Extra Subforums Suggestions

May I suggest including a "Solutions" subforum to the super secret conspiracy theory/political usergroup forums?

Yes, there's lots of bad things happening, but there's also a lot of projects that are very successfully pushing back. I don't think focusing only on the bad is healthy, nor is it accurate.

Also maybe another forum thing in extended consciusnes focused entirely on dreams. Yes people could post in the personal experiences subforum, or in the astral/obe/dreams forum which to me appears the better place. But dreams are a lot more common to a lot more people and it might be nice to have a specific place for people to share their own dreams.

Also, either in extended consciousness or related topics, or even it's own entire category, a section for forum and user run experiments. It's all well and good to talk about experiences or dissect papers done by others, but I personally think it would be great to have an entire section dedicated to forum members running proper PSI experiments to the best of their ability. It would make sense if it was it's own entire category split into NDE, OBE, PK, etc like the extended consciousness section.

Just my two cents.

May I suggest including a "Solutions" subforum to the super secret conspiracy theory/political usergroup forums?

Yes, there's lots of bad things happening, but there's also a lot of projects that are very successfully pushing back. I don't think focusing only on the bad is healthy, nor is it accurate.

Conspiracies to do good?  Hey, why don't we start one

[Laird]

Hey, Mediochre, these are some really good suggestions. Strange that nobody's responded until today. Not sure whether I missed this the first time around or just forgot to get back to you.

May I suggest including a "Solutions" subforum to the super secret conspiracy theory/political usergroup forums?

Yes, there's lots of bad things happening, but there's also a lot of projects that are very successfully pushing back. I don't think focusing only on the bad is healthy, nor is it accurate.

I'm very much in favour of this.

Also maybe another forum thing in extended consciusnes focused entirely on dreams. Yes people could post in the personal experiences subforum, or in the astral/obe/dreams forum which to me appears the better place. But dreams are a lot more common to a lot more people and it might be nice to have a specific place for people to share their own dreams.

Interesting idea. Would it be for posting dreams themselves, or discussing dreams and dreaming techniques in the abstract, or both?

I guess the question also would be then what to do with the OBE/Astral Travel/Lucid Dreaming forum: whether to split the Lucid Dreaming part out into the new forum or whether to leave it where it is.

Also, either in extended consciousness or related topics, or even it's own entire category, a section for forum and user run experiments. It's all well and good to talk about experiences or dissect papers done by others, but I personally think it would be great to have an entire section dedicated to forum members running proper PSI experiments to the best of their ability. It would make sense if it was it's own entire category split into NDE, OBE, PK, etc like the extended consciousness section.

I like this idea. I wonder though whether enough people would conduct enough (different types of) experiments to justify multiple sub-forums? Perhaps start off with a single forum and then expand/split-off as needed?

Just out of curiosity: who reading this post thinks they would or at least might start threads in such a forum?

Just out of curiosity: who reading this post thinks they would or at least might start threads in such a forum?

Dreams are a continuing fascination of mine so that one has a lot of potential for me.

Interesting idea. Would it be for posting dreams themselves, or discussing dreams and dreaming techniques in the abstract, or both?

I guess the question also would be then what to do with the OBE/Astral Travel/Lucid Dreaming forum: whether to split the Lucid Dreaming part out into the new forum or whether to leave it where it is.


I like this idea. I wonder though whether enough people would conduct enough (different types of) experiments to justify multiple sub-forums? Perhaps start off with a single forum and then expand/split-off as needed?

Just out of curiosity: who reading this post thinks they would or at least might start threads in such a forum?

The intent was the dreams forum would just be for sharing dreams whether they be paranormal or not. Not so much about discussing dream techniques although I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed.

I don't think there needs to be an experiment subforum for everything anymore but at least there should be an experiment subforum period. Maybe two, one for the "hard science" area that has much stricter criteria and one for the "soft science" area that is more informal and accessible to get started in. I really, really think more people should be doing more personal research instead of playing armchair scientist where they, at best, read some papers and think they know how it is.

As for the OBE section, I dunno, I guess leave it where it is? I think obe's and projection are very much their own class of thing that deserve their own space away from dreams.

Also I figure it would help draw in more people if you flipped the ordering of the main categories so the "hard science" skeptic vs proponent stuff was at the top and the "soft science" extended consciousness stuff was at the bottom. Would make the site look a lot more serious and legit to more mainstream people who are on the fence about whether there's any legitimacy to any of this. I mean, imagine what those peoples reactions would be if the first thing they read is half of the things I've written? Chances are they'll write this place off as just more spiritualist nonsense. At least if all that stuff is at the bottom of the page it makes it look like the site puts "real science" first and spiritualism second. It's just better optics in my opinion. for example Dreamsoap pretty much refuses to come back to the forum because of, in her words, "crazy religious people like Pssst". Although I'm still trying to convince her to come back and she knows it.

