BarbTherese Posted November 25, 2020 Share Posted November 25, 2020 A message from the President of Catholic Answers Dear Members and Patrons of the Catholic Answers Forums, On Thursday December 31 at 5pm PT, Catholic Answers will close the Catholic Answers Forums (CAF). I have made the decision to close the CAF after lengthy consultation with the Catholic Answers executive committee and board of trustees. Read more HERE Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lilllabettt Posted November 26, 2020 Share Posted November 26, 2020 4 hours ago, BarbaraTherese said: A message from the President of Catholic Answers Dear Members and Patrons of the Catholic Answers Forums, On Thursday December 31 at 5pm PT, Catholic Answers will close the Catholic Answers Forums (CAF). I have made the decision to close the CAF after lengthy consultation with the Catholic Answers executive committee and board of trustees. Read more HERE I saw that. In all honesty I get where management is coming from as far as questionable value. The culture was always a bit weird over there. If you asked a question you would not necessarily get a solid "Catholic" answer. Lots of well meaning but poorly catechized folks and then a large contingent of the truly rigid rule bound anxious crazy- eyed trad type. Idk why... maybe was just too big a community. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 26, 2020 Share Posted November 26, 2020 I don't think it was as bad as now back over 5 years ago, perhaps longer. But I agree with your comments about how CAF is now. I think it has grown far too big and moderators probably can't keep up as before. It is a really weird place now to have the name "Catholic" in the title at all, because the forums were not necessarily Catholic at all, as you have highlighted. It was not the place for those seeking reliable information about Catholicism to peruse/join. I joined Catholic Community Forum before joining Pham, but I found moderation back then on CCF much too strict for the likes of me to be happy there. I hope Phatmass here never has similar or other serious problems. I am going to reinstate my very small regular donation to be supportive of Pham. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ash Wednesday Posted November 26, 2020 Share Posted November 26, 2020 I had an account there but I never fully took to it. One person in particular absolutely dominated those boards and she was always so grumpy and rude, and was very rude to me, needlessly. They never had a great mute or blocking function for dealing with people like that, so I lost interest in staying. A lot of them have migrated to a forum called "Catholic Common Sense: A Forum for the reasonable Catholic" -- whatever that is even supposed to mean. One thing I appreciated about here was that there was some effort to try to avoid letting visitors become confused and scandalized. People may not have liked the "labels" or restrictions on Catholic vs. Catholic debate, but those things were put in place for a reason. dUSt didn't want that happening on his watch, and people could either respect that or leave. Phatmass always felt like its own friendly cafe or pub with tight knit regulars, CAF felt like a large and impersonal cafeteria in comparison. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ash Wednesday Posted November 26, 2020 Share Posted November 26, 2020 13 hours ago, BarbaraTherese said: I hope Phatmass here never has similar or other serious problems. I am going to reinstate my very small regular donation to be supportive of Pham. Same, I've had to readjust and scale back patreons or subscriptions when I wasn't using them but being a regular here and having more time I'll be able to bring mine back too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HumilityAndPatience Posted November 26, 2020 Share Posted November 26, 2020 Im sad about this. Learnt a lot from that forum but it did develop into quite the industry. Makes me realise how v happy to have joined Phatmass- credit to @dUSt for creating and sustaining such a lively, fun, reasonable, open and interesting community Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 27, 2020 Share Posted November 27, 2020 6 hours ago, Ash Wednesday said: Same, I've had to readjust and scale back patreons or subscriptions when I wasn't using them but being a regular here and having more time I'll be able to bring mine back too. 51 minutes ago, HumilityAndPatience said: Im sad about this. Learnt a lot from that forum but it did develop into quite the industry. Makes me realise how v happy to have joined Phatmass- credit to @dUSt for creating and sustaining such a lively, fun, reasonable, open and interesting community Well said re Phatmass and The Boss! I did not get much at all from the forum, but some really good explanations from Catholic Magazine and also CA videos; questions answers by apologists. https://www.catholic.com/magazine https://www.catholic.com/qa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 28, 2020 Share Posted November 28, 2020 (edited) To be honest, now CAF is closing, I was banned from there for life for telling the moderators off via PM of all things! It was not posted publicly into any forum. I must admit that I had REALLY crossed a culture divide with my PM without being aware of it. About five years later or around there or so, I decided I will try something a bit different without knowing much at all about computers. Lo and behold I was admitted as a member and have been an active member now and then since. I had not even bothered to really disguise my User Name. In fact, I received a couple of PM's asking if I was my original User Name. One thread initiated into a public forum asked if my original user name was out there somewhere - and as the title of his thread. I said I was via PM, but please keep it under your hat LOL. Prior to that every time I tried to access CAF, a sign came up in big letters: BANNED FOR LIFE. I could