I was wondering if it might be possible to color code the login names in the posts of the forum members here, according to a self-designated classification of each person that they would assign to themselves according to their former involvement in the church. So if you are a returned missionary, you get one color. If you were a bishop or stake president, perhaps that's a different color. For just regular members, yet another color. Perhaps different shades (lighter or darker of the same main color) could designate whether you have resigned yet or not. A person who has never been a member would perhaps have no color in their login name. The idea would be to give everyone who reads the posts here, an instant idea of where each person is coming from. This could be especially valuable as non-members who pass through reading here could then see a real contrast. A thread with ten damning responses against the church, six of which are from former fulltime representatives of the church (returned missionaries and bishops), might more accurately communicate the nature of the church itself. Most of us are not just people who sat in the pews occasionally some sundays for a few years and then left when life got busy. But how would a casual passer-by who knows little to nothing about the church know that? A more thorough research here shows the reality. Some passers-by might not stay long enough to figure that out. At the same time, someone who has never been that deeply involved in the church might be easier to help if we can see from the color of their login that they've never been through the temple nor held any leadership positions in the church, or if they never joined but are dealing with a church member who is a loved one. If the hosting software here is plug-and-play, this feature might not be possible. If someone has access to the source code and is looking for ways to upgrade things, perhaps this may be an option. If color coding is not possible, perhaps emojis could serve the same purpose.

Great idea!

It's probably hard to do due to anonymity issues, but I like the idea.

Sure beats all the trolls who regularly post topics and replies to stir up trouble.

Then you'd have to blindly trust the claimed level of involvement of each poster. For example, I was never close to being a bishop, but if I color-coded myself as one anyway, who's going to know? And Devin D. Deznat won't care, he'll just color-code himself to whatever and we won't be able to tell.

Would the color-coding be mandatory, or could it simply default to the current black? In that case, a black color code could mean anything, or nothing.

Finally, how would a first-time observer know about which color code means what? A sticky, I suppose – but who reads the stickies anyway? Hell, we still argue about politics and cuss without putting a warning in the subline all the time. We call each other names and often fail to put O/T in the subline. First-Time Poster won't know about any of this.

That's a lot of kinks to work out.

I'd color code myself as a current Apostle... :)

LOL!

How about different color codes for different races, because Mormon racism is an issue.

A color for Americans.
A color for those living in the Moridor

Blue for BYU graduates

A color for Atheists, a color for Never-Mormons.

A color for those who have a PhD and are better qualified at answering questions in an erudite fashion.

A color for anyone who has won a Pulitzer Prize.

A color for women. A pretty color for married women, a less vibrant color for divorced women, and a dull gray for women who are single. Of course the prettiest color for temple-married people.

A bright red for people who have received the Second Anointing.

A rainbow for TGTBQ posters. Their issues are very relevant.

A color for those who have a degree from Divinity School. A color for those who have read the BOM more than 5 times.

Different colors for parents than for childless people, because a lot of posters have issues with their children who are being raised as mormons, child abuse, pedophiles, and all that stuff. Maybe separate tags for how many children a person has.

Categories. People defined in put into boxes.



I trust that posters will make themselves known, in ways that are relevant to the subject about which they are posting.

Perhaps there could also be different indicia reflecting immigration status. If colors, white might work for legal citizens, green for those on green cards, and brown for everyone else. Alternatively we could use font size, ranging from 12 point for full citizens, 10 points for legal aliens, and a negligible 8 points for "other."

Everyone must be in her own little box, after all, so we know what weights to assign to her views.

And a colour for non-Americans. :)

Those living outside the US of A, I mean. (Lot's Wife has the rest covered).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2020 05:22PM by Nightingale.

Would it be OK for the married women use their husband's church position, to be assigned a color?

We will definitely need a unique color for The Greg...I'm not good with sharing, including designations.

The Greg

I agree that it can help in processing someone's point of view if you have an idea where their perspective comes from.

However. Right away I can see some strong reasons not to use colour coding for posters at RfM.


1. It sounds complicated. You'd need to refer to a colour guide before reading every post.


2. Worse, it would tend to classify a poster's opinion or experience in a hierarchical way. Is a former bishop's opinion more noteworthy than a nursery monitor's, for instance? A male's words of more value than a female's?

I remember a former poster, Bob McCue. His threads consistently filled up in a NY minute. I can't quite recall his position in the church but it was bishop or even SP, I think (please excuse me if I'm incorrect on that; maybe someone can confirm). But it was Bob's well-written posts and his pertinent opinions that garnered a large readership, not merely his church callings. Of course, his insider perspective was of great interest. But so is that of many anon posters whose relationship to the church or callings within it are unknown to us. I'm in favour of avoiding anything that smacks of indicating in any way that one poster is 'better than' another.


3. Colour coding could turn things here into more of a popularity contest type atmosphere. Not desirable.


4. Most posters welcome the anonymity factor at RfM. Stating callings and positions and locations could tend to ID someone IRL, which most want to avoid.


azsteve Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>Most of us are not just people who sat in the pews
> occasionally some sundays for a few years and then
> left when life got busy.

