Chaos

I should probably check if Ian has been adding people to the Patron group. Don't anticipate it's quick! It is a manual part. But, www.patreon.com/17thshard

I feel like you kind of said the same thing twice. I'm saying I do not have faith, you're saying I do. What do I have faith in? Do you have faith that I don't have my dragon in the closet? Do you go to church with other people proclaiming faith and worshipping the idea that I don't have a dragon? That, to me, is absurd. There's tons of things you don't personally believe; that doesn't mean you have faith in those disbeliefs. I don't know how to say this: I do not have any convictions like you state. I do not have faith, I do not believe anything, particularly as ardently as you do. Do "almost all" others think there's divinity? I think that's a pretty narrow view. Sure, lots do, but this is very culturally dependent, and the form of it varies. Many places have a big population that don't. And I'll be honest, you can feel it's true all you want, but that is not the same thing as showing it is the case. I wanted to follow up on this actually. I think this is pretty dangerous logic here for you, because you could also say, why did God hold back on the Bible? We have evidence that anatomically modern humans have existed for about two hundred thousand years. Do their souls not matter? What about other species in genus homo, like homo erectus, who were quite intelligent and anthropologists would classify as humans. They existed for two million years.... Also, you could also argue, "Why did God add to the Old Testament with the New Testament" just as similarly.

Well, ultimately, it's what people choose to call themselves. They are not going to be using academic definitions, just as no one is going to agree as to who is a "real Christian" after all. If you're confused by what a person means, ask them! Some would say belief in God (theism/atheism) vs. knowledge (gnosticism/agnosticism) are different. Certainly by the definition I gave, yes, many agnostics would fit that category. If you subscribe to these two categories, then I'm an agnostic atheist (I don't believe in God, but I can't know for sure). I think the word atheist gets a bad wrap from religious people in general--there are still many who think that if you don't believe in God, you are a totally immoral person--so maybe agnosticism feels "lighter" and more palatable. I'd argue, though, there is not a person in the world who knows for certain God exists or not. Lots claim to, though! As for me, I described myself as an agnostic for a while. Maybe God exists, maybe God doesn't. When I got more experience, let's say, I started to think, "Okay, yeah, this specific God concept seems impossible" and so rather than, "eh, maybe God exists" it became more "Probably not." But yeah, the important thing is that these labels are arbitrary, and have cultural context, so you can't just apply academic definitions to people and think that works. The atheists I know don't believe God exists and don't really care, and it's utterly irrelevant to their lives. Call that whatever you wish.

This is to distinguish between general members and staff, and a few other things like Patrons. Those aren't user-changable.

