelligent, civil debate focused around fact. If you are interested in another form of debate, please go elsewhere.
From this point on, we will begin deleting posts that are not constructive. We will issue strikes as necessary.
OFF-TOPIC POSTS
We have read a lot of posts to the effect of "I know this is off-topic, but...".
These posts are unacceptable. If you know that the post is off-topic, then you know it is against the rules.
Posts like these will be deleted in their entirety, and strikes will be issued.
Read the rules. Know the rules. Follow the rules.
[QUOTE][/QUOTE] TAGS
Many people have been making other member's words bold instead of using the QUOTE feature.
This makes a thread difficult to read, and often impossible to know who you are quoting.
Posts like these will be deleted in their entirety.
If you need help using any of the forum features, please read the help files and the tutorials (we are currently rebuilding our tutorials to reflect the most recent features, but they still apply).
If you need further help, please contact a staff member for assistance.
AND YOUR QUESTION IS...?
We have noticed that more and more new topics consist only of lengthy opinion statements. This is not a blog spot. If you need a place to vent your frustrations and make a lengthy opinion statement, we suggest you look elsewhere.
New topics must have a clearly defined question or a clearly defined issue up for debate. Any topic without an obviously stated point of debate is not constructive and will be closed and/or deleted.
It is certainly acceptable to post a link and solicit members' opinions, but make sure you let us know that is what you expect. Simply posting a link to an article does not constitute a good topic.
Not to pick on anyone, but here is a perfect example of a thread destined for closing from the first post. It starts off with a large amount of information, presumably about a speech. There is no stated question up for debate.
The author was asked what the subject of the debate was. In the time it took to get the response, we had several replies. The point of debate veered off into discussion of the facts of the post, and then into the effect of sanctions against Iraq.
If we had a clearly defined topic from the beginning this thread would have had a chance at developing into a healthy debate. In the future, posts like these will be closed and/or deleted.
YOUR POSTCOUNT
Q: Are there any benefits of having an increased post count?
A: NO!
Right now, members are promoted from the Members Group to the Advanced Member group when their post count reaches 200. The benefit? Nothing. Your name turns blue in the online user list, that's it.
Originally, this was so we could easily see which members had made a large amount of contributions to the forum. These days, however, 200 posts is not much, and the novelty has worn off.
Lately, however, we suspect that some members are intentionally posting poor-quality posts in order to increase their post count. As a result, we will be discontinuing the "Advanced Members" group in its current form.
We will be switching all Advanced Members back into the Members group.
The advanced member group will then be populated by members chosen by the staff. Advanced Members will be chosen based strictly on quality of posts, not quantity.
The benefit of being in the Advanced Members group will still be minimal, as the true intention of this is to recognize members who have made considerable contributions to the debate.
LINKING TO AMERICA'S DEBATE
We encourage people to link to America's Debate from their own sites. We also encourage you to invite your family and friends.
We highly discourage posting any links to America's Debate at any other forum or website that does not strictly follow our rules.
If you want to post a link to America's Debate at another site, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Does this site allow profanity?
2. Does this site allow racism, ageism, sexism, or negative blanket statements?
3. Does this site allow personal attacks?
4. Does this site allow content that conflicts with the America's Debate Rules and Guidelines / TOS?
If the answer to any of those questions is YES, DON'T POST A LINK TO AMERICA'S DEBATE. Doing this in the future will result in disciplinary action.
While we have received a small amount of funding in the form of a donation, we are genuinely disappointed at the overall lack of response to our request for donations.
There are real costs involved in running and maintaining America's Debate. The costs are rising at an alarming rate as a result of our recent growth spurt. In order to prepare for further growth, we need funding now.
Beside the real costs associated with running this site, the time required for administration, moderation, and maintainence is also increasing. Even after expanding the staff, the workload still consumes more time than two full-time jobs for Jaime and me. That means that our Monday through Friday jobs are supplemented with another 6 to 8 hour a day, 7 day a week job.
We are currently in the process of soliciting sponsorship relationships with various corporate, private, and government sources. It appears as though our only option will be to serve advertisements on the forum.
In the mean time, if you like the site, and you frequent the site, we need you to donate. A small contribution in the order of $5 or $10 is certainly not too much.
Click here to donate now!
BENEFITS OF DONATING: As an incentive, members who donate $20 or more will be placed into a "Contributing Members" group. This group will receive several benefits:
1. Ability to request Custom Member Titles
2. Ability to carbon copy PMs
3. Contributor icon under name
4. Increased PM storage
5. Colored/bold name in the Online Members List
Click here to donate now!
IMMEASURABLE IMPACT
In the short time we have been around, we have climbed our way up through the search engine rankings. We often rank higher than many of the major news organizations on the topics of the day.
As a result, we continue to experience a great deal of growth in membership, and an even larger increase in readership. Your posts reach a growing audience of thousands. Since the beginning of the year, we have had visitors from 36 different countries on six continents.