I already lived through three years of feeling second-class due to being an adult "convert" and being classified in a certain way due to that. Even here it has sometimes felt like I needed to justify my (uninformed) choice to join. Self-inflicted injury, iow, is how Mormons IRL and occasionally exmos here have indicated that my situation should be defined. Yet another wound caused by Mormonism, to feel like a blithering idiot for listening to their missionaries in the first place - and some members and former members do demonstrate that attitude in particular about falling for the missionary "lessons". What kind of a church (my constant refrain these days) can actually cast blame against people who joined their ranks due to misinformation and as a result of its own missionary efforts, making converts feel like marks who got taken in a con game.

"People who sat in a pew for a few years and then left when life got busy" is the same type of dismissive attitude converts run into from the very type of church that discounts people in the first place.

Rather than leaving because "life got busy", how about leaving because the Mormon Church is a crock?


Not speaking of myself but just in general now, it's wrong to classify a person's pain, although we tend to do it in many ways, not just in regard to Mormonism. With grief, for example. The first question most people ask when a loved one passes away is "how old was s/he"? As if the depth of loss is measured by age. Of course, many factors come into play and losing someone at a young age is a great tragedy. But seeking to quantify the pain of a person's loss due to the age of the deceased minimizes the loss and adds to the pain.


I know it's a human tendency to classify, prioritize, assign hierarchy, sort, weigh and otherwise process our world and all its input. I think I can see where you're coming from with your suggestion, azsteve. But it clangs to me, for the reasons I've laid out, and more. Such as colour coding whether someone went to the temple or not. Mormonism itself does that. For many reasons along those lines, I can see that a significant number of posters, who have already been judged within the church according to their callings and activities and participation, wouldn't want to submit to disclosing such details here. Plus, again, the potentially identifying info thing.


Plus it sounds like a lot of work for Admin. At least initially, if not ongoing.


Colour me a 'no thanks' on this one.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2020 01:41PM by Nightingale.

The mere fact that the status must be taken on the poster's own information makes it unreliable. Why wouldn't a troll lie about his status?

I was never a bishop or missionary. My highest calling in the church was organist. What does that have to do with the importance or relevance or value of my posts?

Bad idea!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2020 01:48PM by RPackham.

I want whatever color BYUBoner gets.

I want to be white and delightsome.

The idea wasn't to rank people's comments by level of importance. It was to provide objective context and to display how long-term and deep the damages caused by the church are. And not to minimize the stories from short-term church members and those who were smart enough to get out earlier than some of the rest of us. In any event, all information shared here has to be volunteered. I don't care if others know that I went on a mission. It's not a badge of honor to me. I don't mind using that information about myself to let others know that even former fulltime representatives of the church such as myself (and many others here), currently believe that the mormon church is an immoral scam. But looking back at my own progression out of the church (psychologically), perhaps sometimes less information is best.

I like it because I feel like I was a Mormon poser when I believed. All of my family has been true blue blooded believers and I still feel like an imposter. It would be nice to see how posters fall into their respective surface Mormonism and then read what they wrote without needing biography info.

For instance there are no/never mos here who know more about Mormonism than I do. I'm always shocked when I find out their status. It would be nice to see that they were never Mormon when I'm reading their posts. Same goes for people who served missions or not. The level of control a mission toll takes on a person can be significant or not at all but the context of having gone out and tried to sell this stuff is good information without having to explain it.

2 cents. Worth less tha face value.

I think I get what your intention was, azsteve. And I know you meant no harm.

It's just that even inadvertently such a system categorizes people by level of the importance given to certain parameters. Kind of like the church we've left. Like how converts are tainted by being less valiant in the PE, according to Mormon doctrine (of course, nobody tells them that until *after* their hasty leap or not-so-gentle push into the Mormon font).

As someone else said, little boxes, little boxes. Many of us are rightly allergic to such singlings out.

But if we wanted a bit of colour to express our mood or persona, say, I'd go for purple, my favourite.

Purple grapes
Purple wine
Purple clothes
Purple mood
Purple afternoon

Purple Rain

I can think of several posters who would likely pick a new color every post just for the hell of it. I might even be tempted.

Bad idea IMHO.

So like an ExMo Royalty hierarchy?
Awesome.

People see stars upon thars where they should see a rainbow of diversity. Our nature is to bifurcate unfortunately when reality appears to be a spectrum.

I think a good starting point should be taken from NYC work on identifying 31 genders.

Why reinvent the wheel?

https://theluxuryspot.com/31-official-genders/

Get the box of 64 Crayons to do the color coding, name the member classification the same as the color, https://www.ranker.com/list/best-crayola-crayon-color-names/amylindorff



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/26/2020 06:13PM by tumwater.

how about a color for how many times a person posts. Most posts are just a back and forth between the same 20 people on the board all day. And at other times posts go on and on by people who have never been Mormons, but somehow know an incredible amount about it. It can be like Wendy giving advice on marriage intimacy, lol!

The board is for nevermos too.

I'm going to go to plaid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBVqygvinzw

As long as we’re making suggestions, I would like all of the red “new” flags on a page to be hyperlinked. Just add anchors. Then it would be easy to skip through long threads looking for the one “new”.

Would using that level of color increase costs and complications for the software and administrators? Don't know.

What about a standard key for voluntary tags added to names.

Eg. Susan I/S (Admin) = Administrator
Twinker (NV M) = never mormon
Dave the Atheist (A) = atheist
ElderBerry (RM) = returned missionary
SLCabbie (DNA) = DNA expert
SisterGoody2shoes (AM) = active member
ElderOldDog (RSA) = Resident SmartAss