A week or so into the New Fray era, technical or process questions remain unresolved concerning the new format. Setting that aside for the moment, does anyone agree this particular board has flourished so far in the new era? I bring this up because I hit the "Most Active" link on the Fray front page and saw that Faith-Based is solidly the number four board in terms of total posts---and there have been several lengthy, high-quality threads and ostensibly less chaff.

Is this board notably busier and better, content-wise---than before, so far anyway? If so, why? Or am I off here---is it just the same as before, or worse even?

Seems about the same to me. It is the usuall battle between the Christian Taliban/ American Facists party and the Hippy liberals/ Athiest Lobby. With the rest of us chiming in and laughing from time to time.

I don't know about better. I'll wait to see NJ's latest unattributed cut and paste.

I mentioned the quality of FB on the old BOTF many times and also the lack of checkmarks here. FB regulars are some of the best on The Fray. When a top post is rated highly, it shows up on the radar. Since we now do not rely on just a checkmark to highlight great posts, the quality of this board is showing up. I just hope it does not bring with it the usual rif raf flamers.

is roughly the same? Maybe if there'd had a counter before, we'd have been the fourth most-active anyway, but I'm not sure. If there has been an increase, it doesn't seem to be an increase in junk.

On my occasional forays into other Fray boards, I'm always disappointed by the level of 'screaming' and the fact that noone seems to be reading any other posts, just posting their own opinion. If all I wanted was to post my opinions, I'd stick to my blog !

One of the things I like about faith-based are that the threads are long, posts generate lots of replies (even if some sub-threads go off on tangents :)). Its really the closest one can get to 'discussions' in the e-world, for those of us who enjoy discussions, even if they occasionally (or frequently) involve hurled ink-pots !!!

In fact, I'm a little sad that some of the old 'regulars' like gerkmonster and ex_pounder seem to have fallen silent, even though I disagreed with them 89.75% of the time !!!!

I think it is slightly low but that is largely because the Luddites like me are trying to fgigure out the new system. I am sure that the number of posts will increase in the coming weeks. Especially if we can get into another good Evolution/Creation debate.

enough on the "Most Active" display---Faith-Based is Number Five, behind Ballot Box, Today's Papers, Kausfiles Special, and BOTF, with TV Club now a close sixth (doubtless riding a "Sopranos"-finale spike.

I think it's a bit less busy than before because some folks either haven't figured out how to get back here, or have decided that they just don't like it as much as the old. (Is the new JGC the same as the old JGC-2004? I didn't think so at first, but now I think it is...)

I think we were all a bit off our game the first few days, but it seems like we're settling back to normal.

I would say, no offense to my old friends, that the esteemed Bubbuh deserves much credit for the activity here. He has delivered a couple of solid, provocative posts, then managed his threads, which is crucial for developing traffic.

Beyond solid posters, the new software may make us more noticable to the casual browsers just by letting us sometimes appear on editor's picks or most viewed lists. The number of strange names on the "recommended" list leads me to this conclusion.

I think that Faith-based hasn’t gotten up to its old speed—one of the obstacles in the way is that as far as I can tell (and please correct me if I’ve missed something) there’s no easy way to tell if a post you’ve authored has been replied to other than individually checking every post in every thread you’re contributing to.

(And yes, I’ve been able to reclaim my original handle of “JGC”, although I did post one post as “JGC-2004” before thinking to check if it had become available again.)

If you are the top post, check the "notify me by email" box at the bottom of the reply screen, my understanding is you will get an email every time that post is replied to,

For the lower posts, you have to, Coffee help us all, figure out your post's spot in the threaded view and check for replies. Be sure to bring a magnifier or set your monitor to 800x600 rez or your eyes will unscrew, drop on the floor and roll under the desk.

Yayyyy, you're back! You're first few posts under JGC didn't seem to be quite your style, but now you seem back to normal. ;)

I tended not to agree with him, and I found him a little cheeky and smug, but he had an interesting way of challenging an opponent's thinking, so that when I could be bothered to respond to him, there was a guarantee that I'd have to choose my words carefully. Basically, I thought of him as a rhetorical whetstone.

Ex-pounder had a tendency to perceive/fabricate personal attacks on my part that I'd never made, then make personal attacks on me on the fallacious premise that I'd started it; it became more than a little tiresome. That said, he often seemed more willing than some to parse out the metaphysics of his positions, which is more than I can say for many of his ilk.

. . . as to finding responses to one's own posts. I rarely top post, and I'm not as interested, frankly, in what people are saying as I am in what they're saying to me.

I agree -- wish there was a third option other than 'threaded' and 'flat' -- for e.g., where the 'threads' came unravelled as soon as you clicked so you could find own post and replies.

Right now I'm occasionally reminded of a native story from Bengal, where children were going to find a legendary wise man called 'gechho dada' to answer their questions, but the problem was finding him (a feat noone had apparently managed)........the steps were as follows:

1) First you'd have to figure out where all gechho-dada might reside.

2) then you had to figure out where all gechho-dada will not reside.

3) Then you had to figure out where he was residing most recently.

4) Then you had to figure out by the time you got there, where he was most likely to have shifted to...........