Good question. This can be a matter of definitions, and so yeah, maybe some atheists do say it as such, but many atheists I know would not use your definition of atheism. They do not say, "I know God/the supernatural for sure does not exist". They might say, "here are my reasons for thinking this specific religion is BS" but that certainly does not generalize. Moreover, it's the lack of being convinced of any specific God claim. If I told you I have a dragon in my closet, how do you react? Are you convinced of that? I would say most people, at a baseline, would think that I don't in fact have a dragon in my closet. You just are not convinced I do. Maybe if I brought it on camera and it blew some fire, you'd be like, hey, wow, you do have a dragon! But by default, it's a rather extraordinary claim that you wouldn't believe without more convincing. That does not mean you affirmatively believe that no dragons exist, or have ever existed. Just that you're not convinced that I have a dragon. Another example: I actually was on the phone with my dad (very rare, he's a horrible person) and he said he had a phone call with God. They talked for forty minutes, apparently. I asked him how he knew it was God. He said that the speakerphone was broken on the landline phone and God spoke very loudly. My dad said that they agreed on almost everything, too. (Note also he seems to really be losing his mind.) Now, I certainly don't think my dad represents anyone but himself, but I think most of you all reading would this would be like, "Okay, this guy is a weirdo out of his mind and I don't believe him." That story certainly is not convincing to me, nor believers I've told this story to. That's the level that I think most atheists are at. Open to being convinced with sufficient evidence, and hey, if there's an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent deity, that should be trivially easy to do. To my eyes, there's not much concrete to go off of. And also to my eyes, there seems to be plenty of evidence that religion is very much a thing humans created, rather than the other way around, so this all makes perfect sense. I'm not convinced by any supernatural claim so far. I am not a priori excluding it, but humans are pattern seeking, confirmation bias machines. If there is incontrovertible evidence that, importantly, does not require for me to already believe in something for it to happen, that no matter what worldview you have, you can see it happen before your very eyes, then cool, I am down for the supernatural existing. The second some wizard comes by and is like, "Hey, check out me summon lightning on command" and they can repeat it, I'm so in, especially if I can have that power. I do think I can be convinced supernatural things are real--or at least, there's some additional mechanics that are totally foreign to science. So no. I do not worship the idea that God doesn't exist (though I'll be honest, I don't really understand even for an atheist who makes the positive claim that God doesn't exist how you'd even worship that in any practical sense). I do not worship anything. I do not have the desire to worship or obey anything. I do not have a desire for an afterlife, nor am I up at night that I don't know the answers to why we exist, where the universe came from, and all those existential questions. It does not bother me to say, "I don't know, and we may never know." Lots of people say they have an answer, but I don't think having just an answer is good enough unless it can be shown that yes, it is definitively the answer. A bad, poorly justified answer is worse than just saying "I don't know," in my opinion. I specifically try to not dogmatically hold to any opinion. I don't want to believe anything ardently. I want to accept things that can be demonstrated, and if better evidence comes along, I'm in. Why would I hold something on faith and get something incorrect? There is nothing wrong with changing my mind when better information comes about. All knowledge is provisional, and that's okay. Anyway, that was a long response. I hope that makes sense. I could go on a lot longer, but this is the concise version. Also, I'm not sure what your definition of religion is, but I don't see how atheism could be a religion. There are no rituals or rites. No acts of service or devotion... There are no precepts, no code of morality. The only thing that unites atheists is that we aren't convinced God/gods are real. That's it! Some might use the little gnostic/agnostic theist/atheist chart, but a lot don't. The labels are squishy and you can't prescribe what people how people feel about God by the label they choose. The easiest way is to just ask them what they think/believe, and that goes for any religion, belief, or lack thereof.

We're not commenting on the initial incidence, but... You know, take your imagination for why someone would make multiple accounts. I don't mean to psychoanalyze, but take your pick from stupidity, arrogance, immaturity, wanting attention or any number of other reasons I'm sure you can imagine!

Quick clarification: dating people on here is not against the rules. I met my wife through 17S/Coppermind. But obviously, it needs to be consensual. If things are not, and you are uncomfortable for any reason, please contact any staff member or report the offending content. Harassment can include any of the following, and we will not tolerate harassment here:

I'll be honest, I don't quite understand exactly what you're referring to. Could you provide a screenshot of where exactly you're saying a thing pinned?

The wiki forum is not for book discussion, but rather wiki business. I've moved this to Cosmere Discussion.

You're all good. I'm not picking on you in particular (or at least, that's not the intent). It can be hard to tell if discussions will go for a bit or sustain for a long time.

Okay, now you all can go into some other topic, since I do think the extensive comparisons with real-world societies, which is clearly where you want to go, can go elsewhere. That's a bit further than just reacts. One of you go do that. Of course discussion can happen here, that is natural, but the further it goes into the weeds, the less general it is.

In addition to the answers given, lots of people would do things like have extensive nested spoiler boxes, and other shenanigans.

Discussion naturally occurs in reaction threads, and has always been the case. I think this is fine so far. Please report if you feel things progress, and we will make a determination. This seems totally fine so far.

