Give me back my Critical Thinking

[Chrissi]

I can't be the only one who's been noticing the decline of the CT forum lately. Sure, I've been joining in on many of the discussions myself, but a part of me is going "I shouldn't be able to fit in here without accessing the higher portions of my brain." And yet, I am doing so - I can fit in just fine spewing my own thoughts.

I remember a year ago, CT had MUCH higher standards and a lot more intelligent debate was going on. Many of the topics lately have just been "How do you feel about this topic?" I don't think the CT from a year ago would have accepted such a subject.

In my highly biased opinion, the decline was egged on by coberst, who, for a long time, was allowed to post his mockeries of essays, which were simply CRUEL to the english language. After that, a flood of what I consider to be absolutely pointless topics started pouring in from ever other chit-chat regular who figured they could make a post asking "Do you think ghosts are real?" or "Have you ever experienced deja vu?" and get away with it, thinking their unintelligent, opinion-based, improperly-worded banter was actually "higher level thinking". Just take a look in CT right now. In my opinion, it's abysmal.

Sure, it may have opened the doors to discussion from people who wouldn't normally post there, with the ridiculously elitists standards of the past. It even allowed me to post more often, when I wouldn't have been able to before. However, is this good? Do we want every other chitchat regular visiting CT and giving their humble opinion on the state of gay marriage?

Maybe I'm being elitist, but I want to hear from real higher-level thinkers, not some guy or girl who thinks "the bible said so" is adequate proof and doesn't know what an argument is or how to further one's knowledge.

I've probably rambled on long enough. My point? What am I trying to say? I think it's up to both the community and the moderators to try to raise the standards in the CT forum. Moderators: troll more often, and be more discriminating. If the post has two or more typos or spelling errors, it should be gone. Posters who can't capitalize or use grammar appropriately need to be booted. And such absolute and complete pie-in-the-sky drivel as the paranormal thread needs to not exist. It should be gone.

If the first post in a thread isn't at least 3 well-structured, well-grammarred, insightful paragraphs long, the topic should be considered worthless and should be thrown out.

Okay, I have nothing more to say, so I'm done.

By the way, I don't even know if most of my posts live up to these standards. I don't know if I'd fit into the optimized CT most of the time. But I don't care. I want it to be better. Hopefully some other members do too.

(Stuck it in chitchat, not sure if there's a better place to put it, if there is, feel free to move it. Sorry for the trouble.)