Sampling the A-Plus Forum

The only way to really understand a forum or a subculture, in my opinion, is to immerse yourself in it. Interact with the locals, get to know the language and customs. This approach takes loads of time and effort, and more saliently, a predisposition to enjoy or at least tolerate the content of the forum. In the case of the Atheism Plus forums, it requires the willingness to read the forum without being openly critical of the content, which will most likely get you banned therefrom.

Since I’ve already done a post sampling the SlymePit, for the sake of being fair and balanced, I’ve sampled their arch-nemeses as well, the social justice enthusiasts over at the Atheism Plus. The process was rather different this time, because those two forums operate rather differently. While the Pit is based on the idea of an unmoderated and continuous endless thread, the Plus forums are spread out, stovepiped by topic, and very heavily moderated. Whereas the Pit may be sampled by opening the endless thread at a random point in time, the A+ cannot be sampled in that way. Instead, I sampled at the unique thread level, for the first 5600 unique threads, using the random numbers provided by Aimee Breeze in this tweet.

Some of these threads are missing and presumably deleted, others are apparently hidden from public view without first logging in. Unfortunately, I cannot login, as I was banned from the forum some time ago.

As before, I’m not going to provide my own subjective evaluation of the content of these links right here and now. Instead, I’m going to leave the links up for those who want a fair sample to peruse at their own leisure, or to share with critics or supporters of the forum. If you want to avoid positive-spin cherry-picking or negative-spin nightshade-gathering in favour of a truly unbiased and randomized approach, this is the probably your best bet.

Article by: Damion Reinhardt