The likelihood that we have been visited by members of the media and elected officials is great. What you write here may in fact be read by people capable of setting the wheels of change in motion. It is important we keep this in mind when crafting our posts.
The rewards of a thoughtful, constructive debate may be greater than we think.
SPELLCHECK
For those who may not be aware, we have a spellcheck feature incorporated into the forum. Simply click the "Spell Check" button before submitting a post to bring up an easy-to-use spellcheck. Taking an extra 30 seconds to run a spellcheck makes posts much easier to read, and helps avoid the embarrassment of posting a string of typos.
CONSTRUCTIVE DEBATE
We have received a number of complaints about the recent quality of the debate on this forum. Some think they are going down the drain. While we are not as pessimistic, we would have to agree that the level of maturity displayed by some of the members here has dropped as of late.
For those of who you are not completely familiar with the Rules and Guidelines, we would like to point out one key element:
QUOTE
We require posts to be constructive, and on-topic. We may delete or edit posts to remove off-topic content.
This line is the first line of the rules for a reason.
Lately there has been an increasing number of posts that are not constructive. We have received a flood of threads that are:
-Unsupported in any way
-Full of blanket statements
-Full of childish name calling
-Useless one-line posts
-WAY off-topic
This forum does not exist as a place for people to rant in an immature way. America's Debate is for people who can handle intelligent, civil debate focused around fact. If you are interested in another form of debate, please go elsewhere.
From this point on, we will begin deleting posts that are not constructive. We will issue strikes as necessary.
OFF-TOPIC POSTS
We have read a lot of posts to the effect of "I know this is off-topic, but...".
These posts are unacceptable. If you know that the post is off-topic, then you know it is against the rules.
Posts like these will be deleted in their entirety, and strikes will be issued.
Read the rules. Know the rules. Follow the rules.
[QUOTE][/QUOTE] TAGS
Many people have been making other member's words bold instead of using the QUOTE feature.
This makes a thread difficult to read, and often impossible to know who you are quoting.
Posts like these will be deleted in their entirety.
If you need help using any of the forum features, please read the help files and the tutorials (we are currently rebuilding our tutorials to reflect the most recent features, but they still apply).
If you need further help, please contact a staff member for assistance.
AND YOUR QUESTION IS...?
We have noticed that more and more new topics consist only of lengthy opinion statements. This is not a blog spot. If you need a place to vent your frustrations and make a lengthy opinion statement, we suggest you look elsewhere.
New topics must have a clearly defined question or a clearly defined issue up for debate. Any topic without an obviously stated point of debate is not constructive and will be closed and/or deleted.
It is certainly acceptable to post a link and solicit members' opinions, but make sure you let us know that is what you expect. Simply posting a link to an article does not constitute a good topic.
Not to pick on anyone, but here is a perfect example of a thread destined for closing from the first post. It starts off with a large amount of information, presumably about a speech. There is no stated question up for debate.
The author was asked what the subject of the debate was. In the time it took to get the response, we had several replies. The point of debate veered off into discussion of the facts of the post, and then into the effect of sanctions against Iraq.
If we had a clearly defined topic from the beginning this thread would have had a chance at developing into a healthy debate. In the future, posts like these will be closed and/or deleted.
YOUR POSTCOUNT
Q: Are there any benefits of having an increased post count?
A: NO!
Right now, members are promoted from the Members Group to the Advanced Member group when their post count reaches 200. The benefit? Nothing. Your name turns blue in the online user list, that's it.
Originally, this was so we could easily see which members had made a large amount of contributions to the forum. These days, however, 200 posts is not much, and the novelty has worn off.
Lately, however, we suspect that some members are intentionally posting poor-quality posts in order to increase their post count. As a result, we will be discontinuing the "Advanced Members" group in its current form.
We will be switching all Advanced Members back into the Members group.
The advanced member group will then be populated by members chosen by the staff. Advanced Members will be chosen based strictly on quality of posts, not quantity.
The benefit of being in the Advanced Members group will still be minimal, as the true intention of this is to recognize members who have made considerable contributions to the debate.
LINKING TO AMERICA'S DEBATE
We encourage people to link to America's Debate from their own sites. We also encourage you to invite your family and friends.
We highly discourage posting any links to America's Debate at any other forum or website that does not strictly follow our rules.
If you want to post a link to America's Debate at another site, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Does this site allow profanity?
2. Does this site allow racism, ageism, sexism, or negative blanket statements?
3. Does this site allow personal attacks?
4. Does this site allow content that conflicts with the America's Debate Rules and Guidelines / TOS?
If the answer to any of those questions is YES, DON'T POST A LINK TO AMERICA'S DEBATE. Doing this in the future will result in disciplinary action.
I know we have had quite an influx of new members since we posted this. Please take a moment to read this announcement. 
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