Frequently Asked Questions

For a few years now, SI has been moving away from anonymity. Consequently, we require your real name in your profile when you join (visible only to other members). We also strongly prefer that your username be either your real name or some variation of your real name, such as first or last name with an initial or two. If there is a name just about everyone knows you by but which has little relationship to your real name, we can accommodate that. Handles are not permitted.

Some examples for a member named Francis August Schaeffer…

The Who’s Online box has some time thresholds in order to limit how much drain it puts on the server. So if you log in, then log out, then log in again within the time limit (I think we’re at something like 15 minutes at present), you’ll show up twice.

In short, the Who’s Online box doesn’t know you’re gone for roughly 15 minutes but usually registers a log-in immediately… and it’s not quite smart enough to notice duplicates (…yet).

SI funding comes from advertisers and donations, mostly the former.  Most years, expenses have exceeded income by a small margin. If you’d like to donate, you’ll find more information here. For the time being, SI is not a 501(c)3 and donations are not tax deductible.

The ability to edit your comments is limited in order to preserve the continuity of the thread. As an extreme example, if everyone who posted in a thread heavily edited his/her posts multiple times over a period of days, the thread would no longer make any sense. People would be responding to statements no longer there, etc. Moderators and site admin. can edit posts beyond the time limit in rare cases where that’s necessary.

Though SI reserves the right to ban anyone from the forums for any reason at any time, we’re not eager to do that. Banning usually occurs only when a member has made it clear that he or she is not going to behave in a way that is compatible with the purpose and spirit of the site. That usually means they’ve violated the Comment Policy in a serious way or have shown a pattern of skirting the edges of the rules. Occasionally a member finds a way to avoid flagrant rule violations yet still be a constant headache for the Moderating team. That can also result in banning. The decision to ban or not ban is usually made collaboratively among the site Moderators and Admin Team.

For information about SI’s team of Moderators see the Moderators page.

For a list of common internet acronyms and their meanings, see our GOOA (Glossary Of Online Acronyms).

For a few years now, SI has been moving away from anonymity. Consequently, we require your real name in your profile when you join (visible only to other members). We also strongly prefer that your username be either your real name or some variation of your real name, such as first or last name with an initial or two. If there is a name just about everyone knows you by but which has little relationship to your real name, we can accommodate that. Handles are not permitted.

Some examples for a member named Francis August Schaeffer…

The rules are detailed in the Comment Policy.

According to Google Analytics, SI averages 12,000 to 15,000 unique visitors a month (40,000 to 60,000 hits). The site’s visitors are located in more than fifty countries, but 89% use the site in the USA. 2% are in Canada and most of the rest in Australia, U.K. and Europe.

Though we have yet to systematically measure demographic details, most who would know “guesstimate” that a majority of SI readers are male, and a significant percentage are pastors (maybe a third). We know that ages and vocations vary widely.

The site has over a thousand active* members who identify with Fundamentalism (more than four thousand archived members).

A survey for gathering demographic data was recently completed and awaits analysis.

*”Active” here means members who have logged in at the site within the last 12 months.

Internet advertising is a growing business. Studies show that Google consistently obtains more than 90% of its revenues from Internet advertising alone. Advertising on a website rather than traditional print or broadcast media offers the following advantages:

• Web advertising allows consumers to click directly to an advertiser’s site for immediate purchase of products or services.
• Web advertisers may change an ad design at any time, inviting a higher click-through ratio and more hits to their site.  For example, if an advertiser advertises a product but wants to introduce a new one, he may change the ad to broadcast his new product. In other words, there’s no limit to the number of products or services an advertiser may broadcast during the course of his ad contract period.
• Web advertisers can usually obtain ad performance data such as the number of times displayed their ad to users and how many times users responded by clicking.

A variety of options is available. Current pricing info can be found here.

Most of our clients create their own image ads using various graphics programs. If you’d like to advertise but don’t know how to go about creating the ads, just let us know. We’d be happy to make them for you.

Yes! You’ll find it here. You can also view our current advertisers here.