The Newbies' Guide To Greasespot Cafe Forums

[modcat5]

This is a placeholder for a thread introducing the GSC to new posters. I thought it would come in handy to have some easy-to-find advice and information. This will be updated, but I invite longtime users to include your own recommendations and new users to ask questions.

For now, this will suffice:

Greasespot Cafe exists to provide "the other side of the story" about The Way International. With very few exceptions, members of this forum are former followers of The Way. That is the ONLY generalization that is safe to make those who post here. Other than that, our experiences and views vary widely. To wit:

Some of us hold a deep appreciation for the work and ministry of Wierwille. Others think he was a moral monster. It is possible to think BOTH, and some people do ("he was a lecherous so-and-so who taught some neat stuff"). Some people are involved with offshoots of TWI. Others are more mainstream Christians. A few hold completely different religious views (I think we have at least one Wiccan). A vocal minority are agnostic and/or atheist. Do not assume a fellow poster is a Christian until that poster has made it clear, and do not assume a fellow poster respects Wierwille's doctrinal legacy unless that has been made clear also. Wondering why posters have moved "so far from the Word," for example, will likely provoke some less than charitable feedback. Some of us think we've moved closer to the Word. Some of us think there IS no "Word" in the sense defined by TWI and/or Christianity.

All views regarding TWI are welcome, but they are also subject to challenge, discussion and debate.

We've tried hard to divide the forum into different sections to make it easier to find topics of interest. Most of these sections are self-explanatory.

The Open Forum is for topics of general interest.

"About the Way" is ... about TWI. About Wierwille. About Martindale. About Rivenbark. About the practices and experiences associated with TWI.

We don't host discussions of politics on this board. We tried. It was too volatile to justify for our purposes. Get your fix elsewhere.

Our doctrinal section is for discussions of doctrine. While it is open to everyone, the key in every doctrinal thread is to remain on topic. We recently started a subforum in the doctrinal section to isolate conversations with an agnostic/atheist bent. Feel free to peruse, participate, or avoid it like the plague. But whatever you do, stay on topic.

If you don't know where a topic belongs, take your best guess and post it there. A moderator will move it if we think it's in the wrong place.

The prayer room is not a place for debate.

We have rules. They're a little out of date, but they give moderators a guide to resolving disputes.

The Golden Rule applies here. Be respectful, and you'll be respected. But be careful: not everyone defines "respectful" the same way. You may feel it's respectful to tell me my opinions will send me straight to hell. I may feel it's respectful to tell you you're brainwashed and deluded. Take a breath, try to resolve your disputes amicably, and report a post or conversation to the moderators if you feel intervention is the best way to handle it.

We used to have a LOT of moderators. Most are now inactive, but a couple of us are still around. We have real jobs. Give us time to address issues brought to our attention.

This will be updated.

[waysider]

Like my mother used to say, "Fight nice".

[MRAP]

Yeh Waysider, when my Mom said: "fight nice", it usually meant "drop the ball bats".

[modcat5]

Don't even pick up the bats, and keep your balls to yourself.

[Modgellan]

This was a good reminder for newcomers. Bumping it to be seen.

[reborn]

It's been a long, long while since I've been here.  Just wanted to check in and see what's going on and how others are.

[Rocky]

23 minutes ago, reborn said:

It's been a long, long while since I've been here.  Just wanted to check in and see what's going on and how others are.

Living free! 

[Lifted Up]

On 5/8/2018 at 1:17 AM, Rocky said:

Living free! 

Yep. And if this is for newbies, can returning oldies use the info too?

[Taxidev]

Can someone explain this:  Under my user name in my posts, I see the phrase "Thinks Raf is a weatherman" and under that is 4 dots. 

How does that get there?  And what do the dots signify?

The other information I understand.

[Raf]

"Thinks Raf is a weatherman" is a very old joke. Like, at least 13 years old at this point.

Anyway, I'll try to get an answer on the dots.

[Modgellan]

If I recall correctly the dots are indicative of your “rank”. i.e. it relates to how many posts you have made. When someone has made “x” # of posts their rank increases and the phrase changes automatically.  At least that is how it used to work. The different phrases are embedded into the site and change the more one posted. There also was a way it could be edited. I am not sure how it works now with the new platform.

[Taxidev]

6 hours ago, Modgellan said:

The different phrases are embedded into the site and change the more one posted. There also was a way it could be edited.

Thank you.  Yes, I did find where to edit the phrase, which I did.  But I couldn't figure out what those dots were about.

[WordWolf]

The dots are a visual representation of a category of how many posts a poster has made.  The GSC has had that for a long time-since we moved off ezboard, IIRC. (I remember the 1.0 version of the dots rendering well for Internet Explorer, but not Firefox, and I saw the posting section of the page shoved over if someone's "rank" was high, to make room for all the dots. (That was fixed pretty fast once I mentioned something.)  

As for the phrases, messageboards tend to have a default "title"  for posters based on number of posts.  Often staff will give someone a unique title on their own, sometimes with their input, sometimes surprising them with it.   The GSC is the only board I'm familiar with that lets the person set their own title.   (I've seen a board where idiot posters were allowed to continue to post but their title was changed to "twit".  And seen boards where I logged in, posted, and saw I had a title. And so on.)