User:CyberAnth/CF Forums Draft

Christian Forums is the most active Christian discussion board on the Internet. It was created by Erwin Loh, an Australian doctor and lawyer. Erwin Loh Stepped down as CEO in 2007, leaving it in the hands of Escalade Media, and specifically Lee Dodd.

History
In June 1998, the Left Behind Message Board (LBMB) was removed due to funding and ownership issues, and many fans of the series found themselves without an outlet to voice their support. Two message boards were created to address this. First was an Ezboard called The Unofficial Left Behind Message Board (uLBMB) created by Ryan Swift (aka Melchizedek on LBMB, and Josephus on uLBMB), and next was Three Bruces, a Chloe, and a Pizza Parlor (later renamed to The Pizza Parlor), a privately run board by other members of the old Left Behind board. In 2000, The Unofficial Left Behind Message Board was renamed The King's Tavern (KT). It had grown to be a large online Christian community with over 1200 members and featured over 20 different forums ranging from Christian apologetics to news and Christian fellowship.

Christian Forums was created by Erwin Loh on November 19, 2001. After two months of preparation and discussion, The King's Tavern merged with Christian Forums on February 7, 2002, to help establish it as the largest Christian message board community in the world. The new Christian Forums was re-launched on that day to promote the unity of all Christians as one body. It was hoped that the merger would create conditions that would enable the new board to not only continue serving as the largest internet communications and evangelistic medium for Christians worldwide, but to also become one of the largest internet message boards ever conceived. The combined membership of the boards, as of the merger, was 1,387. Immediately before the merger, ChristianForums had 620 members, and King's Tavern had 1,280. (This suggests overlap of just over 500 users.)

In May 2002, Ryan Swift (Josephus) stepped down as co-admin to allow the message board to continue under the unified leadership of Erwin Loh. Four years after its creation, a few of the original merger staff still remain serving as staff as Christian Forums continues to grow and as the shared mission of promoting the unity of the Christian faith continues. The site currently has over 130,000 registered users and serves members from almost every country in the world. It also has over 100 administrators and moderators who are divided into staff teams named after the fruits of the spirit as defined in Galatians 5:22-23. The forum's motto is "Uniting All Christians As One Body".

Organization
Christian Forums has an extensive organization of forums. There are over 400 forums, many of which have their own sub-forums. Some of these forums place limits on the users who can post on them. For example, only teenagers may post in the "Christian Teens" forum. Of particular notice is that many of the forums are only open to Christians.

Also of interest is the large number of options available to users. There is a rather extensive profile that users can fill out for themselves, and some profile information (such as age and faith icon) is used to determine access to certain forums. The message board also has its own currency called "blessings". Blessings can be given by other users or earned from jobs, and are regularly earned by posting on the forums. They are used to add features like pictures and avatars to profiles and to purchase armor, pets, and other features that can show up on the users' posts. You can now even create a virtual character.

Christian Forums is currently running a heavily modified version of vBulletin. The webmaster, Erwin Loh, was an administrator at vBulletin.org, an official vBulletin site which modifies the software, but he stepped down from his position on May 19, 2006. Christian Forums currently runs on multiple separate web servers, a central database server, a slave search server, a DNS server, a mail server, a static file (image/Flash/Java) server, and an IRC server.

As of February 2006, Christian Forums has a "Christian Wiki" based on the vBulletin software. In order to add articles or make changes, one must be a registered member of Christian Forums, a Christian per the site definition, and must join the "Wiki Team."

Culture
Christian Forums attracts individuals from a variety of ages, nationalities, and religious philosophies. Members may be from fundamentalist, liberal, or a variety of other theological backgrounds. There are many members from non-Christian faiths, including Atheists, Agnostics, Jews, Muslims, and various Pagan beliefs. All members are required to specify their faith on their profile when they join.

Some forums are listed as Christian-only, and only Christians (as defined by the Nicene Creed, with a few footnotes to allow some modern mainstream groups to participate) are allowed to post in those forums. Some forums are also restricted by age or gender. Although most forums are casual social forums, a number of forums deal specifically with political and theological issues and invite debate.

Criticisms
Some members believe that defining a Christian by the Nicene Creed produces an overly restrictive view of Christianity. This policy excludes Latter-day Saints, Jehovah's Witnesses, some liberal Christians, and other groups that claim the name Christian. However, other members of the site are quick to point out that there must be some standard, and that in the Christian community targeted by the site, the Nicene Creed defines Christian belief, although some portions of the Creed are interpreted broadly to allow beliefs common in some Protestant circles but contrary to the traditional understanding of the Creed.

Some other members believe that defining a Christian by the Nicene Creed is not restrictive enough, because it allows people whose beleifs are more in common with paganism to call themselves "Christian".

Many forum members have raised objections about moderator treatment. Sometimes, non-Christian (per site rules) members feel that they are being unjustly moderated in comparison to Christian members. Many believe they are treated unfairly by not only the rules, but the site moderators. Protestants feel they are treated differently from Catholics, when Catholics by self-definition are part of the "the One true Church" but Protestants cannot call into question a Catholic's standing in Christ based upon substantive theological reasons.

Members of any nonecumenist, old calendarist Christian Orthodox church body who try to mingle with the Orthodox forum members at christianforums, will soon find their church smeared with the derogatory label of being 'vagant'. Various members of the ecumenist community at christianforums assign this misnomer to nonecumenist Orthodox churches, which the admin and mods for that subforum uphold. Their explanation is that this is based on the supposition that if one's own church does not recognize the ecumenical Christian movement, then neither do the Christian ecumenists give recognition in return. The illogic of this is shown in the general position of christianforums and the ecumenical movement, that if one's church satisfies all requirements for being 'Christian', it is recognized as such; whereas, if the same church rejects the ecumenists, then that church is rejected in turn as not being Christian according to their self-professed, loose ecumenist standards, which may be briefly summarized as 'all paths lead to God', but which accepts and includes churches which recognize nonchristian religions. The false cannot stand the real, and neither can the ecumenists tolerate the more narrowly defined standards of the nonecumenist Orthodox Christian churches. Hence, the openly avowed smear that they are 'vagant'.

Moderators and staff at Christian Forums have been accused of unfair practices. This includes deleting threads without warning, banning members unjustly, punishing members for their viewpoints, and failing to follow the site's disciplinary guidelines. In 2005, Erwin Loh issued an official apology for these actions and introduced a plan to implement staff training and policy revisions to alleviate future issues. These plans are currently being implemented as of June 2006.