Atheism Plus/Free Thought Blogs (FTB)

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Foolmewunz said:
Okay, my curiosity was piqued when I noted the above so I actually tracked the first twelve hours 00:01 to 12:00 GMT of 31 July 2013. As I said, I just happened to notice this in the first hour, but I was wondering if it's a pattern.

Opening Counter: 87488 posts
12:00:01 GMT 87515

Total would seem to be 27 new posts in 12 hours. (For them, that's kind of average lately as they are hovering between 2 and 3 posts an hour.)

But here's the beauty part.... visible to your average member.... seven (7) posts. SEVEN!!! That's one new and exciting and informative post every hour and twenty-five minutes!

Invisible to all but the Cool Kids' Table? 20 posts! That is correct - over 70% of the posts are in private among the in crowd. How must it feel to be one of the dupes who fell for their inclusionary b.s.? It's a safe space for a select few individuals. You can watch the activity on the forum index page and see the royalty logging on, see the total posts go up, but see no posts visible to the lower classmen.

ETA: It's now 75% hidden posts. The overall count went up one post, but nothing's shown up in the last fifteen minutes on the public wall of the index, so it's another uber sensitive social justice message that y'all can't be trusted with, you peons!
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By way of contrast, JREF has 9.37 million posts, give or take, and roughly 167,000 posts in the Mod Area. Now, before you get all paranoid, keep in mind that a post has been generated in the Sooper Sekrit area for every infraction ever issued on this forum (which accounts for the vast majority of those 167,000 posts). The actual number of posts the Mod Team has made in that area is something slightly over 30,000. So, about 0.3% of our posts are invisible to the general population. I haven't compared posts in the Sooper Sekrit area per day to the total number of posts per day, but I'd bet the fraction is vanishingly small (I'd be amazed if it was as many as one in a thousand).

Draw your own conclusions.
 
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jhunter1163 said:
By way of contrast, JREF has 9.37 million posts, give or take, and roughly 167,000 posts in the Mod Area. Now, before you get all paranoid, keep in mind that a post has been generated in the Sooper Sekrit area for every infraction ever issued on this forum (which accounts for the vast majority of those 167,000 posts). The actual number of posts the Mod Team has made in that area is something slightly over 30,000. So, about 0.3% of our posts are invisible to the general population. I haven't compared posts in the Sooper Sekrit area per day to the total number of posts per day, but I'd bet the fraction is vanishingly small (I'd be amazed if it was as many as one in a thousand).

Draw your own conclusions.
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By the way, the final count for the 24 hours of July 31 comes out to

Total Increase 60 posts
Visible 24
Private Area 36

So only 60%. And again, this is not the mods area. This is the inner sanctum soopersafe space for the uber sensitive to have their privacy from the people they're inviting to join a forum and discuss things. Essentially, there are two forums. One for the untrained SJ101 crowd and one for the privileged SJ201 crowd.

60% of their posts are invisible to the general membership. And that general membership has been culled to get rid of undesirables, already. They've raised the ante on the "read and lurk" admonishment to extremes.

I don't liken it to a cult so much as see it as something they must've all railed against throughout their school years. It's the Revenge of the Nerds. They now occupy the Cool Kids table in the lunch room. (For certain obscure definitions of the word "cool".)
 
Apparently I have made it to the SP list having never posted on the A+ forum. I am on the Block Bot twitter list as a level 2 having done nothing more than an occasional comment on twitter and occasionally retweeting things.

I would count this as a badge of honor but I can not say that I was going out of my way to annoy them.
 
Kochanski said:
Apparently I have made it to the SP list having never posted on the A+ forum. I am on the Block Bot twitter list as a level 2 having done nothing more than an occasional comment on twitter and occasionally retweeting things.

I would count this as a badge of honor but I can not say that I was going out of my way to annoy them.
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You'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes!
 