not even read the forums. After my PM, I had decided I would leave CAF based on something posted which really disturbed me and no action was taken. That disturbing post was about Our Lady - it was a very serious statement by a person who stated he was a faithful practicing Catholic of some status. So I sent the badly worded PM to moderators and then posted into a forum that I was leaving, no reason given. Goodbye and good luck, please don't leave - and posts like that followed into my thread. Very shortly after the thread was locked, posts deleted, without advising why and almost suddenly I could no longer access CAF at all. I must have really upset the under bosses big time. Just did a quick search to see what the web might be saying. I had a good laugh at this: Why is everybody banned? Because it is run by fat older women in stirrup pantaloons whose social life consists of cats. They're not called CATholics for nothing! Edited November 28, 2020 by BarbaraTherese Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dUSt Posted November 28, 2020 Share Posted November 28, 2020 Are we the last board standing? lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dUSt Posted November 28, 2020 Share Posted November 28, 2020 Everyone with a CA account should go over and suggest that we are willing to accept new noobs here, with minimal hazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 29, 2020 Share Posted November 29, 2020 6 hours ago, dUSt said: Are we the last board standing? lol I do recall quite some time ago, Boss, on a software change (I think that is what it is called) that someone made a statement that we were destined to be bigger than Catholic Answers Forums. And here we are plodding along as it were at a normal sort of pace, rising and falling then rising again - and lo and behold, Catholic Answers Forums is closing. We are destined to become bigger than CAF! It rather reminds me of St Therese of Lisieux, that most gentle of saints, on her clothing day she would have loved for it to snow but it was out of season. On her clothing day, it snowed. Later in her journey, a murderer was to be hanged. Therese prayed for his conversion. He converted at the last minute. Therese decided that she really must be careful about what she prayed for. Congrats to that prophet in our midst Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HollyDolly Posted December 1, 2020 Share Posted December 1, 2020 No Phatmass is not the last board.There is also Fisheaters forum which is Catholic. I enjoyed learning about some of the communities Cloisters posted, american and forgein orders.I enjoyed reading peoples posts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cruciatacara Posted December 2, 2020 Share Posted December 2, 2020 A bunch of people from CAF have migrated to a new forum which has been set up by one of the group. It is early days yet so we will see how it goes, but so far, it seems nice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted December 2, 2020 Share Posted December 2, 2020 49 minutes ago, cruciatacara said: A bunch of people from CAF have migrated to a new forum which has been set up by one of the group. It is early days yet so we will see how it goes, but so far, it seems nice. Do you have a link to the new forum please? I would like to have a look. I am wary many might join Phatmass if I post now into CAF re Phatmass with link...... wary of potential that many could join Phatmass and a problem develops, which CAF experienced, with far too many active members to moderate. Apparently the activity on CAF became so much that only flagged posts (by members) were moderated. Although the moderations seemed to me to be inadequate, and badly inadequate, even lousy judgement, with an awful lot of aggressive type non-Catholic input and argumentative conflict posts, some insulting posts - while some Catholic members I did have time for and for some unknown reason were being banned, some for life apparently like me. @dUStI read your post re advertising Pham on CAF now. I did not know whether it was for real or just tongue in cheek . Catholic Community Forum (CCF) is still active a day or two ago. I am a member, but nowadays and for quite some time, I only lurk reading just now and then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cruciatacara Posted December 2, 2020 Share Posted December 2, 2020 44 minutes ago, BarbaraTherese said: Do you have a link to the new forum please? I would like to have a look. I am wary many might join Phatmass if I post now into CAF re Phatmass with link...... wary of potential that many could join Phatmass and a problem develops, which CAF experienced, with far too many active members to moderate. Apparently the activity on CAF became so much that only flagged posts (by members) were moderated. Although the moderations seemed to me to be inadequate, and badly inadequate, even lousy judgement, with an awful lot of aggressive type non-Catholic input and argumentative conflict posts, some insulting posts - while some Catholic members I did have time for and for some unknown reason were being banned, some for life apparently like me. @dUStI read your post re advertising Pham on CAF now. I did not know whether it was for real or just tongue in cheek . Catholic Community Forum (CCF) is still active a day or two ago. I am a member, but nowadays and for quite some time, I only lurk reading just now and then. It seems they have the same concerns in the new forum that you have about CAF people coming to Phatmass, so I can't give you a direct link to the new forum (it requires either an invite or Mediator of Meh approval) but the forum admin said that anyone wanting to join could contact them on CAF and put in a request. The link to the new forum discussion is here: https://forums.catholic.com/t/caf-closing-feel-free-to-join-our-new-forum/636033/3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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