A Message from the Accordance Forum Admins

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

Hi Accordance User Family,

 

I wanted to take a moment to address some of the recent events that have occurred on the forums. In the event you have additional questions concerning this message, feel free to send me a DM, or email me at nparker[at]accordancebible[dot]com (replace bracketed text with punctuation). 

 

The purpose of the Accordance Forums is to provide a place for Accordance users to interact with each other, ask questions and share feedback (such as feature and module requests) and share knowledge with each other. The goal is to provide an environment where our Accordance User Family can have a positive experience getting more out of Accordance while also directly interacting with members of the Accordance Staff Family. 

 

With the release of Accordance 14 and some of the launch day issues associated with it, the Accordance Forums have seem to have pivoted to an ongoing 
“Festivus Airing of Grievances” event concerning Accordance 14. While we always welcome feedback and bug reports concerning any version of Accordance, let’s not forget the purpose of the Accordance Forums: for Accordance users to interact with each other in order to get more out of Accordance.

 

Just like every other public forum, the Accordance Forums has a clear set of guidelines that can be found here. We welcome and encourage healthy, productive discussions on the Accordance Forums. We welcome your feedback, whether positive or negative, and we graciously and patiently listen to Accordance users who wish to vent their frustrations concerning Accordance with us. For example, there are long-time Accordance users who are not afraid to ask tough questions and to keep us on our feet in ensuring we’re providing a first-class Bible study experience for our customers. We welcome that feedback, and I personally respect and value the opinion of those customers and our entire Accordance User Family.

 

However, there has been an occasional user who has gone beyond constructive criticism or even asking tough questions to crossing the line in violation of our community guidelines (as many of you experienced such interactions this week). The latest example concerned a user who labeled numerous false accusations against Accordance, who did not followup with Accordance admins on various options to productively and constructively resolve issues they were experiencing with Accordance (including multiple offers to contact tech support directly), and who previously hijacked other user’s threads on the forums and continued to post off-topic comments, even after being specifically requested by a forum admin to cease such activities. Originally, we simply hid such posts from the user so we could allow the individual the freedom to still post on the forums while exercising some moderation over their posts, but it has come to a point where we have had to take further action against the user for continual violation of our community guidelines.

 

In the future, if you encounter such activity from someone posting on the forums, there is no need to directly engage with the individual. Please report the forum post using the forum’s reporting tools, or DM me directly. We will examine the post, and if we feel it it is in violation of our community guidelines, we will hide the post and issue a warning to the user immediately. If the user continues to engage in violation of our community guidelines, we will immediately restrict their posting privileges on the forums. Again, allow me to reiterate that we welcome constructive criticism, hard questions, and even allow customers to vent their frustrations concerning Accordance. However, occasionally a user will cross the line and attempt to degrade the experience for other users on the forums, and this is unacceptable. We treat the Accordance Forums as one would treat a highway. We allow a range of different cars to drive on the highway, but one car cannot continual to purposely swerve into another person’s lane and attempt to cause a wreck and hog the road.

 

Thank you again for being a part of the Accordance User Family. Thank you for your continued positive interaction on the Accordance Forums and for the support and encouragement you have shown us. 

[Dr. Nathan Parker]

In order to exercise some grace, we will be lifting posting restrictions on forum accounts that have violated guidelines in 2023 at the end of the month (accounts banned before 2023 will not have their posting restrictions lifted). Those customers will be allowed to post without approval from a forum admin. We’ll continue to monitor the forums to ensure such customers post in accordance with our community guidelines.