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Merged RD Forum shutting down

He can apologize as much as he wants. I still love the man and his works. But the new forum they're setting up sounds to be too regimented and I for one will not return. I will keep posting here as well as the new forum at Rationalscepticism.com which has attracted a huge percentage of ex-members of RDF. Of course, it remains to be seen how many of these members return to the new RDF. I hope quite a few make it over to here, as this forum overlaps RDF as well.
 
amb said:
But the new forum they're setting up sounds to be too regimented and I for one will not return.
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Yes. It's good news that the old forum will remain online for reference and archive retrieval, though. That would have been some significant intelectual loss. I hope the contributions from some users that were deleted in jest may be restored from backups.
 
Carefulplease said:
Yes. It's good news that the old forum will remain online for reference and archive retrieval, though. That would have been some significant intelectual loss. I hope the contributions from some users that were deleted in jest may be restored from backups.
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Thanks a lot for posting the link. My digital day is just starting so I hadn't heard the latest. You've inspired me to share a few observations as someone with a long history as a Dawkins observer.

Like many I was blown away by The Selfish Gene. The Blind Watchmaker was also a great read. Back in the seventies I was firing on a lot more cognitive cylinders though, as was Richard. That's the turd on the floor that we all choose to ignore. He's 68 I believe, and I'm not surprised he is overwhelmed by the rapid evolution of cyberspace and out of the loop. He depends on young Turks like Josh. His site had a feel of absentee ownership all along. DO watch that YT video I posted above. Funny, no matter your POV.

I spent 3 years as an active member of RDF. I left there for TalkRational last April, along with quite a few others from the evo and gensci forums. I witnessed countless direct challenges by some very sharp evo grad students there go unaddressed by RD. He even took offense about some polite rebuttals by mjpam-one of many émigrés from here-that were posted on TR, and insulted him in his RD sub-forum. Many of the brightest jumped in afterwards, with some very compelling arguments. Richard fled. He had previously made about 5 replies on that thread. It was a question primarily about the nature of evolution, and that very question is what brought me to JREF back in ’08.

I asked if evolution was stochastic in the Evolution Facts Forum started by The Atheist, and it was soon split to this thread. My purpose was to verify Articulett’s claims at RDF that everyone here thought it wasn’t random. She was partly right, though in way far beyond her comprehension to be sure. The thread goes on for 10 pages. I let Dr. Adequate have the last word, as engaging him had become tedious. Some will never grok the importance of defining your frames of reference clearly. Adaptation may be more significant and traceable than allele drift and reproductive success. But if a dye has 5 sixes and one 5, the results of any given toss are still stochastic and can be magnified by radical environmental shifts over time.

I don’t think the Dawkins’ site will ever come back to even half their former traffic level, short of RD firing Josh Tinomen and being baptized by the atheist Protestants. :D As if! I suspect the future belongs to user generated sites with shallow pockets. In the litigious cultures of the west, allowing the kind of uncensored discussion that has produced 30+k replies on the thread linked in my sig would be too dangerous a game for any foundation or corporate entity to play. Sorry for the length of this. I'm close to RD's age, and do tend to prattle. :( I added in my history here as I find the recursion worth noting. The questions that led me here are basically the same ones that were part of the science schism begun at RDF. If any want links to these debates, let me know. :)
 
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Is it just me but I never noticed that every thread on this forum now has a "download this thread" option in thread tools? Is that new or did I just miss it?
 
Rrose Selavy said:
Is it just me but I never noticed that every thread on this forum now has a "download this thread" option in thread tools? Is that new or did I just miss it?
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It's not new. But, one used to be able to download it as a pdf. Current functionality, I believe, only allows it to be downloaded as a text file.
 
I still don't like the counter that it's the owner's web site and they can do whatever they please. Because, it's clearly the users that create the value in any internet forum, and they invest significant intellectual capital into the place. They are why more people post (or dont post if the average user contribution sucks). That's gotta create some type of warranty that the owners will act reasonably and not just shut everyone out or make mass rules without user feedback.

The users should get more consideration for their time (not saying they should call the shots, just that's it not fair to expect them to just suck up any change mgmt makes, including deleting hours of individual contributions to a forum.
 
bpesta22 said:
I still don't like the counter that it's the owner's web site and they can do whatever they please. Because, it's clearly the users that create the value in any internet forum, and they invest significant intellectual capital into the place. They are why more people post (or dont post if the average user contribution sucks). That's gotta create some type of warranty that the owners will act reasonably and not just shut everyone out or make mass rules without user feedback.

The users should get more consideration for their time (not saying they should call the shots, just that's it not fair to expect them to just suck up any change mgmt makes, including deleting hours of individual contributions to a forum.
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No, sorry, it doesn't. As an analogy, take a coffee shop. Its indubitable that the coffee shop receives all of its value from the customers - no customers, no value.

Yet the owner can shut it down whenever he wants.

This goes for really pretty much any service.
 
GreyICE said:
No, sorry, it doesn't. As an analogy, take a coffee shop. Its indubitable that the coffee shop receives all of its value from the customers - no customers, no value.