Kochanski said:
Apparently I have made it to the SP list having never posted on the A+ forum. I am on the Block Bot twitter list as a level 2 having done nothing more than an occasional comment on twitter and occasionally retweeting things.

I would count this as a badge of honor but I can not say that I was going out of my way to annoy them.

Lorentz said:
You'll be first against the wall when the revolution comes!

Kochanski said:
I say bring the revolution, in the proud Polish tradition I will be Żołnierze wyklęci.
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:) It's these kinds of posts that keep me coming back to JREF. If I ever decide to create an account there (A+ or FTB) I want to do so in the proud Russian dissident tradition of folks like Natan Sharansky. I think people like Ellen Beth Wachs have had epiphanies like the Mitchel and Web Nazi characters in skit bellow.

 
zooterkin said:
It doesn't seem to be working at the moment, though it was yesterday, but it's http://www.theblockbot.com/?page_id=35

(Found via Tim Farley's excellent blog post on the topic.)
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Very interesting list. Saw Claus Larsen complaining about being on the list and how there's no channel for appeal. Also found "girl writes what" on level 2. She's really cool! It's not just about abusive trolling. It's about fear of contradiction and fear of dissent. Again, uniformity of opinion is mandatory with the A+ crowd which is the antithesis of free thought.
 
You can be banned without even having to post there?! :boggled:
At what point did that seem like a good idea? Preemptive strikes on a forum.
 
Thanks to the A+ block list I found that Barbara Drescher was on twitter and so followed her.
 
Rrose Selavy said:
It said "blogger Rebecca Watson" had a " bad experience" and showed a short clip of her "guys don't so that" vid.
Then moved to the creator of the "Block Bot", connected with Atheism+
http://www.theblockbot.com/?page_id=2

Must say though Toby Young was useless in the studio debate as was the woman interviewed from twitter.
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It was interesting to see that they interviewed Oolon, the only person able to post to FtB, A+ and the Slyme pit and not be considered evil by the former two because he's associated with the latter.

Mr. Scott said:
Also found "girl writes what" on level 2. She's really cool! It's not just about abusive trolling. It's about fear of contradiction and fear of dissent. Again, uniformity of opinion is mandatory with the A+ crowd which is the antithesis of free thought.
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But GWW is an evil fedora wearing misogynistic gender traitor MRA who wants to see all women stay in the kitchen, of course she's on the block list.

Then again we are talking about a group of people who employ followcrime as a tactic. If you want to get on that block list you probably only need to follow either @elevatorgate or @AngrySkepchick since to some of these people that's a blockable offence.

Interestingly enough, @thunderf00t is only on a level 2 block, while two fake accounts are level 1.
 
Dissolution said:
You can be banned without even having to post there?! :boggled:
At what point did that seem like a good idea? Preemptive strikes on a forum.
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Probably right after the point that they decided that "safe space" would override any thoughts of allowing dissent and just before they realized that they needed a "safer space" (secret forum) for the bunch who hang out at the Cool Kids' Table in the lunchroom.

Results: A forum with no discussion, just head-nodding. A forum where the smart newbies(the ones who want to survive) wait for one of the CK(cool kids) to post the party line before stating an opinion. A forum with an average of just over two posts per hour, 60% of which are not even visible to the UK(uncool kids).
 
Dissolution said:
You can be banned without even having to post there?! :boggled:
At what point did that seem like a good idea? Preemptive strikes on a forum.
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I did not even register at A+ forum let alone attempt to post there, I have no desire to get into that vortex of doom.

It is a twitter block bot so the delicate flowers at A+ don't even have to block individuals they can sign up for block bot and it does it for them.

I was listed as level 2 SP for doing nothing more than following individuals on their list, retweeting things and conversing with individuals on their list.

I don't really care that they block me, not like I am competing for followers or using twitter to promote anything, it is my personal twitter account for fun.

What I care about is that the BBC used them as an example of blocking people and that they characterized individuals as abusers.
 