I admit I am a little confused as to the efficacy of editing a field that only appears on desktop and doing so on mobile, since you would literally never see it on mobile. I suppose you can view the page as Desktop through your mobile browser and attempt to adjust the view properly, if you really had to. But if you're on mobile, I suppose I'd just say keep it short! As for SE, I don't remember specifically but probably just to keep things cordial and less competitive overall.

Two things here. First, our ability to do software upgrades is something we now value very highly. Any customization has the heavy cost of making sure it works with updated versions. So short answer, the software doesn't work that way, and sure we could theoretically change it but that would be unwise. Second, I think you are misconstrue the purpose of signatures. It's supposed to be a small amount of information in a short space that is always visible on all the posts. Like an email signature, right? It requiring a click does allow for additional information to be present... but imagine if twenty different people posted in a topic. Do you think people would actually click on those separate boxes? I don't think so. People would click on one or two, and then would rarely bother from there. So, honestly, this idea fundamentally destroys the nice thing about sigs, in that it is ambient information people actually see. Of course, on mobile there isn't space, and you can certainly set things on desktop to ignore certain people's sigs or turn them off. But I'd argue that it's still a terrible experience if you come in and you see all these sigs being huge. That makes people more likely to just turn them all off, and that would mean you've contributed to people never seeing that info. Sigs aren't biographies or complete listings of all things about you. Certainly people use it for a variety of things, such as listing theories they like or Shardbuddies. Go for it! But like, is it necessary to have say... thirty Shardbuddies? There's an amount where now no one is reading them at all or cares. So, what we are trying to do is have some reasonable restrictions on sigs so it's not this monstrous catastrophe but still allows for a lot of freedom. Certainly when the Shard occurred, Shardbuddies weren't a thing (probably because none of the social media-y features existed, and you couldn't tag people), and so from the admin perspective you want to allow such freedom and creativity. But I do think limits are necessary in order for the system to have buy-in. People may not remember (or be alive) to remember early 2000s forums where forum sigs had tons of images, and god, that was obnoxious. Anyway, if you want more detail, I think About Me is a far more appropriate space. For sigs, brevity is the soul of wit! Your sig, Shattered Cosmere, does a really good job of summing up a lot of info about you in a compact way, and that's nice!

I'd like to chime in as well, because I realize this comes across as very fun-policey. What's the problem with giant signatures? The problem is that when you are scrolling through a topic, particularly with many short posts, big signatures add a lot of vertical space and noise. Compare this to what is now an objectively more popular way to communicate, Reddit, and it's just so much easier to read a sequence of text there. Forums have had much less membership over the last ten years. Let's try and not accelerate that process more and make the forums look nice for all, so people want to join in.

Perhaps an internet issue that they aren't submitting correctly?

I see no evidence on our end that anything was deleted. Are you sure they submitted? Please provide screenshots of your end as you submit posts/replies so we can diagnose.

I imagine IPS did not anticipate the massive status update threads that happen here, expecting people to use the base forum stuff.

We are unfortunately at the behest of Invision Power Suite here, and it seems they don't have any interest in doing this. In fact, IPS 5 has removed status updates completely... Not sure what we can do about it, really. I think there are plans in the IPS converter to save the data somehow, which would certainly be a requirement. But yeah, it seemed like this was a pretty unpopular decision on the IPS forums to remove these, but they did it anyway. Soooo I guess enjoy them while they still exist, I suppose. Currently, I believe our intent is to wait as long as possible to update to IPS 5, so don't worry for the near future. But eventually IPS 4.x will be end of lifed.

For some context as to what "hiding" is: it's a non-permanent deletion. This way, there is a record of it, which may be useful for a variety of reasons (not the least of which is restoring things). So, we grant regular members the ability to hide because, hey, mistakes happen and sometimes that's what you want to do. But a permanent deletion of posts is reserved for moderators, and even then we rarely use it.

Yeah, I don't know why this person keeps doing this. Worry not. I'm on it.