You may or may not be aware that the Founders of HoF have been in constant discussion about the protocols for the Tol Eressëa forum. This discussion began even before we opened HoF to the public.
Our original intent was to provide a forum where expressions of personal spirituality would be given special consideration - protection from ridicule and fly-by criticism and so forth. After five months of this experiment, and several changes of protocol among the Shirriffs themselves for modding the forum, we have realized that we are unable to reach clear agreement among ourselves as to how our original concept should be interpreted on a day-to-day basis.
We can't expect our members to abide by guidelines which we ourselves are unable to interpret with a single voice. And we would like to discontinue these constant discussions among ourselves regarding what is or is not appropriate in the forum.
Effective immediately, we are removing the special guidelines that apply to this forum.
Courtesy toward individual members is still required all the time, in all cases, everywhere on the board. But we will no longer review posts for adherence to some standard that does not apply anywhere else. We just could not reach agreement among ourselves as to what the standard should be.
We are unanimous, however, in believing that the integrity of the fellowship among members and the integrity of the fellowship among the founders is more important than anything else, and the best way to preserve that is to have the same rules for every forum on the board.
Both forums - Tol Eressëa and Lasto Beth Lammen - will remain in existence. Tol Eressëa will still be devoted to topics concerning religion, philosophy, and spirituality, etc. Lasto Beth Lammen will be devoted to topics concerning politics, history, and current events, etc. The forum stickies will be updated accordingly. Thread starters should put their threads in the forum they deem appropriate for the topic. Courteous debate, humor, etc. will be allowed in both forums.
The slight shift in forum criteria means that some threads which are currently in Lasto can be moved back to Tol Eressëa. There may be temporary inconvenience associated with this and I thank you all in advance for your flexibility.
Finally, I want to thank all our members for bearing the Tol Eressëa experiment with such good grace and forgiving us when we blundered. You are all such great people, and I'm really grateful that you stuck with us through this trial period.
Jn
).
I guess the wisdom is in knowing the difference.
)
