Is A2K Fixable?

We could use psy-ops?
"It's Here, or Nowhere - The End is afoot"
And - Reggae it up a bit
"Eets Yere or Eets nowere, Da end Eez afoot, man
Leesen ta wot we eez sayeen
Or I eez gonna make anotha plan
An eef dat plan don't work, I Eez neva gonna geev up
Unless a course eetz supper time
Den I eez cheelin out
Fin.

How about, "It's like Facebook, but without the idiots." That would attract attention. It would be a lie, but nevertheless....

How about "Ask an Expert"?

Everyone here knows that when you ask people who all think they are experts, you will get answers of decidedly limited expertise.

But only you seem to be hung up on that.

You'd make a terrible business owner, btw. You get a bunch of customers, decide they are rude and you don't want them, and conspire to get rid of them. Sure, you can do that. But you might wind up with a dead forum. An echo chamber of only people who agree with you. Human beings like to argue. So let them. Or face the consequences of having nobody to meaningfully talk with. Look at how alot of real businesses are functioning. They insulted their customers. Now people are shunning them.
https://www.americanpartisan.org/2021/12/the-newly-woke-salvation-army-is-struggling-our-situation-is-dire/

Just say no to radical change. Do what you're doing, even if you don't understand why people like it.

Once a site starts censoring free debate, it's doomed. Trying to fix it is a waste of energy.

Feel free to waste your time and energy if you must. But don't blame me for the bitter feeling that you will get when you fail and you realize that all your efforts were wasted.

Surely in going onto a forum, you get as much out of:
- seeing where the flaws in your logic are (if the other poster is good at logic)
- correcting the structure of your argument
- seeing the many, many ways your use of English can be misinterpreted
- seeing the many different types of behaviours people engage in when they don't want think about something that disagrees with their guiding beliefs
- identifying motivations
- etc
- ie. improving your own logic & communication; and understanding yourself better

ie. even if a person gets censored - overall it should hardly be a waste of time.

When posts are censored, no one is able to challenge their logic.

When challenges to logic are censored, no one sees the challenges.

Either way no flaws are exposed.

There is no point in trying to communicate with progressives anyway.

In short: It's dead, Jim.

If you get censored a few times, or don't convince someone of something, so what (?)- that hardly makes it a waste of time, when you get other things out of the communications - you have thousands of posts on this forum - from those, you still should obtain overall, the things I mentioned. A few posts here and there don't affect the overall outcomes I mentioned.

a) The censorship that I am complaining about is a new thing. Past posts say nothing about present policy.

b) While I have in fact had some posts removed under questionable circumstances, I am actually thinking of certain other posters and not of myself.

I was commenting on this: "Feel free to waste your time and energy if you must. But don't blame me for the bitter feeling that you will get when you fail and you realize that all your efforts were wasted."

Censorship is a related but different issue to the above. The above (being all, and plural) relates to everything that a person posts...censorship relates to specific posts. I commented that overall the above is not true.

I was referring to efforts to save a2k.

Trying to save a website that carries out censorship is a futile endeavor IMO. The censorship dooms the website no matter how much effort posters put into it.

Your 'observational' skills, alone, might well entice a new face or 2.

But, Folk will, by fate, discover a comfortable setting to abide in - If such befits.

Scaring people away is a No-No.
And erasing the archives is a MUST.

A FULL Reset is Needed, or, by research, alone - All 'Herein' will be open to enquiring minds.

Have an amazing Everything.

I'll continue to be what I am.
Cheers.

Have a lovely Day

Not if - Off-thread topics are removed, and posters thereof flagged for such.
It worked well on philiforum - Stay on Topic, or Get your ego slapped.
Enjoy.

Keeping people on-topic is different from outright censorship. One is good for a website. One is bad for a website.

You do realise the first blue and the 2nd blue aren't tied together? Because you wrote the above like they were.

I mention this because one of the reasons there is a self-esteem crisis in the west is that Many places in Government / Many Business Owners expect their employees to cop abuse from their customers, and/or not hang up phones on abusive people.

Of course on a forum, people can choose to leave - and those that usually do are those that choose not to visit uncivil environments...so you lose people (just like you do if you censure rude people)....

...and end up in a forum of increased toxicity...

I'm against any censorship or even removing off-topic comments. Sometimes the off comment topics are more interesting then the original theme.

I still think the biggest problem with a A2K is the small pool of members who actually interact. I don't know how or if that can be rectified. But somehow this site should be advertised to become more attractive on the internet. At the beginning of A2K there were many more members, probably refugees from Abuzz. We were fortunate that A2K even sprung up

Additionally, when people start reasonable topics in good faith, and all of their topics are instantly locked for no reason as soon as they start them, it would be unreasonable to remove their off topic posts when they place them in threads that remain unlocked.

I agree.
It's up to members who are participants in a topic, to reveal such, to the site moderators.
Mods have heaps to do, as it is.
There should be 'flags' (3-strike-warnings) To those who pee about with threads - They have no intent to Contribute to.

This system works well, when folk appreciate it as a comprehensive inclusion to terms & details.

An 'open-topic-area' is introduced to allow for 'broader' posts/posters - But, Threads of Non-'OTE's' are protected by the 'community-at-large'.

It works.

Have a Great Today.

After thinking on this, I think the main reason A2K has been declining for quite some time, is the number of regular posters who engage in too frequent personal attacks against other posters (to be clear, everyone is human, and one or two personal attacks by a poster should be pulled but but is not an issue overall for said poster - it is when it becomes a regular occurence that an issue arises, and a much bigger problem when multiple posters are doing the same thing).

Where they have a choice, Civil people tend to choose to hang around places with civil conversations - which places always require moderation (and the participants of those places usually want moderation against personal attacks to be enforced).