Could we perhaps have a subforum for psychoanalysis? It would be useful for other members to perhaps chime in with their thoughts and ideas to help members understand various reoccurring events in their lives that could prove use to pull apart and analyze.

In relation to dreams, I feel that many of the experiences in our dreams are often related to subconscious thoughts and feelings that we are not experiencing consciousness, and can be an extremely useful resource for understanding ourselves when properly analyzed.

Carl Jung, in his psychoanalytical work, seemed quite interested in people's dreams and how they manifested people's unconscious hopes and fears, and buried emotional energies in general, beneficial and detrimental.

Could we perhaps have a subforum for psychoanalysis? It would be useful for other members to perhaps chime in with their thoughts and ideas to help members understand various reoccurring events in their lives that could prove use to pull apart and analyze.

In relation to dreams, I feel that many of the experiences in our dreams are often related to subconscious thoughts and feelings that we are not experiencing consciousness, and can be an extremely useful resource for understanding ourselves when properly analyzed.

Carl Jung, in his psychoanalytical work,  seemed quite interested in people's dreams and how they manifested people's unconscious hopes and fears, and buried emotional energies in general, beneficial and detrimental.

Personally I think psychoanalysis is probably the worst possible idea given the already paranormal nature of the forum. I've been on sites that did that sort of thing, all of them were cults telling the members "who they are" by judging their experiences. Usually getting people to believe they're the chosen one or God's first thought or the New Age messiah or some agent of a galactic alien federation "of light" or an eight headed dragon who eats souls and cleanses them like those cats that eat coffee beans or, or, or...

There's already lots of sites where you can post dreams and such and have the community "analyse" them for you. Personally it would be nice to have a place where that didn't happen, where people could just share experiences without everyone else trying to tell them "what they mean." On those sites Dreamsoap and I were always considered the evil "dark hats" because most of our experiences involved some form of fighting. I'd prefer psiquest not turn into just another one of those sites.

Also I figure it would help draw in more people if you flipped the ordering of the main categories so the "hard science" skeptic vs proponent stuff was at the top and the "soft science" extended consciousness stuff was at the bottom. 

I'm afraid the more time goes on, the more I feel that the sceptic vs proponent section isn't the appropriate place for hard science to be discussed. The site rules essentially say that sceptics can participate everywhere provided they're not just blindly coming out with blanket denials. I don't see any reason why discussions of the science should be characterised as "sceptic vs proponent", and what that means in practice - at least on this site at this time - seems to be just pointless ping pong matches and point scoring.

I'm afraid the more time goes on, the more I feel that the sceptic vs proponent section isn't the appropriate place for hard science to be discussed. The site rules essentially say that sceptics can participate everywhere provided they're not just blindly coming out with blanket denials. I don't see any reason why discussions of the science should be characterised as "sceptic vs proponent", and what that means in practice - at least on this site at this time - seems to be just pointless ping pong matches and point scoring.

Yeah you're probably right.

Also I figure it would help draw in more people if you flipped the ordering of the main categories so the "hard science" skeptic vs proponent stuff was at the top and the "soft science" extended consciousness stuff was at the bottom. Would make the site look a lot more serious and legit to more mainstream people who are on the fence about whether there's any legitimacy to any of this.

I think it depends upon what kind of people you are hoping to draw in. If it's the average Joe mainstream person, I think that having a section devoted to the kind of information which is compelling to most people (confirmatory research, personal experience) works up at the front. If you are looking to draw in proponent hard science types by giving them a sense of legitimacy, then in addition, a section where they can 'win' against skeptical arguments is useful. But I don't think you want that up front (it looks divisive and petty much of the time, among other things).

There is "hard science" in all areas of the forum, but it's very difficult for anyone to discover this amongst the plethora of sub-forum categories and drawn-out descriptions under each. I suspect that if the Extended Consciousness forum was instead divided into discussions on Research, Personal Experiences, and Exploration/Speculation, it would give a new visitor a clearer idea of where to look. You don't need preset sub-forums for each possible parapsychology topic.
 
On-the-fence hard science types will be harder to draw in, but you might get there if you put the Research section first and keep critical discussion to a minimum.