Philosophical Vegan Forum

Interesting information. We should probably just replace or remove atheist with something then. Maybe we could do tests?

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:Maybe we could do tests?

Like surveys?
We'll probably want to look around and see what else is out there.

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:Discussion is required here. If you have a view people disagree with, and they vocalize said disagreement, you have to either concede or refute. Otherwise you will be banned.

Then they just won't vocalize it, assuming they know the rules.

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:None, really. That's why I was asking.

Ah. I think vegetarian is fine.

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:Do you think dogmatic vegan YouTubers would want to promote a non-dogmatic forum?

I think they'd be more likely to promote it than to promote a forum with 'atheist' in the title.

The forum mostly has non-dogmatic vegans, but it's not like a matter of policy that people must fit that demographic.

miniboes wrote:

Jaywalker wrote:I think it should have "vegetarian" in the title. "The Rational Vegetarian" or "The Ethical Vegetarian". It may attract more meat eaters and it may attract other vegans like The Rational Vegan guys, abolitionists, or plain old vegans who think vegetarians are just as bad as meat eaters.

"There's no such thing as an ethical vegetarian! Become vegan already! Throw away your old wool clothes!.. What do you mean it's sometimes ok to use animals?"

I do not agree. As far as I'm aware, there is not a single vegetarian here. It would be like changing the name to 'VeganAgnostic'. It seems disingenuous and unnecessarily soft to me. I'm also totally unconvinced it would attract more people. In fact, I think it would discourage vegans to join exactly because of the anti-vegetarian sentiment you mentioned. We may have a bit of an overflow of vegans, but those tend to be the people that stick, and we still have plenty to disagree on.

Most of us are vegans, and it's the core of what this forum is about; rational, open-minded vegans having thoughtful discussions.

I think vegetarian has the connotation of also including pescatarians/vegans/people who don't eat a lot of meat.
Also, vegans are vegetarians. A vegetarian is just a person who doesn't eat meat, though it usually refers to someone who consumes other animal products.

As for the core of what the forum is about: Are you saying we should basically be a closed off forum that only includes vegans?
I think that we should invite people who don't agree with us, so that we can make new vegans. It's not like we can't also have thoughtful discussions about vegan issues while doing that.

EquALLity wrote:Also, vegans are vegetarians. A vegetarian is just a person who doesn't eat meat, though it usually refers to someone who consumes other animal produc

That's true. However, people often assume lacto-ovo vegetarianism and there isn't really a good reason to not be specific here. As seen from the stats Brimstone linked, people find us because they are explicitly searching for a vegan forum. Yes, vegetarian might broaden the audience, but also the competition. People that search for vegan will also be way less likely to find it; it's no longer in the title.

It's pretty clear to me that our niche is no-bullshit vegans. I see no real reason to reject that niche. Yes, we should by all means try to get all sorts of people in here, but that should not go at the cost of our core audience.

EquALLity wrote:As for the core of what the forum is about: Are you saying we should basically be a closed off forum that only includes vegans?

No, I am not.

EquALLity wrote:I think that we should invite people who don't agree with us, so that we can make new vegans.

I agree.

However, we don't need to name the forum after them.

PS. I would not be opposed to 'No Bullshit Vegan Forum' as a new name.

Perhaps something like "Rational Thought", by TVA

brimstoneSalad wrote:Like surveys?

More like experimenting with different forum names. So maybe we try out "The Generic Example Forum" for a month and see what types of people are brought in and how many.

brimstoneSalad wrote:We'll probably want to look around and see what else is out there.

What do you mean?

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:

brimstoneSalad wrote:Like surveys?

More like experimenting with different forum names. So maybe we try out "The Generic Example Forum" for a month and see what types of people are brought in and how many.

That would be expensive, since it means buying up domains.

Cirion Spellbinder wrote:

brimstoneSalad wrote:We'll probably want to look around and see what else is out there.

What do you mean?

Like we can't go with therationalvegan (for example) because it's taken (and by nutty anarchists). There may be similar situations with other names.

That's true. However, people often assume lacto-ovo vegetarianism and there isn't really a good reason to not be specific here. As seen from the stats Brimstone linked, people find us because they are explicitly searching for a vegan forum. Yes, vegetarian might broaden the audience, but also the competition. People that search for vegan will also be way less likely to find it; it's no longer in the title.

It's pretty clear to me that our niche is no-bullshit vegans. I see no real reason to reject that niche. Yes, we should by all means try to get all sorts of people in here, but that should not go at the cost of our core audience.

The reason to not be specific is so it seems like we're not the strict dogmatic vegans people typically think of on the Internet, and so lacto-ovo vegetarians/pescatarians etc. are more open to joining.

Again, it's not like we can't experiment with different names to see how many and why types of people join with different names.

EquALLity wrote:The reason to not be specific is so it seems like we're not the strict dogmatic vegans people typically think of on the Internet, and so lacto-ovo vegetarians/pescatarians etc. are more open to joining.

I don't think it's dogmatic to use the word vegan.