What killed the old ABC forum?

[Hostile Duty]

What do you think killed the old Abusive Churches forum?

My opinion is that things got really out of hand with extreme negativity. Additionally there were too many personal attacks between ex members, etc. It was like a "dog eat dog" situation, when we should have been focusing upon the real enemy or problem of cfc. It got so bad at one point that I quit posting as did many others.

I will admit, I have had my moments of immaturity with some really scathing negative posts about the leadership... I won't make that mistake again. I am going to try my best to remain objective and constructive this time.

[turningjapanese]

I guess only Al and Dee know why...but I'm thankful that people can still access that information. It's too bad that those who decide to leave don't have a place to vent..maybe they will find their way here. Although by the looks of things, there aren't too many fish left swimming in the CFC hole!

[bramble]

I'm sorry to see it go. I wish that they could have: 1) left it open 2) found an interested moderator. 3) fixed their search function.

It was shut down for good in April. For the past year and a half no new accounts were given out.

IMO, it is the first place that many leaving CFCMI would turn for help as it is well established and well known. I think we need their website now, more than ever.

It would take about 100 hours to go through the entire thing if one's server is working efficiently.

I posted a poll on the site. It would take a bit of digging to find. Please vote.

[John Cady]

Hostile Duty, you are probably correct. I did notice, though, in the last two years little activity took place on the forums, especially as the site owners did not visit as often to keep things in line.

Other factors:
- the lack of moderator presence permitted a flood of spam bots which linked to porn sites and other unsavory items. Alan eventually deleted those accounts.

- There used to be a thread on "Other Groups" which covered groups similar to CFCMI. However, some of those threads got out of control as the members of those groups signed on to offer rebuttal and stir the pot. The climax came in 2005 when one Virginia Beach church, whose pastor was later sued for sexual harrassment of a female member, threatened to sue ABC over some unflattering comments. When the site re-opened after a short hiatus, Al and Dee placed restrictions on that particular thread and it was never used.

Those are a few more things that led to ABC's decline.

[bramble]

About spammers--

I have read about them on ABC site. I also wonder if any of that spam came from CFC--not just hostile posts, but real hard core spam. There are so many computer science types there, and a few talented amateurs.

I have seen old, obscure CFC sites spammed up with porn--EEEW! I wonder of someone is singling them out! CFC seems to have a lot of enemies.

There seem to be groups that spam anything with 'church' in the address. Our church website had to be pulled for porn spam last winter. I haven't visted in a while. I don't know if is back up.

Around 2002 there was a lot of porn being sent in e-mails. A friend of mine kept getting these at work--not that he wanted it--he didn't! A lot of these spammers were pranksters from FL and were busted.