Yet the owner can shut it down whenever he wants.

This goes for really pretty much any service.
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I disagree in that the coffee shop customers provide value only as long as they are there, and the value is not in the form of intellectual capital. Once the coffee's consumed they're done, unless they come back.

Take away posts and there is no forum. Take away interactions with coffee shop customers and there's still coffee.

I think RD has the absolute legal right to do it; I think it's wrong though from any other perspective. I do think forum owners owe something to people who invest lots of intellectual capital to the website. What they owe is not financial or even monetary, but I still think it's a debt.
 
bpesta22 said:
I disagree in that the coffee shop customers provide value only as long as they are there, and the value is not in the form of intellectual capital. Once the coffee's consumed they're done, unless they come back.

Take away posts and there is no forum. Take away interactions with coffee shop customers and there's still coffee.
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The forum is still there, even if no one posts in it.

A forum with no posters and coffee with no coffee drinkers are reasonably similar things.
I think RD has the absolute legal right to do it; I think it's wrong though from any other perspective. I do think forum owners owe something to people who invest lots of intellectual capital to the website. What they owe is not financial or even monetary, but I still think it's a debt.
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Oh I agree 100%. They most definitely have a social, if you will, debt to their posters. Forums are made by the people posting in them, and the organizations they bring publicity and attention for benefit from these people.

I wouldn't say that Dawkins shouldn't be castigated on the Internet for this. I wouldn't say that posters should return - once burned, twice shy, and the best way to prevent people from doing this in the future is show them the consequences of these actions today.

But there's no 'warranty' that the forum won't be shut down, unless of course the organization running it makes one.
 
bpesta22 said:
I think RD has the absolute legal right to do it; I think it's wrong though from any other perspective. I do think forum owners owe something to people who invest lots of intellectual capital to the website. What they owe is not financial or even monetary, but I still think it's a debt.
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I suggest that if you're so worried about your "intellectual capital" being taken advantage of, deleted, or otherwise not used according to your intent, that you spend more time charging for it and less time posting it for free on webforums. Alternately, don't charge for it, but put it on your own blog where you alone can control its fate.

I understand that it can be upsetting to see a forum go away or completely change its form. And it's a good thing that RD decided in the end to leave the whole thing up as a 'read-only' reference (though, as he notes, it will cost him money and so a lot of the graphics will end up blasted away after a short time). But at the same time, I think calling forum posts by such a hoity name as "intellectual capital" is indulging in a bit of post hoc* rationalization, don't you? I really don't think most of the posters felt their posts were anything other than well-written responses** at the time they were posted.

If I were really going all-out to create proper articles as responses to something on the forum, I would certainly either crosspost them to a blag somewhere or otherwise ensure I had a local archive. I don't do that currently because I don't really care whether all my posts survive the mists of time -- while I do think many of them are remarkably well-written and to the point, I also think that a lot of them are what's colloquially called "common sense"... so there's little need to preserve them for posterity.


* Pun intended.
** Or barely-literate screeds. English majors and scientific knowledge are not even close to genetically linked.
 
remirol said:
I suggest that if you're so worried about your "intellectual capital" being taken advantage of, deleted, or otherwise not used according to your intent, that you spend more time charging for it and less time posting it for free on webforums. Alternately, don't charge for it, but put it on your own blog where you alone can control its fate.

I understand that it can be upsetting to see a forum go away or completely change its form. And it's a good thing that RD decided in the end to leave the whole thing up as a 'read-only' reference (though, as he notes, it will cost him money and so a lot of the graphics will end up blasted away after a short time). But at the same time, I think calling forum posts by such a hoity name as "intellectual capital" is indulging in a bit of post hoc* rationalization, don't you? I really don't think most of the posters felt their posts were anything other than well-written responses** at the time they were posted.

If I were really going all-out to create proper articles as responses to something on the forum, I would certainly either crosspost them to a blag somewhere or otherwise ensure I had a local archive. I don't do that currently because I don't really care whether all my posts survive the mists of time -- while I do think many of them are remarkably well-written and to the point, I also think that a lot of them are what's colloquially called "common sense"... so there's little need to preserve them for posterity.


* Pun intended.
** Or barely-literate screeds. English majors and scientific knowledge are not even close to genetically linked.
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I dunno; I still disagree with you. There's bantering among "friends" on forums and there's also serious educational discussion (at least here). I do think some posts are an investment of intellectual capital (though we could debate how good the intellect is) and I think that creates some type of moral warranty that the people benefiting from the capital will not screw those who invested it. jmo.
 
The problem is he's friends with Josh and not willing to speak badly of him publicly... Pretty hard to make a full apology without doing that. I remember a lab I worked in where we had a manager who was vindictive, irrational, abusive, (rumoredly) had sex in her office with a favored co-worker, etc. HER boss was actually a pretty nice guy afaik, but because they were long time friends he never did anything about it.
 
Not sure I like where you may be going with this analogy, but, hey, if it's salacious, lay on McCornsail...:D
 
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