Kochanski said:
I did not even register at A+ forum let alone attempt to post there, I have no desire to get into that vortex of doom.

It is a twitter block bot so the delicate flowers at A+ don't even have to block individuals they can sign up for block bot and it does it for them.

I was listed as level 2 SP for doing nothing more than following individuals on their list, retweeting things and conversing with individuals on their list.

I don't really care that they block me, not like I am competing for followers or using twitter to promote anything, it is my personal twitter account for fun.

What I care about is that the BBC used them as an example of blocking people and that they characterized individuals as abusers.
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Followcrime and associating with unpersons? You're literally Hitler.
 
Mr. Scott said:
Very interesting list. Saw Claus Larsen complaining about being on the list and how there's no channel for appeal. Also found "girl writes what" on level 2. She's really cool! It's not just about abusive trolling. It's about fear of contradiction and fear of dissent. Again, uniformity of opinion is mandatory with the A+ crowd which is the antithesis of free thought.
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I found that discussion particularly interesting, as Claus was asking how he could appeal being on The List. In the media reports, they seem to downplay being put on lists 2 and 3, suggesting that there was some sort of appeal process to avoid abuse, but when Claus asked about it, the only identifiable person associated with the list told him that he has no control over the list, and that it's all in the hands of the Aplussers. Who have of course banned Claus from their forum.

So, so much for their alleged appeals process.
 
Horatius said:
I found that discussion particularly interesting, as Claus was asking how he could appeal being on The List. In the media reports, they seem to downplay being put on lists 2 and 3, suggesting that there was some sort of appeal process to avoid abuse, but when Claus asked about it, the only identifiable person associated with the list told him that he has no control over the list, and that it's all in the hands of the Aplussers. Who have of course banned Claus from their forum.

So, so much for their alleged appeals process.
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I can't even get them to say why I was put on the level 2 list. I never even attempted to sign on to the forums. I am surmising that it the fact that I follow SPs and converse with them. I am on the Slypmepit, but I have only posted a couple of things there (you would have to look hard to find them) and I joined for the amusement. I don't blog (except for occasional contributions on someone else's blog on non-skeptical topics) or do videos on youtube, I am not on the speaker circuit, my tweets are just my personal ones.

I am very small potatoes indeed. I doubt that most of the A+ers have any idea who I am and they could hardly tell anything about me from my tweets, which makes it odd that they bother to have me on the list at all. It is unlikely that any of them would be following me or seek to follow me, and while I might retweet something from someone they don't want to hear from, it seems unlikely that they would ever see it.

Again I don't really care that they have me on their block bot, I find it amusing, what I care about is how it was characterized on the bbc and the fact that lots more people have been pointed to the list who really have no clue about why the list was made and the people that made it. If people start using that list themselves to block what they think are abusers and I find my twitter account disabled I will be very angry.
 
I would say that the posts per hour comparison could only be used to determine whether dissent leads to conversation if it took into account membership numbers and was posts per hour per member. Otherwise it's just saying "forums with fewer members will have fewer posts", which seems fairly obviously and trivially true.
 
Squeegee Beckenheim said:
I would say that the posts per hour comparison could only be used to determine whether dissent leads to conversation if it took into account membership numbers and was posts per hour per member. Otherwise it's just saying "forums with fewer members will have fewer posts", which seems fairly obviously and trivially true.
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Oh, the posts per hour is just the upshot of the daily post count, which I agree is trivial, but I'm anal retentive and that sort of thing amuses me.

The more interesting thing, and the real reason I brought up the whole topic is that even at the paltry total posts per day, if they maintain that 60% rate going straight into the inner sanctum club house, then they'll have days with a dozen posts visible to the general membership. People like talking about things (even if they're not allowed to debate them) and a post every two hours for general consumption really can't feel much like a conversation, so they may lose their public following because people think there's no one posting, while they're really having tea and biscuits out of sight of the masses.
 
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