Saints,
We just got this question before we could post the update on these changes "just made" so here is the explanation we gave.
I am no longer seeing stars, someone please hit me again :-)Have the stars been taken away? No biggie, I have always viewed them as performance, like a good record so far. By the way, what were they for?
Brother, we have taken out the stars with just a simple graphic. The stars represent before how many posts you had and the "moderators" had "red stars". After thinking about this further it makes more sense for all users to have the same status because we are all just Christians who are brothers and sisters and equal in Christ. And the reason the bar is "red" for moderators is just for them to stick out as an authority on the forums to be paid attention to "a little more" then the other posts.
I trust this change will help people more see themselves as the same as others and part of this community together.
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Also another change is when you leave a comment on "sermons" you cannot leave a star ranking of 1-5 because really it seems strange overall to rank a sermon as if it were something of a sport! This concept we had going for a long time because we felt it would give more promence to the messages that really were prophetic, strong and were impacting people's lives. We still feel this can come across better just simply by the number of comments on a sermon. Our recommendation is if a sermon impacted your life and you felt it should be shared with others simply leave a comment on the message.
You can see an example of this here: https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/mydownloads/singlefile.php?lid=282&commentView=itemComments
We trust the Lord will bless these changes to make the site more clear, simple, and intuitive so people can focus on the word of God.